I was in college about this time; did a lot of programming on the Apple //e. I didn't have one, but the college I attended had a lab full of them in the business department, and a lab full of boring green-screen IBMs in the computer science department. What can I say, I like color. I wrote a bunch of Apple code that is long gone and not lamented, and created some RPG materials that I did rescue from the floppys a couple of decades ago.
The MAD Computer Program
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#12Ah good times, I remember spending countless hours typing in source code like this. At one point I also submitted the source for a couple of games I'd written to a computer magazine when I was younger, and was delighted to get one of them published. My address was included; if people sent me a $5 note and a 5.25" floppy I'd return their disk containing a copy of the game plus a couple of other "bonus" apps I'd writte…
Do you mean double sided or double density?
I distinctly recall having to rotate discs on my BBC, and seems strange to needlessly break backwards compatibility.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#13"What me worry?"
Interesting, loved MAD and had a VIC-20 early in the eighties, but think by '85 (the days of Miami Vice) I'd already put it into storage. So, while the issue looks familiar, don't think I tried it.
I have most of my MADs in a box around here somewhere.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#14I spent an entire night typing this into my Commodore 64. And it didn't work. I also messed up the save to tape, and never had the patience to type it all over again. Real world software programming was hard, and it still is. It remains just as frustrating when it doesn't work.
I think I typed this twice into my C64 and never got it working either. Always wondered what the output looked like.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#15Quick translation to javascript: https://jsbin.com/qipapokova/1/edit?js,output (Note I flipped it with css, too lazy to fix in js :) Edit: Perhaps more historically accurate if you can watch it draw: https://jsbin.com/veniwodidi/1/edit?js,output
> Perhaps more historically accurate if you can watch it draw
Were computers really that slow back then or is that effect exaggerated for nostalgia? Really hard to imagine computers that slow for us young generation.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#16I noticed that most of the DATA numbers were negative. I swapped the signs on all the numbers, and that saved about 250 characters. That would have added up when lots of machines still had 16KB of RAM.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#17Quick translation to javascript: https://jsbin.com/qipapokova/1/edit?js,output (Note I flipped it with css, too lazy to fix in js :) Edit: Perhaps more historically accurate if you can watch it draw: https://jsbin.com/veniwodidi/1/edit?js,output
> Perhaps more historically accurate if you can watch it draw Were computers really that slow back then or is that effect exaggerated for nostalgia? Really hard to imagine computers that slow for us young generation.
If anything, my simulation is being generous, at least for the C64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4h9a2QGdQM
That is, drawing from BASIC though. Games weren't saddled with that, so they drew faster.
A comprehensive comparison would be hard, but just by straight instructions per second: An old 6502 is probably 1/2 a MIP with each instruction dealing with 8 bits. A new AMD Ryzen is 350,000 MIPS, with each instruction able to deal with 64 bits. So, 700k times faster, not including the difference between 8bit and 64bit.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#18I typed this into a Commodore C64 with a kid next door. It felt like an eternity to type those rows.
The first time something was bad and we had to debug. The disappointment was tremendous.
The next time it worked, and felt magical how all that sweat and effort and those nonsense numbers became Alfred.
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#19I spent an entire night typing this into my Commodore 64. And it didn't work. I also messed up the save to tape, and never had the patience to type it all over again. Real world software programming was hard, and it still is. It remains just as frustrating when it doesn't work.
every summer for about 3 years, i tried to key this into my apple IIe. Came up with all sorts of schemes to keep track of my place in the listing, but never got it to display more than a few lines of the illustration, which I declared a minor victory (the first 2 times, it didn't work at all!).
This experience ingrained my top row typing skills in a big way though...
Re: The MAD Computer Program
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps more historically accurate if you can watch it draw Were computers really that slow back then or is that effect exaggerated for nostalgia? Really hard to imagine computers that slow for us young generation.
If anything, my simulation is being generous, at least for the C64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4h9a2QGdQM That is, drawing from BASIC though. Games weren't saddled with that, so they drew faster. A comprehensive comparison would be hard, but just by straight instructions per second: An old 6502 is probably 1/2 a MIP with each instruction dealing with 8 bits. A new AMD Ryzen is 350,000 MIPS, with each instructio…
Man, that video makes me appreciate my old TI-83 so much more, even with its lower resolution...