Mad Magazine's computer program.

[snorlaxnut]

I was looking through my collection of issues of Mad Magazine last night, and I came across issue 258 (October 1985), the one with Alfred E. Neuman's head shoved into the disk drive of a computer.

 

This issue had "The Mad computer program" in it. It was a program you could type in and create your own Mad logo and Alfred E. Neuman face. It had instructions for Atari computers, as well as Apple, Commodore, and IBM.

 

I tried typing it in on an Atari 800XL, but all I got was a different screen color, a few lines, and a message that said "error in line 40" or something like that. Must have typed it in wrong somewhere.

 

Does anybody remember this program? Have you ever got it to work right (Mad Magazine logo and Alfred E. Neuman's face)?

[Nukey Shay]

Here:

http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/mad258.html

 

What was the error #?

[Gregory DG]

Does anybody remember this program? Have you ever got it to work right (Mad Magazine logo and Alfred E. Neuman's face)?

 

I remember typing it in all those years ago. I never got it to work either. I think (but I'm not sure) I saw something in a later issue that listed a few more lines of code to get it to work. By that time, I didn't care anymore.

[NE146]

Here ya go. From a quick glance it looks like it probably plots out a picture.. (of Alfred E. Neuman perhaps?)

[aminerva]

I had an issue of Mad at the time with the program, and my friend & I stayed up all night typing it in (prior to my having a storage device), trying to run it, getting errors, and correcting them as we found them. Some were our own errors, and others were errors in the text (I believe).

 

Eventually we got it to work about 80%. You could see all of his face except the bottom 20% or so. It was painful to turn off that 65XE the next morning and have all that work disappear.

 

I sold my 5200 shortly after that to buy a used 1050 drive.

[Nukey Shay]

Well, I'm guessing that there isn't a multiple of 4 numbers in the data (since 4 are read at a time). Or possibly an extra comma in that mess somewhere (the computer will "see" this as a empty string variable). If somebody has Ascii-translating software, you can just use that to load it into Atari800Win without typing all that junk.

[snorlaxnut]

Here:

http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/mad258.html

 

What was the error #?

 

Well I just spent the last 6 hours typing the whole thing in. Every line, 2 or three numbers at a time on the DATA lines, and checking every few numbers that I typed to check if I got them right.

 

After all that all I got was this:

 

The screen changes color.

 

Starts to draw Alfred's face , mostly his right ear and eyebrow.

 

Then it stops, and shows:

 

ERROR- 8 AT LINE 40

 

 

The morals for me:

1.Forget typing in this thing again.

2.Don't waste 6 hours typing in a program that shows just some guy's face, and you don't have anything to save it on.

3.Find a better way to waste 6 hours!

[Nukey Shay]

8 INPUT or READ type mismatch

(from http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lak...6757/errors.txt )

 

Yup...you have a extra or trailing comma someplace in all that data. Look for a double-comma , , or an extra comma at the end of a line. This will cause the program to try to READ a string value into a numeric variable.

[NE146]

I'll try typing out the Apple program in APPLEWIN. You can save programs to your virtual drive there

[Nukey Shay]

Atari800Win can do the same to the HD. That's why I suggested a text-grab

program...so you can convert the scanned picture to wordpad text, save it as

unformatted .txt, and ENTER it into Atari800Win. You'll need to add Ascii code

155 (hold ALT and type 155 on the keypad) to the end of EACH line...but it's

much better than typing everything!!

When you ENTER the program, the emulator will grab each line from the

.txt file and simulate a return key...just like if you entered it by using the

keyboard yourself. Auto-typing!

 

Ahh...youth has things so easy. See how much fun we had back in the day?

[+Allan]

If somebody can type it in or OCR it to turn it into a text file (Notepad/Wordpad/Simpletext file), I can import it into my Rainbow emulator and turn it into an .ATR and post back up here. Come on, I want so George W. Bush....I mean Alferd E. Numen.

 

Allan

[Nukey Shay]

Most of the lines contain 16 values...you can therefore narrow down the

search for the "bad" data by adding the following lines:

 

15 ZCT=500

85 ZCT=ZCT+2.5

 

The variable ZCT will kind of keep track of which data line # is being

read (though not precisely). When the program gets the error, you can

type ? ZCT and hit enter to see a number on the screen (you may

need to round it down to the next 10). So if it reports 942.5,

LIST 900-1000 and look around. Chances are, it would be near line 940.

[devwebcl]

Well, after seeing this post I search in the net and found a binary

version of it for Acorn, but the data was readable.

I only have to type the Atari code (not the data)

 

 

You can download a disk image containing the basic prog at:

http://www.emuladores.cl/atari/madmag.zip

 

 

Later

 

Devwebcl

[Callipygous]

Most of the type-in magazines used a checksum program. You ran the checksum program and typed each line and compared the your checksum with the checksum printed in the mag. If they didn't match, you had an error.

 

Ya'know he does bear a resemblance George War Bush. Never thought of it before. Of course, George is lot more frightening then Alfred.

[NE146]

Well, after seeing this post I search in the net and found a binary

version of it for Acorn, but the data was readable.

I only have to type the Atari code (not the data)

 

 

You can download a disk image containing the basic prog at:

http://www.emuladores.cl/atari/madmag.zip

 

 

Later

 

Devwebcl

 

Hey cool! So that's what we're trying to get to eh...

[Explodey]

Note of these links work anymore! Aargh! After almost 30 years, I thought that I would finally get this program to work, but alas, no, just broken links. There must be somewhere online where I can download this. I did find one website that claimed to have it available for download, but what I got wasn't an actual disk image, so it didn't do me much good. Can someone help? I got so excited when I saw this thread, only to have my hopes dashed once again

[Eyvind Bernhardsen]

Holy necrothread, Explodey! The last post on this thread is more than ten years old

 

NE146's images work, I'm almost tempted to try typing the program in from them.

 

Almost.

[AtariGeezer]

Note of these links work anymore! Aargh! After almost 30 years, I thought that I would finally get this program to work, but alas, no, just broken links. There must be somewhere online where I can download this. I did find one website that claimed to have it available for download, but what I got wasn't an actual disk image, so it didn't do me much good. Can someone help? I got so excited when I saw this thread, only to have my hopes dashed once again

 

Found it here: http://meatfighter.com/mad/

[+Roydea6]

Note of these links work anymore! Aargh! After almost 30 years, I thought that I would finally get this program to work, but alas, no, just broken links. There must be somewhere online where I can download this. I did find one website that claimed to have it available for download, but what I got wasn't an actual disk image, so it didn't do me much good. Can someone help? I got so excited when I saw this thread, only to have my hopes dashed once again

 

MADPLOT.BAS

[+Gemintronic]

Note of these links work anymore! Aargh! After almost 30 years, I thought that I would finally get this program to work, but alas, no, just broken links. There must be somewhere online where I can download this. I did find one website that claimed to have it available for download, but what I got wasn't an actual disk image, so it didn't do me much good. Can someone help? I got so excited when I saw this thread, only to have my hopes dashed once again

 

After ten years some links go dead. I know you like to lurk in the Knight Rider 2600 topic so it's understandable to think some things last forever.

[devwebcl]

yes, I moved my files to http://devwebcl.atarionline.pl/madmag.zip

[WestofHouse]

I can't believe I missed that issue. I was a huge Mad nut as a kid. Just the other day I was thinking about their "Disco" issue that included a plastic record of disco songs.

[Explodey]

Thanks guys. At long last, I have closure on this issue... of Mad. I've been extracting disk images from all my old Atari five inch floppies, so I can run them on Atari800MacX, and I just came across the disk that contained my attempt to enter this program, which is what prompted me to hunt for it online. Back in '85, I spent several days typing in about a quarter of the code, and when I realized how much more I still had left to enter, I started to suspect that this was some sort of practical joke on the part of Mad. When I tried to run my unfinished version of the program, the resulting image didn't look even remotely like an unfinished image of Alfred. Now that I see what it's supposed to look like, I'm fairly certain that my attempt was rife with typos.

 

Anyway, thanks again.

[Magic Knight]

Brings back memories - i remember buying this issue and spending ages typing this in (and then ages debugging my typo errors!)

 

was worth it to see Alfreds face on my Atari!

[Explodey]

The attached image is the result of my attempt at entering the Mad computer program. Not one of those lines looks right. I actually did have a fair amount of experience typing in programs back in 85; I wonder how I got this one so wrong. I remember that when I saw that all my work was just producing an abstract blob of diagonal lines, I decided to give up, hah..