The BASIC print+goto loop might have been my first ever program too (in the 80s) but one thing for sure for me: it was definitely not “Hello, World”. I and others filled the screen with any number of silly things, random words, jokes and juvenile phrases, whatever, but for some reason, “Hello, World!” was a C thing, and I remember seeing it for the first time in a C class in high school, and then much more often in college.
I have memories of ‘poke’ as well. On the Atari 800 you could poke memory to change the keystroke repeat rate and delay before repeat started, so obviously we would turn down the delay to zero and turn up the repeat to max (it was maybe 60 characters per second), so anyone trying to type couldn’t hit the keys quickly enough to avoid repeating. You’d have to power-cycle the machine to fix it, so it was hilarious to 11 year old me.
Similar to his description of ‘poke’, but different mechanism - using debug.com on an IBM PC jr to edit the Ultimate III save files, and give myself maximum money and lives.
In high school, my friend and I were demonstrating to Fred the magic powers of our IMSAI 8080 with ye olde:
10 PRINT "FRED IS A GEEK"
20 GOTO 10
To wit my friend and I would giggle and taunt.
Undaunted, Fred took a look around, found the power button, and turned the machine off. Yes, that power button next to the "DO NOT TURN OFF" sign.
As the monitor and LEDs faded to black, the giggling stopped and my friend and I stood aghast at Fred's treachery.
Fred left, and we were tasked with restarting the machine, getting to the monitor, keying in the hex code of the cassette loader, and reloading BASIC from cassette.
dahart · · focus · HN ↗
I have memories of ‘poke’ as well. On the Atari 800 you could poke memory to change the keystroke repeat rate and delay before repeat started, so obviously we would turn down the delay to zero and turn up the repeat to max (it was maybe 60 characters per second), so anyone trying to type couldn’t hit the keys quickly enough to avoid repeating. You’d have to power-cycle the machine to fix it, so it was hilarious to 11 year old me.
Similar to his description of ‘poke’, but different mechanism - using debug.com on an IBM PC jr to edit the Ultimate III save files, and give myself maximum money and lives.
Good times!
whartung · · focus · HN ↗
Undaunted, Fred took a look around, found the power button, and turned the machine off. Yes, that power button next to the "DO NOT TURN OFF" sign.
As the monitor and LEDs faded to black, the giggling stopped and my friend and I stood aghast at Fred's treachery.
Fred left, and we were tasked with restarting the machine, getting to the monitor, keying in the hex code of the cassette loader, and reloading BASIC from cassette.
Got it to work on our second try!