Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Nelson would already be pushing him away, sitting down at the console, bringingup the "TECO" editing program, and pounding in code at a blinding rate. In fiveminutes, he'd be done, leaping up to print it on the Model 33 teletype near themachine, and in a rush of motion he'd rip the paper off the line printer, run back tothe machine, pull off the tape with the grad student's program, and send him off.Then he'd do his own hacking.He knew no bounds. He used both the PDP-1 in the Kluge Room and the newermachine at Project MAC. When others used the PDP-1 and its limited instructionset, they might have grumbled at having to use several instructions for a simpleoperation, and then figured out the subroutines to do the programs. Nelson couldbum code with the best of them, but he wanted more instructions actually on themachine. Putting an instruction on the computer itself in hardware is a rather trickyoperation. When the TX-0 was given its new instructions, it had to be shut downfor a while until official priests, trained to the level of Pope, almost, performed thenecessary brain surgery. This seemed only logical who would expect a universityto allow underclassmen to tamper with the delicate parts of a fantasticallyexpensive computer?No one. In fact, Dan Edwards, one of Minsky's graduate students who had donesome hacking on Spacewar, had set himself up as protector of the hardware.According to Gosper, Edwards had declared that "Anyone who does as much aschange a ribbon in the typewriter is going to get permanently barred from thisplace!" But hackers did not care what the university allowed or didn't allow. WhatDan Edwards thought was of even less concern: his position of authority, like thatof most bureaucrats, was deemed an accident.Nelson thought that adding an "add to memory" instruction would improve themachine. It would take months, perhaps, to go through channels to do it, and if hedid it himself he would learn something about the way the world worked. So onenight Stewart Nelson spontaneously convened the Midnight Computer WiringSociety. This was an entirely ad hoc organization which would, when the flow ofhistory required it, circumvent the regulations of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology against unauthorized tampering with expensive computers. TheMCWS, which that night consisted of Nelson, a student worker, and severalinterested bystanders, opened up the cabinet and proceeded to rewire the PDP-1.Nelson fused a couple of diodes between the "add" line and the "store" line outputsof the instruction decoder, and had himself a new op-code, which presumablysupported all the previous instructions. He then proceeded to reassemble themachine to an apparent pristine state.The machine was taken through its paces by the hackers that night, and workedfine. But the next day an Officially Sanctioned User named Margaret Hamilton