Type in programs!

[scooterb23]

One of my greatest memories of growing up was spending endless hours in front of my TV, typing in the BASIC programs from magazines for my TI994A, and then my C64.

I always felt a sense of accomplishment when I got done, and the game worked correctly.

And such a tedious task when something went wrong.

One thing I've noticed (maybe I'm not looking hard enough) is that there seem to be very few people who are trying to preserve this aspect of classic computing.

You see a lot of people collecting old Nintendo Power mags, but how many people still have old Computes, Ahoy!, Family Computing etc. mags around?.

I guess what I want out of this thread is discussion about favorite programming magazines / books, favorite programs, and anything else you can remember about type in programs. And especially places where these programs are available today.

I had every issue of Family / Family & Home Office / Home Office computing from issue #1, until the issue that they removed the programs. Probably typed in over 200 programs from those... I loved some of the Compute books that I got from my 3rd grade book fair (love to find those again). And I always regret never getting the chance to type in "Hotfoot" from Ahoy!
magazine.

I also remember a bok I had that I bought that tried to introdce Machine Language...I never got the hang of that one :)

Somewhere at COSI, there is a C64 programmers manual that I WANT!! But recent changes have made that book go missing :(

Again, share :D

[Kroogah]

Oh man, Microsoft QBASIC....I think I still have some of my *cough*horrible*cough* programs somewhere. My friend Blake made a roleplaying system entitled Cats On Wheels (4th grade, maybe?) I'd buy old "Programming for Kids" books from the early 80's and type the stuff in to QBASIC. WOW I CAN DRAW PICTURES

[oesiii]

I grew up typing games into my Atari 8bits from Antic and Analog, the two prominent mags for Ataris.

These days there little sense in preserving the tradition because the magazines and the basic listings are all archived on the net in places like this:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/

So I just download the basic listing and load it up on my Atari. And you need to be young and naive to do all that typing anyways :D

[Lady Jaye]

Scott, my dad still has the good ole TI99/4a (beige version complete in box, w/ tape recorder and vintage tapes). He also still has the Compute! Book of TI99/4a Basic (lots of stuff to type in there!). It'd be ridiculous to scan the entire book (or maybe not), but at the very least I could borrow it from him and scan the cover and a selection of pages from it (which could be donated to the great DP archives, if Joe's interested. If not, there's always Atarimagazines.com)... Now that I think of it, it would be fun to use that book on an emulated TI99/4a.

So, yes, I did learn TI BASIC as a child, although it never went beyond that. The next computer we got (not counting the Timex Sinclair that Dad got for kicks) was the Mac SE/30, so it was a big jump. Oh yeah, I do remember vaguely a session or two of dabbling with Logo on an Apple ][ in grade school.

[Flack]

When we first got our TRS-80 III, the only software we HAD was stuff we had typed in. I remember one time my dad typed in an entire program and then it didn't work. He proofread it and couldn't find the error. I proofread it and couldn't find the error. The next month the magazine printed an "Oops!" and said there had been a typo in the original program. Oops is right.

[Ze_ro]

My absolute favorite was a game called Crossroads. It was a C64 assembly program that was features in Compute!'s Gazette Dec '87. Imagine Pac-Man, with LOTS of enemies, no dots, and your character has a gun... and that's sort of what the game is like.

It was also followed up with a sequel (subtitled Pandemonium) about a year later, which featured a level editor.

In fact, I liked this game so much that I actually rewrote it so it worked natively in X Windows (With some nifty extra features like four-player support and random maze generation (This feature was actually contributed by someone else... hooray for open source :) )). If you're a Unix dork like myself, feel free to try it out (http://supernova.ath.cx/xroads). It won't work under Windows... but you can download a disk image from that site that has both Crossroads games on it. Try 'em out in Vice.

--Zero

[YoshiM]

The two that were my favorite were Rainbow magazine and Hot CoCo. We my Dad first started getting Rainbow it was this huge honkin' 200+ page magazine with programs, reviews, helpful tips, game scoreboard, CoCo community news and more. Of course when I was younger I just wanted the games and Rainbow delivered, especially in August which was always a games issue.

Hot CoCo was a thinner magazine but that didn't mean it was of lesser quality. One of my favorite sections in Hot CoCo was (of course) "Elmer's Arcade", usually written by Richard Ramella. Each article took place in this fictional arcade filled with old mechanical machines and one ornery proprieter. It's written in the first person and usually involves the person (probably Richard) coming up with a computer game idea based on one of the old gaming contraptions.

With my stint with the TI 99/4A I really didn't get access to any magazines. I did flip through a few 99er mags a friend of mine had but they didn't yield anything interesting for me. I did check out some little black book called something like "Games for the TI 99/4A" from the library a few times. I remember typing in a maze game where some ball came at you and you had to press the Space Bar to stop it. I soon replaced the graphics with the starship Enterprise as the protagonist and a Klingon warship as the "ball" that came streaking towards you.

I still have all of my Dad's Rainbow and Hot CoCo magazines and have since added to that with a year's worth of fresh Hot CoCos. It's always a fun read paging through and seeing how excited people were when floppy drives became more affordable and hard drives were something people who didn't have the cash would dream about. Right now I'm currently in the process of scanning those mags so I'll always have them.

[Happy_Dude]

I typed in some stuff from the C=64 manual.
A ballon crossing the screen. WOW. only took me 4 hours.
A friends parents had an Amstrad with lots of books and they would type the games in for us :)

I also recently bought a book full of little type in games for my C=64.
I'll have to blow off the cobwebs and give it a go somtime :D

[kainemaxwell]

My friend used to type in alot of programs from Compute! magazines and Contact issues for us.