Hello chums, and welcome to this, the incessant wittering of a Speccy programmer (although I don't wear glasses, heh). As software gets written it'll appear here, along with maybe the odd little news item or funny quote or whatever. Most of the programs will be in BASIC, because I'm pants at machine code and have only just got the z88dk to build. Might have a wibble with that, if time allows.
This started off as the only pre-drunk conversation at a CSS meet (photos once Dave finds a scanner...), and has now been completed. It's a version of the SETI@Home screensaver/life search thingy. I warn you in advance, the search algorithm is very slow on a 3.5MHz Z80. However now that I have z88dk I might be able to reimplement it in compiled C, which should boost the speed a little. Anyhow, until then, grab the TZX file and start completing those work units!
Entries for CSSCGC 2004:
PongVenture
Phew! What a Pong
Some of my readers may remember the good ol' bad ol' days of type-ins from magazines like Your Sinclair. Invariably the code sent to the printers was a Xerox of someon's ZX printer output, and as such it was impossible to read. Well, through the power of the internet I can now bring you readable type-ins! I hope you have as much fun with this software as I did laughing at how pathetic it would be to include a type-ins section on a page brimming with TZX downloads!
This beautiful little program, sent in by Mr. F. Morris of Oxford, pays homage to the popular "I love you" virus on IBM hardware. We think it's great, and would like to see the looks on your friends' faces as you happily infect their C90 collection!
1 GO SUB 9995
9994 STOP
9995 MERGE ""
9996 PRINT "Please rewind the tape and pressany key."
9997 IF INKEY$ ="" THEN GO TO 9997
9998 SAVE "iloveyou.bas"
9999 RETURN
This snappy little BASIC code from a Mrs. E. Trellis of North Wales brilliantly demonstrates the amazing graphical powers of the Spectrum, as well as its wonderful computational speed. Erm, actually it doesn't. It bombs out with a "B Integer Out of Range" error about halfway through. Still, that's what computing's all about, isn't it readers?
10 REM Text-based Mandelbrot
20 REM What was I thinking?
30 PAPER 0: CLS
40 FOR x=0 TO 31
50 FOR y=0 TO 21
60 LET cr=(x-16)/8
70 LET ci=(y-11)/5.5
80 LET re=0: LET im=0: LET i=0
90 LET i=i+1
100 LET re2=(re*re)-(im*im)+cr
110 LET im2=(2*re*im)+ci
120 IF SQR ((re2*re2)+(im2*im2))>2 THEN INK (i-(i*INT (i/8))): PRINT AT y,x;"*";: GO TO 150
130 IF i>15 THEN INK 7: PRINT AT y,x;"#";: GO TO 150
140 LET re=re2: LET im=im2: GO TO 90
150 NEXT Y
160 NEXT X
170 GO TO 170