Do It Yourself Songtext
von Bill Sutton

I went to buy computers, they said a million bucks
For a brand new mainframe IBM, now that price really sucks.
So I looked at all the pictures, and I chose to build my own,
For you can build a mainframe from the things you find at home.

refrain:
Oh, IBM, DEC, and Honeywell, HP, DG and Wang,
Amdahl, NEC, and NCR, they don′t know anything.
They make big bucks for systems, though they never want it known
That you can build a mainframe from the things you find at home.

Well, take the CPU, you see it's only just a box
With blinking lights and whirring fans and lots of cable slots.
Well, I spent an evening working with some wire and bulbs and pins,
Then I hauled them to the basement and I plugged the freezer in.

refrain


Well, next I needed tape drives, my tape drives were a steal.
I climbed into the attic for my dad′s old reel-to-reel.
Some cable and some binder twine, and soon it was complete:
My CPU and tape drive at a price no one can beat.

refrain

Well, then I looked for disk drives, but it didn't take me long.
Function follows form, they say, or have I got that wrong?
Well, I found a drive with five new modes that blow the rest away:
Cottons, linens, wash and wear, rinse and lingerie.

refrain

Well, I had to have a console just to make my system run.
Without a fancy console then my system wasn't done.
So, I tied a ten-buck typer to a broken TV tube,
And now I′ve got a console that can write the evening news.

refrain

Well, I′ve had my system running - I'll admit it′s not the best.
The data isn't right, and the response time is a mess.
It crashes every hour, and it isn′t worth a damn,
But I'm satisfied because it runs just like an IBM!