When I met the devil

In an often told story famous Blues musician Robert Johnson at some point came to the crossroads and had an encounter with the devil. Johnson was a great muscian but after meeting with the devil, this all changed, in return for Johnsons soul the devil tuned Johnsons guitar and taught him how to really play the blues and after this Johnson went from great to legendary, and the sound of Johnson guitar is still considered outstanding and unique.

Back in to my youth in the 1970's

Maybe you have had moments in life too, when something happened that was unexpected or even impossible and things changed forever, it sure has happened to me, and maybe it was the devil that took action. I was around 17 or 18 years old, and at my high school they had a computer (just one, an Alpha LSI) that had my attention, this seemed like fun and I spent quite a bit of time with it. It was in the late 1970's (I'm born in 1960) so having your own computer hadn't up til then been realistic, but now there were microcomputer kits, you built your own 8-bit computer from electronic parts. I was pretty good at electronics so I could probably build something like that, but these kits were still kind of expensive.

I saved up some money though and my mom and dad had promissed to support me with as much as I put in myself. I was getting close when there was a hobbyist show in the small town where I lived with my parents and the local computer shop was exibiting there, selling the kit I was looking for at a special price, a price that I actually could afford. I convinced my dad to go there with me and at this big show with lots of activities there was just one thing I wanted, me and my dad got up to the stand where the Compukit UK 101 kit was on display, got a kit and left the show.

Building the Compukit UK 101

Back home I made some place for the computer in the basement TV room in our house and then too the kit to the workshop where a soldering iron was waiting at the table where I usually assembled kits for and serviced trains for my model rainroad (this was about to be retired but I didn't know that yet). I unpacked the kit (see https://uk101.sourceforge.net/docs/pdf/manual.pdf) and started soldering. There were some 80 or 90 circuits, a keyboard and some other odd components to solder to the circuit board, and I spent a few days working on it, trying to be as careful as possible. Eventually I had it ready and I had already got myself a black and white TV to use as the monitor.

I took the assembled kit to the TV room and hooked it up to the TV and switched on the power and I got.... Nothing. Stone dead. And I was devastated, what do I do now? I was young and inexperienced, I knew a fair bit about electronics but I had very little gear, an old style analog multimeter was it, basically. Also, I was a bit worried what my parents would think, I had spent quite a bit of money on something that didn't work at all. I went to bed that day and didn't feel well.

Recovering and meeting him

I woke up the next day with a plan that someone had planted in my head: the most likely issue, assuming all components worked OK, was a cold solder. Makes sense, right, there was something around 2000 solder points on that board and if one of them was a cold one, nothing would work. Problem was that I had to find that cold solderpoint, so I better get started. So I did, measuring with my multimeter I tried to detect a cold solder, to no avail, and I started to get worried again and the positivism I had felt when I woke up was all gone. But I can also be stubborn at times (ask anyone who has had to work with me) so another plan came to me when I was sitting in that workshop. Not that I would instead pick up the guitar and play the blues like no one else, but the devil came to me with another idea: You don't know which solder is bad, so you better resolder all of them. If you do that I'll fix your computer for you, in exchange for your soul.

So I set out to do just that, resoldering all the solder point on that board. The chances of this getting the job done was not that high, but just the kind of thing a stubborn young nerd can do if pressed hard and in addition I had an important dignitary backing me up. So I soldered and soldered, and soldered. It took me a few days. Sometimes I lost track of where I was, but eventually I soldered my way through all points, while trying not to think of the old saying that trying the same thing twice and expecting a different result is not the smartest thing to do.

Eventually I had been through all solder points. I sat down and looked at the Compukit, then I grabbed it and took in into the TV room and hooked it up and turned on the power. The TV took a while to start up, but I had heard some noces of static electricity from it so maybe something was working. Just maybe. Then the TV woke up and at the bottom was 4 letters: D / C / W / M ? In Computkit lingo this means a question on what to do now, boot from the optional floppy (which I never got) (D) isk, (C)old start, (W)arm start and machine code (M)onitor. It worked!

Epilogue

That moment when that Compukit booted properly changed the course of my life. Yes, I enjoyed computers even before this, but if the Computkit hadn't started, I guess I would have continued working with my model railroad and gotten a job at the local Telco and that would be it. But that is not what happened, I got stuck with computers for the rest of my active life (it's not over yet, but I don't think it will change, really), for many years I have now worked with computers on a daily basis, built them, serviced them, programmed them and cursed them but always enjoyed them, but it all started that evening in the basement of my parents house when the 14in TV I used as a monitor woke up and displayed 4 letters at the bottom. So sometimes meeting the devil can potentially be a good thing.