The Tiny Type-In Hiding In A 40-Year-Old Blank Computer Cassette
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- Is there a tiny type-in program listing hiding inside a Thorn EMI EMITAPE Computer Cassette? I tracked a brand new, unopened C20 tape down, thanks to a tip from viewer EdwardianTeaChest, and opened the early 1982-vintage cassette. There are in fact two listings, one for the Commodore VIC-20, and another for the Sinclair ZX81. Join me as we type these programs in on vintage hardware, and figure out what they do.
The closing credits song can be heard (and watched) in full here:
• History (Commodore 64)...
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Title:
0:00 EMITAPE Computer Cassette C20 + Opening
3:40 Examining the cassette and j-card notes
6:46 Fun Program found!
7:46 Commodore VIC-20 Type-In
12:17 Saving program to EMITAPE
13:41 RUNning on VIC-20
15:17 Sinclair ZX81 Type-In
23:04 RUNning on ZX81
25:10 In Conclusion: Thanks - Наука та технологія
You're welcome, Robin! :)
I'm really glad you mentioned it; I absolutely love weird little things like this and it seems nobody else remembered about it!
so glad there was something inside... otherwise it would be a boring video.
@@8_Bit Here is another listing that may be of interest to you. You are probably familiar with the Usborne range of programming/type-in books from the 1980s. Well, Usborne published a book that wasn't part of that range, but it did have a small game listing for the ZX81, which also works on the Spectrum. The book is called "Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games" and it can be downloaded as a PDF from a certain digital library site.
Ed, as an audience member, I thank you for all contributions to this video and channel. I really appreciate seeing the programming and the history of the cassette.
@@EdwardianTeaChest I actually have that book in physical form! I've always considered it to be part of the computer programming series but you're right that it's not really. I love all those books, and really should make a video about them sometime.
Considering the amount of bugs you've found in type-in programs in published books, it's a bit funny that this tiny throw-away bonus program is tidy, uses some clever logic, and works.
Completely agree. But Robin's ZX81 could do with an internal composite mod and 16K upgrade. :-)
Clever logic indeed. I love the way the programmer used the logic statements on the movements.
Well it's from Thorn EMI. They made great software for the Vic 20.
@@CJ-ur3fx - With the restrictions back in the day, programmers came up with some clever solutions to pack as much data as possible in the limited amount of memory.
It's an Etch-A-Sketch. I would have loved this program when I was a VIC-20 kid. Thank you very much for sharing this!
I subscribed to a computer magazine called "RUN" and typed so many programs into my C64. I was actually published in one of the magazines with a software program! So cool. My parents were proud.
Great video,
This has solved a mystery I haven't thought about for nearly 40 years. I had a Acorn BBC micro for Christmas in the 80's (I live in the UK). My parents used to hide gifts in the loft (attic) sometimes they couldn't find them. I think I received a set of these tapes months after Christmas they came in a nice case.
Always wondered what the programs did as they didn't work on my BBC. Mystery solved.
Thank you so much.
I had an Acorn Electron. I share your interest in this with similar memories!
The amount of details, good guidance, and suggestions on that inlay is heartwarming.
Yeah, it made me happy 😊
The genius of the ZX basic input being single key presses is they didn't need to interpret typed text into tokens saving ROM and RAM as each key press was a complete basic language token. Also not only did it make it impossible to missytpe something like the word PRNIT, it meant you didn't even need to attempt/learn to touch type. Also having spent many, many hours programming on my Spectrum back in the day you quickly learned where the (normal) commands are.
PRINT was stored as a single byte 0xF5, the genius was followed when people realised that integers were stored twice. Once for display, another for usage.
LET A = 0 would be hex F1 41 3D 31 but then a "secret" 0E 00 00 00 00 00 (0E + a 5 byte floating point representation)
LET A = NOT PI would clock in at
F1 41 3D C3 A7
That's a 5 byte saving. When you've only 1k that's more than significant!
It only took me 40 years to get my head around that, despite the excellent manual explaining it all along.
It was great fun wasn't it? My brother and I used to write our own games in ZX basic. Spent many slightly frustrating hours de-bugging. We were not hot on pre-planning, but we came up with some almost fun bug-free games. The load times put us off playing them a lot, though.
Touch typing on a ZX.
That is a pretty funny idea!
Happily, my OSI Superboard II came with a full sized keyboard.
ZX and Spectrum seriously sucked.
Wasn't a fan, it was much quicker typing the word PRINT than looking for the key where it's printed on (well, for PRINT one probably new…)
@@EVPaddy As ThePoxun said, you soon got muscle memory for where all the keywords were. As he said, having the input being tokens rather than text that needed to be decoded by the ROM was a minor stroke of genius. This was particularly critical on the first machine to use it, the ZX80 with its 4K integer ROM.
I could smell the tape the moment you unwrapped it.
To be fair to Sinclair, I became so proficient with it the Spectrum implementation (on the frankly decadent Spectrum Plus no less lol) that when I moved on to bigger and better machines I actually resented having to type out the commands! It genuinely does save time once you're used to it, and the built-in error checking means you're not chasing typos the whole time.
That program is quite the little masterpiece of compact code, I like it!
I think Sinclair made a good call with the entry method. For one even the original Spectrum didn't have a very good keyboard, and XZ80/81 was worse. For other the expected target audience, unlike today, doesn't have a typing skill and laboriously searching for one button is much easier than searching for 6. And third, 8 year olds probably aren't great at spelling, so it cuts down on frustration since the system doesn't allow you to misspell keywords. Our expectation today is warped by having grown up with quality keyboards allowing us to bang out a keyword in a fraction of a second without looking, and yet typos are one of persistent programmer gripes even today.
@@SianaGearz Yeah, I've actually got a programmable macro keyboard that can type out entire words when pressed FN+key and used it to replicate that input thing with common C/C++/Java/C# and similar language keywords. So for example FN+C outputs "class" FN+F "for" and so on.
Didn't even had a Spectrum, but that input system just makes sense. And yes, I'm aware of code completion, which is amazing, but rarely helps with keywords themselves.
@@SianaGearz My understanding (perhaps incorrect) was that the primary reason for that input method was to reduce RAM usage: by directly tokenising the contents of the line as you type you don't need to store the individual letters in a separate input buffer that you then tokenise.
@@Curt_Sampson Yes, the entire BASIC ROM was built with compactness in mind - to the detriment of performance unfortunately. Sinclair BASIC was *incredibly* slow - probably the only machines that make the TI99 seem reasonable (well, the Spectrum is faster than the TI but the earlier ones weren't). But it was the only way of making a machine viable with the original ZX80 specs of 4KB ROM and 1KB RAM including video memory. By the time the Spectrum came along this was no longer necessary but it was kept as a "feature" of the machine.
Nonetheless it did have its advantages, and the editor/parser was definitely one of them - the 128K Speccy (which had a more traditional editor) was a vile, horrible thing by comparison - slow and cumbersome. And the Amstrad Spectrums had the worst keyboards as far as I am concerned - all springy and twangy - I despise them to this day. They have the feel of a (very cheap) keyboard that can take touch typing but then on the 128k editor you end up missing every fifth or sixth keystroke, leading to the dreaded red cursor of Doom and the parping beep of disappointment. Prefer the dead flesh to be honest.
The decadent spectrum plus! Love it.
Thank you so much for using an actual ZX81 and bringing back my memories of typing in code on that beast!
Not using the RAM expansion pack at least made sure it won‘t crash by simply looking at it.
I never had that problem with my RAM expansion. But I also didn't need to pack it away when I wasn't using it. Maybe that's why!?
I never had one, but I have heard from several people that the RAM expansion was a bit wonky due to the interface connector.
We had hot-glued our RAM expansion permanently in place. We have Sir Clive to thank for starting our tradition of hot-gluing everything in sight. Cheers.
I have two myself and frankly i am not sure how anyone did anything on them.
My first computer was a vic20,my schoolmate sean had a zx81.
We both picked got our computers their maximum expansions(vic20/32k,zx81/81k)
The only problem he had was that although he had more memory,he didn't risk using it much since it could boil a glass of milk after 15 minutes use.
3:28: Glad I'm not the only one that has to quickly smell all my new 8-bit acquisitions. :D
I'm from the UK but didn't even know about these tapes. I did have shed-loads of WHSMITH C-15 cassettes however. The black ones then the yellow and black ones. great stuff.
Holy crap, I typed this into my THEC64. I feel like I'm 5 years old again! What a wonderful gift from the past!
I had that tape when I proudly owned my first ever computer, a 1K Sinclair ZX81 back in 1982. Typed in the listing and spent many happy hours figuring out ZX Basic before moving onto the mighty Spectrum 48K. To think we are reminiscing about technology from forty years ago, and we still love it with the same passion as we did when we first had it. Everything I do now is on emulator (sad I know) but I've learned so much about Commodore Basic and indeed the Commodore 128 which I owned back in 1987 until its demise some years ago. Thanks Robin for your magnificent insights into a world we all love. Sir Clive Sinclair RIP.
Love it. The suspence when typing on the ZX81 was unbelievable!
The suspense would have been heightened, had there been a RAM pack threatening to wobble.
Even years ago told people to backup their stuff and we still don't listen :)
A cool tape and a cool video. Thank you. When I was at college back in the 80s we had IBM clones with SVGA (I think). One project we had was to program a similar etch-a-sketch. One of the kids enhanced it to have different colours by pressing 1 to 9. And 0 for black. The teachers were so impressed that they let us draw pictures for art class. Those were fun days :-)
I never used "computer casettes". I just bought 60 or 90 minute TDK cassettes for my... uhm... "shareware" C64 games 😁
A friend had an early TRS-80 Model 1. I nhad a reel-to-reel tape machine that could use a wired remote. We lashed up some gear to interface the two. It worked and surprised the heck out of us!
Hard to even remember that old hardware these days.
So cool! My first computer was the ZX81 with a 16K RAM pack! I mean; a WHOLE 16K of RAM! 🤣 I had it connected to a 12” black & white portable TV. The height of computing. Happy memories! I progressed to an Amstrad CPC464 at home and the BBC B Microcomputer at school.
I had the opposite experience with the ZX81. It brings nothing but terrible memories. I had to return 2 to W.H. Smiths. They simply would not load anything from tape. Maybe I was unlucky. I gave up after that ( A disappointed 14 year-old is not a good thing! Ask my dad!) I saved some money and went for the Spectrum. Absolutely loved it! Loved programming it with my dear brother and loved playing the games.
Knowing it's a type in, I'd like to add this line to it (Commodore Version, not sure how to do it on the Z/X):
105 IF A$=CHR$(147) THEN 60 :REM OPTION TO CLEAR SCREEN, AS THAT WAS DEFINITELY A THING ON ETCH-A-SKETCH, TOO
and then maybe also:
107 IF A$=CHR$(19) THEN 70 :REM THIS IS NOT THAT USEFUL, ACTUALLY...
Heck, I think even color controls oculd be added. That is the beauty of typing your own programs. YOU are in charge! Notice I use present terms because that still is the case today if you have both DOSBOX and QBASIC on your computer, although it's not the same BASIC, it's still the same idea in general.
I do notice that the Z/X has the same commend as QBASIC to clear the screen (CLS) lol
Thanks for this video, it brought back good memories. I wrote a similar program for the Apple II's low-resolution screen back in the mid 1980s, and it was the first program I ever wrote that other people played with. Watching my classmates willingly drawing pictures with my little Etch-a-Sketch program made me a proud young boy. When I discovered the original TRS-80 last year via emulation I wrote it again.
From now on, whenever I hear "Red Leader" on Star Wars, I'm going to remember your video about this tape with the red leader. Thank you for the video!
Thats te first thing I thought too 🤣
Since I'm currently messing around with generating graphics on the VIC, it's nice to know exactly what's going on in a 8BS&T program for once. :)
For example POKE 36879 sets both the background and border colors at the same time, though you have to consult a table in the programmer's guide to know what number you need to poke to get the color combo you want. (8 sets border & bg to black)
Brings back memories of starting out on a ZX Spectrum.
The LET statement does serve a purpose in Sinclair BASIC, to switch the keyboard from command input mode to alphanumeric input mode. So that's why it's required.
Wouldn't you run into the same situation any time you have to type a variable name?
@@big0bad0brad You can't put two commands on the same line, so any time you type a command, Sinclair BASIC automatically switches to alphanumeric input mode.
If you draw to much on the screen on a ZX81 with only 1K it will probably run out of memory. The ZX81 with 1K uses a clever way of organizing the screen memory where only the chars from left per line are stored with a next of line byte at the end telling it that the rest of the line is blank. It has to because the 40*25 chars would use 1000 of the 1024 bytes on the system. Since the system needs some RAM also to function this would mean only a few bytes left for a program.
If I've understand correctly yhat might explain the glitching also : Every time the program causes an extra char to be displayed the rest of the screen behind it has to be moved up a byte in memory before using the CPU intensive plot routine which alters a char in a 2x2 grid.Since the CPU is used the lines on the screen only in the vertical blank there is time to process this. This might interfere with the interrupt routine what was developed to improve the ZX81 from the ZX80 which blanked the screen at every keypress.
Can someone check if the glitching is there with a ZX81 with 16K expansion also?
Aha, thanks for the explanation. I think I read about that screen memory compression trick it does once but had forgotten about it. It's pretty amazing that it works as well as it does in 1K of RAM.
@@8_Bit It is! Another thing I wonder about. Would it be possible on a 1K ZX81 to set the screen like it is on a 16K ZX81 (So to use 1000 bytes for it) and just put the code for the program there also? So that the code and systems variable are visible as a few line as garbage on the screen? And the use the rest of the screen as output of the program ? This very technical stuff so I don't expect you to know this, but maybe someone else who is reading this? Or can someone recall a 1K ZX81 program which put some of the code on the screen? I think 1K chess uses the on screen chessboard to evaluate moves and if I recall you can see this program 'think' on screen. But I've never seen 1K Chess in real life. I think it's a marvel of ingenuity (although a lousy opponent)
@@8_Bit Another thing I think is amazing how they improved the code for ZX80 to get rid of the blanking screen during key presses. The advantage of such a limited machine was that some coders really understood those machines well. Far better probably than the people at Sinclair themselves. The same thing happened with the C64... The magic they get out that machine nowadays must go far behind the creators thought it could do.
I am certain I have a few of those tapes in my collection. I will have a look and see if they have the same or maybe have something different printed. Great vid as always.
I really wasn't expecting a whole program to be printed on the inside of the J-card! lol
To help clear up the Sinclair Timex tie up mystery. Sinclair used the Timex factory iirc in Dundee, Scotland to build the ZX 81 and subsequent models in the UK. Maybe it was thought that Timex was a better known brand in the US and would have better traction against the myriad of better known computer manufacturers in the States.
Although I can't comment for computer use, for audio usage it was well known that the longer C120 tapes were thinner and could stretch with undesirable results. So most self record audio tapes in the UK tended to be C60 or C90. Of course the usage case is slightly different with audio as well. Although you could search for individual tracks, in reality it was such a faff of a process that often you just played the tape through which incidentally kept the tape stretch and packing more uniform. Repeated searching for individual parts of the tape in computer use would possibly stretch areas of tape less uniformly. Thus the recommendation for shorter tapes. Just a theory, but I would imagine people would just use what they had around anyway ie C60 or C90.
The ZX80 and ZX81 are marvels of design of packing the maximum in at a minimum price. I see them getting insulted many times on American channels for their obvious shortcomings, but they are rarely given the credit they deserve for kick starting a whole generation of British programmers. The plethora of competitors available in the US were either not available at all in the UK or were hideously expensive and well beyond most peoples budget. There also wasn't the large no of spare old teletypes kicking around that seemed to be a necessary requirement of the first PCs either😊
One thing I never see, is any comment on the weird video dongles that hang off so many early US machines. Being used to UK and possibly European computers that just plug into the TV, it is interesting to note how much the FCC held back early micro computer development in the USA with their very restrictive rules on emissions. An interesting what if story in itself. The apple 2, TI99 and early ataris are just 3 off the top of my head that were heavily affected by this regulatory oversight.
I remember typing in this program from the cassette inlay. It was a watershed moment in my BASIC learning when I figured out why those movement expressions worked!
That takes me back to my youth typing in programs from Compute! magazines that I borrowed from the elementary school library back in the early 80's then troubleshooting to find my mistyped entries.
I thought I really had something when I got my VIC 1110 typing away those cold and snowy Saskatchewan winters.
Wonderful to see that little piece of history captured and shared =D
its mad really, kids of today mostly dont even know what a disk is never mind a data storage cassette...lol ... good video Robin... i was cringing when you took that seal off that C20 lol should have kept it on for another 40 years lol.. but in the name of science and curiosity we killed the cat (not really) :D LOL
Beautiful- especially the quality of the used materials, todays plastic often breaks in pieces After 10 Years, this cassette looks new and so solid
Nice! Love the free games included with a tape.
Just a ?
I find it fun to watch What I loved to do like 30-35 years back, type in, my question is, is there some kind of online library where you can find old magazines with type ins, that I could do in a emulator, I miss those days, just spending hours for hours to type in :)
Yes, archive dot org has many old computer magazines scanned. You'll find lots of type in listings there.
Cool! Though the tape is moldy as hell... Clean you tape recorder well with IPA after it, otherwise it can infect other tapes with spores.
Yes I saw that too, it shouldn't really be used!
I'm happy to see the ZX81-thanks for entering this program-and even happier that I didn't have to type it in.
Good old days I remember baying cassetes for recording programs that came in a magazine and one hat to type them in... Wish you well
Another reason for short lenght tapes was that a C90 had so much tape that the act of using it and rewinding it and the such put a lot of stress on the tape, leading it to cut, or to stretch beyond reliable use.
This is so cool. I remember those tapes very clearly and used them with a ZX81 in 1982/3 approx. I'd forgotten about the program on the inlay card, but as soon as you mentioned it remembered! 🙂
First time seeing an Early Access video! Wooo. Being a Patron is fun :D
EDIT: Definitely going to be typing in that program on my VIC-20
I have a few C15 cassettes from WH Smith hanging around from back in the day.
Interesting to note that your ZX81 keyboard says "Enter", but ones I have seen in the UK do say "Newline" which is the same as the ZX80.
As a rule, back in the day when I had a brand new cassette I used to always fast forward both sides before use.....to bring up the tension incase the reels were slightly loose
Thing is though, winding and rewinding actually loosens, not tightens the tape pack. If you try rewinding a fully-played tape using a Bic biro, the pack is solid and regular throughout. If you wind the tape you can keep tightening the tape, and this actually can defeat the rewind auto-stop of some cassette recorders.
Neat boundary checking. Never seen it done like that before!
The singular of parentheses is parenthesis, not parenthesee. Fun to see you type into the Zx81. It brought back memories. I think my Zx81 cost £80.
I remember having those tapes.
Its funny how we had autocomplete in the 80s but people today insist on complaining about it
Always fun to find hidden programs. There's a type in on the Windows 11 box. Almost sure about that.
Oooh, I gotta get it!
Is that on the tape version or the floppy version of Windows 11?
@@NaoPb It's easiest to read on the 8 inch floppy version since the box is nice and large.
Those shorter tapes for storing programs were also available without the leader, so you couldn't lose the start of your code accidently.
Nifty little application and so cool it came on the tape case. Thank you for sharing 😀
I recall back in the mid80's as a kid getting a magazine for the C64 that had programs in the back of it for a free game. They were always in assembly and I can't recall ever getting a single one running.
I've got a NTSC ZX-81, too! My first computer, my father bought for me before the Timex partnership and the name change.
I bought a few of these when my 48K Spectrum was current and I'm sure I must have one or two in my old gear, so now I'm a bit excited about getting my tapes out to find out. Great video, brought lots of 8-bit memories back!
Well, this took me down memory lane - I wrote my very first programs on a ZX81 more than 40 years ago..
Having to explain tape-drives to a coworker born in 1998, it's an honor to share your UA-cam channel. Hopefully I've increased your subscribership. Great Vid!
Haha, in high school (2002) even that long ago alot of other students didnt know you could record to tapes from another source (i used to make trance mixtapes from cds or mp3's from the net) and later i think 2005 i had to physically bring in a vhs tape with gameplay footage of need for speed underground and gran turismo, to prove to a few friends that in fact, you could record from the ps2 to tape 😂 i dont know if it was just that i was poor so i was used to old tech, or if they were poor and didnt have these things to try 😂
They still use tape-drives for backups.
Cool Vid, had a C64 and ZX Spectrum+3, if I ever get a band together i was gonna call it 'GoSub no Return' ;-) To actually find a type in program that works is a feat in its own and when you said you were gonna type in the ZX81 version i thought you must be a glutton for punishment.
I had a friend back in the early 90's who said he had a ZX80 in the box and I thought 'Hmmm, Yeah right' one day he came downstairs with it still in the box and still shrink wrapped, it was a proper jaw meets floor moment.
Brilliant bit of computer archaeology ! Thanks for this. ZX81 was my first computer.... the pain of finding those keys and pressing those keys !
My friend had a VIC20 and I can remember us playing Shamus until dawn. Fun times.
I loved that the first thing you drew was what any boy would draw. Or maybe that’s just me😅
That XZ81 doesn't have a graphics mode, it's just text. The PLOT statement is pretty nifty, it uses a set of 2x2 block characters to emulate low-res bitmap graphics.
The funny thing is, the VIC is similar in that it also doesn't have a true bitmap mode. Although for the VIC you can copy the character set from ROM to RAM and then redefine the characters to whatever you want (if you don't want to use the PETSCII characters for your graphics).
I must have had 20 of those tapes and never opened the packaging up once!
16:04 but you're missing out on typing on that delightful keyboard!
14:27 A mandatory test drawing for any application. 😂
This brings back memories ! Had a lot of fun with the Acorn Electron,, even made an I/O board for it, heaps of DIL IC's on a euroboard and layers and layers of wire-wrap.
I remember my Dad bought a ZX-81 back in 1981 for £50 when I was 13. Then about 2 years later I vaguely remember having a Speccy, then for a short time a SORD CGL M5, which I sent back and got a Commodore C-16. Then in 1986 my brother got a VIC-20, in 1987 I got an Atari ST (520). I don't know why I went for an Atari after getting the C-16. I built myself a big desk in my bedroom and had the C-16 & Atari side-by-side 😆
Gawd its amazing to find these things now. Holy heck that is awesome!
I had the zx81 when i was 17. and now i bought a Matra Alice to play with nostalgie. Thank you for the vidéo.
Odd that the INKEY$ function is repeated in the Sinclair version of the program, instead of storing the keyboard input in a variable. Since the function is evaluated 4 times per loop, you can technically break the bounds check by rapidly entering a new key after the first INKEY$ statement is evaluated. Of course, it may not be possible to do this given the quality of the membrane keyboard 🙂.
The only key you can enter is the one that moves you into the other direction, i.e. walking back inside the bounds.
I broke my snake games turning by the input changing in the middle of the movement/check loop in qbasic.
Actually it was stored in a variable but the effect of using onkey would still change it while in the logic loop.
It was fairly annoying because you could play the game for minutes without a problem and then just die for seemingly no reason while turning
I love it @3:30 Im saying Smell it Robin... and you do.
Great Video and Happy New Year!.
As you were opening it, I was screaming out "WHAT DOES IT SMELL LIKE???" Thank you for not disappointing. I used tapes like this for my first computer (VIC-20 in 1982).
There were more of these weird methods for distributing programs. There were flexi discs on magazines. The Thompson Twins had an adventure game on one. There’s a challenge for you : Get the disc, make it work, complete the game !
I'm pretty sure one of those is just masochism, lol.
Fascinating to see that program after all these years. I also realised something - the 5678 as cursor controls explain why some ZX Spectrum games use the same key setup.
One thing Spectrum BASIC did was error-checking as you typed in a line - so you didn't have to wait until the program ran to see what was wrong. Of course, at that simple level, it couldn't check more than the syntax, but it would have saved time in the long run - you couldn't enter an invalid line. It also "held" the last line in memory so you could back and edit it quicker.
The TI-99/4a was the first 16bit home computer. Still got mine, and still works great. All I wanted was a Spectrum but they were sold out so parents got me the TI for Christmas. Had no games, what was available was expensive as it was on cartridge so spent hours and hours converting ZX and VIC code into TI BASIC. Great memories with tapes, but lost so much due to tape decks chewing them up or leaving tapes near sunlight.
Cool. That border checking is really smart. Without a lot of ifs makes it small and fast.
Wow this brings back memories, though I never owned a VIC 20 or ZX81, instead I started with a TRS-80
Ah, memories. ZX81 was my first computer, and I've spent many sleepless nights tring to fill that tiny 256 × 192 pixel screen with something great. I almost went bunkrupt buzing 64K external RAM for around 1000 German Marks, which I never managed to get working LOL.
I love that kind of code and ideas. Thank you for sharing
14:26. Of course. It's the first thing every programmer draws.
Man I feel bad for you old timers! If I was growing up back when these computers were current I don't think I would have been as interested in them as I was growing up!
I just turned 40, and I feel OLD when it comes to computers.. but my first was an Apple IIGS, so I at least got to enjoy playing games in full color. Then by the time I was a teenager I had a DX2 66mhz with 4MB of Ram. I barley remember ever having to use a 5-1/4 floppy, because by that time the 3.5 had already become pretty much standard. I DO remember some software titles coming with BOTH versions in the same box though, so from time to time I remember wanting to share something with a friend, and never having any blank disks around because my Mom would refuse to buy something that was "blank". She would complain that it was like "buying AIR!" So I would have to dig through old software boxes and find titles that came with 5.25 floppies, and having to put tape over the write protect notch and test to see if I could get data to write to them (some commercial floppies were just unwritable and couldn't be formatted for some reason).
But I never had to deal with tape cassettes, or monochrome screens with BASIC being the only thing you really did with your computer. I would have been like, nope. How boring..this sucks.. and I never would have gotten so interested in computers!
Wow, I haven't seen one of those cassettes since 1982 when we had our Vic 20. I tell people about them and how before we had SSD drives and before we had HDD drives we used DVDs for storage, before that we used CDs before that we had the floppy disks that were 3.5" started by Apple and before that the floppy disks that were 5 1/4". But before even the floppy disk were the audio cassettes that used a computer cassette player. That brings me back to my teenage years
I noticed the ZX81 was using +1 for the logical expression bounds checking, while the VIC was using -1 in the same bounds checking. I got used to having to translate that sort of thing when I had my first Exidy Sorcerer. Lot of programs had machine specific 'poke' addresses and things like 'true expressions' were sometimes -1, sometimes +1.
Nice walk down memory lane here. The 'joy' we would feel just playing a simple cursor moving thing like this, or testing "Who's buried in Grant's tomb" sort of Q&A. My goodness how far we've come in just our lifetime.
Exidy Sorcerer, nice! Do you remember if it was in the +1 or -1 camp? I think most Microsoft-derived BASICs use -1.
@@8_Bit Sorry, was a long time ago, on a computer far... far away. But I DO remember being royally p*** off when a popular compiler switched implementation and some 'trick' code started overflowing instead of counting down to zero. lol
I had these tapes back when I had zx spectrum. I did indeed type this program in. Oh what fun.
This is so cool to watch, thanks. Love the tapes, still have plenty :)
Yes I believe this is the first time we've seen your ZX81 on the channel! What a pain in the fingertips to type that out, but maybe we can see a bit more of it with a working cassette deck too! Thanks, this was a lot of fun.
I had a ZX81, with the whopping 16k memory expansion. It produced frightening amounts of heat and would frequently become disconnected just from the motion of typing on the keyboard. Then I graduated to the state of the art C64, and had it for years. We were so easily entertained back in the day.
this is before my time, but it was still very interesting to see how this simple code works.
the boundary checking lines are quite brilliant and check both sides with one command.
this should be taught to young kids just to show them how coding worked back in the day.
Ah but now I'm wondering - how do we know its actually working, can this program be LOADed from the tape?
here in poland we didn’t have dedicated computer cassettes, so everybody used c60 and c90, you have a tape counter, problem solved. i haven’t heard of problems with cassette recorders (computer-powered ones) caused by this, but i guess no one researched this. i guess, though, that it was mostly cassette manufacturers’ initiative to sell more cassettes, rarely actually desirable (as would be the case when you’d like to pass a single program to somebody). the blurb on the sleeve is kinda revealing :)
nice trophy, tho
You had to buy expensive tape. Trying to save and load programs from Soviet tape on a Soviet recorder was a double hazard. By late 80s, we had some Soviet machines with imported Japanese mechanisms and those finally stopped chewing tape.
@@SianaGearz actually i guess many people used western cassettes, available via ‚pewex’ (in ussr: beryozka) or gray import, i guess. local tapes were inferior, though i remember using them still
We used to collect C64 games on mother cassette of 90 minutes and games we liked were loaded from these 90 minute tapes and saved back onto 15 minute tapes.
In the 80's you could buy empty cases (no tape). We used to buy them and a C120 tape and make our own C5 and C10 tapes
Blue on black.
Tears on a river.
Push on a shove, it don't mean much.
Back in the day, when my Timex Sinclair 1000 was new (quickly replaced by a TI 99/4a), I found a third party "keyboard" that was a set of plastic mechanical keys that glued on top of the membrane keyboard. The keys were a lot like HP calculator keys, and really sped up typing. It would have definitely won your hypothetical typing contest.., 😁
Robin, I really lived dangerously. I used the 120 minute cassettes. ; )
3:28 I don't know how but I can smell it too.
12:40 the logic in lines 110-140 is what smart people used to do in the old days.
And to get the full nostalgia you need to use a pencil to advance that tape 😁
Thanks
I am surprised that the Apple II and TRS-80 were not listed since both were more popular than any of those other computers and both used tapes as well.
This tape was made in the UK, and the Apple II and TRS-80 weren't popular there due to some combination of price and distribution. The VIC-20 was very popular world-wide: it was the first computer to sell a million units.
C15 and similar short tapes usually hold data better than the mass-produced C90 tapes for only recording music, plus if you want a program on the other side you have to rewind/forward less to get the position. A trick is the put the max position of a side on the label, then you don't have to rewind all the way to the start to zero it. Another way is to have a cassette player that allowed you to listen in, then you could quickly find the start header of a program, load it, get its name and compare it to the position on the label and you'd know your relative position to the program you wanted. I think there are some tapes made for portastudios that are higher quality than others, if you can somehow get hold of them.
I was back in my 80s zone watching you type this, i remember spending many hours do typins for my Spectrum 48k the hardest ones always being the data statement lines, i remember typing in a pacman game once that had over 100 lines of data statements each had 32 pairs of hexadecimal numbers because the program was written in machine code with just the basic loader to poke them all into memory then saved it out to tape after.
luckily each data statement line had a checksum at the end so if you had made a typing error it could tell you what line the error was on. i also brought your sinclair megabasic out of the magazine and remember typing in the code from the your sinclair magazine (it was in 3 parts so took 3 months to complete) that actually added 3d sprites to the megabasic command set so you could create your own knightlore/alien8 type games with it.
ahh such fundays, i actually really miss them.
Great video! These small "revealed" things make you feel like you found the lost treasure :)
At 9:25 when the listing scrolled up, I had to fight a reflex to grab it somehow, like it was sliding off the keyboard. 😂
The 1st computer I used was an HP9830 called a deck-top calculator with 8K of ram memory. It used a special cassette tape to record programs. And also was programmed with BASIC.