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> You seem to assume that I'm some 15yo whose first computer was a PS2.
More a like very bright 20-ish. ;-) How should I have known you were about
my age?
> And exactly what do you think I consider a game? Why wouldn't a VIC-20
> or an Atari 2600 game be a game? Primitive (even by the time they still
> were popular)? Definitely. Playable games? Why not?
Because I assumed you to be in your twenties. Sorry. But do you really think
a teen or a young twen would consider our first computer-games fun? A game
like emperor or pharaoh? Enter number of acres to be planted, enter grain to
be spend on subjects, x subjects died, y subjects were born - you know the
kind of game? When we were young this kind of stuff was fun - at least for
me. Or the original "Bard's tale" on the C64? Mangar attacks. Hero got
blasted for 56 points of damage? I was enticed with the partially animated
graphics - the Zombies were really gross. And the 3D labyrinths, the
pictures of the streets of Skara Brae, all new and exciting. But would a
teen today say that this is an interesting game?
Later I really liked nethack. But a game that uses a yellow "i" for an imp
is not what any person less than 25 years old would consider a fun game.
> I really don't understand what binary coded decimals have to do with
> space optimizations (given that they actually *waste* space compared to
> native binary representation of numbers).
And you are right: nothing at all. I was just strolling down memory lane. I
had some problem to solve with BCD back then. And trying to solve it I
stumbled upon the word "nibble" for a half-byte. Something younger people
will probably have never heard of, neither will they need to hear about
this. And thinking you to be much younger...
> I still don't buy a *sine wave* taking *10 minutes* to draw, even if you
> used BASIC.
I think the sine-function was not the problem. The drawing of the pixels
was. Maybe my method of determining which bits were set was the culprit, I
don't remember. Maybe PEEK and POKE did take extra time. I think you had no
bit-operators in Commodore Basic (or I did not know it had - I think the
"and / or" was only logical operators), so I may have used some math and
some loops that were not optimal. Again, I don't remember the details,
except that it took a lot of time to draw this curve. It was my first
computer, the manuals were written in English (a foreign language for me),
my first programming language and my first program that did draw a graph.
Besides, to get a smooth curve you had to compute more than one pixel per
column. Knowing my younger self I assume I'll have iterated from 0 - 360
degrees and converted this to radians. Which probably took some GOSUBs, as
did the encoding and decoding of the individual bits.
> At least you didn't type gigantic hex listings, like me...
A lot was done by entering DATA - byte values which were read and then poked
into memory for small graphics or machine language code. It was pretty much
the same, only in decimal. I remember the PC magazines had checksums at the
end of each line so correcting was possible if you entered the
checksum-generator first.
My first steps into 6502 assembler were done entirely by hand since I could
not afford a proper assembler-program. Got a book on assembler, did
translate the code into machine-language by hand. So I know of the joys of
entering hex values - assembler is something else I do not miss at all. ;-)
Make a mistake and the computer did freeze - then guess what went wrong for
want of a debugger.
>> Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing
>> a
>> flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
>> complete.
>
> That would tell something about the speed of the BASIC interpreter rather
Yes. And that is part of the point. The very first post did compare BASIC to
Python and from there did compare computer speeds by the example of
interpreted languages.
> These are some pictures I drew with my first computer, a Spectrum 128:
> http://warp.povusers.org/SpectrumPics/
Nice. Especially the Ninja Turtles. Fond memories here, too ;-)
The Spectrum seems to have had way better graphics than the VIC. As I
already mentioned: you could not colour individual pixels, only individual
characters.
> Please stop assuming I'm a 15yo.
Sorry about this. ;-)
To put an end to a lengthy discussion: I told what I remember. I might
remember wrong, though I doubt it. I have no way to prove I remember the
correct time.
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TC wrote:
> Later I really liked nethack. But a game that uses a yellow "i" for an imp
> is not what any person less than 25 years old would consider a fun game.
>
I dunno, I still see young CS majors playing text MUDs on rare
occasions. And Dwarf Fortress, which while being a text game, could
never have run on any of my early computers.
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote:
>> http://prog21.dadgum.com/52.html
>
> It's like saying that Python is 1000 times faster than C by running the
> C program in a computer made in 1980 and the Python program in a computer
> made in 2009.
Yes, it is like saying that. That's the point too.
And C isn't as fast as Atari BASIC interpreter.
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Darren New wrote:
> He too. Altho I never did much graphics on the TRS-80, I do remember
> letting Mandelbrots run overnight on my Amiga. (Or was that still the
> Atari at that point? I don't even remember.) Whatever, it was pretty
> amazing at the time. :-)
Heh. On a 486SX, you can *watch* FractInt draw the individual pixels
while plotting, say, the lambda sin fractal. I would never have been
able to render a 48 megapixel image on such a machine!
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> While he does put the python version to run 1000x over the Basic version,
> he
> doesn't acknowledge the difference between 1984 hardware and, say, a P4.
Err, wasn't the whole point of the article to highlight the hardware
advances?
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scott wrote:
> Err, wasn't the whole point of the article to highlight the hardware
> advances?
Hence the title of the article.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Hi, Darren,
completely off-topic and off-post:
> Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
> I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
Did you really order those stamps? And if, what happened when you did use
them?
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wrote:
> I learned BASIC by typing in the listings of games and other programs. The
> listings were to be found in computer magazines or books and had to be
> typed in by hand. Here is an example of a more interesting game, "Hunt the
> Wumpus":
Hey, me too! I once spent 3 months typing in a logo interpreter from a book
I got at the library into my trust Apple ][ - and this was in the eigth
grade!
> A really spiffy graphics game I remember programming (or better: porting
> to the VIC, for my own enjoyment) was a space-invaders clone. I used a ^
> as missile graphics, the UFO was a <X>, you get the picture ;-)
Same thing here, only on the Apple ][ - which maybe had slightly better
graphics? I remember the raw excitement of
10 GR
20 PLOT...
> Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing a
> flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
> complete. it would take quite a bit of time to do some really spiffy
> graphics like the ones here:
Ooo I remember the sloooooow floodfills... anybody played any of "Adventure
International"'s games on the ][?
> About the original post: I really do not know anymore how long it actually
> took to draw the curve. It was a very long time ago. I am absolutely sure
> that I started the program, waited a bit admiring the curve drawing to
> start, went to the bathroom, came back, waited a bit longer till it was
> finished and showing the result to my parents. If this took 5 minutes, 10,
> or 15, I really cannot say anymore.
I entered another program from a book that did this on the Apple ][ in about
nine or ten seconds - but then I think its 6502 might have been running at a
higher speed than the CPU used in Commodores of that age?
> All this brings back rather fond memories and it makes me feel REALLY OLD
> for the first time...
>
> I remember times when a phone-call to the US cost $2.50 per minute and
> when this amount of money would buy you four large loafs of bread. Times
> when you had to leave home and go to the public library when you wanted to
> do some research for homework instead of googling or searching in
> wikipedia.
Don't feel lonely. I'm just as old, and I'm feeling it too.
> Times when you did a technical drawing you had to use compass,
> ruler and ink.
I -hated- those!
> And had to do all again if you did draw a single false line
> (OK - if you were lucky you might try to erase the wrong line or numer by
> using a razorblade, but then you would get poits off from your instructor
> who would write "Fog?" in the margin...)
>
> Nowadays you are very lucky, more lucky than you will ever know.
Too true.
--
Stefan Viljoen
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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Maybe if you implemented the sine function evaluation as the evaluation
>> of a fourier series, in BASIC,
>
> OK, I LOLed.
>
>> At least you didn't type gigantic hex listings, like me...
>
> Remember the magazines with the machine-readable barcode down the edges of
> program listings? I never got that to work.
Yes! I remember those.
Ever had something "saved" to an audio cassette, and you had to PLAY it back
to the computer? And if it played too softly or loudly it would be
scrambled?
I had games and stuff that used to take ten minutes to load this way.
Sometimes at 8 minutes it would fade just a little bit and you had to start
all over.
Granted this was in the early days even for the Apple ][ - later when you
could get the disc drives (floppy discs) for it, it was much better.
I remember doubling them (they held 120KB if I remember right) by turning a
store-bought one over, and cutting another write-protect notch at the
opposite side, so I could write on the "backside" of the disc, storing 240KB
(wow, that's a LOT!) on one disc.
The "backside" wasn't too reliable though. Mind you, neither was the "front"
of those discs. :)
--
Stefan Viljoen
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wrote:
>> You seem to assume that I'm some 15yo whose first computer was a PS2.
>
> More a like very bright 20-ish. ;-) How should I have known you were about
> my age?
>
>> And exactly what do you think I consider a game? Why wouldn't a VIC-20
>> or an Atari 2600 game be a game? Primitive (even by the time they still
>> were popular)? Definitely. Playable games? Why not?
>
> Because I assumed you to be in your twenties. Sorry. But do you really
> think a teen or a young twen would consider our first computer-games fun?
> A game like emperor or pharaoh? Enter number of acres to be planted, enter
> grain to be spend on subjects, x subjects died, y subjects were born - you
> know the kind of game? When we were young this kind of stuff was fun - at
> least for me. Or the original "Bard's tale" on the C64? Mangar attacks.
> Hero got blasted for 56 points of damage? I was enticed with the partially
> animated graphics - the Zombies were really gross. And the 3D labyrinths,
> the pictures of the streets of Skara Brae, all new and exciting. But would
> a teen today say that this is an interesting game?
I fully agree. These days the blink and twitch kiddies would not spend ten
seconds in something like Bard's tale. Or "Santa Paravia" on the Apple ][.
But when I played them... man! What a wet dream that was.
>> I really don't understand what binary coded decimals have to do with
>> space optimizations (given that they actually *waste* space compared to
>> native binary representation of numbers).
>
> And you are right: nothing at all. I was just strolling down memory lane.
> I had some problem to solve with BCD back then. And trying to solve it I
> stumbled upon the word "nibble" for a half-byte. Something younger people
> will probably have never heard of, neither will they need to hear about
> this. And thinking you to be much younger...
Nybble? At least I thought it was spelled that way. It seems to have fallen
into disuse (I only encountered it once after my Apple ][ finally burned out
- it was some custom station control electronics we used to have in the
dispatching center at the fire station.)
>> I still don't buy a *sine wave* taking *10 minutes* to draw, even if you
>> used BASIC.
Yeah, but then, not everybody is as math wise as Warp is. I chanced upon
some old listings of BASIC I did when I got my first IBM PC in 1984 / 1985
and I'm -amazed- at how stupid and primitive most of the stuff I tried was,
and how primitive the environments - no IDE, no editor as such, no debugger,
no profiler, no switch{}... No wonder such a thing might be slow - those
days the hardware was so underpowered and you had to be incredibly fly to do
something quickly and with no tricks.
> I think the sine-function was not the problem. The drawing of the pixels
> was. Maybe my method of determining which bits were set was the culprit, I
> don't remember. Maybe PEEK and POKE did take extra time. I think you had
> no bit-operators in Commodore Basic (or I did not know it had - I think
> the "and / or" was only logical operators), so I may have used some math
> and some loops that were not optimal. Again, I don't remember the details,
> except that it took a lot of time to draw this curve. It was my first
> computer, the manuals were written in English (a foreign language for me),
> my first programming language and my first program that did draw a graph.
Same here. One of the greatest driving forces for me to learn English was to
be able to read all those programming books.
> A lot was done by entering DATA - byte values which were read and then
> poked into memory for small graphics or machine language code. It was
> pretty much the same, only in decimal. I remember the PC magazines had
> checksums at the end of each line so correcting was possible if you
> entered the checksum-generator first.
Yes, I can remember headaches while still in primary school, going late into
the night despite repeated threats of parents to go to bed for the next
day's maths exam. Staring at pages, so tired the letters are swimming in
front of your eyes, trying to find the blasted POKE in line 982 that is
messing up the nice graphic you want to draw.
> My first steps into 6502 assembler were done entirely by hand since I
> could not afford a proper assembler-program. Got a book on assembler, did
> translate the code into machine-language by hand. So I know of the joys of
> entering hex values - assembler is something else I do not miss at all.
> ;-) Make a mistake and the computer did freeze - then guess what went
> wrong for want of a debugger.
I was never this hardcore. I remember the
c0b8 d1b3 e1fa ff4a 1aac 1d1a
*
the Apple would display as its assembler "interface". I usually hit CTRL-
RESET at that point.
>>> Later, on the C64, a way better and faster computer, when you were doing
>>> a
>>> flood-fill with Simon's BASIC you could sit by and watch the picture to
>>> complete.
>>
>> That would tell something about the speed of the BASIC interpreter
>> rather
Floodfilling used to fascinate me - probably because I never managed to
implement it and there were NO libraries that did it for you.
It really does seem much easier these days.
--
Stefan Viljoen
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