The Wizard of Id’s WizType

At one time there were a variety of software products on the market for teaching you how to type. I’m not sure what that market is like today but in 1984 The Wizard of Id’s WizType by Sierra was one of the better such products out there. It was available for many of the computers available at the type including the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit line, DOS and Apple II.

Like most software of its type, WizType offered various options including practice, a game and testing. The most interesting in the options in WizType were probably the game, own lesson, and paragraphs.

The game, along with the theme for all the other sections, was based on The Wizard of Id comic strip. In the game, typing accurately and quickly enough caused the Wizard to zap the spirit from the well. Too slow or inaccurate and the spirit eventually turns into a dragon and breathes fire on the wizard.

The ‘Own Lesson’ option allowed you to enter words or letter combinations for you to practice. This was useful if you had difficulty with something in particular or were just tired of the provided content.

Paragraphs provided paragraphs out of various literary works (Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities for example) for you to practice on. It also allowed you to enter and store your own paragraphs for practice. This feature is what really gave WizType longevity.

Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (437-440)

All of the photos in this set were taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were all likely taken in the Lansing, Michigan area.

The first photo was processed in January 1969. These kids appear to be working on making Christmas decorations so this was probably taken in December 1968.

Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (437-440)

Digital Archaeology: LifeBook N6010

The Pentium 4 wasn't the greatest CPU for a laptop. It used a lot of power which isn't great for either portability or battery life. Nevertheless, there was a brief period of time where the Pentium 4 was the only choice if you wanted a high performance laptop. This meant you were out of luck if you wanted something thin and light but not so bad if you were looking for a desktop replacement.

Digital Archaeology: LifeBook N6010

SupraModem 2400

In the dark ages, before always on high-speed broadband internet connections, people used devices like these to reach out to other machines. Of course in 1989, the year of this ad, there was no Internet to speak of. At least not one that was publicly accessible for most people. However, there were still ways to communicate with the digital world.

From the early 1980s through the early 1990s using dial-up via a modem like the one pictured above to call a local BBS was the way to go about it if you had the right equipment. While you were only connecting to a single machine with your modem, a BBS would provide files to download (freeware/shareware games, apps, etc.), games to play (usually turn based and against other players who would take their turn when they dialed in) and message areas. Many BBSes made use of FidoNet which was a networked messaging system like Usenet in many ways. BBSes that were part of FidoNet would exchange messages and thereby allow you to communicate with people all over the world.

Modems progressed through various speeds throughout the years. In the BBS era these speeds progressed from as low as 300bps (bits per second) to as high as 56kbps. However, one of the longest lasting speeds was 2400bps which is what the SupraModem 2400 provided. Modems providing these speeds were introduced in the late 1980s and were common through the early 1990s. Though faster modems were becoming available at reasonable prices, my first modem was a second hand 2400bps modem for my 486 based computer in 1993. By 1994 I had a 14.4kbps modem which was pretty new at the time but price wars were rapidly driving down modem costs by this point. 9600bps modems were available earlier but they were expensive and by the time the protocol was standardized, work was nearly complete on a standard for 14.4kbps modems.

Supra was known for producing decent modems at a good price. An external model like the one pictured above would work with just about any computer available at the time with the right interface cable (Amiga, Commodore 64, PC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, TRS-80, etc.) and with the right software you could communicate with a BBS running on any type of hardware. I had an internal modem for my 486 based PC that fit into one of the ISA slots because it was cheaper but external modems offered more flexibility (e.g. I couldn’t use my internal modem with anything other than a PC).

The above ad is from the October 1989 issue of Compute!’s Amiga Resource.