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Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

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Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#121

Post by fit2rule »

coldcode wrote: post #6

It was a great game. I also remember making gold master floppies for our products going back to 1987. It's actually a scary process because if you made any mistakes, you got back thousands-millions (depending on who you were) worthless disks back. Even sending out updates cost money and often we had to charge people in order to pay for duplication, packaging, shipping and sometimes a manual update. Often updates were…

I really miss the days when all I had to do, to finish a release, was wait for 'dd' to complete, and then I was done.

Floppy-based releases were amazing. You knew exactly what was going to boot.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#122

Post by dylan604 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #106
serf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Found out a few years later that the drives were defective, and would often (but not always!) have buffer errors when burning discs close to capacity there was a slew of software hacks in most cd burning suites that'd attempt to deal with that problem across the industry. believe it or not : time dependent FIFO buffers are capital H Hard. Or at least they were back then.. I suspect the damage done by poorly construc…

I was bulk ripping CDs a few months ago and was running multiple SCSI drives to increase my throughput. The current Linux SCSI drivers will lock up the bus when you insert a disc and ruin any transfers already in progress on another drive. You'd think something like that would have been resolved at this point.

An actual SCSI device? And you're complaining about "by now". How old of hardware are you using? "By now" fixes are included in modern hardware on USB.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#123

Post by chrisseaton »

huhtenberg wrote: post #89

> The day has come and gone and I didn't get a happy birthday card from Disney with the Monkey Island IP tucked inside. Disney got the Monkey Island IP when they bought Lucas Arts. The first thing they did with it was to pull an excellent MI remake off the iOS Apple Store. The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. So I really doubt that Ro…

> The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit.

If you're convinced it's bullshit, what do you think the real reason is instead?

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#124

Post by dylan604 »

myself248 wrote: post #110
jedberg wrote: post #84

In the middle it links to the post he made on the 25th anniversary, which talks about how they would ship the gold masters to Europe. He says they didn't have time in the schedule to mail it, so they would go to the airport, find a flight to London, walk up to the gate and find a passenger and ask them to carry a pack of disks with them, and tell them someone at the other end would meet them at the gate to pick it up…

A friend of mine had this happen with a processor card for a telephone switch. A bad software update had hosed up the primary card in such a way that it also made the standby unable to function, and they were capital-D Down for hours. The manufacturer was in Texas, the switch was in Michigan. The soonest flight was a passenger flight, not a cargo flight, so they bought the box a ticket and sent it on its way. At the…

I love these kinds of stories. My current favorite is one I first read about here a few weeks ago where NASA needed some to replace a broken something holding up a launch. They arranged for an F-14 (or something along those lines) as a courier since normal shipping wouldn't get there in time.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#125

Post by jedberg »

myself248 wrote: post #110
jedberg wrote: post #84

In the middle it links to the post he made on the 25th anniversary, which talks about how they would ship the gold masters to Europe. He says they didn't have time in the schedule to mail it, so they would go to the airport, find a flight to London, walk up to the gate and find a passenger and ask them to carry a pack of disks with them, and tell them someone at the other end would meet them at the gate to pick it up…

A friend of mine had this happen with a processor card for a telephone switch. A bad software update had hosed up the primary card in such a way that it also made the standby unable to function, and they were capital-D Down for hours. The manufacturer was in Texas, the switch was in Michigan. The soonest flight was a passenger flight, not a cargo flight, so they bought the box a ticket and sent it on its way. At the…

For most of my career, I've worked in ops for companies where every moment of downtime would mean the loss of a lot of money.

But I always tempered the anxiety by reminding myself that no matter what happens, no one's life was on the line from any downtime I might be responsible for.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#126

Post by bengalister »

Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle so many good memories. I remember the anti-piracy message in Guybrush where the main character was sent to jail, the inner game (Maniac mansion) in Day of the tentacle.... I think Monkey Island was the game I spent the most time with, it was full of humour.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#127

Post by will_pseudonym »

LifeIsBio wrote: post #80

When I was growing up my brother and I used to spend a week each summer at our cousins' house. They had a copy of Monkey Island and each summer we would tell ourselves, "This is the year we're going to beat Monkey Island." Each year we never made it much further than the first Island. Eventually our cousins lent us the game and we beat it over the course of a few months. Interestingly, I think about Monkey Island a l…

I enjoyed your anecdote, as someone who has never played Monkey Island.

Just FYI, the word you're looking for is "elicit", not "illicit".

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#128

Post by lostcolony »

chrisseaton wrote: post #123
huhtenberg wrote: post #89

> The day has come and gone and I didn't get a happy birthday card from Disney with the Monkey Island IP tucked inside. Disney got the Monkey Island IP when they bought Lucas Arts. The first thing they did with it was to pull an excellent MI remake off the iOS Apple Store. The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. So I really doubt that Ro…

> The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. If you're convinced it's bullshit, what do you think the real reason is instead?

I think you misunderstand what he's calling bullshit.

He's not claiming they don't actually believe the reason they give. He's saying the reason is bullshit.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#129

Post by chrisseaton »

lostcolony wrote: post #128
chrisseaton wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. If you're convinced it's bullshit, what do you think the real reason is instead?

I think you misunderstand what he's calling bullshit. He's not claiming they don't actually believe the reason they give. He's saying the reason is bullshit.

Oh right - was going to say they kept the other games up so they obviously aren't doing it because they hate games or out of spite. Reasonable to believe their stated business reason.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#130

Post by tome »

chrisseaton wrote: post #123
huhtenberg wrote: post #89

> The day has come and gone and I didn't get a happy birthday card from Disney with the Monkey Island IP tucked inside. Disney got the Monkey Island IP when they bought Lucas Arts. The first thing they did with it was to pull an excellent MI remake off the iOS Apple Store. The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. So I really doubt that Ro…

> The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit. If you're convinced it's bullshit, what do you think the real reason is instead?

Presumably that they merely thought it was diluting their brand without it actually doing so.
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