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You are rummaging though your grandpa's old stuff and see an old PDP-8 with a note attached to it. On one side there is the following key combo:



Here is a picture of the characters (written in the proper context):

Key combo

On the other side you find the following text:

EXTRANEOUS DATA INCLUDED. FOR USE WITH WINDOWS NT.

What is Grandpa saying?

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These characters

are all in the Unicode Private Use Area. They have character codes F0__: the first is F054, the second is F068...

Removing the "F0" at the start of each character code gives hexadecimal ASCII, which reads The rep is a Lie.

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    $\begingroup$ You got it, but not in the way I intended it. Maybe I should start checking my puzzles for shortcuts :P $\endgroup$
    – Seggan
    Jul 22, 2022 at 16:10
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    $\begingroup$ so do PDP-8 and WINDOWS NT have anything to do with the solution actually or are they there just to mislead and make it harder? $\endgroup$
    – morgwai
    Jul 23, 2022 at 6:41
  • $\begingroup$ @morgwai I suspect that they have something to do with the intended solution - something about those PUA characters being accessible in Windows NT through some key combination, perhaps? - but I skipped over that completely. $\endgroup$
    – Deusovi ♦
    Jul 23, 2022 at 21:22

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