Frobnicate

I’m reading through Rick Murray’s old magazine. I have observations:

The first 12:

The modem to modem connection circuit… is potentially still useful.

The article on Serial Block Drivers will be very useful to me, as I want to write some RISC OS rs232 software. NOT using the block drivers never even seemed an option!

BBS/Fidonet stuff? Historically interesting. I missed the BBS era. My first time “on-line” was on the Internet.

“The Finishing Touch” explained some mysteries about sprite files.

The Hacker’s Diary, demented hacker, etc: I thought I was reading a RISC OS magazine, not my old PHRACK archive? (lol LOD 43v3R d00d:)

I’m interested in ECONET because reasons but don’t know a lot about it. These articles only increased my curiousity.

Still working on the Last 10! :-)

The first 12:

[…]

Still working on the Last 10! :-)

And somewhere along the way you’ll notice you’ve skipped a bunch (there are 30 issues in all), plus if you can read mangled French – https://riscos.fr/frob31/

I can’t even read non-mangled French.

I wasn’t aware the middle block of issues was still on-line somewhere.

BBS/Fidonet stuff? Historically interesting. I missed the BBS era

telnet telnet.arcade-bbs.net

You can use Hearsay to access Arcade – https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20150101

But as Frederick mentions, the address is now telnet.arcade-bbs.net as Demon is no more…

This has given me the nudge to convert the remaining (middle) issues to PDF format, including converting most of the sprites to JPEGs so they can be used sensibly with PDF output (yay for RISC OS’ coherent drag’n’drop – save the sprite out of Ovation to ChangeFSI, and then save the JPEG right back into Ovation in place of the original sprite).

Blog article now created: https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20181002

That’s it then. Now all copies are online in universally readable PDF form.

Just do not expect twenty-year-old (eeek!!!) URLs, email addresses, and the like to work…

Yay, the full set!

Don’t worry, I download one, read it, and then download the next. I only rarely do wget \-r * :-)

More observations:
12b: Nava Whiteford’s article on SWIs is good stuff.
14: More econet stuff! And a web comic?
15: stalking, SETI, and upgrading audio hardware.

observations on 16-19:
Early Acorn web browsers
Waitress becomes a teacher!
Some good stuff about assembler!
Rick re-invents the Jargon File

Observations on 20-21:
Did Alpha Sprite make it to RO 5?

I’ve actually been bitten by a ROM function call with multiple entry points. TRS-80 Model 100.

The ‘decoding’ articles are interesting. I didn’t know RISC OS binaries were squeezed.

The RISC OS wars are over. RISC OS lost. :-/

22-26:
Lua!

Yes, software patents are bad.

I don’t watch TV, don’t care about TV tech…
teletext being a minor exception:-)

I had wondered what was meant by a “1 bit DAC”!

In 2005 I was working at McDonalds, I assure you it was far worse than you ever dreamed. OTOH it’s messed up that they wouldn’t sell you a meal with a coffee!

27-30:

Whatever happened with your 6502 project?

win98 software?

C has many “gotchas”! (I personally hate the ?: operator)

Writing a virus? Wait I didn’t think I was reading PHRACK…

OPL actually sounds interesting. Someday I will dive into a proper P-code engine.

and done!

Whatever happened with your 6502 project?

Died. As I didn’t have a Tandy or Maplin to walk into, the cost of getting all the parts was going to be a fair amount. By then it was becoming clear that a small microcontroller would do the same job for a fraction of the cost and complexity. I mean, these days you could probably have the firmware on one of those tiny WiFi gizmos and have it remotely controllable.

win98 software?

Probably because the PC I was using at the time ran Win98…?

C has many “gotchas”! (I personally hate the ?: operator)

I find it useful for stuff like a quick way to give yes/no responses, or to add an ‘s’ for multiple amounts of something. An odd little bit of syntax can replace a clunky IF THEN ELSE construct.

Writing a virus? Wait I didn’t think I was reading PHRACK…

There’s something intellectually interesting in the idea of a program that can exist but not be seen.

OPL actually sounds interesting.

It is. I’ve dug into the mechanics of how it works. It’s a somewhat complicated idea that mostly involves pushing a lot of values into a stack and then calling a function. Because the processor is an 8086 clone, practically no registers are used, it’s all stack based.

and done!

Was it worth it? Those are hours of your life you’re never getting back… :-)

C has many “gotchas”! (I personally hate the ?: operator)

Some verbatim code I found at work yesterday (admittedly JavaScript, but still):

// Convert month to 2 digits.
var twoDigitMonth = ((fullDate.getMonth().length + 1) === 1)
    ? (fullDate.getMonth() + 1)
    : (fullDate.getMonth() + 1);

You’ll be pleased to hear that I changed it to something more sensible (and updated the comment to explain what it actually does).

Was it worth it? Those are hours of your life you’re never getting back… :-)

Since I did a 48 hour week at work last week, I was too tired to program… reading about programming was about the best use of my down time.

[javascript…]

You’ll be pleased to hear that I changed it to something more sensible (and updated the comment to explain what it actually does).

I’m glad that code got changed, because wow!

Someday I will dive into a proper P-code engine.

I have one. Very extensible (no real limit on number of keywords accepted), but I never finish it :)

Oh, I’ve got (at least) one. OS-9 Pascal compiles to P-code, and I have (I think…:) everything I need to weld z80 UCSD Pascal to my CP/M machine’s BIOS to get a running UCSD machine… When I have a week or so to devote to it. :-(

Looking through my files, I found that I have full(?) docs for UCSD Pascal, including the P-Code “assembly”!

C has many “gotchas”! (I personally hate the ?: operator)

A lot of the Doom source code was written by “Killough”, someone who seemed to delight in writing totally unreadble code.

  floorplane = (frontsector->floorheight < viewz	// killough 3/7/98
        || (frontsector->heightsec != -1
        && sectors[frontsector->heightsec].ceilingpic == skyflatnum) ?
        R_FindPlane(frontsector->floorheight,
            (frontsector->floorpic == skyflatnum	// killough 10/98
                && (frontsector->sky & PL_SKYFLAT) ? frontsector->sky : frontsector->floorpic),
            floorlightlevel,				// killough 3/16/98
            frontsector->floor_xoffs,			// killough 3/7/98
            frontsector->floor_yoffs) : NULL);

someone who seemed to delight in writing totally unreadble code.

Every code is unreadable after Textile has been at it. ;-)

Try: <pre><code> …put the code here… </code></pre>

[looks at modified code example]

Seriously? I think I’d need to see the assembly just to work out WTF it is actually doing/testing/checking!

Ick. It’s things like this that make me glad I didn’t end up a professional programmer.