But meanwhile I was teaching myself about RSTS/E (spoken as "RIS-tisEE"), the operating system manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used on the school’s minicomputer located in downtown Los Angeles. The nearby Cal State campus at Northridge (CSUN) also used RSTS/E on its computers. I set up an appointment with the chairman of the Computer Science Department, Wes Hampton, and told him, "I’m extremely interested in learning about computers. Could I buy an account to use the computers here?"