There were always mistakes in those magazines and books.
For magazines you would need to wait for a following
issue if the noticed the mistake, or for a lot of the
books, the programs written in basic would be a generic
basic, and sometimes you would need to modify it for you
particular computer.

Oh yes, the books that had BASIC programs that would run on any computer! And somehow they often didn't seem to work on any computer I tried! haha

I remember borrowing books from the library that suggested the programs could work on an computer with BASIC (but you may need to make some small modifications). I definitely wasn't able to get past the 'small modifications' step at that time.. Sometimes I hadn't even seen the computers that ran the BASIC dialect used in the book - pretty sure I remember trying to get some Sinclair BASIC programs running in Microsoft GW-BASIC in DOS, I'd never seen a ZX Spectrum in my life.

The books were still a great experience.


Chris/akacastor


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Re: Re: I want to do something retro...
By: neoshock to Bob Worm on Mon Jul 01 2024 03:39:25

Hi, Lloyd.

When I got the VIC20 I did not even have
a desk, the computer would just be on the ground with me cross-legged sitting on the floor typing away.

Wow, that's dedication. Shows how engrossing computers were in those days.

Of course if we could have just sat in front of the TV on a laptop in those days I imagine that would have been what we did instead :)

BobW
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Re: Re: I want to do something retro...
By: AKAcastor to Neoshock on Mon Jul 01 2024 11:56:06

Hi, Chris.

I remember trying to get some Sinclair BASIC programs running in Microsoft GW-BASIC in DOS, I'd never seen a ZX Spectrum in my life.

I think you had more luck making Sinclair type-ins work on DOS than I ever did on my aunt's Sinclair. That awful BASIC where you had to have the cursor in keyword mode and press "P" for "PRINT" - don't *type* "PRINT", that won't work. Oh, you did it again. Oh and now the whole line is muffed and actually now that I look, so is that one 3 lines ago.

35 years on and I'm still extraordinarily furious just thinking back to that. And to think, people loved those things. What's wrong with people?

Eughhhh!

BobW
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I remember trying to get some Sinclair BASIC
programs running in Microsoft
GW-BASIC in DOS, I'd never seen a ZX Spectrum in my life.

I think you had more luck making Sinclair type-ins work
on DOS than I ever did on my aunt's Sinclair. That
awful BASIC where you had to have the cursor in keyword
mode and press "P" for "PRINT" - don't *type* "PRINT",
that won't work. Oh, you did it again. Oh and now the
whole line is muffed and actually now that I look, so
is that one 3 lines ago.

Oh no. I didn't realize the depths of the depravity of Sinclair BASIC. I've always been curious about the ZX Spectrum but now I must re-evaluate whether it is a curiousity or a curse.

35 years on and I'm still extraordinarily furious just
thinking back to that. And to think, people loved those
things. What's wrong with people?

Seems like we heard "inexpensive computers" and our brains shut off while we sat in front of those terribly frustrating underpowered uncomfortable gadgets. (I feel like that was a kind of genre of computers in the 80s, and I wanted them all.)


Chris/akacastor

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Re: Re: I want to do something retro...
By: AKAcastor to Bob Worm on Tue Jul 02 2024 12:05:44

Hi, Chris.

Oh no. I didn't realize the depths of the depravity of Sinclair BASIC.
I've always been curious about the ZX Spectrum but now I must re-evaluate whether it is a curiousity or a curse.

The later releases I believe worked the "normal" way, it was just the very memory constrained earlier BASICs that made life that difficult. Possibly you could get used to it but I sure as hell was not going to put myself through that for a computer I didn't own.

People loved the Spectrums, I never understood it. The C64 had much better graphics and sound, plus a proper keyboard, and what the hell is a Kempston joystick? Supposedly the games were better?

I have basically just insulted the religion of 50% of British 8 bit fans, I was going to say they will be out with the pitchforks but, if they were here, they would already have been out defending that awful BASIC.

Actually most of my friends had Spectrums (Spectra?) back in the day and C64s were in the minority, most people probably didn't care about the BASIC because to them that was just the thing you use to load your games off tape. Then you had the hoity-toity BBC crew, whose mum or dad (or both) invariably worked at a school because nobody was shelling out 400 squids of their own money for an 8 bit micro :)

BobW
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Oh no. I didn't realize the depths of the depravity of Sinclair BASIC.

The later releases I believe worked the "normal" way, it was just the very memory constrained earlier BASICs that made life that difficult. Possibly you could get used to it but I sure as hell was not going to put myself through that for a computer I didn't own.

Not sure where it came from, but we liberated a Sinclair from a School
Cabinet. It had the wacky press this button for print, do not type print, do not pass go. We gave it back after the weekend :)

On a slightly different note, I've no idea what it'd be overseas, but we had the "Dick Smith VZ" range of computers, VZ200 sticks in mind, not sure how
many other models there were, but it worked the same way. Horrible little things, even smaller in footprint than the sinclair, but boxier and a little taller, like a small tissue box. The keys were flat with the top surface,
and you had to push them below the surface to get a key stroke.

Spec


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Re: Re: I want to do something retro...
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Wed Jul 03 2024 21:37:00

Hi, Spec.

Not sure where it came from, but we liberated a Sinclair from a School Cabinet. It had the wacky press this button for print, do not type print, do not pass go. We gave it back after the weekend :)

There's something to be said for a system that's so disappointing that people not only think twice about pinching it but actually return it once they've had a go.

Somehow reminds me of when an old friend took the dashboard out of a car to turn the mileage back and someone had written "oh no, not again!" in tippex on the back :)

BobW
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Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

You had a spreadsheet? We were writing basic programs on paper... :/

At my first job in college, one of the older guys kept asking me where
the spreadsheets were. I had no idea what he meant, I thought he meant
Excel? Maybe he needed it installed on his Mac?

No, he was referring to a 2 foot wide "columnar pad", a pad of paper
with spreadsheet columns that he used to use to create spreadsheets by
*hand*.




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