Blogs

There is an interesting hidden message embedded in the Color BASIC ROM, and here is the code that reveals it: 0 REM COLOR BASIC EASTER EGG 10 A=26493:B=66:C=13:GOSUB40 20 A=291227:B=B+2:C=C+3:GOSUB40 30 END 40 I=RND(-A):FOR I=1 TO 4:PRINT CHR$(B+RND(C));:NEXT:RETURN If you run this code, it will display this: “COCOFEST” …

See also: part 1 There is a time and ELSE for everything After I dove into ELSE efficiency, and then dove into it a bit deeper, I realized one of the major things that slows down BASIC is having to scan to the end of the line in order to …

Every since I first learned about the Max Headroom signal hijacking incident in 1987, I’ve been fascinated about it. There has been much coverage of this over the years, including some interesting “recreations” of behind-the-scenes footage. There has even been a documentary about the incident. Here are some to check …

My recent return to exploring my old Commodore VIC-20 code has reminded me about the main reason I jumped ship to a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer: Extended Color BASIC. The older CBM BASIC V2 used by the VIC was missing keywords like ELSE, and had no functions for graphics …

I got stuck on my multi-part Sky-Ape-Er dissection tangent, so I thought I’d do something different for today’s VIC-20 Tuesday. The VIC-20 uses programmable character based graphics, You can change the pixels that make up a letter “A” to be a small 8×8 icon of a spaceship, for instance. But, …

More comments from the first ELSE article… First, MiaM chimes in: MiaM: You could also split that to two separate statements. One handling K=17 case, and then do ON K-38 GOTO 50,x,30 where x is just the line following the ON GOTO line. don’t know about speed but you could …

See also: part 1, part 2, part 3, or part 4 (with more coming). Is it really VIC-20 Tuesday again? Okay, then. Let’s get started… The theory so far… When we last left off, I had just described my theory about how my prototype Sky-Ape-Er game loaded as just one …