stamp of approval, after all, and that meant a lot. Another attrac
tion: The peripherals were standard and easy to obtain.
I was reading about all these newer CPUs that
could
do what
I wanted. It became clear that the 68020, which
looked
interesting,
wasn't going anywhere. I could have considered buying a CPU
upgrade for the QL. In those days that meant basically rebuilding
the machine. And the operating system didn't know about mem
ory management, anyway, so I would have had to write my own
version. So it was like:
Hhhmmm. Doing that will be a big step. And it
will be expensive to get a new
CPU.
And then there was still the increasing headache of buying
things for the computer. It wasn't as if there was a Sears catalogue
for the Sinclair QL and you just picked up the phone and ordered
more memory. The postal-order-from-England routine was getting
old. (I didn't mind that there was no shrink-wrapped software
because I was able to write all that myself.)
There was a positive side effect to this pain-in-the-neck.
When I was thinking about getting rid of the machine, I decided
to sell my peripherals-the real hard drive I had purchased because
I couldn't take the microdrive one second longer, and my expansion
RAM. But there weren't people lined up in the streets searching for
such stuff, so you had to advertise in a computer magazine and
pray. And that's how I met my good friend Jouko Vierumaki , who
turned out to be probably the only other person in all of Finland
who owned a Sinclair QL. He answered my ad and took the train
from Lahti and bought some of my peripherals. Then he intro
duced me to snooker.
L i n u s To r v a l ds a n d D a v i d D i a m o n d
4 9
II.
My first year at university, the Sinclair QL sat on a desk
against my first-floor bedroom window on Petersgatan, but I didn't
do much in the way of programming. Partly it was a matter of
wanting to concentrate on my studies. But also, I simply found
myself lacking a project to do on my computer. Lack a project and
you lack enthusiasm. You're trying to come up with something
that might motivate you.
It seemed like the perfect time to join the army, which I
knew I would have to do anyway. I was nineteen years old and irri
tated with my computer's shortcomings and unattached to any
interesting computer project. I boarded a train for Lapland.
I've already indicated how clueless I was about, among other
things, the physical demands of army service. So after the eleven
months of phys ed-with-firearms, I felt perfectly justified in spend
ing the remaining decades of my life in blissful inactivity, with the
only exercise coming from tapping code into a keyboard or grip
ping my fingers around a glass of pilsner. (In fact, the first near
sport activity after leaving the army didn't take place until almost
ten years to the day following my discharge, when David coerced
me into going boogie-boarding with him in the killer waves at Half
Moon Bay. I practically drowned, and my legs were sore for days.)
Army service ended on the 7th of May, 1 990. Although Tove
would tell you I have trouble remembering our anniversary, I can't
possibly forget the date I was discharged.
The first thing I wanted to do was get a cat.
5 0
I had a friend whose cat had produced a litter a few weeks
earlier, so I bought the sole remaining kitten, which was wnite,
male, beautiful-and, because he had spent his first few weeks in
the outdoors, easily able to live both inside and outside my mother's
apartment. I named him Randi, short for Mithrandir, the white
wizard in
Lord of the Rings.
He is now eleven years old and, like his
owner, has become totally adjusted to the California lifestyle.
No, I don't think I did anything productive that entire sum
mer. Classes for my second year at the university wouldn't start
until fall. My computer was not quite up to snuff. So I sort of hung
around in my ratty bathrobe or played with Randi or, occasionally,
got together with fri'ends so they could chuckle about my attempts
at bowling or snooker. Okay, I did do a little fantasizing about my
next computer.
I faced a geek's dilemma. Like any good computer purist
raised on a 68008 chip, I despised PCs. But when the 386 chip
came out in 1 986, PCs started to look, well, attractive. They were
able to do everything the 68020 did, and by 1 990, mass-market
production and the introduction of inexpensive clones would make
them a great deal cheaper. I was very money-conscious because I
didn't have any. So it was, like, this is the machine I want to get.
And because PCs were flourishing, upgrades and add-ons would be
easy to obtain. Especially when it came to hardware, I wanted to
have something that was standard.
I decided to jump over and cross the divide. And it would be
fun getting a new CPU. That's when I started selling off pieces of
my Sinclair QL.
Now everybody has a book that has changed his or her life.
The Holy Bible.
Das Kapital. Tuesdays With Maury. Everything I
Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
Whatever. (I sincerely
hope that, having read the preface and my theory on The Meaning
of Life, you will decide that this book does the trick for you.) The
book that launched me to new heights was
Operating Systems: Design
and Implementation,
by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
I had already signed up for my fall courses, and the one that
L i n u s To r v a lds a n d D a v i d D i a m o n d
5 1
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