We draw some dragon curves with Logo on the Commodore 64 inspired by Jurassic Park

Introduction

We’ve done 10PRINT on a lot of machines.

But we haven’t done a comparison between Rust and C.

Wax

Over the years, I’ve looked for an Assembler for the VIC-20. Sure, there are great cross-assemblers like Kick Assembler, but I wanted something that would run on the VIC-20 itself.

Over the years, I’ve been on a silly quest to do 10PRINT on as many things as I can. They end up on X, here, or sometimes both.

My son, now 25, was a McNuggets fan. Can you blame him? They’re delicious. He’s always been into numbers and puzzles, so I introduced him to the McNuggets problem when he was about 10.

Back to the basics with basic

Let’s say for a moment that we’ve got an ordered list of numbers.

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.

Recently, we looked at a simple LFSR and how it works.

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.

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.

The “famous” 10PRINT program on vintage computers was a delight for many in the 70s and 80s. It’s fun to port to other platforms and machines.

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. The language takes care of the details for you.

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.

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.

Rockwell International was a powerhouse of the 1970s and 80s.

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.

In the world of tech, including vintage tech, the lure of the blinkenlight is strong.

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.

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?

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.

I built the world’s worst paper tape reader some weeks ago. It works pretty okay on anything with a USR-style port like a KIM-1 clone or a VIC-20.

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.

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.

I’m a Commodore guy through and through. This isn’t tribalism, it’s what was in my room from 1983 to when I graduated High School in 1993.

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.

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”.

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. (You’re old.) Back then, I had attempted some programming on it, but I had the patience and focus of your typical suburban kid. Over the years I’ve thought about the many hours I spent on that machine (remember when computers lasted more than a single year?) and as a seasoned developer I began looking at the computer and seeing more potential than I was able to realize as a kid. Modern software is very powerful. Unfortunately, if you program with it long enough, it stops feeling “real.” It’s like learning to fly on Microsoft Flight Simulator, versus taking private pilot lessons to actually control and fly a real aircraft. My experience with flying actual planes prepared me to recognize the distinction that afternoon in September when I pulled out my old machine. I had the idea that if I could get closer to the bites, I could become a better programmer. And if that didn’t work, I could at least have fun with it. (nostalgia is a hell of a drug.)

People are funny on the internet. We always seem to divide into tribes even when it’s not necessary or advantageous to do so.

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.