[nfbcs] first programs?

Mike Freeman k7uij at panix.com
Tue Jan 21 17:12:39 UTC 2014 

Yeah! There you go!

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Doug Lee
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 8:38 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] first programs?

0300 - A9 48      LDA #$48
0302 - 20 ED FD   JSR $FDED
0305 - A9 69      LDA #$69
0307 - 20 ED FD   JSR $FDED
030A - 60         RTS

I started in Apple BASIC in my junior year of high school but learned
6502 Assembly at the same time. I didn't have an assembler, so I would have
typed the above tiny program, which prints "Hi" to the screen, by typing
something like this, except for the "#" lines which are comments I'm adding
now to explain each line:

# Go from BASIC (prompt being "]") to the Monitor (prompt "*").
] call -151
# Enter the program at address 300 hex in memory.
* 0300: A9 48 20 ED FD A9 68 20 ED FD 60 # Return to BASIC.
* 3D0g
# Run the program.
] call 768

My most complex successful 6502 Assembly program was one that let me read a
disk directory (catalog) into a BASIC array so I could sort it.
I also modified textalker.blind, my speech synthesis program, in a few ways,
one of which allowed Ctrl+L, the command for entering screen review, to
activate while stuff was scrolling to the screen, so I could freeze it and
read it.

I also tried to write an Assembly program to reproduce a hi-res graphics
screen in Braille, but my resolution reduction was 3x3 to 1, with any dot in
that nine-dot square causing the Braille dot to stand.
I'm sure that would have been a pretty bad rendition... but I never got it
running, partly for lack of computer time since all my actual entry and
testing had to be at a friend's house. I routinely tape-recorded my program
listings by voice, typed them when I saw a keyboard, recorded the
synthesizer reading the listings and errors, took them home to listen to,
and repeated, until I got it done.
Needless to say, errors were expensive in time. I didn't have my own
computer until my second or so year in college.

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 08:16:38AM -0800, Mike Freeman wrote:
How about:

Perform Routine Thru Routine-end
Until End-of-file.

In this connection, one had to specify how one determined End-of-file with
an "88 record".

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Hyde, David W.
(ESC)
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 6:11 AM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] first programs?

Ok. I never became a computer programmer. The first one I wrote though was
in Fortran, and it was one just to move a knight around a chessboard, and to
print the results on the line printer. I was between my sophomore and junior
year in high school, and I remember we worked on a Honeywell 1150. Had a big
surprise when I learned that things like the period and coma were not in the
same place on the keypunch machine as they were on a typewriter keyboard.
Now if you want to repeat this message

300    do, 400 i(50)
310    I = I+1
400    If I = 50, go 410
410     continue

Thanks for this thread. It does bring back memories of long ago.



-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Stevens
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 9:10 PM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] first programs?

The first full program I wrote was my end-of-year project using the Basic
language on the legendary Radio Shack TRS-80 during my senior year of high
school (1984).  It was a music trivia game where if the player got the
answer wrong, an ASCII human stick figure got blasted by a "laser beam" from
above.  If the answer was correct, the beam did a sudden left, missing the
figure.  From what I remember, the game randomly selected five questions
from a pool of fifteen or twenty, and the player's score was shown after the
final guess with corresponding message ("Good job", "Bad luck", etc).

Ryan Stevens




-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Littlefield,
Tyler
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 7:22 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Subject: [nfbcs] first programs?

Hello all:
Given that this is a cs list, I kind of had a fun topic. As brought up by
one of the most recent threads, I wrote a "swim" program a while back. This
was one of my first programs I ever actually wrote for the pc, and was
written for a school project in my 6th grade class using Libertybasic. I'd
totally forgotten the program or the language itself, but it seems LB is
still alive and kicking. I don't really remember much of the details of the
program, just that it was a very very basic game, if it can be called that.

What were some of your first projects?

--
Take care,
Ty
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that
dares not reason is a slave.


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-- 
Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
"You must let me try, for a true soldier does not admit defeat before the
battle."
--Helen Keller (in a letter to the president of Radcliffe College)

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