4 ms·
As an 8 or 9 year old boy, I spent an afternoon calling out an interminable list of numbers for my Dad to enter into DATA statements in a BASIC program on our Z
by timthorn 7y ago
As an 8 or 9 year old boy, I spent an afternoon calling out an interminable list of numbers for my Dad to enter into DATA statements in a BASIC program on our ZX Spectrum to turn it into a terminal emulator by means of a hex loader. Once we'd entered it (correctly - we ended up making a few inevitable errors along the way) and saved it(!) to tape, we hooked up our phone to an acoustic coupler* and Dad spent a few minutes connected to the university mainframe.
* This (exact) one: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/37926/Moore-Reed-TC-301-universal-Acoustic-Coupler/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/37926/Moore-Reed-TC-3...
- stevekemp 7y agoI remember typing in programs from magazines with those lines of DATA-statements - if your magazine was Sinclair User, Your Sinclair, or similar it was easier than if it was a book. Most books would print a program for BBC-Basic, and give you a set of lines to change for other systems. e.g. Adding in the LET statement for Spectrums.
- jcims 7y agoWe used to do the same with those machine code games for the c64 in the back of Compute or Byte magazine. One reader, one typer and one proofer huddled around the screen for hours. The worst part is that we didnt have the 1541 drive yet, so the game was only around for as long as the power was on. The good old days lol
- foobarian 7y agoCompute! had a handy little program to print a checksum of each line of BASIC on the left margin. Then, their other BASIC listings had that checksum printed alongside, so that eliminated the "proofer" job for us :-)
- tomcam 7y agoMLX, I think it was called. I used it to type out Speedscript, a word processor that took only 3K for my Commodore 64 and used it for my first years as a professional writer, it was connected to a Brother electric typewriter with a parallel printer interface to the Commodore 64.
- yitchelle 7y agoAntic magazine also had similar program, aptly called "Typo" for "Type Your Programe Once".
- mattl 7y agoAmstrad Action also had Type-righter (sic) and would put checksums next to every line of BASIC in the magazine. Type-righter itself was included on the covermounted tape once that became a thing.