Back to the basics with basic Let’s say for a moment that we’ve got an ordered list of numbers. 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25 There are 13 values here and we want to check if the number 25 is in this list. One way to do this would be to loop over each element in the list and check to see if it matches what we’re looking for. In BASIC, we’d do something like

I’ve done a lot of silly math, ciphers and asked a lot of my vintage hardware on this site over the years. But I’ve not talked a ton about optimizing code for faster results. Today, we will count from 0 to 2^24-1 (16,777,215). Nothing else. Count, time it, and see how fast we can get it to go. Rust In Rust on my 2020 MacBook Pro: use std::time::{Instant}; fn main() { // Start timing let start = Instant::now(); // Loop from 0 to 16777215 for _i in 0.

Recently, we looked at a simple LFSR and how it works. Shift the bits XOR some of the bits together; we call these the taps Replace a bit with the XORed value. Repeat Easy peasy. I’ve long been fascinated by the Sound Interface Device (SID) in the Commodore 64, mostly because you can use it to get random numbers. But how does it work? The Commodore 64 SID LFSR is 23-bits.

What is an LFSR? An LFSR is a Linear Feedback Shift Register. It’s a simple way of generating a sequence of numbers that look random. Used in cryptography and in generating pseudo-random numbers, they are interesting because they are so simple. Shift bits and feed a few of them back into the sequence. That’s it. Important note: LFSRs are not cryptographically secure on their own. ESPECIALLY 8-bit LFSRs. More on that in the next post on this topic.

Commodore BASIC 2.0 A lot of fun with binary numbers can be had by printing them to the screen. This is a quick post to show how to do that with Commodore BASIC 2.0. This is a follow up to Quick Post: XOR in Commodore BASIC 2.0. We’ll be using both of these in upcoming posts, so it’s good to have them handy. 5 REM PRINT ALL 8 BIT NUMBERS IN BINARY 10 FOR N= 0 TO 255 20 FORI=7 TO 0 STEP-1 25 B=0 30 IF N AND 2^I THEN B=1 40 PRINTMID$(STR$(B),2); 50 NEXT 60 PRINTN 70 NEXT This prints all the numbers from 0 to 255 in binary.

I was recently on a video call with a friend, throwing around some ideas for a new product. I mentioned adding large signed numbers in assembly and using two’s complement. He asked me what two’s complement was. I was a little surprised that he didn’t know. He’s been a Java programmer for more than 30 years. Java and Python programmers (and others like gasp Commodore / MicroSoft BASIC) don’t have a native unsigned integer type.

N-Queens Problem The N-Queens problem is a classic in computer science. Place N queens on an NxN chessboard such that no queen can attack another queen. Wut. Imagine you’ve got a chessboard and a bunch of queen pieces. Your mission is to place these queens on the board so that none of them can attack each other. That means no two queens can be in the same row, column, or diagonal.

I have a BUNCH of nieces and nephews. Over the years, doing some secret message passing with them around birthdays and holidays has been fun. The “secret” location of hidden Christmas presents is a favorite. Traditionally, we’ve used a transposition cipher like the Shift or Ceasar Cipher For something different, we’re going to use another transposition cipher called the Rail Fence Cipher. It is easy to implement and understand. Plus easy to break, so it’s a good teaching tool.

I’m working on the next in the Cipher series and want to start drawing graphs on a Commodore to show letter freqency analysis. I needed a way to lay out screens by hand to determine how I was going to fit a lot of data on a limited screen. Many books in the 70s and 80s containted templates for this, but I figured we could just make our own. My mockup in Python looks something like this.

Modern and retro mix One of my favorite peices of retro clone hardware is Bob Corsham’s KIM-1 Clone. I’ve featured it many places like the 6502 speed series. I have the latest model of this board, and he made an interesting design choice. It actually has an FTDI chip on board and you use that via USB to connect via a modern computer with an FTDI driver. This is very convenient for working with a modern computer, but then eliminates the ability to use a real serial port.

In the world of tech, including vintage tech, the lure of the blinkenlight is strong. And if you don’t like blinkenlights, can we even be friends? My PiDP-8 might be the ultimate in blinkenlight flexing, BUT we can probably do some other fun stuff if we use math. And science! Vicarious excitement is not as good as the real thing, he finds. - Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson, 1999 Let’s make some 8 bit computer equipment output some stuff “in the real world” shall we?

My friend Robin’s favorite demo is 10 print. And what’s not to love about 10 print? After all, there’s even a book about it. My Favorite Demo My favorite demo is more complex but still simple enough to understand. The Maze Generator, from Compute! December 1981 by Charles Bond has been a favorite of mine since it came out. In the filing cabinet of my mind, I even remember it as the “Page 54 Maze”.

Have you ever sat down at your old Olympia typewriter and felt compelled to write poetry in which each word is the same length as successive digits of Pi? Me too!!! This is called a Pilish: The idea of writing a sentence (or longer piece of poetry or prose) in which the lengths of successive words represent the digits of the number π (=3.14159265358979…) has been around since the early 1900’s.

I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month for the last two years. While I don’t have aspirations of being a fiction author, I think there is a ton of value in writing 1500 words daily. Good writing or bad, 45000 words in a month is worth the effort. In 2021, I used a DOS 386 with Wordperfect 6.22 to complete the writing for the month and produced a pretty terrible Techno/Wilderness thriller that no one should be subjected to reading.

Can we get a little more speed from a 6502 than we did last week? Almost certainly. The memory test we used was a general-purpose one. It’s flexible and reusable. The price is some speed. Let’s try and make it faster. The test machine for this one I’m going to rerun the test on a Corsham KIM-1 Clone for a couple of reasons: It’s still on my desk from last time It’s clocked at EXACTLY 1Mhz It has a large block of contiguous memory available if we want it without ROMs , etc.

The amazing Gregorio Naçu posted the article title graphic this week to bring attention to the venerable 6502 processor and poke fun at Apple’s M2 chip marketing slides. He’s doing probably the most ambitious single-person Commodore 64 project I know of and has a fantastic blog. Apple claims the new M2 chip has the following specs. M2 features Image by Apple via Youtube We all know that these numbers are probably a little fluffy.

Dealing with large numbers in computing has been an attractive problem area for a long time. Using an average calculator might lead you to believe that it’s too tricky for most applications. But it’s not that difficult. And to prove it, we’re going to implement this calculation on machines with 8 Bit registers (I mean, cmon, on this site, you can’t even pretend to be shocked). Big numbers with the wheat and chessboard problem A classic math exercise is called the wheat and chessboard problem.

I stumbled across a ZX Spectrum version of the 100 Door problem that got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to have PRINT AT in Commodore BASIC? We do this in Assembly all the time. We already know from several previous articles that moving the cursor is pretty straightforward using a Kernal routine: Load the row number in X, the column number to Y, clear carry, and jump to $fff0. Simple.

Quite a while ago, I started playing with random numbers on 8 Bit machines. I don’t think anyone is doing “serious” work on these machines, but playing with Ciphers and Crypto got me at least curious about how a Commodore 64 generates random numbers. There are many ways to determine randomness. Humans are pretty good at picking out patterns in visual representations. Luckily our beloved machines have easy screen memory access.

Someone asked me yesterday how to very simply split the Commodore 64 screen to display two solid colors. The screen is 1000 “blocks”(character cells) starting at Hex $0400 (1024 decimal). It’s 40 characters wide and 25 rows. 25 rows don’t divide evenly, so we can tell the VIC register to hide a small part of the screen to display 24 rows instead. Register $d011 needs bit 3 toggled to zero to set the screen to 24 rows.

Someone asked me this week if I would help him with a graph theory problem on 8-Bit machines. The first task was to get all permutations of 1 to 9. Since the total permutations is 9! (362,880) I knew this would take a while. Learning without learning, the standard library problem There are no shortcuts to pretty much anything worth doing. If you fail to learn the basics, then when you get to more advanced things, the basics will feel like black magic, and the thing you’re working on will only make sense on the surface.

There’s a wonderful yearly online event called Advent Of Code (#adventofcode). Each day there are two code challenges that follow a holiday narrative. Some of them are easy, and some of them are quite difficult. This year I’ve attempted to do as much of it as I can on 8-Bit Machines. Mostly Commodore 64 because it’s what I know the best, and also what I like most to actually code on.

I LOVED Ayliean MacDonald’s Tower of Hanoi video on Numberphile this week. I wanted to try it with some “soothing” sounds from the 80s with the SID from a Commodore 64 No code breakdown this time, just a little Thursday lunchtime fun I whipped up during a conference call ;-) Maybe over the weekend we should try and match her key and make it 90 beats per minute like she does.

I’ve been obsessed with the Random number generator on the Commodore computers for a LONG time, and I’m not the only one who is, to be sure. We’ve used this random function in many of the Cipher series articles before, both via BASIC and directly getting randomness from the SID oscillator 3. Let’s try a “practical” example we might code into a game that throws dice and tests the frequency distribution.

Back in March, we did a simple set of programs to brute force calculate Pi using a simple and well-known series. It works, even if it’s inefficient. Speaking of inefficient, it’s September and that means it’s time for #Septandy! I have a Tandy Color Computer 2 - 16k of RAM version. There are versions of this machine with more RAM and an enhanced version of BASIC called “Extended BASIC”, but I’ve had this machine since the 80s and it is the most entry-level version Tandy made.

What’s the 100 door problem? It’s a just for fun problem in “beginning” math and computer courses. The idea is simple: There are 100 closed doors in a row. You walk past the doors 100 times (100 passes) The first time, visit every door. If the door is closed, open it. If it is open, close it. In programming, you’d probably call this toggling the door so let’s call it that.

The Commodore 64 and PET are fairly similar systems. Other than a few memory location differences, many BASIC programs written for the Commodore 64 that don’t use graphics can run on a PET. There is one caveat. The PET doesn’t relocate a saved BASIC program to the beginning of BASIC, like all of the Commodore lines after it. So if you find yourself trying to load a program on your PET written on one of its younger siblings, you may wonder why it loads, but you can’t find it.

We’re on ANOTHER random number generation technique today. Let’s work on the Lagged Fibonacci Sequence, a fun way to use the Fibonacci Sequence on itself to generate pseudo-random numbers. One of our long term goals is to add a bunch of tools to our toolbox. Making reusable components makes doing more complicated things easier. You can rifle through your toolbox in hopes of an “Oh, I already have something we can use for this part!

One of my favorite videos on the whole internet lately is this hidden gem by Robin. In it, he executes a programming challenge he found on Twitter to draw a pattern without using IF statements. His approach is one of my favorite math tricks of all time, and I was excited to see him use it in practice. I’ve only used it for you know… math tests. Here’s the video if you’ve not seen it.

One of my main goals in sharing retro computing is to help people DO things with these machines. They are useful for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is education and demonstration. The constraints are wonderful for this. Using 30-50 year old hardware comes at a price. They are, well… old. They require constant care and maintenance and parts are becoming more and more scarce. Enter the retro pinout project In fixing or maintaining these old computers, one of the best resources you can have is a similar working model next to it.

I posted this on Twitter a few weeks ago, but a young lady has been exploring programming in Python and also with Commodore BASIC which is pretty neato. She’s 11 and asked if there was a way to do modulo functions on Commodore BASIC because she’s using her Dad’s VIC-20 and Simon’s BASIC is obviously not available for the VIC-20. The answer is pretty simple and will actually work in most programming languages.

Cryptonomicon Pontifex/Solitaire We’re back to my favorite book for another round. We’ve done quite a bit with Cryptonomicon so far. One of my favorite moments is when Enoch Root introduces a cipher that two prisoners used to communicate using just a humble playing card deck. Drawing of the mine in the book Bruce Schneier Pontifex is an encryption method you can do with another person using a deck of cards. It was invented for “Cryptonomicon” for Neal Stephenson by Bruce Schneier.

A while ago, I explained in detail how to generate one time pad sheets and use them to encrypt and decrypt messages. It turned out to be doable, only requiring a pencil and a way to create random numbers, but it’s slow, error prone and tedious. Why The one time pad article was born out of my annual reading of Cryptonomicon. I wanted to learn how to make these pads, which if used correctly are mathematically unbreakable.

Hashes We did an implementation of a once popular hashing function in Part 8 on RC4 without really going into why. A hash function is any function that is used to map data of an arbitrary size (input) to a fixed size output. An algorithm is applied to the input and results in a fixed length output called the hash. In cryptography it’s important to get a repeatable output for a given input, but ideally NO information about the input that created it.

Recap So far we’ve Reversed a string Shifted bits left and right (mostly right) Brute forced a known simple cipher Channeled our inner John Connor by cracking ATM machines Searched through a large number looking for matches Learned how to use XOR to recover data Created a Linear Feedback Shift Register to generate better random numbers Implemented a “real” but outdated cipher: RC4 Disclaimer: I’m sure I’ll get an angry email from a mathematician about this, but we’re going for understanding here.

An “almost teenager”, Josh, sent me an email yesterday asking how I do slow text on the Commodore. He is just starting assembly at 12 which is pretty impressive. He’s been using KickAssembler, but wants to try it “on hardware”. It’s not difficult really. There are probably a lot of ways to do this, here’s how I do it in Turbo Macro Pro. Let’s start with some text: ARE YOU KEEPING UP?

Concept Cyberdeck I’m fortunate to have a number of vintage computers I’ve collected over the years. Some were fun finds, others donated. One I’ve had since 1983 (we think) and it’s one of my most prized possessions. I travel a fair bit and not long ago I was looking for something for my “TheC64” to do. It’s technically an emulator, but with it’s accurate Breadbin keyboard and REU support it makes a pretty decent development platform for some things.

Recap So far in this 8 part series on doing weird things with Ciphers on old computers we’ve: Reversed a string Shifted bits left and right (mostly right) Brute forced a known simple cipher Channeled our inner John Connor by cracking ATM machines Searched through a large number looking for matches Learned how to use XOR to recover data Created a Linear Feedback Shift Register to generate better random numbers The warning “In September, 1994 someone posted source code to the Cyberpunks mailing list-anonymously.

I have several items from DIY Chris that we’ll review over the next week including a GAL PLA and flash-able ROM drop in that can hold kernal, character or BASIC ROMs. First on the list is the RAM tester. The problem child 128 I have a Commodore 128 which developed a bad RAM issue a few weeks ago. These old computers just sometimes sacrifice a part to the component gods.

So far in this 7 part (shocked I’ve made it through 7!) series on doing weird things with Ciphers on old computers we’ve: Reversed a string Shifted bits left and right (mostly right) Brute forced a known simple cipher Channeled our inner John Connor by cracking ATM machines Searched through a large number looking for matches Learned how to use XOR to recover data Author’s Note: This one stretched my skills quite a bit, but I kept it under 2000 words (by 89).

Review So far we’ve: Reversed a string Shifted bits left and right (mostly right) Brute forced a known simple cipher Faked it, but then looking for a 4 digit known pin Searched through a large number looking for matches We now have most of the basic skills in Assembly to start doing some real work. Let’s tackle what is arguably the most important of the bitwise operators for ciphers and encryption: The exclusive OR.

If you REALLY want to get into the weeds on how I figured out the Easter Egg(s) inside the Easter Egg on a 35 Year old album on a 35 year old computer then you’re in luck! This video is for you! I mention “the original author” in the video several times, but fail to say his name. It’s Tom Beaton (aka TCB1984) Original Easter Egg Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAVuv…​ Reissue Video - https://www.

A common task in our code is to determine the length of something. In this example, let’s check the length of a string like “are you keeping up?” In Python, this is crazy easy. #!/usr/bin/env python message = "are you keeping up?" len(message) In 6510 Assembly, this is also easy. Not crazy easy, but straightforward anyway. messagelength ldx #$00 checkdel lda message,x cmp #$00 ; or whatever we're using as a delimeter beq done inx jmp checkdel done stx messagelen rts .

Just the BASICs, please Our friend in retro @NoelsRetroLab has a simple BASIC benchmarking tool that’s fun to use to compare different basic systems execution speed. We’re counting jiffies, which is roughly (sometimes very roughly) 1/60th of a second. We’re using three variations of this code on the Commodore BASIC computers. This will vary a little if you try it on something else. And PLEASE try this on whatever you have.

Many of you know that you can use a “Jiffy” on a Commodore as a measure of time. Sorta. The short short version is that we have a 3 byte clock that increments once every interrupt, so 1/60th of a second. It’s not considered reliable as a real time clock, but it IS useful for benchmarking. According to “Compute’s Complete Guide to the C64” p. 156: “TI equals PEEK(162) + 256PEEK(161) + 256256*PEEK(160); for TI$, the value of TI (in jiffies) is converted into hours, minutes, and seconds.

Let’s recap a little So far we’ve: Reversed a string Shifted bits left and right (mostly right) Brute forced a known simple cipher Faked it, but then looking for a 4 digit known pin What we need next in our toolbox is to be able to search through a large number of values to look for something. This will build on the previous skills and also reinforce working with tables and 24 bit math on an 8Bit Processor.

It’s Pi day tomorrow, and you know what that means! Cherry is favorite. Apple is second favorite. There is a well known and easy to understand method for calculating Pi with the Gregory Leibniz series. Leibniz built on the work on Gregory. It has the added benefit of being pretty inefficient to implement on computers. This seems like a job for the Commodore VIC-20! Our outcome repeats a variation of:

There are many hacks you can do in Assembly language on the Commodore. Here’s a very easy one with impressive results according to my analog stopwatch. We want to count to $ffffff or 2563 (224) which is 16,777,216 We wont print to the screen to save a lot of time, and just put an “a” in the top right corner when we’re done. One way (and yes, I want to know all the other ways you know of to do this) would be:

Ahh, the quest for a better Vintage computer picture never ends. I’m having fun with it anyway. Side thought: At what point does a computer cross over from old: no one wants that 2007 Windows tower you built in your basement, to OMG, it’s Vintage, let’s drive up the eBay bids to the stratosphere!!!! How bad was it? Original picture from my 64C PAL Machine. Muddy with jailbars, but I’ve gotten used to this over the years

A few minutes into Terminator 2, the young John Connor takes his Atari Portfolio out of his bag and inserts a foil covered card into an ATM machine and proceeds to crack a pin number and steal some cash from an unsuspecting account. This is a movie prop and doesn’t really appear to do anything useful. It’s almost certainly just a script that runs on the Atari Portfolio, and just counts down some strings to make a “cool” effect.

Well here we are at part three and it’s a lot to pack into one page. Let’s build upon [what I called the Shift Cipher] and implement what is often referred to as the Caesar Cipher, although there is much debate on when this was really first done. The idea is the same as our Part 2. We’re going to shift the letters a given number of times, but this time we’re going to do the encoding and decoding programmatically instead of just creating a reference to do it by hand.

In Part 1 we did a simple reverse of a string. While simple, these software steps will help build the skills we need going forward in Assembly without feeling like I skipped right to a 300 line after doing a short one. One foot in front of the other and all that. The Shift Cipher For Christmas, my wife and I bought my sister’s kids this code wheel. It implements a simple shift cipher to be transposed by hand.

The output on my newest Commodore 64 (1989) is pretty marginal. The colors are okay(ish) but the text lines are clearly bleeding and the picture is very muddy. Most vintage computers don’t do red text on blue very well, but this one is particularly painful. Red on dark blue is too much to ask almost any vintage computer My non-expert electronics assessment of the signal is that there are probably a couple capacitors on the board that need to be replaced, particularly in the RF Modulator.

Sometime during my weeklong exploration of SHA-256 on a Commodore realized that there was a whole world of exploration that could be explored. Just because a Computer system is old, doesn’t mean it’s not interesting or useful. I had expected it to take months to figure out the SHA-256 implementation, but it only took me a week or so. This was pretty surprising to me and is an excellent demonstration of what might be possible on a Commodore 64

Last week, at this bat-time on this bat-channel, I talked about checking off one of my 35 year old bucket list items by learning Commodore assembly language. (shut up, you’re old too.) Coincidentally, I picked this up at the time I was re-reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson for the ump-teenth time. There are a few books that I consider so good that they’re worth re-visiting, and this is one of them.

Some time in the month of September 2020 I dug out the old Commodore 64 that my Dad bought for himself in 1983. It quickly migrated its way into my room and stayed there until 1993 when I joined the Navy. Someone in my family, probably Mom, carefully packed it back into its original box and put it into storage. Despite its many years of use/ abuse by a messy teenager, it’s in surprisingly good condition, 38 years later.

I’m blown away by some modern games still being developed for the Commodore line of computers. Both games I’m playing in January are sold by Protovision, who has probably the best vintage company name on the market right now. Soul Force is an excellent take on a side-scrolling space shooter (maybe the cool kids abbreviate these SSSS?). It seems both familiar and unique, which is hard to do in a space based shooter like this.

People are funny on the internet. We always seem to divide into tribes even when it’s not necessary or advantageous to do so. I wasn’t surprised to see someone (there’s always one isn’t there?) comment that I might be using real hardware, but for only part of my retro setups. “I’m disappointed that you’re using an LCD monitor on your retro computers” You’re… disappointed? Kinda dramatic isn’t it? Do I get more pleasure out of doing retro on real hardware rather than emulators?

It was just a few months ago that I started to get back into 8-Bit computing. It started with Ben Eater’s Breadboard 6502 build. Something about his complete exploration of that build including single stepping the clock and watching the processor registers was really compelling to me. I built Ben’s project by following along with the videos. It’s currently inside a shadowbox in my office wall blinking away :-) My wife was the only one not surprised that two months later I was completely immersed in the “modern” 8-Bit computing scene.