[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Apple IIe used for DNA analysis!



mquattro@chat.carleton.ca (Michael Quattrocchi) wrote:

>I was watching the FOX show "Sightings" last night, and they ran a segment
>on people who supposedly worked at the infamous "Area 51" in Nevada desert.
>While analyzing samples from a worker from there who had died, they found
>high levels of dioxin and such nasty chemicals... and what do you think
>that he would have had as such a powerful supercomputer to analyze the
>results? the original beige Apple IIe, quite visible on his lab counter,
>with the trusty "Monitor ///" sitting atop...

My brother in law brought me a disk to determine how it worked.  It was
DOS 3.3 disk and the program controlled a chemical machine by determining
timing and quantity of ingredients.  It was pretty old and so was the
machine, all the documentation was missing, and no one who worked there
had ever used it nor known of anyone who had.  Unfortunately the program
lacked any internal documentation, and the only information I was able to
obtain from it is the out-of-business company name and a disconnected
phone number.  That was the most I could do without access to the
additional machine.  I expect they scrapped it by now.

So it could be that that beige IIe was just being used as a controller for
a more advanced machine.  I believe there's a ][+ flying around inside a
space probe.

-- 
///   ____   \\\  http://cse.unl.edu/~gberigan/ (Greg Berigan)
| |/ /    \ \| |
 \\_|\____/|_//  "It's MIME Time.  Today on MIME Time: posting an imaginary
     \_)\\/       Usenet news article."  MIME winks, mimes typing at a    _
       `-'        keyboard and is consumed by real flames.  "The End."   d b CC