4 ms·

I think the Seattle Public Library has a complete archive of BYTE magazine if you ever feel like spending a weekend typing a Lunar Lander simulator into a TI-99

by 13of40 3y ago

I think the Seattle Public Library has a complete archive of BYTE magazine if you ever feel like spending a weekend typing a Lunar Lander simulator into a TI-99/4a emulator. You know, for old times sake.

euroderf 3y ago
OCR from a decent cellphone photo should work eh ? Unless a listing is in that dot-matrix style and the OCR software is not up to the task.
- mariuolo 3y ago
  Next step should be finding a way to encode it into a tape or disk image to feed to an emulator or possibly a wav file to use with the real thing.
- flir 3y ago
  Yeah, but you won't learn to program from OCR. (I credit typing in listings for about 80% of my initial learning).
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Compute!'s Gazette was my "GitHub of the 80s" for my Commodore machines. It was absolutely a wild ride, typing in programs from the back to do everything from games and word processing and who knows what. IIRC, they began with BASIC, but then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The punchline is that I did not necessarily have any way of saving those programs to persistent storage, so it was just like... keep the computer turned on for a week? Most coders learn so much from hacking on other people's code, it's an indispensable step. So typing in code is a great opportunity to experience coding, starting with a working codebase, and perhaps making your own tweaks, fixes, and enhancements. Commodore BASIC was perfect for rapid prototyping and access to sound and graphics primitives.
    - u801e 3y ago
      > then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor I remember that I copied a short program in BASIC that you had to run in order to type in the machine code part of the main program you were typing. It would sound a bell if the checksum had no error, otherwise you would hear a buzz sound. > and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The programs I typed in had parts in BASIC and other in machine code. I just wish the machine code parts used the instruction mnemonics instead of the actual instruction byte code. It definitely would have been more educational to see instructions like LDA, SDA, CMP, JSR, etc instead of the actual number values.
- ignite 3y ago
  You are correct. Grabbing a random issue of BYTE from the internet archive, and finding a listing, I get the code below. There were some minor errors I fixed, like 3 -> }. Main issue was loss of whitespace, so not good for python :-). But the whole was amazingly quick. Getting code from a print magazine from 35 years ago into editable form in a couple of minutes. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/... {$K-}{ turn of checking for stack overf low } program interrupttest; type IoProcess = *integer : var count: integer: var timerhandler: IoProcess; ... {definitions of NewIoProcess and IoAttach } procedure incrementer: begin count:=succ (count ) : end; begin timerhandler:=NewIoProcess(Ofs(incrementer).1000): count:=0; ioAttach ($1C, timerhondler); | attach himerhondleich" user | while true do timer interrupt ( 1Ch ) begin writeln (count ); Delay (100); { delay 100 milliseconds} end; end.
deleted 3y ago
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by 13of40 3y ago

euroderf 3y ago

OCR from a decent cellphone photo should work eh ? Unless a listing is in that dot-matrix style and the OCR software is not up to the task.

mariuolo 3y ago
Next step should be finding a way to encode it into a tape or disk image to feed to an emulator or possibly a wav file to use with the real thing.
flir 3y ago
Yeah, but you won't learn to program from OCR. (I credit typing in listings for about 80% of my initial learning).
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Compute!'s Gazette was my "GitHub of the 80s" for my Commodore machines. It was absolutely a wild ride, typing in programs from the back to do everything from games and word processing and who knows what. IIRC, they began with BASIC, but then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The punchline is that I did not necessarily have any way of saving those programs to persistent storage, so it was just like... keep the computer turned on for a week? Most coders learn so much from hacking on other people's code, it's an indispensable step. So typing in code is a great opportunity to experience coding, starting with a working codebase, and perhaps making your own tweaks, fixes, and enhancements. Commodore BASIC was perfect for rapid prototyping and access to sound and graphics primitives.
  - u801e 3y ago
    > then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor I remember that I copied a short program in BASIC that you had to run in order to type in the machine code part of the main program you were typing. It would sound a bell if the checksum had no error, otherwise you would hear a buzz sound. > and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The programs I typed in had parts in BASIC and other in machine code. I just wish the machine code parts used the instruction mnemonics instead of the actual instruction byte code. It definitely would have been more educational to see instructions like LDA, SDA, CMP, JSR, etc instead of the actual number values.
ignite 3y ago
You are correct. Grabbing a random issue of BYTE from the internet archive, and finding a listing, I get the code below. There were some minor errors I fixed, like 3 -> }. Main issue was loss of whitespace, so not good for python :-). But the whole was amazingly quick. Getting code from a print magazine from 35 years ago into editable form in a couple of minutes. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/... {$K-}{ turn of checking for stack overf low } program interrupttest; type IoProcess = *integer : var count: integer: var timerhandler: IoProcess; ... {definitions of NewIoProcess and IoAttach } procedure incrementer: begin count:=succ (count ) : end; begin timerhandler:=NewIoProcess(Ofs(incrementer).1000): count:=0; ioAttach ($1C, timerhondler); | attach himerhondleich" user | while true do timer interrupt ( 1Ch ) begin writeln (count ); Delay (100); { delay 100 milliseconds} end; end.

deleted 3y ago

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