5 ms·

Question: what is "typing games from magazines?"

Osiris 5y ago
Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX. Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.
- bananabat 5y ago
  Wow, this was not a thing where I grew up. I never even saw a real pc until I was in uni. That sounds awesome. Thanks for explaining. EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.
  - prerok 5y ago
    If you are interested in the history of games there is an excellent blog here: https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/ https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/ Have been following it for years and would recommend reading it all the way through. Maybe even get an idea for the next project :)
    - bananabat 5y ago
      Saved the bookmark for reading, thanks!
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    Note that half the time, you'd make typos and it wouldn't run. So it sounds nostalgic, but not so much. However, debugging it helped to learn the language. :) Dr. Dobbs Journal was probably the king of source code listings in magazine format. Pre-Internet, there were some remarkable mass-distribution Unix magazines with significant source code for utilities: Unix Review and Unix World. Even today, the back issues would be useful. I remember lusting over the AT&T 3B Unix machines advertised in those, but never could afford one. So I waited until VAX Unix in uni (the arts dept. had an unused one), then SCO and Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_UNIX_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_UNIX_PC
    - bananabat 5y ago
      So I can see how you can debug BASIC when you're doing the magazine thing and it doesn't run. But what about hex...how did people even find where they made had typos?
      - redis_mlc 5y ago
        Most probably gave up on the hex listings if there were typos, but I never typed that in - it was all ASM or BASIC. I think it's important to realize that there was a golden age of early personal computing, but for most people it wasn't the first couple of years of toggle switches, very limited RAM and hex. Unlike Raspberry Pi's, the early PC was a standalone device that needed a usable UI before it had widespread appeal.
- ako 5y ago
  Yes, remember friends typing in games from a magazine on a zx81 around 1983. Horribly slow with the membrane keyboard. And then someone would touch the table, the 16Kb memory extension would disconnect and all work would be gone...
  - arafalov 5y ago
    I did that for a programmable calculator. Without permanent memory.....

Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX. Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.

bananabat 5y ago
Wow, this was not a thing where I grew up. I never even saw a real pc until I was in uni. That sounds awesome. Thanks for explaining. EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.
- prerok 5y ago
  If you are interested in the history of games there is an excellent blog here: https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/ https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/ Have been following it for years and would recommend reading it all the way through. Maybe even get an idea for the next project :)
  - bananabat 5y ago
    Saved the bookmark for reading, thanks!
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Note that half the time, you'd make typos and it wouldn't run. So it sounds nostalgic, but not so much. However, debugging it helped to learn the language. :) Dr. Dobbs Journal was probably the king of source code listings in magazine format. Pre-Internet, there were some remarkable mass-distribution Unix magazines with significant source code for utilities: Unix Review and Unix World. Even today, the back issues would be useful. I remember lusting over the AT&T 3B Unix machines advertised in those, but never could afford one. So I waited until VAX Unix in uni (the arts dept. had an unused one), then SCO and Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_UNIX_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_UNIX_PC
  - bananabat 5y ago
    So I can see how you can debug BASIC when you're doing the magazine thing and it doesn't run. But what about hex...how did people even find where they made had typos?
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      Most probably gave up on the hex listings if there were typos, but I never typed that in - it was all ASM or BASIC. I think it's important to realize that there was a golden age of early personal computing, but for most people it wasn't the first couple of years of toggle switches, very limited RAM and hex. Unlike Raspberry Pi's, the early PC was a standalone device that needed a usable UI before it had widespread appeal.
ako 5y ago
Yes, remember friends typing in games from a magazine on a zx81 around 1983. Horribly slow with the membrane keyboard. And then someone would touch the table, the 16Kb memory extension would disconnect and all work would be gone...
- arafalov 5y ago
  I did that for a programmable calculator. Without permanent memory.....