The Hacker Files
Encyclopedia
The Hacker Files is a twelve issue DC Comics
mini-series published from August 1992 to July 1993. It was written by Lewis Shiner
and illustrated by Tom Sutton
.
novelist Lewis Shiner is notable for the first appearance of a post Suicide Squad
Barbara Gordon
(Oracle). And the introduction of Digitronix computers, a brand which continued to show up in the DCU for years afterwards.
In issue #1 Lewis Shiner states that he based the series and its main character Jack Marshall on an unpublished novel called Red Weather in which he detailed the experiences of a young programmer named Jack Marshall who worked for a Texas based computer company named Warrex, manufacturers of the short lived Centurion computer.
. Fascinated with computers ever since he was a child, he grew up alongside the industry and eventually ended up working at Digitronix World Industries (DTX), a small company in Dallas, Texas
. Maverick company president Donny Travis worked alongside Marshall to invent the Digitronix Desktop PC.
The Digitronix PC's success and profits caused rapid growth in the company, and a new senior Vice President named Walter Sutcliffe denied Marshall any profit sharing from his invention, because said profit sharing was based on a handshake agreement between Marshall and Donny Travis. Sutcliffe was one of five middle managers Donny Travis brought in from CompuTech. According to Jack, CompuTech went under due to incompetent middle management. Marshall attempted to steal his own codebase
for a new updated version of Digitronix' proprietary operating system
DROS (Digitronix Resident Operating System) but was caught and summarily terminated. But since he is the only one who truly understands DROS, he is brought in by the United States government, specifically Sarge Steel
as a freelance troubleshooter whenever there is a problem.
, it had somehow spread over the internet
and infected Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency), Securenet (connects to bombers and missiles) and Milnet
. Jack compiles an anti-virus
and recounts his history with Digitronix after a confrontation with Sutcliffe. He's able to cure the virus everywhere except Cheyenne Mountain
which isolated itself the moment a virus was detected. The virus takes over the Cheyenne Mountain system and uses it to begin deploying ICBM
s. Jack uncovers a traitor in Cheyenne Mountain who dies while trying to escape, he later stops General Wade Eiling
from accidentally launching a nuclear strike on Russia and prevents World War III.
, a United States Secret Service
crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities that took place in 1990. The operation is named after a decoy message board used by the Federal Government called Moon Witch. Someone got hold of the E911
document which details how the national emergency response system works, and then they put the document online in a real world zine
named Phrack
. The government uses the theft and publication of the document as an excuse to dismantle the Hacker subculture. They arrest Sue Denim of the Speed Metal Kids after copies of the document are planted on their personal computers, and Oracle (Barbara Gordon) who downloaded a copy from Phrack as part of an investigation. Barbara accidentally shoots a Federal agent who had burst into her bedroom, but his vest saves him, in federal prison she uses the alias Amy Beddoes from her days with the Suicide Squad
. Jack Marshall finds a copy on his own machine and deletes it, he's able to trace that copy back to Digitronix World Industries. Catherine Cobert
of Justice League International
calls in the assistance of Green Lantern
Hal Jordan
on behalf of Sue Denim and Oracle, but Jack Marshall gets there first. Oracle
is able to prove that the file originated at Digitronix and all the detainees are set free.
, but he later built chip foundries on the Chinese mainland. Jack confronts Yoshio with evidence of his complicity in the Pentagon Virus and the E911 document leak. Jack discovers that Yoshio was framed by Sutcliffe who has been using his superuser
account and password. Yoshio introduces Jack to Yan Qing a Chinese exile and a survivor of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
, her fiance Yi who worked at a Digitronix assembly plant in China, had discovered an undocumented feature
in the machine he was working on, it automatically recorded all spoken conversation in its local environment and stored it in a hidden partition
on the machine's optical hard drive. He disappeared soon after sharing this fact with a close friend from the plant. Jack schedules a meeting with his ex-wife Kathy Spencer who works in Digitronix' hardware division, and who designed the security hardware that protects all Digitronix plants. Kathy gives Jack a device which should get him past a plant's electronic security. Jack goes to China intending to break into one of the assembly plants, but his arrival is anticipated by Sutcliffe. Due to a botched infiltration Jack and Yoshio and captured by Sutcliffe and thrown into a holding cell with Yi. While in that cell they begin to see the outlines of the Aleph
conspiracy, the true reason for the virus, and how the information retrieved from the computers would be routed by the virus and co-ordinated by Tohiro Natsume's newest project a supercomputer
with 64 parallel processors. They escape from the cell using Kathy's anti-security device, and sneak Yi out of China by shipping him to the US in an equipment box.
in Kazakhstan
, parallel processors
, Prolog
language modules, and experimental fiber optic
buses. They figure out that Digitronix is building a working globally networked Artificial intelligence
which they intend to use to process a few million gigabyte
s of stolen government and industrial secrets. Jack uses a Digitronix videophone
to contact Justice League Europe
headquarters in London
, and offers them a cure for the Pentagon virus. When he gets there he tells Hal Jordan and the rest of the JLE what Digitronix is really up to. Wally West
scouts the installation at superspeed and runs into a door knocking himself out, he is captured by Digitronix security but escapes them when he wakes up. Jack uses the virtual reality
interface to hack the AI which looks like Sutcliffe, he confronts it inside a game of Code of the West. Jack had designed a compact videogame for the DTX PC called Code of the West, it is also a backdoor which is hardcoded into the operating system of every Digitronix PC. Jack uses this game to define the rules of the fight between himself and the AI. The AI makes sure there is no possible way for it to lose the game. Jack deliberately loses to the AI, allowing it to kill him in the game, because "There's a million ways to END the game by losing...but NONE to end it by WINNING. And since you CAN'T lose...you're going to be here a LONG time". And he leaves the AI playing the game, stuck in a recursive loop
. Yoshio is put in charge of Digitronix, and no charges are filed against the company.
Kids are teenage hackers who worship internet personalities like Hacker and Oracle, and who serve as his assistants.
personal computer
that can also serve as a business capable workstation
or a clustered file server
. It boasted 100 megabytes of ram, an HDTV monitor and optical disk storage, possibly based on the NeXTcube
's magneto-optical drive
. It also had built in compatibility with NTSC
\PAL
formats and had built in composite video out
, as well as advanced digital audio and video editing capacity on-chip, possibly as coprocessor
s similar to the Amiga
.
wasn't considered secure enough for government installation (in 1992), he decided that DROS would look like UNIX but would not exactly be UNIX. Kim Fairchild another series consultant suggested that he use emacs
as DROS' resident text editor
. In DROS file blocks are graphically represented as rows of stacked rectangular blocks. All commands shown when Jack interacts with DROS are Unix commands. As in UNIX, BSD
and Linux
, there are user and superuser accounts.
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
mini-series published from August 1992 to July 1993. It was written by Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner is an American writer.Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, identified early on with cyberpunk, and later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and fantasy elements...
and illustrated by Tom Sutton
Tom Sutton
Tom Sutton was an American comic book artist who sometimes used the pseudonyms Sean Todd and Dementia...
.
Publication history
The series written by cyberpunkCyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
novelist Lewis Shiner is notable for the first appearance of a post Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad
The Suicide Squad, also known as Task Force X , is a name for two fictional organizations in the DC Comics Universe. The first version debuted in The Brave and the Bold #25 , and the second in Legends #3...
Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon is a fictional character appearing in comic books published by DC Comics and in related media, created by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino...
(Oracle). And the introduction of Digitronix computers, a brand which continued to show up in the DCU for years afterwards.
In issue #1 Lewis Shiner states that he based the series and its main character Jack Marshall on an unpublished novel called Red Weather in which he detailed the experiences of a young programmer named Jack Marshall who worked for a Texas based computer company named Warrex, manufacturers of the short lived Centurion computer.
Story
Jack Marshall (Hacker) is a freelance systems analyst from Raleigh, North CarolinaRaleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
. Fascinated with computers ever since he was a child, he grew up alongside the industry and eventually ended up working at Digitronix World Industries (DTX), a small company in Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. Maverick company president Donny Travis worked alongside Marshall to invent the Digitronix Desktop PC.
The Digitronix PC's success and profits caused rapid growth in the company, and a new senior Vice President named Walter Sutcliffe denied Marshall any profit sharing from his invention, because said profit sharing was based on a handshake agreement between Marshall and Donny Travis. Sutcliffe was one of five middle managers Donny Travis brought in from CompuTech. According to Jack, CompuTech went under due to incompetent middle management. Marshall attempted to steal his own codebase
Codebase
The term codebase, or code base, is used in software development to mean the whole collection of source code used to build a particular application or component. Typically, the codebase includes only human-written source code files, and not, e.g., source code files generated by other tools or...
for a new updated version of Digitronix' proprietary operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
DROS (Digitronix Resident Operating System) but was caught and summarily terminated. But since he is the only one who truly understands DROS, he is brought in by the United States government, specifically Sarge Steel
Sarge Steel
Sarge Steel is a detective/spy character published by Charlton Comics during the 1960s. As he was published during the time of Charlton's Action Heroes line of superheroes, and had loose ties to some, he is sometimes included with that group...
as a freelance troubleshooter whenever there is a problem.
"SoftWar"
The first Story arc SoftWar dealt with a virus infecting the Digitronix computers used by the PentagonThe Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
, it had somehow spread over the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and infected Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency), Securenet (connects to bombers and missiles) and Milnet
MILNET
In computer networking, MILNET was the name given to the part of the ARPANET internetwork designated for unclassified United States Department of Defense traffic....
. Jack compiles an anti-virus
Antivirus software
Antivirus or anti-virus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including but not limited to computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware...
and recounts his history with Digitronix after a confrontation with Sutcliffe. He's able to cure the virus everywhere except Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain is a mountain located just outside the southwest side of Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., and is home to the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and its Cheyenne Mountain Directorate, formerly known as the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center .Throughout the Cold War and...
which isolated itself the moment a virus was detected. The virus takes over the Cheyenne Mountain system and uses it to begin deploying ICBM
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a long range typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery...
s. Jack uncovers a traitor in Cheyenne Mountain who dies while trying to escape, he later stops General Wade Eiling
General Wade Eiling
General Wade Eiling, sometimes known as The General, is a fictional character published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Captain Atom #1 , and was created by Cary Bates and Pat Broderick.-Captain Atom:...
from accidentally launching a nuclear strike on Russia and prevents World War III.
"Operation Moonwitch"
The Operation Moonwitch storyline was based on real world Operation SundevilOperation Sundevil
Operation Sundevil was a 1990 nation-wide United States Secret Service crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities." It involved raids in approximately fifteen different cities and resulted in three arrests and the confiscation of computers, the contents of electronic bulletin board systems ,...
, a United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities that took place in 1990. The operation is named after a decoy message board used by the Federal Government called Moon Witch. Someone got hold of the E911
Enhanced 911
Enhanced 911, E-911 or E911 in North America is one example of the modern evolution of telecommunications based system meant as an easy way to link people experiencing an emergency with the public resources that can help. The dial-three-digits concept first originated in the United Kingdom in 1937....
document which details how the national emergency response system works, and then they put the document online in a real world zine
Zine
A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....
named Phrack
Phrack
Phrack is an ezine written by and for hackers first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest...
. The government uses the theft and publication of the document as an excuse to dismantle the Hacker subculture. They arrest Sue Denim of the Speed Metal Kids after copies of the document are planted on their personal computers, and Oracle (Barbara Gordon) who downloaded a copy from Phrack as part of an investigation. Barbara accidentally shoots a Federal agent who had burst into her bedroom, but his vest saves him, in federal prison she uses the alias Amy Beddoes from her days with the Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad
The Suicide Squad, also known as Task Force X , is a name for two fictional organizations in the DC Comics Universe. The first version debuted in The Brave and the Bold #25 , and the second in Legends #3...
. Jack Marshall finds a copy on his own machine and deletes it, he's able to trace that copy back to Digitronix World Industries. Catherine Cobert
Catherine Cobert
Catherine Maureen Cobert is a fictional character published by DC Comics. She first appeared in Justice League International vol. 1 #8 , and was created by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire.-Fictional character biography:...
of Justice League International
Justice League International
Justice League International is a DC Comics superhero team written by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis, with art by Kevin Maguire, created in 1987.-Publication history:...
calls in the assistance of Green Lantern
Green Lantern
The Green Lantern is the shared primary alias of several fictional characters, superheroes appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. The first Green Lantern was created by writer Bill Finger and artist Martin Nodell in All-American Comics #16 .Each Green Lantern possesses a power ring and...
Hal Jordan
Hal Jordan
Harold "Hal" Jordan is a DC Comics superhero known as Green Lantern, the first human shown to join the Green Lantern Corps and a founding member of the Justice League of America. Jordan is the second DC Comics character to adopt the Green Lantern moniker...
on behalf of Sue Denim and Oracle, but Jack Marshall gets there first. Oracle
Oracle (comics)
Oracle, in comics, may refer to:*Oracle, an alias used by DC Comics character Barbara Gordon*Oracle. the original alias of the DC Comics character who would be reimagined as Aurakles...
is able to prove that the file originated at Digitronix and all the detainees are set free.
"Working-Class Hero"
Jack confronts his former co-worker Yoshio Natsume. Yoshio is the nephew of Tohiro Natsume whose Japanese company originally supplied Digitronix with cheap computer chips he bought on the Black Market from the YakuzaYakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
, but he later built chip foundries on the Chinese mainland. Jack confronts Yoshio with evidence of his complicity in the Pentagon Virus and the E911 document leak. Jack discovers that Yoshio was framed by Sutcliffe who has been using his superuser
Superuser
On many computer operating systems, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system, the actual name of this account might be: root, administrator or supervisor....
account and password. Yoshio introduces Jack to Yan Qing a Chinese exile and a survivor of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
, her fiance Yi who worked at a Digitronix assembly plant in China, had discovered an undocumented feature
Undocumented feature
Undocumented features are frequently found in computer software releases. Sometimes the documentation is omitted through simple oversight, but undocumented features are often elements of the software not intended for use by end users, but left available for use by the vendor for software support...
in the machine he was working on, it automatically recorded all spoken conversation in its local environment and stored it in a hidden partition
Disk partitioning
Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks. Partitions are also termed "slices" for operating systems based on BSD, Solaris or GNU Hurd...
on the machine's optical hard drive. He disappeared soon after sharing this fact with a close friend from the plant. Jack schedules a meeting with his ex-wife Kathy Spencer who works in Digitronix' hardware division, and who designed the security hardware that protects all Digitronix plants. Kathy gives Jack a device which should get him past a plant's electronic security. Jack goes to China intending to break into one of the assembly plants, but his arrival is anticipated by Sutcliffe. Due to a botched infiltration Jack and Yoshio and captured by Sutcliffe and thrown into a holding cell with Yi. While in that cell they begin to see the outlines of the Aleph
Aleph
* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
conspiracy, the true reason for the virus, and how the information retrieved from the computers would be routed by the virus and co-ordinated by Tohiro Natsume's newest project a supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
with 64 parallel processors. They escape from the cell using Kathy's anti-security device, and sneak Yi out of China by shipping him to the US in an equipment box.
"Showdown"
Yoshio discovers a massive mobilization of Digitronix personnel and hardware being sent to a secret facility at TyuratamTyuratam
Tyuratam is a station on the main Moscow to Tashkent railway, located in Kazakhstan. The name is a word in the Kazakh language and means "Töre's grave"; Töre, or more formally, Töre-Baba, was a noble, a descendant of Genghis Khan...
in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, parallel processors
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
, Prolog
Prolog
Prolog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
language modules, and experimental fiber optic
Optical fiber
An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
buses. They figure out that Digitronix is building a working globally networked Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
which they intend to use to process a few million gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
s of stolen government and industrial secrets. Jack uses a Digitronix videophone
Videophone
A videophone is a telephone with a video screen, and is capable of full duplex video and audio transmissions for communication between people in real-time...
to contact Justice League Europe
Justice League Europe
Justice League Europe was a DC Comics book run that was a spin-off of the comic book Justice League America ....
headquarters in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and offers them a cure for the Pentagon virus. When he gets there he tells Hal Jordan and the rest of the JLE what Digitronix is really up to. Wally West
Wally West
The Flash is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. He is the first Kid Flash and the third Flash....
scouts the installation at superspeed and runs into a door knocking himself out, he is captured by Digitronix security but escapes them when he wakes up. Jack uses the virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
interface to hack the AI which looks like Sutcliffe, he confronts it inside a game of Code of the West. Jack had designed a compact videogame for the DTX PC called Code of the West, it is also a backdoor which is hardcoded into the operating system of every Digitronix PC. Jack uses this game to define the rules of the fight between himself and the AI. The AI makes sure there is no possible way for it to lose the game. Jack deliberately loses to the AI, allowing it to kill him in the game, because "There's a million ways to END the game by losing...but NONE to end it by WINNING. And since you CAN'T lose...you're going to be here a LONG time". And he leaves the AI playing the game, stuck in a recursive loop
Recursion
Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...
. Yoshio is put in charge of Digitronix, and no charges are filed against the company.
Speed Metal Kids
The Speed metalSpeed metal
Speed metal is a sub-genre of heavy metal music that originated in the late 1970s from NWOBHM and hardcore punk roots. It is described by Allmusic as "extremely fast, abrasive, and technically demanding" music....
Kids are teenage hackers who worship internet personalities like Hacker and Oracle, and who serve as his assistants.
- Sue Denim - Fifteen year old Heavy metalHeavy metal musicHeavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
fan. - Phreaky Phreddy - As in phone phreakingPhreakingPhreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. As telephone networks have become computerized, phreaking has become closely...
, - Master Blaster - A thirteen year old African-American video game buff.
Digitronix PC
The Digitronix PC (DTX PC) of 1992 is an inexpensive OEMOriginal Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
that can also serve as a business capable workstation
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
or a clustered file server
Beowulf (computing)
A Beowulf cluster is a computer cluster of what are normally identical, commodity-grade computers networked into a small local area network with libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them...
. It boasted 100 megabytes of ram, an HDTV monitor and optical disk storage, possibly based on the NeXTcube
NeXTcube
The NeXTcube was a high-end workstation computer developed, manufactured and sold by NeXT from 1990 until 1993. It superseded the original NeXT Computer workstation and was housed in a similar cube-shaped magnesium enclosure. The workstation ran the NeXTSTEP operating system.- Hardware :The...
's magneto-optical drive
Magneto-optical drive
A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. Both 130 mm and 90 mm form factors exist. The technology was introduced commercially in 1985...
. It also had built in compatibility with NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
\PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
formats and had built in composite video out
Composite video
Composite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. In contrast to component video it contains all required video information, including colors in a single line-level signal...
, as well as advanced digital audio and video editing capacity on-chip, possibly as coprocessor
Coprocessor
A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor,...
s similar to the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
.
DROS
DROS is the Digitronix Resident Operating System, a free copy of DROS was bundled with every machine. Lewis Shiner gives detailed information on the inner workings of DROS in the usr/hacker/mail section at the back of the first two issues. Because series consultant Alan Wexelblat had warned him that UNIXUnix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
wasn't considered secure enough for government installation (in 1992), he decided that DROS would look like UNIX but would not exactly be UNIX. Kim Fairchild another series consultant suggested that he use emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
as DROS' resident text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
. In DROS file blocks are graphically represented as rows of stacked rectangular blocks. All commands shown when Jack interacts with DROS are Unix commands. As in UNIX, BSD
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, there are user and superuser accounts.
Command line examples
| /dev/sd0a |
| pent1.dod.com:/usr/share |
| rm vcom.doc |