Byte my shiny Machine Language...

During 1983 a devious, yet wonderful magazine was on the newstands and I was crazy enough to send in for a subscription.  That magazine was Compute's Gazette!  This wonderful but down right devious magazine just grabbed the C-64 and VIC-20 users by the fingers and refused to let go!

What was so powerful about this magazine?  Glad you asked.  This magazine gave us the ability to MANUALLY input Machine Language coding that if done correctly...would allow you to play a free graphic based game or utilize a neat little program.  Now for those that do not know or remember what Machine Lanugage is, you are very lucky.  Just thinking about the hundreds of lines of code that had to be input by hand for hours and hours and hours makes my fingers and eyes start to hurt all over again.  To make it even harder, if you did not have an external storage device (floppy or tape) entering the code for a game that you really enjoyed with end as soon as you turned off the computer or heaven forbid - the power would go out!

You have to remember, back then there were no massive 1TB hard drives, if you were lucky and had the money you could have a 50MB drive.  But those of us that had a "shoestring" budget, I started with an external tape drive.  Oh wait, some of you younger people may not know what a tape is...let's say it correctly...a casette tape.  You know, those small little rectangular plastic things you see your parents talk about when they find an old box in storage with a ton of tapes full of music.  Yes, back then there were no iPods or CDs, just casette tapes.  I was lucky because we always had tapes around because my aunt would record some of the church sermons when we attended the bishop's church.  So every now and then I was able to sneak one casette out of the pack and use it for my programs.

Ok, back on the main point of Machine Language.  That language was a monster to input because you had to do everything absolutely perfect from beginning to end.  I know the image to the left is not very clear, but it gives you an example of a page from the magazine that would need to be entered by hand in order to run a specific program.

Now you would have to tell the system what is the starting point address and end point of the address where the data was to be stored in memory.  Once you set those parameters, the fun started and you had to load line by line of code.  There were six data bytes plus a seventh data byte to be the checksum.  Now if you entered the data correctly, the next address would auto-increment onto the screen and you would load the next set of bytes.  If the checksum was wrong, then you would get a little buzzer sounnd from the CPU and you would have to figure out what you did wrong.

In order for me to know exactly where I was with the inputs, I used another piece of paper to slide down the page to only show the line I was working on at the time. Of course the computer was also telling me what line to input based on the original parameters that I input at the beginning. But from time to time, after looking at three to six pages of Machine Language, the numbers start to play tricks on your eyes. (Even as I type this, my eyes are staying far away from looking at that image!)

So after typing hours and hours of code into the computer, I would save the data and run the program.  While playing various games I would forget about all of the code that I had to input. I would sit there and just have a great time playing and learning all sorts of things about this new electronic world that was made available to people in their homes.

One day at school, i mentioned to a few friends that I had a really cool game that I programmed into my computer and I copied it on a tape for them to try.  To my surprise, one friend informed me of this new thing that let's you use the telephone line to access a type of board to share and get things from other people.  Too cool, I gotta check this out!

Wait a second, Tulare doesn't have one of these things, but there is one in Fresno and I have the phone number.  I will try this thing called a Bullentin Board System.  It's long-distance, but since it is a computer talking with another computer, it should be free, right?  The phone company only charges when people talk on the phone?

Phone bill arrives...(You know where the next blog is heading...)