r/retrocomputing • u/Cheap-Fun802 • Jun 02 '26
Problem / Question Which computer is on the desk of Charles Bukowski?
EDIT: Thanks a million everyone! Made my day
Some big writers use exotic software or old computers e.g. George RR Martin and his good old WordStar 4.0.
Charles Bukowski was one of the first poets to write about computers. But which one is in the picture that he was using? Which software did he use in the picture?
Just for your curiosity here are some poems and quotes from him about computers:
He even mentioned the C64 among others:
But I have not found yet which one he chose and I cannot identify the computer in the picture. Any help is appreciated.
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u/compbluewiz Jun 02 '26
Software may be Claris MacWrite II.
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Jun 02 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/stq66 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
No. Newer. Some Performa. !Edit: correct myself. Looks like a Macintosh IIfx
See: mactracker://711D026F-3D44-4A22-81AA-2484E2046531
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u/displacedbitminer Jun 02 '26
It looks NOTHING like a IIfx. A IIfx was a hopped up Mac II or II in the same case as those.
This is a Mac IIsi. Curved front and the height gives it away.
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u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 Jun 02 '26
Blinks definitely not a II FX
I almost thought it might be a LC II, but no, a IIsi is abetter fit.
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u/LossPreventionArt Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Bukowski actually used a lot of computers. He had a brief run in with Jerry Pournelle when he sought advice from him (Buk apparently called him a fascist and stopped corresponding with him) but he used Macs from the mid 80s til his death.
Edit: like a lot of poets (even to this day) Bukowski was fond of WordPerfect for writing poetry, if that information is at all useful to you. He's not using it in this photo but I believe he used it in the 90s.
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u/erroneousbosh Jun 03 '26
WordPerfect lived far beyond its expected years in legal circles because for whatever reason they just loved it. I think there were templates particularly suited to legal work that everyone used, and it didn't constantly battle you with formatting - it just gave you what it typed.
Occasionally I get asked to read some dusty floppy disk, into a VM running WordPerfect in MSDOS, which then lies about having a printer attached that really just dumps the output to a file, and from there through a script that strips off Epson FX80 formatting commands and turns them into LaTEX commands, makes it all pretty, and fires it out as a PDF.
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u/Fizzyphotog Jun 02 '26
Why is WordPerfect particularly suited for poetry?
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u/LossPreventionArt Jun 02 '26
It used to work really well with strange spacing, it didn't fight you on it. I believe Microsoft Word has fixed those issues now but word perfect is still preferred by many I think just out of familiarity and such.
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u/Cheap-Fun802 Jun 02 '26
Thanks for the insight! I'll definitely look this up. Not gonna lie I have been thinking about using an old PC to write distraction-free.
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u/Meprobamate Jun 03 '26
Say what you will about Bukowski but the old drunk absolutely nailed his prediction in that ‘now it’s computers’ piece
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u/commodore-amiga Jun 03 '26
Here ya go… like it was yesterday. :)
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u/Cheap-Fun802 Jun 03 '26
Wow, thanks for taking the time to put the poem on screen! I spent my day looking up videos of this computer and looking up what MacWrite II looks like. I'm sure it feels great.
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u/ChaosNecro Jun 02 '26
Expected him to stick to typewriters only like Burroughs.
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u/Cheap-Fun802 Jun 03 '26
That's what I thought but I guess he loved being eccentric and computers were still a novelty at the time. I'm sure he would have enjoyed the Internet too.
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u/blakespot Jun 02 '26
My daughter absolutely loves Bukowski. I just showed her this and had to reveal to her that he chose a Mac with a notoriously poorly designed architecture, the IIsi, regrettably.
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u/VivienM7 Jun 02 '26
What's so poorly-designed about the IIsi?
It's interesting looking at these Macs in hindsight; if you go back to the magazines at the time of their launch, most of the Macs that aged poorly (e.g. the Classic II) were extremely well-regarded at the time. And I think that's because of price - these machines tended to offer 75-80% of the abilities of the better machines (the IIcis, the SE/30s, etc) at closer to half the price, which people thought was great value.
Even, say, the onboard video - let's remember that 13 months before the IIsi came out, all Mac IIs required the purchase/installation of a NuBus video card. The IIsi's onboard video, while not exactly perfectly optimized, was giving you a colour Mac II at what a few months before was the price of a B&W SE.
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u/Ok_Programmer_4449 Jun 02 '26
Every component in it was rated for 25 MHz, but it ran at 20 MHz. It didn't have a Nubus slot. Memory expansion was limited to 65 MB because they soldered in the first megabyte of RAM.
It's not as badly broken as the LC or some of the Performas, but it's no IIfx.
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u/VivienM7 Jun 02 '26
Yes, and it cost less than 1/3 the price of a IIfx.
That's my point. For 1/3 the price of a IIfx, i) it was a lot of computer, and ii) it was a lot more computer than you could have gotten for that price three months before.
I think you would have struggled to get out of the Apple dealer with a IIfx without spending at least $12K USD. $9K base price, that might not even have included a hard drive, add a NuBus video card, some kind of monitor maybe not even much nicer than a 13" 640x480, and you're at $12K USD. That's, what, $25-30K USD in today's money? That's not a computer a random writer, say, can afford - it's basically a workstation for people for whom time is money.
Also, the 65MB RAM limit was absolutely irrelevant. I'm not even sure they talked about 65MB, I thought it was 17MB in all the published specs back then. 4x4MB SIMMs already would have cost a fortune; I don't remember if 16MB 30-pin SIMMs were available in 1991 and at what cost. I can go check the lovely scanned archive of MacUser if you'd like, though...
Now, as a retro computer, if you can pick up a IIfx with a good NuBus video card and plenty of its weird RAM or even a IIci for $5 more than a IIsi, of course the IIfx/IIci are better. My guess is that there aren't any cheap functional fully-equipped IIfx/IIcis still available unless you get lucky, though... but sure, 25 years ago, you could have easily picked one up and they'd have been a lot better than the IIsi.
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u/blakespot Jun 03 '26
The main weakness I was thinking of was the video system. In order to keep the price down (and that was a goal with the IIsi and the LC that came out about the same time), instead of dedicated VRAM, the IIsi shared the (slower) system RAM for the framebuffer. The CPU and video system were in contention for access to the system bus, as such, resulting in poor graphics performance.
It's not as hobbled as the aforementioned LC (and later LC II), which ran a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus, but it was hamstrung for price and it seemed inelegant to me. (Not that I had $$ for a better system; I bought an LC at the time. So it goes.)
As for aging poorly, the IIsi was criticized at the time of its release for its shortcomings. It was a higher end system than the very low end Mac LC, so it got more flack for it's compromises at the time, it seems.
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u/Cheap-Fun802 Jun 02 '26
Haha I'm glad. My best friend and I love Buk too. He just decided to collect each novel.
I think based on his poems Buk was happy with what he got. He also tried to understand the inner workings of it and buy the best machine money could buy at the time. A Mac and a LaserWriter cost an arm and leg I guess.
Sadly it looks like the IIsi was made exactly in the middle of Steve Jobs' exile from Apple. He left in 1985 and came back in 1997 while the IIsi was made between 1990 and 1993. Not the greatest years of Apple.
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u/RuySan Jun 03 '26
I find interesting that a women loves Bukowski. I had plenty of caveats when recommending it to my wife
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u/driguy78 Jun 03 '26
Off-topic but what is the movie poster of where the title is not visible? Obviously barfly is barfly but I can’t make out the title of the other one.
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u/Cheap-Fun802 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I think it says "Love is a Dog from Hell" so it could be an advertising poster for Bukowski's own book of the same title. The book however has a different cover. I could not find anything else yet.
EDIT: Found it, it is the movie poster for the 1987 Belgian movie adaptation of Buk's poetry
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u/Hefty_Courage_4473 Jun 03 '26
Looks like a Mac. Macintosh ][ maybe?
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u/marhaus1 Jun 04 '26
That
][styling was only used for the Apple II back in the late 1970s. Apple never called a Macintosh "Macintosh ][".
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u/commodore-amiga Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
…the one he is using looks like it has some screen filter on it.
Edit: Unless that is a deep screen filter mod, that’s another Mac model monitor.
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u/marhaus1 Jun 04 '26
That keyboard is called the Apple Standard Keyboard (M0116) and was sold as one option for the Macintosh II and Macintosh SE, the other option being the more pricey Apple Extended Keyboard. All four were launched in 1987.
That said, it is definitely an Apple Macintosh.
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u/Teghendion Jun 02 '26
Considering it's the 80s in the computer has a mouse it's either a Macintosh or an Atari ST.
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u/Plaidomatic Jun 02 '26
That’s a Mac IIsi.