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Uborne Children's Books Release For Free Computer Books From the '80s (usborne.com)
martiniturbide writes: To promote some new computer coding books for kids, Uborne Children's Books has put online 15 of its children books from the '80s to learn how to code games. The books are available for free in PDF format and has samples to create your game for Commodore 64, VIC 20, Apple, TRS 80, Spectrum and other. Maybe you read some of them like "Machine Code for Beginners" or "Write your own Adventure Program for MicroComputers." Should other publishers also start to make their '80s and '90s computer books available for free?
my fav old children's books.
Errm it is Usborne not Uborne.
I know editors don't actually do any editing, but come on...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
If my memory serves me, you could download a free version of Visual Basic "Lite" from common dial-up services of the day, and it was bundled with certain VB books. I don't remember what Microsoft called it exactly; it might be this thing:
http://news.microsoft.com/1996...
It supported a subset of traditional BASIC, but I never heavily tested backward compatibility.
Table-ized A.I.
Honestly, what?
I'd love free copies of The Art of Programming by Knuth, or any of the K, R, or P books. Maybe even Bjorne.
I'm probably missing out on something but couldn't most of the C64 code be run on most other BASIC interpreters as well? Especially if the code was intended to be child / introductory level?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You can if you don't need to see the words and pictures.
Table-ized A.I.
In order to use some of the more interesting features of BASIC on the C64 you had to POKE to and PEEK from very specific memory locations.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Only if you target a common sub-set of language features. Each vendor offered specific features or extensions. For example, if the source relied on direct memory calls for special or fancy stuff, those won't likely match up to another vendor's dialect.
Table-ized A.I.
Notably, there were no graphics and sound primitives whatsoever in C64 BASIC. If you wanted to take advantage of the (actually quite impressive, for the day) graphics and sound, you had to directly manipulate memory.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm probably missing out on something but couldn't most of the C64 code be run on most other BASIC interpreters as well? Especially if the code was intended to be child / introductory level?
Much of it probably could. Peek and poke graphics would get interesting though ...
Go to the Atari Archives or Don Lancaster's web page and you'll find many of the classic computer books from the 80's. There are other sites which feature old computer books, all with permission of the rights holder.
I learned to program primarily on Radio Shack machines (MC-10 and Color Computer, boy that brings back memories). I found the GWBASIC/QBasic interpreters fairly close to the old Tandy/RS variants of Microsoft BASIC. The Commodore interpreter, which was also an MS BASIC variant, still seemed to have some oddities.
The problem with gaming was of course that every microcomputer had its own graphics engine, so it made porting incredibly complex in many cases. Since we're talking about computers that had, at most, 30-odd kb in free RAM, there wasn't much room for graphics abstraction. Commodore's graphics, especially on the C64, with its sprite capabilities, made it very different than the rest of the microcomputers of the time.
But text-based stuff was usually pretty easy, and I remember the adventure writing book, which was pretty cool, and I wrote a few adventure games. It actually taught me a lot about string processing, indexes and counters and the like, so these books did teach some pretty important fundamentals in a way that gave you quick results.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I remember typing in the "Haunted House" by hand from Write your own adventure programs for your microcomputer"
The games I wrote never looked like anything the pretty illustrations -- I imagine they helped sell the book. :-)
I remember a book of basic games for my Apple 2+. After entering page after page of code only to have it not work, we found, the back of the book, a small note about how the authors intentionally left errors in the code that you had to troubleshoot. After what seemed like forever of fixing the code, the games sucked. Nowhere near as good as my Atari 2600 games. Good stuff.
Windows 95 came with QBasic built in. QBaisic was a more advanced version of GW-Basic/BasicA that was part of the original IBM PC. It was basically an interpreter only version of Microsoft's QuickBasic. It believe it was was introduced with the release of DOS 5.0. It featured the 1985 ANSI extensions (no line numbers necessary, long variable names, and labels), but it was fully backwards compatible with GW-Basic. It was a DOS program, so it was never promoted or advertised as a feature of Windows 95, but it was still there. I believe that they continued to include it through Windows 98. QBasic would have had little trouble running the old line numbered programs that are in these books. So, you did have a chance to use those books. You just didn't know it! :-)
Anyone remember that wireframe rolling ball demo for GWBASIC (?) that looked tron-esque? It used the 4 graphics pages to give the illusion of rolling.
IIRC the land showed lines getting closer together to simulate distance.
* http://www.abandonia.com/files...
The ball wasn't transparent -- it used hidden line removal IIRC.
* https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...
Now-a-days we would use a wireframe like this:
* http://eleganthack.com/wp-cont...
I thought I saw unborne children for a moment.
Yes and no. GW-BASIC and especially QBASIC had their own way of doing things, but they were essentially backwards compatible with the the 8-bit Microsoft basic found on Apple, TRS-80, and many other microcomputers of the era (as long as you didn't do machine specific graphics and sound).
That is a really good point that I overlooked. When I wrote BASIC on the C64 I didn't go nearly that far (but that says lots about how little I did with BASIC on the C64 and nothing about doing anything clever to not need those features). That said, if these were "programming for kids" type books would they go to that level?
As someone else pointed out, a C64 emulator could make the point unimportant.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Does it include pascal? If so, then maybe i should look into it and finally make that IGM for L.O.R.D., I was planning on doing 19 years ago... better late then never i guess
The original poster said nothing about having familiarity with 8-bit computers. I don't understand your complaint.
Table-ized A.I.
> couldn't most of the C64 code be run on most other BASIC interpreters as well?
No. 'BASIC' is not one language but is many different variations with some vague similarities. Some require and use line numbers, some require that there be no line numbers and have 'labels'. Some only allow single letter plus number variable names, some allow long names. The interesting bits are machine specific extensions and addresses unique to a particular computer model. The methods of displaying graphics are also different.
To again state the obvious, a lot of /.ers are too young to have had machines like this.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm pretty sure cursing the editors is part of our community here.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I remember trying to get the Basic programs printed in Penny Power (and later renamed to Zillions) magazine to run on our IBM PC clone in various Basic versions (a, qw, etc). Holy shit was that frustrating. At least you can do copy and paste now. Though to really feel the pain of the past kids need to type all that in by hand!
I had that old 'Creepy Computer Games' book. I still might somewhere - I think I saw it in a box a couple of years ago.
That's really what got me excited about computers, and I remember being amazed that I could make the magic box do what I wanted it to.
I had so much fun playing Zork on my Sanyo MBC-555, that being able to actually make the computer do what I wanted, and to write my 'own' games on it, was just astounding.
I might have to go through it again. I doubt re-writing the behavior now would be more than a short exercise, but it might be interesting to see how it goes trying to translate them.
"Computer Lib/Dream Machine"
I used to spend hours looking a the cover of the BATTLEGAMES one wishing that one day I could play a game like that, imagining that one day an airoplane wouldn't simply be a square on the screen.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
jeesus reading the comments to this question makes me feel old, and also sad that there is such bad information given to the op
yes if you stay away from peeks, pokes, graphics, sound, joystic / paddle io, and the charater set of the C64 they are mostly portable, until they are not cause the methods have different names on different computers depending on if they were keeping compatibility with some pre MS BASIC (such as apple, tandy commie and just about everyone else)
Indeed. The Win95 familly (95, 98, 98SE, Me) also come with GORILLA.BAS preinstalled, a game written in BASIC. Earlier versions also came with DONKEY.BAS, a driving game written by Bill Gates.
My first programming book. Still have it.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
The illustrations in Usborne's 1980s books are top notch. I don't think I read these particular ones, but I loved checking them out from my grade-school library.
well the really simple stuff sure.
anything with an ounce of graphcis and it will pretty much run only with whatever it was intended for.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You're not talking about the Boing Ball are you? A demo for the Amiga written to show off its graphics capabilities.
No, they don't. That's just because you're a horrible human being.
Know how you can tell? It wasn't just boys who learnt by themselves, back in day.
Microsoft used to have a proper BASIC interpreter/editor in DOS - which worked well under windows 95. I think it was called MSBasic. I wrote my first post-LOGO programs using MSBasic and the user's manual from a long-discarded commodore-64. Peek and Poke stuff were not useful (completely different memory layout) but the rest was - and there were other ways to do graphics.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
This.
I'm sure the vast majority of nerds are decent human beings - but misogynistic assholes like him make me doubt that some times... must be the significant minority of libertarian-leaning randroids among the nerd community. Nothing guarantees turning into a terrible person quite like thinking Ayn Rand was right about something. Frankly - her belief that smoking is proof of man's superiority over fire and that scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer is a "communist conspiracy" was exactly typical of the level of her insight into anything at all. And I have utterly digressed - I'm sorry, I just really *hope* it's the randroids who breed that part of the community and not representative of a deeper undercurrent of misogyny and lack of respect for women and other marginalized peoples.
The flames are about to start, bring it on. Flaming this opinion - only proves it right. I'm also pretty sure I'll get a flamebait or a troll mod or two - I am just as certain they are not deserved so I'll accept it as the price of integrity. At least it's not off-topic for the specific thread :P
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I remember hacking the code for GORILLA.BAS to make it behave differently, like increasing or decreasing gravity - which could make Bananas go to orbit... or hit the building immediately beneath you like a stinger missile..
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And in these books (yes, I still have them!) you often found a page or two at the back with a set of corrections to make the program work with the BASIC dialects of different machines (Spectrum, TIMEX, ZX80/81, Commodore 64, Commodore Pet, BBC, TRS-80, Apricot, Dragon, Oric, etc.). The sheer diversity is something I miss now it's all generic Intel.
Notably, there were no graphics and sound primitives whatsoever in C64 BASIC. If you wanted to take advantage of the (actually quite impressive, for the day) graphics and sound, you had to directly manipulate memory.
Fortunately, you could get excellent books on machine code for 6502 CPUs, written in a style that would appeal to children.
These days you get scratch.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
That is a really good point that I overlooked. When I wrote BASIC on the C64 I didn't go nearly that far (but that says lots about how little I did with BASIC on the C64 and nothing about doing anything clever to not need those features). That said, if these were "programming for kids" type books would they go to that level?
Follow the link and read the book on machine code. Yes it goes to that level.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Considering the "useful lifespan" of tech books varies from 3 to 5 years, ALL such older books should become free PDF downloads. "Fun with Your Apple ][", "Windows 98 for Dummies" and "Solaris 2.x for Managers" are completely obsolete. Almost all the Python 2 books become antiques with Python 3 growing - ok, maybe not the best example (but better than Perl 6 which has been 20 years in Promiseland). Most often, by now, the hardware to run the examples is dead and the compilers or software very hard to find.
I still need my Apple ][ reference manual to remind me of the memory map in my Apple ][. I remember books that existed back then that seem to have been lost to entropy.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Uborne Children's Books has put online 15 of its children books from the '80s to learn how to code games.
"Children books"?
The books have been put online so that they (the books) can learn how to code games?
Also it's Usborne, not "Uborne." Yeesh.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
99% of the people who support her views haven't read Atlas Shrugged. I'd reckon it's about the same for those who are against them.
Because (the odd sparkle aside) it's bloody hard going and not very coherent either.
Disclaimer: read it because I had to, or I wouldn't have.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given the context - 1980s computers - I'd take it as read.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In order to use some of the more interesting features of BASIC on the C64 you had to POKE to and PEEK from very specific memory locations.
53280 and 53281 controlled the screen and border colours.
:-)
POKE 53280,0
POKE 53281,0
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You blame women for the changing nature of programming and resent them being educated, and "somehow" that makes you a 'misogynistic pig'. No, makes no sense to me either.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No it's not. If you're a journalist, or even pretending to be, you ought to be more competent.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Same was true for the Apple ][ Basic (I grew up with an Apple IIc then we upgraded to a IIGS when the logic board failed).
I remember the AppleIIGS came with a manual with all the memory locations and what they did. It was trivial to do PEEK and POKE commands to get access to the mouse subsystem or the high-res graphics system (thank god they mapped the PLOT commands to be able to use the high-res graphics system.. it would have been brutal to POKE for every dot on the screen).
Being a bored kid in elementary school, I was able to write my own version of the Apple Finder with full mouse control. I also remember seeing Scored Earth running on one of the computers at the local community college and wrote my own version of that as well. Of course, back then you could find a "physics engine" for those types of games by rekeying functions found in BASIC programming magazines :)
There was QBASIC (later quickbasic... or they just really hid the full name for early versions) and before that GW-BASIC.
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
Thanks, but nope, that was a different demo on a different platform.
The one I'm talking about specifically ran on BASCI and early PC's between ~1984 .. 1990. Some of the machines didn't support the 4 graphic pages so it didn't work on all machines. It might have also been a specialized GWBASIC version of BASIC for that PC.
gorilla.bas goes as far back as MS-DOS 5, and there was also nibbles.bas which was a worm/snakerace/Tron lightbike type of game. They were fun and educational.
People live a long time these days, and a work of fiction or of history doesn't become suddenly irrelevant like a technical book on a narrow topic. Maybe we should have 25-year copyright with optional 10-year extensions which must be actively filed up to a maximum of 75 years?
Asking about 80's computers and knowing about 80's computers are two different things. I've read the original post 4 times. There is nothing objectively wrong with my reply. I will agree there are perhaps valid alternative interpretations, but that's no reason to complain about my interpretation in such a rude way. If someone by chance interprets it different, they can give a re-phrasing of it based on how they interpret it. No reason to rudely accuse the other person of reading it wrong.
Table-ized A.I.
it's funny, but when you think about it, all those BASICs were written by.... Microsoft.
Microsoft BASIC was built-in for most computers of the 80s, the exception being Apple which was a separate product and distinct from integer BASIC by Woz.
GW-BASIC was provided by Microsoft for PC clones which did not have ROM BASIC that the original IBM PCs had - it was a standalone interpreter.
And QBasic/'QuickBasic was its successor, again, a Microsoft product.
And which became Visual BASIC and now is the bane of developers everywhere.
Other than graphics, I think most of these BASICs were compatible mostly because one company was behind them all - Microsoft.
I have to point out that O'Reilly (which I work for) has already made most of our tech books available for free. Students can sign up for online access using our "Safari for Schools" program at https://www.safaribooksonline.... ,
I had one of these books growing up! I recognize which one, too. https://drive.google.com/open?... "Introduction to Computer Programming: BASIC for Beginners." I loved programming in QuickBASIC 4.5 (and then QBX, or 7.1). I am a sysadmin now, not a programmer, but I definitely got my love of computers from stuff like this.
Another good set of cherished computer books from my childhood was the Micro Adventure series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You might enjoy this article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/co... (sorry if not, your comment just made it come to mind)
Naw, you could do some serious programming with assembly language. They had assemblers and everything.
But I simply can NOT imagine any code for the primitive computers of that day (esp. a Trash-80!) being useful at all for a kid. There's nothing to run the stuff on even if you did finally get it typed in, and no way in hell is anyone (short of a supreme expert running on a hell of a good emulator) gonna port any of that stuff to a modern PC. Hell, have you even tried to FIND a BASIC interpreter for Windows or Macs these days?
Ahh, GWBASIC brings back memories ... of throwing bananas at something ... I forget the point of the game, but it was quite maddening. I guess it doesn't bring back that many memories.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Typically not to end users though. Microsoft sold the BASIC that computer vendors (including Apple) burned into ROM. Microsoft QuickBASIC for DOS contained a compiler that could produce stand-alone .exe or .com binaries, though the free QBASIC that they bundled with DOS 5 and later was a cut-down version that only included the interpreter.
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but it was fully backwards compatible with GW-Basic
No it wasn't. I had to install GWBASIC separately from a DOS 4 install disk after upgrading to DOS 5, because the Chain Reaction GWBASIC game didn't work with QBASIC.
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