The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
chicken head
n.
[Commodore] The Commodore Business Machines logo, which strongly resembles
a poultry part (within Commodore itself the logo was always called chicken
lips). Rendered in ASCII as ?C=?. With the arguable exception of the Amiga
, Commodore's machines were notoriously crocky little bitty boxes,
albeit people have written multitasking Unix-like operating systems with
TCP/IP networking for them. Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip K.
Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the movie
Blade Runner; the novel is now sold under that title), in which a
?chickenhead? is a mutant with below-average intelligence.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
chicken head
The Commodore Business Machines logo,
which strongly resembles a poultry part. Rendered in ASCII
as "C=".
With the arguable exception of the Amiga, Commodore's
computers are notoriously crocky little bitty boxes (see
also PETSCII). Thus, this usage may owe something to Philip
K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the
basis for the movie "Blade Runner"; the novel is now sold
under that title), in which a "chickenhead" is a mutant with
below-average intelligence.
[Jargon File]
(2006-07-12)