So long and thanks for all the fishes

Blimey. I must be getting old or something. And there was me thinking my brains were still reasonably intact.

Hmm, I showed the item to my wife, and she laughed almost immediately. That’s what long association with a character like me does to people.

Wait, Steve’s wife got the binary joke?

Oh, Clive, the shame, the shame… :-) :-)

PS: I’d like to think mom would have got it too. Same reason as you Steve, some nerdiness rubs off. Just wait for the day she argues with somebody (like in a supermarket) that their router is the problem, and is correct (mom, local library, several times ¹).

¹ Stupid woman would rather have the taxpayer cough up a hundred euros to have some guy come out to fix it, rather than following our suggestion of turning it off and back on again. Guess what the expensive technician did within one minute of arrival, handed her a paper, and left.

As you say, the shame 8~( 8~(

At least I’m in good company – unless Mr Ruck is just providing kindly solidarity!

Look on the bright side

;-)

It is fire-fighting, quashing unattractive code so it does not set a bad example.

That does set me up for a fall, though. Some of the things I do with BASIC would scare the pants off the community. ;-)

That does set me up for a fall, though. Some of the things I do with BASIC would scare the pants off the community. ;-)

Hear, hear! My sentiments/behaviour exactly.

For as close to arcane … as I can get

You want arcane; you could not stand arcane:

DEFFNBinString(|&8300):REM removes leading zeros
 SYS"OS_ConvertBinary4",|&8300,&8310,33 TO $&8310
=$(&83B0-?&8304)

;-)

Whuh?

So on a 32 bit machine you allocate sufficient space for a 16 bit value and then issue a call that only outputs 8 bit values?

My head hurts.

MODE 28

Blow the dust off that one.

MODE 28? Luxury!

I do not follow?

M.P.F.C – Yorkshiremen.

The follow-up line to Stuarts comment should be along the lines of “We used t’ dream of Mode 28”
Which would be true for a BBC B veteran.

“We used t’ dream of Mode 28”

Mode 28?! We used t’ dream of colour.
People today, don’t know they’ve been born.

Eeh, we had to make do with black-and-black displays. Lick chalkboard clean wi’t tongue.

Having never known the BBC Microcomputers of the 8bit time, I had not any clue.

I’m afraid you’re still missing the running joke, but it’s too much fun to give you more than the pointers we already have.

TV. M.P.F.C – Yorkshiremen.

Oh, and Stuart is slightly off – it would be closer written as:

“Eee, we had t’ make do wi’ black-and-black displays. Lick t’ chalkboard clean wi’ t’ tongue.”

Plus, the likes of t’ are actually not a pronounced "t

Chalkboard? You don’t know you were born, we had to get up at 4am, be beaten wi’ belt by our dad, sent to work down pit to mine coal for the black pixels, beaten wi’ broken bottle by our dad, and have to scrape lines off middle t’ motorway in rush hour for the white pixels, when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.

I do not have a reference that apparently is common among all of you.

Definitely made it to the US

The origin of Spam, spam, spam…
M.P.F.C
Graham Chapman (deceased)
John Cleese
Terry Gilliam
Eric Idle
Terry Jones (deceased)
Michael Palin

That’s it for me. Good night

This forum is broken. It’s telling me that I’ve written eighteen posts. 😉

He is back!!!! :D

You know who¹ has returned! :)

¹ because he said shhh in another post, and that he is lurking…

Still do not have the entire picture.

It is a Python reference. Google is your friend – look up ‘Python’ and ‘lived in a shoe box’ or ‘The Four Yorkshireman’. It relies on cultural references to traits of thos who live in Yorkshire…

Python 3?

I think it may have been before Python 1.

Sorry folks, but this has been buzzing round my head and it has to get out. ;-(

the first rule of Arcane Assembly Language (must be assembly Language).

Here is an assembly routine for the binary string. It is just as written, but I have stripped out the comments:

PROCUSR_BinStr
PRINT USR_BinStr,-200.1
END

DEFPROCUSR_BinStr
 _BinStr=_BinStr:LOCAL zero,char,return
 FOR F%=0 TO 2 STEP 2:P%=END:[OPT F%
 ._BinStr
 STR     lr,[sp,#-4]!
 LDR     r11,[sp,#16]
 ADD     r11,r11,#1
 LDR     r10,[sp]
 MOV     lr,pc
 ADD     pc,r10,#&44
 SUB     r11,r11,#1
 STR     r11,[sp,#16]
 SUB     r6,r8,#&600
 MOV     r7,#ASC"0"
 MOVeq   r2,r6
 Beq     return
 LDRmi   r10,[sp]
 MOVmi   lr,pc
 ADDmi   pc,r10,#&74
 TEQ     r0,#0
 MOVeq   r2,r6
 STReqB  r7,[r2],#1
 Beq     return
 ADD     r1,r6,#&40
 MOV     r2,#&21
 SWI     "OS_ConvertBinary4"
 .zero
 LDRB    r1,[r0],#1
 TEQ     r1,r7
 Beq     zero
 MOV     r2,r6
 STRB    r1,[r2],#1
 .char
 LDRB    r1,[r0],#1
 STRB    r1,[r2],#1
 TEQ     r1,#0
 Bne     char
 .return
 STR     pc,[sp,#24]
 MOV     r9,#0
 LDR     pc,[sp],#4
 ]:NEXT F%:!&8674=P%
ENDPROC

• returns binary string of its parameter
• strips leading zeros except 0 itself
• returns null string if parameter is a string

Note that USR here takes a parameter and returns a string!

There is quite a lot in there that might actually be useful in a general sense for those writing code interacting with BASIC.

Would this be any different in ARM 64- except for the moveq etc?

Would this be any different in ARM 64- except for the moveq etc?

Should I say touché or answer sensibly and say that the code is so intimately tied into BASIC that ARM 64 is impossible? ;-)