[geeks] War games WOPR? Real system?

[geeks at sunhelp.org]

There is a cool legend around Cambridge Mass from many years ago (back when
I used to cruise electronics companies dumpsters around there). There is (or
maybe now its was) a company called Eli Heffrons in Cambridge. They used to
sell electronic/computer scrap by the pound. They'de have it in barrels,
piles, shelves, whatever. If it didn't sell, it went into the next
cheaper-by-the-pound pile until it sold. One day a props/FX buyer from
Hollyweird stopped by and pooped his pants. He bought everything he saw and
made a movie with some of it called War Games. I've talked to some of the
oldtimers at Eli's and they say its true.

The sad ending to the story is that Eli figured his crap was worth lots more
all of a sudden. They also got into the orphan/retired computer parts
business. I used to regularly find parts and subsystems (like papertape
readers) for my PDP8 there. I used to pick up tons of RZ55 drives and use
them on a BBS I had then. Even with the inflated prices they were still
cool. I even found a highly specialized fiche camera manufactured by a
company I was working for at the time (TDC). I bough it for $200.00 and
parted it out to my customers for a total of $3500.00.

James Fogg, Network Engineer
Vicinity Corporation - New Hampshire
(603) 442-1751

~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: Ethan [mailto:telmnstr at 757.org]
~ Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 1:53 AM
~ To: geeks at sunhelp.org
~ Subject: [geeks] War games WOPR? Real system?
~ 
~ 
~ Anyone know if the WOPR was just a box with lights? Or was it 
~ a rebadged
~ mainframe? Didn't Boroughs have LCD screens like that 
~ (bleeding edge at
~ the time) ?
~ 
~ Poked around on google, couldn't find anything useful.
~ 
~ 				-- Ethan
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~ GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks
~