A TV Message: “Kill Your TV! Ⓐ”
Message “Kill Your TV! Ⓐ ” on a parked TV at the roadside Schwedter Strasse, Berlin Prenzlauer Berg / Mitte
Album: Monitor-TV
Light Border Mauerpark 9. November 2014
The Berlin Wall came down this day 25 years ago – on 9 November 2014 around 7 p.m. – so we made our way to Mauerpark to see the ‘dissolution’ of the light border. Apart from us, it felt like 100,000 Berliners and tourists – neighbours and guests – had made their way to Mauerpark. It was correspondingly crowded.
The actual event, the ascension of the balloons, was rather unspectacular – spectacularly unspectacular. One balloon after the other was released from its base and rose into the foggy Berlin November sky to the murmurs of the spectators.
During the past three days I took several hundred photos of the ‘light border’ – by day and by night, mainly in Mauerpark and at Bernauer StTrasse, but also a few pictures in Kreuzberg. In the coming days/weeks I will finish the pictures and upload them into a separate album… But I ask for a little patience, as I have seen enough balloons for now.
The IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer on display in a window in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. Actually – my window, back in the days when we still had our office in Oderberger Strasse 2. So next to the IBM you also see a mini DIY TV-Tower which can be downloaded from here.
IBM PC with Modem
Another photo of my old IBM PC together with the modem we used to connect to the internet, which basically did not exist back in the days.
Contrast and Brightness controls of a IBM Screen
Oh how I loved to play around with the contrast and brightness controls – and it was just so intuitive. Today no computer screen I know has extra buttons to control brightness and contrast – but back in the days, at least the screen of the IBM PC had this basic set of controls.
IBM Personal Computer
A ‘portrait’ of the IBM Personal Computer – the original PC – my first computer. What a beauty! Two floppy drives, one RGB screen – and loaded with a promising 64 kBytes of RAM. We also had an Acoustic Coupler which would connect me to the world whenever I liked – although there was not much to connect to.
Stanley Kubrick Exhibition Opening (2005)
Pictures from the exhibition opening at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin.
In 2005, there was a comprehensive exhibition on Stanley Kubrick and his work at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. There was a wealth of props, photos and models of film sets on display — and of course film clips.
Ford Ranchero with Monitor on top
Why? Why not?
Flight Simulator Cockpit – Twin Towers New York City
A screenshot of the cockpit of MS Flight Simulator, approaching the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. The graphics were of course quite poor – but the ‘plane’ and all the surroundings were at least moving in real time. So it really took time to fly the little Cessna from example from JFK Airport to Manhattan.
Back then the game designers could not add too much detail to the map – but at least the Twin Towers, the Brooklyn Bridge the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty were there to see and enjoy. And looking down you could see one white line resembling Broadway and another white line resembling Fith Avenue – and of course a large green rectangle that would resemble Central Park.
Being bored kids of the Eighties we would usually take off at JFK and fly some rounds above New York City. The usual Tour de New York would include a round around the Empire State Building, then flying down Broadway, trying to fly between the Twin Towers, taking a look at the Statue of Liberty and then back above the Hudson River, enjoying the view to the Brooklyn Bridge. Yay!
MS Flight Simulator Settings screen
The MS Flight Simulator was one of the first rather complex games you could play on an IBM PC in the mid-eighties. Here’s a screenshot of the settings screen. You could basically choose any start position for your flight – but also details like Airspeed and Reality Mode which would make flying the Cessna a bit more difficult.
IBM PC Startup Screen 1980
Turning on the old IBM PC the first thing you get to see is a system message, asking for the current date – in this case in German:
Datum ist: Di, 1-01-1980
Neues Datum eingeben: _
So that would mean the current date is January 1st, 1980 – please enter a new date… Poor machine. Put in simple words: back in those days most computers could not guess the correct date, let alone remember anything from the past, simply because they didn’t have a memory that would remember.
MacBook Pro Crash – Kernel Panic
This is what it looks like when a MacBook Pro says goodbye… Super crash: Kernel Panic. Hardware failure. Motherboards was broken. Hard drive could be saved. The ironic part of this screen shot is that the “hello” mac face icon is still smiling, as if everything was ok.
Happy Mac Startup Image
Ach back in the days, when a Happy Mac was smiling at you would mean that the computer is starting up and probably everything will be fine.