Old Basic programs - who remembers them?

[Marcb]

Back in the 80's way before I bought the Amiga I had memorized a small basic program that I had cobbled together from listings and tutorials in different magazines and I used to terrorize the retailers in town and in my local area with it...
This was in the days when the C64 was always set up in the computer section hooked up to a monitor..
First I used to turn the volume up on the monitor...
From Computes Gazette ( I'm pretty sure it was anyway..) I learnt how to program a siren sound, so I used to disable the run/stop key and put up a little message asking for your name...
As soon as you typed in a letter it would start sounding the siren and flashing the screen...


I used to type it in and then walk away pretending to browse waiting for the first victim

Jeeez... fun was what you made of it back then!

Shame I can't remember the actual code anymore, I'd love to type it in to my C64...

 

[easypreacher]

The most interesting thing i was involved in programming-wise was when i was at Uni using BBC micro's. Ten of us had a job to code a real-time scrolling (gps style) display of a journey around the M25 that could be watched on a tv monitor on a coach actually making the journey, where various landmarks/places of interest would flash up on the screen when the coach passed them. This involved digitising an OS map of the whole route...ie manually coding a (very blocky) graphic of the route that was saved onto a disk, and having the tracker part of the program access the disk to display the relevant part of the route. We then hacked apart the code used on those massive old CAD/CAM drawing boards for the tracking part of the program and ported that into BASIC with the intention of using a sensor wired into the speedometer of the coach so the software "knew" where it was on the route. The project was then unfortunately canned when the Uni realised it was going to have to spend money on letting us rip apart someones coach. Sigh....if they hadn't bottled it we could all have had Tom Toms 25 years ago and i would have been a very rich man.

 

[macwhoelse]

In the mid 80's I just loved programming a basic routine typed in from some magazine. The buzz you got when it was finished and running bug free was great.
However, some of the longer game programs took many hours of typing away. Then when you finished it didn't work & you spent the same amount of time de-bugging it for errors ! I remember typing in a defender type game for the Aquarius (with 16k expansion) that took days & involved lots of data statements !! When I finally finished it and de-bugged it, I played it for about 5 minutes before finding something else to type in. :roll:
Of course once I had learnt to use basic, I too used to go around dixons, curry's & any other computer stores that would let me in, & put my talents to use on their display models annoying the assistants.

 

[Amiga Forever]

I used to do programming on ATARI 65XE on making car sounds

When I had C64 and I didnt get chance to do programming on them due to great 8BIT Games

When Amiga came along....I got Amos which was amazing back then...

I used make World cup drawn of 32 teams into 4 groups, paint program, Word processing and other games too...

I used to code in Pascal, qbasic, freebasic and now I used BlitzMax

 

[Amiga Forever]

When I had Atari 65xe and I making sound car

When I had C64, I didnt get chance to do programming due great 8BIT Games!

When I had Amiga.....Amos came along.....I program World cup drawn which was 32 teams split to 4 group, Paint program, Word processing and some games too..

Amos was best language for Amiga at the time....

I have also had go on BlitzBasic 2 but prefer Amos instead.

I also code Pascal, Qbasic, Visual Basic,Freebasic,Purebasic and now I used BlitzMax

As for other programming language that I have used are C++, Allergo, C#

 

[gazstone]

Used to love BASIC programming. Well still do actually, VB.NET now though. I used to type in programs from magazines as a child and also create my own games sometimes.
Many years later I was at uni with someone doing a computer degree and I was able to help him with his assignments. I had no training, just what I learnt back then for fun!

I think it gave you an insight into how the computer worked, rather than just clicking on things and not really knowing what's going on.

Gareth

 

[orb85750]

Eliza! Yes, thanks for refreshing my memory. That was some rather low-level AI.

 

[Memphis]

Oh god, I remember when i got my first comp Atari 65xe, every month there was a magazine coming out (bajtek) in that magazine on one of the pages was a small program or game and 100 of 100 lines to type, just to see some dot on the screen that moves or short games (i was such a slow typer back than) and in the end never worked, but errors, so i went line by line trying to figure out what was wrong with it and recording on the tape to save the work, i was sitting for hours trying to learn basic , i was pretty good at it, when i made my first game i was happy, my friend only help me with keyboard moves, since he knew more than i did, good old days.

 

[mjnurney]

similar adventure with a Ti99/4a , no software support in the uk after '84 and not much before! So i had to type games in for hours on end , i remember typing in 'hunchback' it took the best part of three hours and then i tried to save it! - it never worked!

magazines like , input, c&vg and such had listings in basic but little for the ti99 , i sold it in the end a bought a zx spectrum! awful keyboard by comparison but at least it had games.

my first games programming was on the C64 , i used to write adventure games all the time