LOAD "HAILS" (with the S in inverse video)
Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2020 9:20 pm
Evening, all. Or maybe it's tomorrow morning if you're in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or somewhere way out east.
I am Dr. Jim and I have just signed up to my fourth Sinclair-related forum (i.e. this one). Maybe one day I will reveal why I did it, though it's a near certainty that it's going to happen early next year.
I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of a ZX81 at Christmas 1983, at the grand old age of four, and it served me well as I wrote "programs" that were little more than PRINT and GOTO statements, while also playing games off a few Quicksilva tapes. That was, until my younger brother tore the 16K RAM pack off the back of the ZX81, some time round about mid-1985. The RAM pack was fried, the ZX81 survived, but with only 1K available and no way to replace the RAM pack, the ZX81 was pensioned off in favour of a Spectrum +2 at Christmas 1987.
Not all was lost, as once I'd discovered Spectrum emulation, it wasn't so long before I'd found some slightly cruder equivalents for the ZX81... and ZX80, which I'd never experienced before and took me by surprise when I found it had a different character set. These days, I can write some rather better programs for the pre-Spectrum machines than I ever did before, and by means of a proper introduction, I'll show the evidence:
Advanced Horseshoe Magnet Simulator - 16K ZX81 (CSSCGC 2004) - based on a running joke that was mentioned on World of Spectrum around that time.
Noughts and Crosses - 2(ish)K ZX80 (CSSCGC 2004) - as it turns out, the very first ZX80 entry to the CSSCGC ever (in its ninth year), and my first ever attempt to write a ZX80 program.
Complex Maths... WITH DRAGONS! - 4K ZX80 (CSSCGC 2020) - comes in a package with three 1K programs and the 4K Super Deluxe version that combines them all together with the extra graphics. Written in one afternoon while the internet was down.
Hexadecimal Fraction Converter - down-converted from a Spectrum program just to show it could be done, and it's almost as accurate.
Dozenal Fraction Converter - as above. Note that I made a mistake in the link so scroll down to the next post to see the real thing. Eventually I'll get these two converters added to ZXDB, along with a load of other Spectrum stuff I wrote.
So that's me - a former ZX81 user, though I've always intended to scour eBay for a good one (or at least one that isn't terminally ruined), along with a 16K RAM pack that also works. I should probably have done this when they were going for peanuts, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
I don't promise I'll be here much this year - although I have one project that's been on the backburner for a while that might be of interest - but if all goes to plan you'll be seeing a lot more of me in 2021.
I am Dr. Jim and I have just signed up to my fourth Sinclair-related forum (i.e. this one). Maybe one day I will reveal why I did it, though it's a near certainty that it's going to happen early next year.
I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of a ZX81 at Christmas 1983, at the grand old age of four, and it served me well as I wrote "programs" that were little more than PRINT and GOTO statements, while also playing games off a few Quicksilva tapes. That was, until my younger brother tore the 16K RAM pack off the back of the ZX81, some time round about mid-1985. The RAM pack was fried, the ZX81 survived, but with only 1K available and no way to replace the RAM pack, the ZX81 was pensioned off in favour of a Spectrum +2 at Christmas 1987.
Not all was lost, as once I'd discovered Spectrum emulation, it wasn't so long before I'd found some slightly cruder equivalents for the ZX81... and ZX80, which I'd never experienced before and took me by surprise when I found it had a different character set. These days, I can write some rather better programs for the pre-Spectrum machines than I ever did before, and by means of a proper introduction, I'll show the evidence:
Advanced Horseshoe Magnet Simulator - 16K ZX81 (CSSCGC 2004) - based on a running joke that was mentioned on World of Spectrum around that time.
Noughts and Crosses - 2(ish)K ZX80 (CSSCGC 2004) - as it turns out, the very first ZX80 entry to the CSSCGC ever (in its ninth year), and my first ever attempt to write a ZX80 program.
Complex Maths... WITH DRAGONS! - 4K ZX80 (CSSCGC 2020) - comes in a package with three 1K programs and the 4K Super Deluxe version that combines them all together with the extra graphics. Written in one afternoon while the internet was down.
Hexadecimal Fraction Converter - down-converted from a Spectrum program just to show it could be done, and it's almost as accurate.
Dozenal Fraction Converter - as above. Note that I made a mistake in the link so scroll down to the next post to see the real thing. Eventually I'll get these two converters added to ZXDB, along with a load of other Spectrum stuff I wrote.
So that's me - a former ZX81 user, though I've always intended to scour eBay for a good one (or at least one that isn't terminally ruined), along with a 16K RAM pack that also works. I should probably have done this when they were going for peanuts, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
I don't promise I'll be here much this year - although I have one project that's been on the backburner for a while that might be of interest - but if all goes to plan you'll be seeing a lot more of me in 2021.
