I too have a TRS-80 program from 40 years ago, but not as exciting as a game. It's a public key encryption program written in Z80 assembler and then hand-assembled into decimal bytes to be "put" into memory from a BASIC program. The divide routine is 198 bytes long and spans 11 pages in my hand-written double-spaced notebook. I even have the original Scientific American article and the RSA paper from MIT, which I used to figure out the algorithm.
If I remember correctly, it could encode a 28 character message in 38 minutes, or maybe it was the other way around. Debugging, of course, was a lot of "fun" because there was no debugger. I had to dump the registers to memory and then inspect the memory from the BASIC interpreter.
Maybe I should get a Z80 emulator and type the program in, once I have some free time from working on my new heterogenous hash table?
Amazing! That paper probably outperformed every other storage medium over 40 years, aside from the low read speed.
Your theory about recovering software from non-volatile mainframes made me want to suggest a YouTube video, "Apollo Guidance Computer Part 15: Recovering lost Apollo software" by curiousmarc.
They visited the Computer History Museum and recovered a (presumed lost) program stored half a century ago in core rope memory.
I am the same in regards to not understanding my own code after several months or even weeks. It's apparent you are 3 times older than me, but it is what it is.
I often wonder what this means for me and programming in general.
You sparked a memory now Ned. I remember I made an ASCII NCC-1701 on my Commie 64 that I could move around and fire the phaser banks. Kinda sorry I didn't keep that, just for the LULZ. I started converting it into sprites but lost interest.
Such a cool read, much appreciated and hope you can come up with more! Reminded me a little of this horror game that kinda also is a weird program acting out; https://www.hahagames.com/game/dreader
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the author's real-life encounter with dormant software programs and the comparison to tardigrades. I can't wait to see what other intriguing encounters they share. https://wordleunlimited.online/
Well, it's not that much code, and reading handwriting isn't a strength of OCR, or at least it wasn't when I was involved in that realm 20 years ago. https://www.typecalendar.com/templates
If I recall properly, it could encode a 28-character message in 38 minutes, or perhaps the opposite. Of course, debugging was a lot of "fun" https://geometrydash.io because there was no debugger. I had to save the registers to memory and then inspect them using the BASIC interpreter.
Although I made an effort, my OCR experiences were less than ideal. It's possible you may find an alternative to manually entering the information. https://amandatheadventurer.io/
May I everything thought about express without holding back whatever a working with to notice somebody that really values what they are looking at on the web. You genuinely see how to uncover an issue and make it enormous. Generously more individuals ought to check out at this and handle this side of the story. It's astonishing you're not more standard given that you completely have the gift. https://mydigitalbuzz.org/
I wrote some TRS80 Mod 1 BASIC programs that I used to teach high school physics. I have toyed with the idea of resurrecting them and even played with an emulator or two. Problem is, I have no printouts but I do have (probably dead) cassette tapes. I have decided it might be interesting but not worth the time or effort.
Who knows? This game might just show up in MAME one of these days..
Seems like it'd be ripe for reinventing on even a semi-modern platform; you certainly had ideas that haven't been duplicated in the subsequent 40 years.
On that note, probably best you didn't get a Model 1 off E-bay. Without shielding modifications that thing would be a FCC knocking-on-your-door nightmare.
I too have a TRS-80 program from 40 years ago, but not as exciting as a game. It's a public key encryption program written in Z80 assembler and then hand-assembled into decimal bytes to be "put" into memory from a BASIC program. The divide routine is 198 bytes long and spans 11 pages in my hand-written double-spaced notebook. I even have the original Scientific American article and the RSA paper from MIT, which I used to figure out the algorithm.
If I remember correctly, it could encode a 28 character message in 38 minutes, or maybe it was the other way around. Debugging, of course, was a lot of "fun" because there was no debugger. I had to dump the registers to memory and then inspect the memory from the BASIC interpreter.
Maybe I should get a Z80 emulator and type the program in, once I have some free time from working on my new heterogenous hash table?
Amazing! That paper probably outperformed every other storage medium over 40 years, aside from the low read speed.
Your theory about recovering software from non-volatile mainframes made me want to suggest a YouTube video, "Apollo Guidance Computer Part 15: Recovering lost Apollo software" by curiousmarc.
They visited the Computer History Museum and recovered a (presumed lost) program stored half a century ago in core rope memory.
I am the same in regards to not understanding my own code after several months or even weeks. It's apparent you are 3 times older than me, but it is what it is.
I often wonder what this means for me and programming in general.
You sparked a memory now Ned. I remember I made an ASCII NCC-1701 on my Commie 64 that I could move around and fire the phaser banks. Kinda sorry I didn't keep that, just for the LULZ. I started converting it into sprites but lost interest.
Such a cool read, much appreciated and hope you can come up with more! Reminded me a little of this horror game that kinda also is a weird program acting out; https://www.hahagames.com/game/dreader
I should buy a Z80 emulator and import the program when I have free time to work https://hello-neighbor.io
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the author's real-life encounter with dormant software programs and the comparison to tardigrades. I can't wait to see what other intriguing encounters they share. https://wordleunlimited.online/
Well, it's not that much code, and reading handwriting isn't a strength of OCR, or at least it wasn't when I was involved in that realm 20 years ago. https://www.typecalendar.com/templates
If I recall properly, it could encode a 28-character message in 38 minutes, or perhaps the opposite. Of course, debugging was a lot of "fun" https://geometrydash.io because there was no debugger. I had to save the registers to memory and then inspect them using the BASIC interpreter.
Although I made an effort, my OCR experiences were less than ideal. It's possible you may find an alternative to manually entering the information. https://amandatheadventurer.io/
May I everything thought about express without holding back whatever a working with to notice somebody that really values what they are looking at on the web. You genuinely see how to uncover an issue and make it enormous. Generously more individuals ought to check out at this and handle this side of the story. It's astonishing you're not more standard given that you completely have the gift. https://mydigitalbuzz.org/
I wrote some TRS80 Mod 1 BASIC programs that I used to teach high school physics. I have toyed with the idea of resurrecting them and even played with an emulator or two. Problem is, I have no printouts but I do have (probably dead) cassette tapes. I have decided it might be interesting but not worth the time or effort.
Who knows? This game might just show up in MAME one of these days..
Seems like it'd be ripe for reinventing on even a semi-modern platform; you certainly had ideas that haven't been duplicated in the subsequent 40 years.
On that note, probably best you didn't get a Model 1 off E-bay. Without shielding modifications that thing would be a FCC knocking-on-your-door nightmare.