You can drive a car with your feet, you can operate a sewing machine with your feet. Same goes for computers obviously
- Reference: 1611303310
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/22/on_call/
- Source link:
Our tale, from a reader Regomised as "Mike", takes us back to the glory days of the personal computer revolution and the service department of a ComputerLand outlet.
[2]
The year was 1982 and Mike was delighted with his workplace. "A fairly amazing place at the time," he said, "that was opening very fancy stores selling the brand new 'personal computer' to the public."
The [3]ComputerLand retail operation was indeed an impossibly exotic place all those decades ago, selling all manner of exciting hardware in a chain of stores across the US. Starting life in the 1970s, it hit its peak in the subsequent decade before sloping into inevitable decline.
[4]
"These were fun days," said Mike, with more than a hint of nostalgia. "The Apple II had been out for a while and was selling briskly, Tandy was selling the TRS-80, Compaq had started shipping the Compact AND IBM had just started shipping the IBM PC."
The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout [5]READ MORE
We suspect he probably meant the Apple II+, which eventually bit the bullet at the end of 1982. The TRS-80 Model III endured into 1983, and who knows what became of that IBM machine.
Stock was flying out the door and into the hands of an enthusiastic public who may not have had much idea how to use the devices, but knew they needed one regardless.
"Almost every purchase," he recalled, "included software to store recipes."
Mike was kept away from the general public, hidden in a backroom fixing borked Apple floppy drives and the occasional overheated Apple III motherboard. It was the job of those on the salesfloor to hold the customer's hand and deal with support.
The Call came in while he was doing "maintenance" on an Apple device running Zork . A customer had bought a system that included one of those newfangled (and very unusual for the time) mouse things, but was struggling to make it work.
A simple fix. Mike had the customer bring the mouse back and swapped it over. The happy camper trotted off to try out their new home computer once more.
But again the phone rang, and the increasingly unhappy customer complained: "The mouse is not working well."
This time Mike asked for the computer back. He swapped it, tested the new one (with new mouse), verified all was working and sent the customer home again.
A third time the customer called, now getting quite irate: "The mouse is going all over the screen, it's very hard to control."
A third time Mike had the customer bring back the entire system. He tested it once again, and everything checked out. The customer had connected the cables correctly and at least appeared to understand that moving the mouse would move the pointer on the screen.
Mike decided to break one of the cardinal rules: invite the customer into the backroom, the inner sanctum of support, to demonstrate the problem.
As Mike watched, the customer sat down in front of the screen and turned on the power. All good so far.
The mouse was reached for... OK...
A shoe was removed... eh?
The mouse put on the floor. Oh dear.
Using a foot to position the wired rodent and toe to click the requisite button, the customer complained "I don't know how people do this, it's really hard..."
"You see in those days," said Mike, "no one had really ever seen a mouse." The customer assumed it worked like a foot control for a sewing machine.
Mouse was introduced to hand and light dawned.
[6]
Ever had to help a user left utterly befuddled by what you thought was a straightforward piece of hardware? Share your experiences with an email to [7]On Call . ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/on-call
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YAqwSXGXXYJQBnKD31hvKQAAAJA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/computerland-corp-history/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YAqwSXGXXYJQBnKD31hvKQAAAJA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/15/on_call/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_personal_tech/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YAqwSXGXXYJQBnKD31hvKQAAAJA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] mailto:oncall@theregister.com
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Foot pedal
Obligatory:
Do you use a Dictaphone?
No, I use my finger like everyone else.
Re: Foot pedal
Just search for "Transcription Foot Pedal". They are still around and lots of different models are available on Amazon. My daughter is a legal secretary and uses one every day.
Re: Foot pedal
Old? I saw these in use still at my solicitors the other day!
Re: Foot pedal
Touche! I was no more aware of dictaphone foot pedals than the customer was of of mouses!
Well,a vague bell has rung in my head now you've brought it to my attention, but even before doing so I was thinking of sewing machines, pianos, organs, guitars, electric keyboards with sustain pedals...
"Old' and "solicitor" doesn't narrow things down...
I asked mine why they still insist on using faxes and was told "they cannot be forged and the sending number is traceable / accurate"
ROFL
Re: "Old' and "solicitor" doesn't narrow things down...
My understanding with fax is that it is guaranteed delivery, i.e. if your machine says it sent, then it's because the receiving machine confirmed receipt, thus it has legal uses for proving that the recipient actually received the correspondence. You don't really get that by default with email.
Re: "Old' and "solicitor" doesn't narrow things down...
I have come across fax machines that , when they run out of paper, they store the incoming faxes in memory until you put paper in. Then they print out the drivel they had received.
If however, they are powered off & on, the memory is cleared. The sender, presumably gets their successful transmission message but no trees are killed.
Re: Foot pedal
They're still used by typists / secretaries, except it's all digital dictation rather than dictation machines (eg BigHand). Last time I played with this (5 or 6 years ago) the typists had a USB-connected pedal with foot controls for forward, stop, back etc. And the solicitors had a USB (or wireless) hand held unit which looked like a dictation machine but which linked to the digital dictation system. All very slick when properly configured. Could even do tricks like send the dictation off for voice recognition first.
Re: Foot pedal
Most people who did support back when the mouse was new have a version (or three) of this story. It actually happened occasionally, I saw it myself.
Re: Foot pedal
Me too. Once. All I remember now is that the machine was an Olivetti 286 and the mouse did indeed resemble a small dictaphone foot pedal.
To be fair
Someone did come up with a foot mouse in the mid eighties, the idea being that you'd have both hands free to type. I can't remember whether it made it into production, or whether it was just a patent, but I did read about such a thing.
Re: To be fair
It wasn't a mouse, but I fiddled about with a foot pedal input device back then. Was a Moog Taurus originally[0], but I modified it so various chords became control, alt & shift keys, Fx keys, Sun's "L" keys, and a couple other key bindings depending on the computer it was plugged into. It was an attempt to bring sanity to EMACS, among other things.
Even when working well, it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, so I never pursued it. A friend of mine took my breadboard rig & used the basic idea for an alternative input device for disabled folks while getting his Masters at Stanford.
[0] Don't swear at me, I didn't wreck it! Somebody had cannibalized most of the electronics, I found the carcass in a pile of trash outside SAIL's DC Power building when we were moving out in 1980. The idea of making it an input device flashed into my mind as soon as I set eyes on it.
Re: To be fair
I bought one for a user back in 2001 (give or take a year or so). Was a 'elf and safety requirement due to RSI. Had two large pedals on which you rested your feet. One of them had a ball joint so you could move it in all directions to move the mouse. The other had two switches for "toe" and "heel", for left and right click. Cost about £300 (a lot 20 years ago). I think she gave up on it after a week!
Back then I was training users who were moving from VT100's to PC's running early Windows. Training them to use the mouse was always fun ... "Please slide the mouse over, don't pick it up and put it down"
No, not there
"No, you don't use the mouse on the screen, if it you use it on the mouse mat it will make the cursor move on the screen".
Sigh.
As an aside, I had a nostalgic moment when reminded of the Trash-80. Being a Z80 machine the software sold for those machines also ran on my Dragon 32.
Re: No, not there
6809 + Microsoft Color BASIC
Back in the late 80s I was called to assist a lecturer (I was working for the local college at the time) on his recently received PC. I can't remember the actual problem but as he was left-handed the mouse was on the opposite side to normal.
I'm right handed so he was most annoyed that I could use the mouse with my left hand better than he could!
Watching users run out of desk trying to use a mouse is one of the funniest things ever. Those were the days.....
Oh, Alexa, how we laughed.
My problem with the mouse, back in the eighties when I first saw such a beast (dangling out of my new-fangled Amstrad PC-1512, as it happens), was a) orientation (all these years later, I can’t for the life of me work out why I found it so hard to point the mouse with its tail away from me) and b) understanding that I could pick the mouse up without moving the pointer if I needed it to scoot a little further than the desk permitted.
Not, it must be said, that the mouse often troubled me. The GUI bundled with it, GEM, was a pile of old pants - and, for years, I stuck with what I knew from my previous computer. Wordstar. Which didn’t need a mouse. To the extent that, when I carelessly bundled the computer into the boot of my car to come home for the summer vac (I was at Uni), I slammed the boot on the rodent and drove home with shattered rodent bouncing on the motorway. It’s death bothered me not one jot - and I didn’t touch a mouse again until I bought a Mac* to learn 68000 assembly language on.
* I wanted a computer with an internal hard drive, which is why I didn’t go for Amiga or ST, and I wanted a small footprint (big box Amiga or ST could have given me the hard disk that I wanted, but they’d have competed for desk-space with the Amstrad’s replacement - a mammoth Opus PCV386) - so I got an SE/30 second hand. Which I still have.
head the old one about 'polish your balls' :D :D
"Mouse Balls" was written as a joke field service memo by a FSE at IBM Boca in roughly 1988, soon after the release of the IBM PS/2. Seems manglement were going on and on about the importance of the mouse with OS/2, and he was in the mood to poke fun at them.
The memo looked official, the original had the actual part number of the FRU mouse balls. It also had the tie-line number of the FSE who wrote the memo. It was never supposed to go outside his immediate office. He is probably embarrassed about it to this day.
The last time I checked (15 years ago (??)), P/N 33F8462 - Domestic Mouse Balls and P/N 33F8461 - Foreign Mouse Balls were still valid part numbers at IBM, with inventory on hand.
Sinclair mouse would have worked
IIRC Sinclair had a plan for a "mouse" that was essentially a joystick without a stick. It had a pad that you tilted to move the pointer. I don't think it ever went into production for some reason...
Hmm ...
I remember being sent to train people trying to use a mouse in industrial environments.
Broken mice from a couple of these locations resulted in an impressive collection of ones packed with grease, filled with metal shavings, partially dissolved or simply melted.
We always brought with us a selection of heavy-duty trackballs and industrial joysticks as replacements.
Foot pedal
In those days, the usual recipient of these machines was the secretary. If you've ever seen the old dictaphone machines, they had a foot control (to stop/start the tape playback as the secretary types in the boss' correspondence) which looked very much like a computer mouse. It's not surprising that some people thought that the mouse was supposed to be foot-controlled.