Gamemoose Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I've recently been packing things away and came across a bunch of Hot CoCo magazines for the Color Computer. Flipping through an issue I came across a game that was submitted called "Timpist", which is a clone of the arcade game "Tempest". Written in BASIC. I'm tempted to type that sucker in for kicks when I get time. Anyone else get the itch to type in a program when they come across magazines or books of programs? Or do you just do it and enjoy? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I stopped in junior high after my mother and I tackled a two hour long program from a book. The C64 disk drive wouldn't save the program afterwards. Quality time for sure but be both ended up tired and pissed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.Bear Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I've not done it for years, now you mention it though I wonder if there is a place to find Amstrad CPC programs, I wouldn't mind giving it a try heh. I remember it being very annoying back in the day though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I do when I can. I've been SLOWLY trying to type in programs from Atari books in hopes that one day a disk image of all the programs will be available for download next to each download of the books. I've done about 5 or 6 books already. Allan 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
20ohm20 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I typed in the game Mystery Spell for the VIC-20 from a 1983 issue of Compute! around Christmas time last year. Not only did I type in a program from a magazine for the first time in about 25 years, I even saved it to cassette. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertLM78 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 (edited) I try to copy/paste when I can (using an emulator, of course), but I've coded by hand a few real gems for the TI from the Computes! series in the last year and half or so. Edited June 13, 2014 by RobertLM78 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 haven't done it in a while, but plan on getting back into my TI and C64 that way sometime. Someday. Some year. Have loads of mags that are still fun to browse through after all these years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I was typing in an Apple II program from Compute in my spare time a couple years ago but lost the code when I migrated to a new machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cvga Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 I have a BatariBasic game I wrote a couple of years ago but lost due to a hard drive crash. Luckily I have a printout of the code. I need to retype it sometime. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 I have typed in a couple small things here and there for utility but if its more than a paragraph or two I either fire up a editor on the machine, or I type it in at my PC and copy over via serial after testing on emulator 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Regulus Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 (edited) Has anyone on this board, heard of OCR? Optical Character Recognition It should come free with your scanner or there is a freeware. If the printed program is a good copy and no smears, it can easily be converted to text. This does depend on the emulator and utilities to get the PC text converted to the computer. Edited June 14, 2014 by Regulus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 Has anyone on this board, heard of OCR? Optical Character Recognition It should come free with your scanner or there is a freeware. If the printed program is a good copy and no smears, it can easily be converted to text. This does depend on the emulator and utilities to get the PC text converted to the computer. OCR results are pretty mixed. There was a project for Rainbow Magazine on the CoCo where someone scanned sections of pages and people could correct the text. It did a horrible job with 0 and O's among other things. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 I've still got a bunch of basic listings that do graphics "tricks" and experiments. These were from my local users group. And someday I hope to have time to type them in. I recall back in the day we had typed up something really long, spent all day and all night. It was a BBS. And we panicked because we hadn't loaded dos. So we got a hold of dos listing and started typing that in. Much like ADTpro would do, so to speak. About 2 hours later we had a brainstorm. Use the cassette port! And the gods smiled upon us.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed in SoDak Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 (edited) Typing on the Timex TS1000 was agony and exercise in near-futility as almost always something would go wrong. Save to cassette after typing just a dozen lines or so and using a different tape and further along on the tape instead of over the previous save. Then I kludged a TI99 keyboard onto the Timex, soldered on the RAMpack and things were much better! Interpreting the tiny graphics characters in the printed listings was fun (not), especially when they were used to enter a USR machine language section of code. Started with cassette on the TI as well when I moved to that in 1985. Typed a lot of programs from anywhere I could find 'em. Eventually we got disk drives and better-connected to get stuff already typed and saved on disk. Wrote my own programs too and rewrote or added to plenty of others. Been so long now, I mostly forgot it all when I went to try again recently. I used to really enjoy programming, now, not so much. For the TI, someone has done the work of entering the majority of published programs listing from the books and magazines of the day. Grab it off the net, load and run! -Ed Edited June 14, 2014 by Ed in SoDak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 Has anyone on this board, heard of OCR? Optical Character Recognition The interesting thing about a lot of magizines scanned as PDF is it will do OCR, its hit and miss so you got to check it ... checking it might take as long as typing it hehe 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 As an active Apple II enthusiast I still find material to type in, from time to time. Rarely, actually.. More often, if I'm perusing a book, for example, I have pretty good luck in finding a disk with the material already typed-in and pre-saved. I just did this with Celestial Basic not long ago. This is an interesting topic. I feel that many people have gotten away from the joys and relaxation of reading an article. Contemplating and comprehending what they read seems so distant and archaic in today's world of MS Messenger and MySpace. But it was that very activity that helped build nostalgia and the love affairs we once had (and still do) with our classic computers. And we learned without knowing we were doing so! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 Yes! I typed in a BASIC listing from one of my back issues of ENTER Magazine just last weekend. I was thinking of dragging out my old flatbed scanner and OCRing it, but then I realized that it would probably take me about as long to type it in myself, so I just did it the "old-fashioned" way. It really brought me back to the time I was typing in code from magazines and books as a kid, and as you say, it was really an interesting way of learning about computers and programming, because you really had to LOOK at the code. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 14, 2014 Share Posted June 14, 2014 When we got bored of Intellivision and VCS games we'd get to typing in stuff. And for "competitions" we'd purposely make a few mistakes here and there and then try and figure out how to fix the program. Just another form of puzzle solving. Truly some of the best of times was taking a Lunar Lander game, text based, and adding our own graphics to it. Or "expanding" the storyline so that you had do a de-orbit or take-off again. So happy I kept all my BASIC listings and all that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uzumaki Posted June 15, 2014 Share Posted June 15, 2014 (edited) I still do it from time to time when I come across interesting program. Usually I get something out of RUN magazine. Once in a blue moon I find something interesting for a different computer, I try to hack translate it. The most difficult one was from an Apple II book on hires graphic (I can't remember the name but I wish I could) it had a few examples including one that generated moon surface like graphic using cosine. Similar to http://www.vb-helper.com/tut4.htm under spash section half way down. Then I went one step further and tweaked it to draw on a 400x400 area and fed the data to Commodore 1520 plotter. 7 hours to complete that one on top of nearly 2 hours of typing and modifying it. PS anyone remember the name of the book that had Apple II programming in hires graphic? Mostly black, oh over 1" thick, had one example graphic that looks like wire mesh (square type) hilly land with a pink wall to show line of sight, and explained in some part how to make it draw with respect to line of sight by not drawing what should be out of sight. Edited June 15, 2014 by Uzumaki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamemoose Posted June 15, 2014 Author Share Posted June 15, 2014 Truly some of the best of times was taking a Lunar Lander game, text based, and adding our own graphics to it. Or "expanding" the storyline so that you had do a de-orbit or take-off again. So happy I kept all my BASIC listings and all that. This. There was a text adventure game for the CoCo called GeoJogger. You had to travel the fifty states, find a few items of that defined a state (like an ear of corn for Iowa) and return it in order to find Dr. Destroi. My dad added graphics of the GeoJogger running across the screen. I tried making a graphic adventure game and I reused the "text to graphics" routine of a BASIC game called "Lurkley Manor". That was pretty neat to pull off! I would just type the text in and when the game ran, it would draw to words on the screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted June 15, 2014 Share Posted June 15, 2014 I've recently been packing things away and came across a bunch of Hot CoCo magazines for the Color Computer. Flipping through an issue I came across a game that was submitted called "Timpist", which is a clone of the arcade game "Tempest". Written in BASIC. I'm tempted to type that sucker in for kicks when I get time. Anyone else get the itch to type in a program when they come across magazines or books of programs? Or do you just do it and enjoy? Definitely type it! You will have a fun game and fun learning about it from the experience I loved doing this BITD 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ripdubski Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 Only if trying to learn something. Otherwise I seek a download of it. If not available I pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarilovesyou Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 Nope. We only tried once. It was like 87, I think....for the CoCo2, something about possums? Can't remember the title but we spent the whole day entering code only to have it kinda do a nice background screen but that was it. Dang, now I wanna know what the name of it was! It would be cool to see it in action on youtube or something like that. Possum Patrol?...Potassium?...Samsonite? The main problem was saving the info to the cassette tape. There was obviously something more to it than what we were doing. Even my buddy's old man couldn't figure it out...so we just ended up playing Pooyan or something like that. DAMN THOSE COCO CONTROLLERS!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 getting an error without a decent editor or storage does make you question the entire process even the simple line editor on most computers is asking for hell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uzumaki Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 RUN Magazine has a checker feature. A little ML code you load at the start, it pops the checksum number at each BASIC link that you can compare to the magazine and catch error every time. If you make a mistake, the odd are 1 in 256 the mistake would end up with same number so it's rare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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