First note: No music played throughout the presentation. I'm unsure if it's because I did not have a correct sound card or if it just didn't have any sound. When I get the time, I’ll try to check again.
Now….Let's begin!
Was confused when it booted to this. There's another prompt screen like this later in the presentation too. I have a theory on it but I'll discuss it later.
A familiar face...haha it was really surreal to see something like this playing on the machine it was advertising. Probably would have played on one of these models too, similar to what they did with the Macintosh.
I didn't see the graphing program when I was exploring last week. Wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the many programs that were corrupted. The photograph display is pretty impressive though..for the time at least....
Pretty usual stuff to see in a presentation like this. These were moves most computer companies were making at the time so nothing real interesting here. I've skipped most of the OS walkthrough stuff as it's nothing you all haven't already seen from my demo of it.
Now done with the boring stuff. It's time I show everyone the REAL interesting part of this disk.
To start, here's the second prompt screen I mentioned. I used an old '90s computer mic as a substitute as I, obviously, do not own any conduit brand computer microphone. With what follows, I don't know if my substitute actually worked, unfortunately.
The write program opened on a blank page, guessing I'm supposed to input something I just entered babble until this popped up.
A virtual assistant! Done way before Microsoft! Initially was very impressed by this but unfortunately, this is when the issues started. (As you can tell by whatever was supposed to be in the assistant box is well...not there.)
Following the prompt, I answered yes into the mic and it didn't respond for a while, just stayed on the same screen. I said yes again and then this happened.
Text disappears and I'm left hanging on this screen for a loooong while. It had to be 5 minutes at the most. After getting fed up with it, I get ready to eject the disk and then…
Remember when I mentioned some familar issues? It kept at this for a couple of minutes before devolving into this mess.
Poor thing finally gives up and error screens. I had alot of similar issues going through the rest of the presentation since it would either hang on blank screens or show me more garbled text...BUT! I was able to view this.
A little thank you message! How sweet...
Here's the last screen the program left off with, of course, one last glitch to send us off ♡. What an interesting little program...
I mentioned at the start I had a theory on this program. Due to the prompt cards and the very buggy state that it's in, I came to the conclusion that this might have been an early version of the presentation disk? A backup of sorts of sorts, if something were to happen to a newer version of the program. I don't know much about the inner workings of 80's tech companies to know if that would be something plausible but it's what makes the most sense...to me at least.
Hope you all enjoyed this weird little piece of software as much as I did. I'm going to see if I have any luck dumping the contents of this disk online for everyone. Fingers crossed!
UPDATE: Hello!! I actually have two updates to give about some things regarding the presenation, but I'll get the disappointing one out of the way first.
To the shock of no one, I had no luck trying to get the files from the presentation onto my main machine to share with you all. I tried booting the floppy up with my USB converter and lo and behold…
I tried using another floppy reader, and then another one when that one didn't work. I even tried booting it back up on the Conduit II but same thing happened every single time. With the combo of this floppy being 30+ years old and it being left in some box for most of it, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
On a more interesing note! When reviewing the footage I took of the presentation, I recognized some of the names in the programs credits from somewhere very, very recently.
It wasn't just these names too! All the names in the emails also showed up in the credits of this presentation. Crazy!!
I can't wrap my mind around how these would even be on here..maybe this machine was owned by someone from the company? and just got lucky enough to never get wiped off of it...I don't know.
I've started going through the names in the emails and the credits and seeing if any give me results online. Some do, some don't...most link me to obituaries or locked facebook accounts. But, some brought me to LinkedIn pages of people who are (or were) in the tech industry...I've gone ahead and messaged some to see if they had ever worked at Conduit! and if so, if they'd be willing to give me a short interview of sorts about what they remember about it.
I don't know if I'll get anything back on it but if I do..you can expect a very interesting blog entry to read sometime soon..
