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Indeed, one of the more memorable set pieces in chapter 1: "He traveled to a city, which was located, he would only say, somewhere in America. He walked into a building, just as though he belonged there, went down a hallway, and let himself quietly into a windowless room. The floor was torn up; a sort of trench filled with fat power cables traversed it. Along the far wall, at the end of the trench, stood a brand-new example of DEC’s VAX, enclosed in several large cabinets that vaguely resembled refrigerators. But to West’s surprise, one of the cabinets stood open and a man with tools was standing in front of it. A technician from DEC, still installing the machine, West figured. Although West’s purposes were not illegal, they were sly, and he had no intention of embarrassing the friend who had given him permission to visit this room. If the technician had asked West to identify himself, West would not have lied, and he wouldn’t have answered the question either. But the moment went by. The technician didn’t inquire. West stood around and watched him work, and in a little while, the technician packed up his tools and left. Then West closed the door, went back across the room to the computer, which was now all but fully assembled, and began to take it apart. The cabinet he opened contained the VAX’s Central Processing Unit, known as the CPU—the heart of the physical machine. In the VAX, twenty-seven printed-circuit boards, arranged like books on a shelf, made up this thing of things. West spent most of the rest of the morning pulling out boards; he’d examine each one, then put it back. ..He examined the outside of the VAX’s chips—some had numbers on them that were like familiar names to him—and he counted the various types and the quantities of each. Later on, he looked at other pieces of the machine. He identified them generally too. He did more counting. And when he was all done, he added everything together and decided that it probably cost $22,500 to manufacture the essential hardware that comprised a VAX (which DEC was selling for somewhat more than $100,000). He left the machine exactly as he had found it." |