Subject: [Scribbles furiously]
Author:
Posted on: 2019-10-03 13:39:00 UTC

...This all leads my to a different subject:

Consoles.

Going by the grand tradition of taking one-off lines from TOS and taking them far too seriously, we know that by the mid-1990s consoles were comparable to the rapidly-advancing computers of the era. We know this because before the Fanfic Explosion, agents would play Quake on the consoles in the downtine between missions (as per Acacia's statements).

In the grand DoSAT tradition, it's safe to assume that PPC consoles in any era a) look like no other computer in the multiverse, and b) are built from a set of radically different technologies, held together with chewing gum and duct tape.

But while it's possible that consoles were so advanced to begin with that they weren't altered at all as the 90s rolled in, it's much more interesting to assume they didn't (and lets me think about designs more in line with the popular imagination of the 70s and 80s).

Being a computer nerd, my natural instinct is that in prior decades consoles were literally that: consoles, monochrome text monstrosities with extra weird gibbons and bobbins and bits, all wired wired up to some mainframe deep inside DoSAT (which is presumably part Difference Engine, part Supercomputer, part potato, two-thirds sentient, and literally eats punchcards for breakfast).

But it's just as likely that these old consoles were just printers that spit out ticker-take mission assignments. Or that agents would get paper mail...

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