[DM-MUG] 1989 - Mac Surgery . . .

[BONISTEWA at aol.com]

Mac Surgery
New York Times
October 26, 2006

 Today, for your entertainment (and my nostalgia) pleasure, another 
installment of the "articles Pogue wrote in 1989 for his local Mac user-group 
newsletter, which he recently found on an old Zip disk and thought you might find 
amusing" files.... This one is called "Mac Surgery." Really takes me back--to a 
time I'm not sure I want to remember.
It began, oddly enough, with software. Powerful, massive, hard-drive hungry 
software. A program so vast and so potent it is shipped on four floppies, to 
which a single meg of memory is like a pebble on its mighty shore. A masterpiece 
of programming which, with its brute and awesome number-crunching demands, 
runs on my Mac SE about as fast as a 42nd Street crosstown bus at 5:15 pm.
 My choice was clear: get an accelerator card or go to law school.
 The literature for the Orion accelerator card spoke glowingly of an 
inexpensive card that you pop 
into your machine, and voila: "calculation-dependent software like music and 
CAD/CAM applications run up to 100 times faster!" Sounded pretty good. I 
ordered one. $860 for the whole shebang.
 Confident, smiling, I unplugged my computer. I laid it on a Spider-Man 
towel, screen down. Feeling 
like James T. Kirk, exploring new dimensions, I unscrewed the Mac's four case 
screws. Piece 
o'cake--a child could open this computer. I lifted off the case, admiring the 
famed signatures of the Mac's creators inscribed on the inside--a sight, I 
realized with a glow of pride, that only the true 
power-user cognoscienti would ever get to see.
 I turned back to the patient and looked at the innards. Immediately I 
abandoned all hope.
 The Mac was a mess. There were wires and components and circuits and all 
kinds of stuff. Reluctantly, I opened the manual for the first time.
 "1. WARNING: Installation procedure is intended for Authorized service 
technicians. All other attempts to install Orion Boards are discouraged by the 
manufacturer, who is not responsible for 
the consequences. You must work in an environment that is static free. Always 
wear goggles. Remove rings and wristwatches before performing installation. 
Never touch the Anode--it carries high voltage from the side of the picture 
tube. These precautions will reduce the possibility of injury but will not 
eliminate them."
 Consequences!? Injury!? Goggles?! What was it gonna do, squirt ink at me? 
For a fleeting moment, my mental picture of Ultra Mac began to waver around the 
edges, like David Letterman going into a flashback while answering Viewer 
Mail. The specter of the Anode haunted me, too. I could just see 
the Post. "KOMPU KID FRIED IN MAC ATTACK."

 But nay! I thrust my shoulders back and gripped the screwdriver. I can DO 
this. Knowingly, I took my watch off. I took my socks off, too--you never know 
about static.
 "2. You will notice three connectors to the motherboard. Unplug these 
connectors from the motherboard (the one from the power board may take a little 
persuasion)."
 Persuasion?
 Perspiring already, I inspected the motherboard. This, then, was the Brain. 
But there were five main connectors, not three. Or maybe only four were 
connectors, and the other was--the Anode.
 I wiped the thought from my mind.
 The first four came off with no problem--like taking diodes from a baby. The 
fifth required a little persuasion.
 "PLEASE! PLEEEEEASE come off!" I cried as I tried to wrest it free with 
sweating fingers.
 No dice.
 It occurred to me that a different, more New York kind of persuasion might 
be the ticket. Glowering threateningly, I slowly lowered the tip of a putty 
knife to the plastic terminus. I slipped it underneath like a lever and 
persuasioned that little sucker right out of its socket with an unnerving ripping 
sound.
 Right out of any future functionality, too, no doubt.
 "3. Locate and remove Apple's ROM chips, labeled ROM HI and ROM LO. Perform 
this removal carefully." In my mind, I heard Leonard Nimoy narrating. "The 
slightest slip will send the patient into an irreversible paraelectronic stupor. 
Pogue must remove the chips leg by leg, taking care not to 
bend a single one. As the night wears on, the surgeon faces his greatest 
challenge."
 At last the chips were free. Handling them like radioactive isotopes, I 
lifted them with the tip of the screwdriver and set them gently down on the bottom 
of a Rubbermaid Freez-N-Serv sandwich box.
 And so it went, organ by internal organ. Finally, an hour later, I arrived 
at the last page of the manual. It was called "Finishing Up."
 It read, in its entirety:
 "7. While holding the motherboard close to the bottom of the computer, 
position it with the bottom side in the track. Now comes the key step: Take a 
screwdriver and insert blade into the notch between the frame and"
 That's no typo. "Between the frame and"
 That was the end of the manual. The last word on the page. That's all she 
wrote. Assuming, of course, that the manual writer--who quit typing in the 
middle of the most crucial sentence in the entire manual in order, I'm guessing, to 
catch the eye of that cute guy with the Sony Watchman 
over in Shipping--was a female.
 Standing foolishly, screwdriver in hand, the fruit of the salaries of ten 
summers of camp counseloring strewn like so much "Star Wars III: Return of the 
Jedi" Prop Dept. refuse across my desk, bed and floor, I fleetingly considered 
some of the actually quite attractive qualities of today's top 
management-training programs.
 In a last futile gesture, I even tried to follow the instruction. I actually 
put the screwdriver between the frame and But it was no use. I chucked the 
screwdriver and slipped the motherboard back into its 
original position, praying fervently. I reconnected the cables--the ones I k
new about, anyway--and, somehow knowing it was futile, turned on the Mac. The 
sweet sound of success--bing!--and there, I saw, with a welling glow of 
satisfaction, the contented smiling startup icon of a well-adjusted computer.
 I choked. I sobbed. All was not lost!
 And soon--miracle!--there was the Desktop, all my little icons yawning, 
stretching, blinking in the morning sun, completely unaware of how close they had 
come to electronic death.
 And what speed! I launched my favorite quick-as-a-turtle graphics program. 
Zooomm! I tried a music program. Zippp! I was almost alarmed.
 Now, exhausted and shaking very slightly, I replaced the Mac cover and put 
back the screws that hold it in place: one, two, three--uh-oh! After all this, 
I couldn't find the fourth screw anywhere. I looked in the sandwich box. On 
the floor, on the desk, in my pockets. I felt like a surgeon who, upon sewing up 
the patient, suddenly says: "Now, what did I do with those sponges?"
 I cleaned up rampantly. I put the tools away, threw away (violently) the 
installation manual, swept the floor. The little screw was defiantly hiding.
 At last, as I brushed the circuitry crumbs from the towel, my thumb ran over 
what I thought at first was just a little Spider-Man eye dirt. Yes, there it 
was, nestled deep in the terry at the corner of Spidey's left eyehole: the 
fourth screw.
 Today the patient is healthier than ever before. It has cut down on meats 
and sugars, increased its leafy vegetable intake, and begun to exercise 
regularly. With a careful eye on its blood pressure and weight, there's no reason the 
Mac shouldn't continue a productive and happy existence right up to the onset 
of obsolescence--which could be as long as another eighteen to twenty months.

 This week's Pogue's Posts blog.
 Visit David Pogue on the Web at DavidPogue.com.

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