Bally (pinball company) way back when, marketed a home game machine with game cartridges. One you could get let you program in 'Palo Alto Tiny Basic'; your maximum program size was 1800 bytes; you could plug in a modem and save or load your programs on a cassette tape. Keypad had 0-9 keys plus I think 4 modifier keys so you 50 key combinations to select from. In programming mode, each key would be a basic command such as GoTO. You could create some pretty sophisticated graphic games with only 1800 bytes using the built in game functions. Alas, it was never very successful. Mine still works!
At age 68 I no longer have the eye-hand coordinaton required for too many of today's games. I just recently came across my son's old Nintendo and have been playing the orignal Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior games and enjoying them.
Years ago I went on fishing trips with some guys who liked their really 'stinky' cigars. it was rustic camping complete with outhouse. I used to bring along a one ounce bottle of some stuff called 'DabIt' that I found at a place selling parts for ovens, refrigerators etc. One drop of the stuff put in an ash tray and placed on top of the frige got rid of the odors in a few hours. Caution: DON"T SNIFF IT or it will burn out your nose for smelling ANYTHING! Used with caution, it even cleared the air in the out house! I don't know if it is even available any more.
OK, how many of you remember the Bally video game machine forhome users? It came with a 'cartridge' that let you 'program your own games' using a language called 'Palo Alto Tiny Basic'? The machine had a grand total of 1,800 bytes! And you could save this by dumping it to a voice tape recorder! (yes, you could reload from the tape also...at the amazing speed of 300 Bits per second). Ah, the REALLY old days! I believe this might have preceed the TRS 80. Unfortunately, Bally never understood the home market and the game machine died a slow death from neglect (at least that is how I perceived it)
Duane
Re:Play nice with Piers Anthony
on
Singularity Sky
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Speaking as someone who has read SF for more than 50 years, i believe that SF today is vastly improved in quality. Much of what I read today is for pure entertainment. When I want to stretch my mind, I read things by Stephen Hawking and others...that's a real mind blowing experience!
As for Piers Anthony, I have read his 'Cluster' series several times. He comes up with some interesting observations from the view point of other life forms. The 'Xanth' series I read for fun.
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Bally (pinball company) way back when, marketed a home game machine with game cartridges. One you could get let you program in 'Palo Alto Tiny Basic'; your maximum program size was 1800 bytes; you could plug in a modem and save or load your programs on a cassette tape. Keypad had 0-9 keys plus I think 4 modifier keys so you 50 key combinations to select from. In programming mode, each key would be a basic command such as GoTO. You could create some pretty sophisticated graphic games with only 1800 bytes using the built in game functions. Alas, it was never very successful. Mine still works!
At age 68 I no longer have the eye-hand coordinaton required for too many of today's games. I just recently came across my son's old Nintendo and have been playing the orignal Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior games and enjoying them.
Years ago I went on fishing trips with some guys who liked their really 'stinky' cigars. it was rustic camping complete with outhouse. I used to bring along a one ounce bottle of some stuff called 'DabIt' that I found at a place selling parts for ovens, refrigerators etc. One drop of the stuff put in an ash tray and placed on top of the frige got rid of the odors in a few hours. Caution: DON"T SNIFF IT or it will burn out your nose for smelling ANYTHING! Used with caution, it even cleared the air in the out house! I don't know if it is even available any more.
OK, how many of you remember the Bally video game machine forhome users? It came with a 'cartridge' that let you 'program your own games' using a language called 'Palo Alto Tiny Basic'? The machine had a grand total of 1,800 bytes! And you could save this by dumping it to a voice tape recorder! (yes, you could reload from the tape also...at the amazing speed of 300 Bits per second). Ah, the REALLY old days! I believe this might have preceed the TRS 80. Unfortunately, Bally never understood the home market and the game machine died a slow death from neglect (at least that is how I perceived it) Duane
Speaking as someone who has read SF for more than 50 years, i believe that SF today is vastly improved in quality. Much of what I read today is for pure entertainment. When I want to stretch my mind, I read things by Stephen Hawking and others...that's a real mind blowing experience! As for Piers Anthony, I have read his 'Cluster' series several times. He comes up with some interesting observations from the view point of other life forms. The 'Xanth' series I read for fun.