The first BASIC program I ever wrote was typed in and executed on my behalf by my 8th grade teacher’s husband, Olin Campbell, who was a graduate student of Prof. Patrick Suppes at Stanford’s IMSSS. Olin sent back a hardcopy of his TOPS-10 terminal session, which of course started with him logging in. He abbreviated the initial command to LOG OLIN. Knowing nada about OSs and security, I was convinced that this incantation -must- have something to do with logarithms.
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I find X <– X + 1 quite compelling, which is also used to describe change of state in older CPU documentation. This use in assignments is also why the left arrow was what is now the underscore in ASCII 1963. (The up arrow, now the caret, was used for calls, I believe.)
Which brings us about back to topic, as these are two beloved symbols on Commodore keyboards (causing much wonder, why these symbols would have been there).
Which is also sort of a first contact story: When I was a kid, at the local bank, handling the account book was a multistep, mostly electro-mechanical procedure (at the front end). As the final step, the account book would be mounted into a special printer (which has a name of its own in German, Sparbuchdrucker) with chain printer like type. And, as a kid, I was really fascinated by this print, especially by as magical characters as the square lozenge (◊, U+25CA, subtotal). Also a character now long out of common use.
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When I first learned Basic, the LET command seemed redundant, because I thought, “What’s the difference between saying LET and just using the variable?” Well, it turns out there was a use for it. Basic didn’t allow you to use a variable name that resembled a reserved word (a variable like PRINT, or PRIN), unless you preceded your use of such a variable with LET. You could say something like LET PRINT=1, and Basic would allow it.
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I watched a few videos on electronics several years ago, and the guy showed how if you connected transistors in certain configurations, you could get some interesting outputs. I thought, “Hey, these sound like logic gates, NOT, AND, etc.” I later learned the term “TTL logic.”
I knew from many years ago that modern computers used transistors, but it wasn’t until this that I got the idea that constructing logic gates with transistors isn’t that hard.
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I knew from many years ago that modern computers used transistors,
but it wasn’t until this that I got the idea that constructing
logic gates with transistors isn’t that hard.
Or indeed (for some value of “hard”), constructing them out of computer-game
elements:
https://retrocomputingforum.com/
t/unintended-use-case/3501
It’s impressive that that guy actually went ahead and implemented
the RV32I instruction set (the RISC-V 32-bit integer-only base
instruction subset). Which in turn allowed a friend of his to
program John Conway’s “Game of Life” cellular automaton (though, granted,
it runs so slowly that it has to be speeded up in the YouTube video).
Coincidentally, I’ve just been re-reading 30-year-old sci-fi from
Australian author Greg Egan. I’m not sure I fully appreciated
this when I first encountered it in the 90s (before I’d ever even
used Virtual PC or VMware or Virtual Box, or knew about SimH or
Hercules, etc., etc.) But I’m certainly getting a kick out of
my re-reads:
“So the processor clusters in Tokyo or Dallas or Seoul were simulating
a cellular automaton containing a lattice of bizarre immaterial computers…
which in turn were simulating the logic (if not the physics) of the
processor clusters themselves. From there on up, everything happened
in exactly the same way as it did on a real machine – only much more slowly.”
– Greg Egan, Permutation City (1994)
Chapter 19
(REMIT NOT PAUCITY)
June 2051
In that chapter, the “Garden of Eden” configuration for the
launch of “Elysium” (the “TVC universe”), being run in simulation
on the “Joint Supercomputer Network”, also contains the uploaded
personalities (“Copies”) of 18 people (one actually “running” and the
others in storage); the code for a second cellular automaton called the
“Autoverse” (together with Maria Deluca’s Autoverse specs for “Planet Lambert”,
along with her design for a simulated microorganism intended to be the seed
for the evolution of life there); plus Malcolm Carter’s code for the
virtual-reality environment “Permutation City”; together with two stowaway
Copies who have been steganographically concealed within the code for the
city.
The $32 million from the 16 billionaire “Copies” to whom Paul Durham
has promised immortality is enough to run the launch for about nine
hours (depending on the fluctuating price of computation on the
“QIPS Exchange”). After the simulation is shut down, according to Durham’s
“dust theory”, the TVC universe will continue to exist (and continue
to grow) orthogonally to the universe from which it was spawned,
organizing itself out of “particles” of space-time that Durham calls “dust”.
Only the Copies of Paul and Maria inside Elysium itself will ever get to know
if the launch was successful, or if Durham’s “dust theory” is true.
Original Maria never believes it – she’s just a freelance programmer
being paid to do a job, and she thinks her employer is a lunatic.
More Permutation City:
++++
"‘There’s a cellular automaton called TVC. After Turing, von Neumann and
Chiang. Chiang completed it around twenty-ten; it’s a souped-up, more
elegant version of von Neumann’s work from the nineteen fifties.’
Maria nodded uncertainly; she’d heard of all this, but it wasn’t her field.
She did know that John von Neumann and his students had developed a two-dimensional
cellular automaton, a simple universe in which you could embed an elaborate
pattern of cells – a rather Lego-like “machine” – which acted as both a
universal constructor and a universal computer. Given the right program – a string
of cells to be interpreted as coded instructions rather than part of the machine –
it could carry out any computation, and build anything at all. Including another
copy of itself – which could build another copy, and so on. Little self-replicating
toy computers could blossom into existence without end. . .
'In two dimensions, the original von Neumann machine had to reach farther
and farther – and wait longer and longer – for each successive bit of data.
In a six-dimensional TVC automaton, you can have a three-dimensional grid
of computers, which keeps on growing indefinitely – each with its own
three-dimensional memory, which can also grow without bound. . . .
The TVC universe is one big, ever-expanding processor cluster.’ . . .
Maria could almost see it: a vast lattice of computers, a seed of order
in a sea of a random noise, extending itself from moment to moment by
sheer force of internal logic, ‘accreting’ the necessary building blocks from
the chaos of non-space-time by the very act of defining space and time.
Visualizing wasn’t believing, though. . .
She said, ‘So you promised to fit a snapshot of each of your “backers” into
the Garden-of-Eden configuration, plus the software to run them on the TVC?’
Durham said proudly, 'All that and more. The major world libraries; not quite
the full holdings, but tens of millions of files-text, audio, visual, interactive –
on every conceivable subject. Databases too numerous to list – including all
the mapped genomes. Software: expert systems, knowledge miners, metaprogrammers.
Thousands of off-the-shelf VR environments: deserts, jungles, coral reefs,
Mars and the moon. And I’ve commissioned Malcolm Carter, no less, to create
a major city to act as a central meeting place: Permutation City, capital
of the TVC universe.
‘And, of course, there’ll be your contribution: the seed for an alien world. . .’
Maria’s skin crawled. Durham’s logic was impeccable; an endlessly expanding
TVC universe, with new computing power being manufactured out of nothing in
all directions, ‘would’ eventually be big enough to run an Autoverse planet –
or even a whole planetary system. The packed version of Planet Lambert –
the compressed description, with its topographic summaries in place of actual
mountains and rivers – would easily fit into the memory of a real-world computer.
Then Durham’s Copy could simply wait for the TVC grid to be big enough –
or pause himself, to avoid waiting – and have the whole thing unfold. . .
Maria arrived at the north Sydney flat around half past twelve. Two terminals
were set up side by side on Durham’s kitchen table. . .
Following a long cellular automaton tradition, the program which would bootstrap
the TVC universe into existence was called FIAT. Durham hit a key, and a
starburst icon appeared on both of their screens.
He turned to Maria. ‘You do the honors.’ . . .
She prodded the icon; it exploded like a cheap flashy firework, leaving a pincushion
of red and green trails glowing on the screen.
‘Very tacky.’
Durham grinned. ‘I thought you’d like it.’
The decorative flourish faded, and a shimmering blue-white cube appeared: a representation
of the TVC universe. The Garden-of-Eden state had contained a billion ready-made processors,
a thousand along each edge of the cube – but that precise census was already out of date.
Maria could just make out the individual machines, like tiny crystals; each speck comprised
sixty million automaton cells – not counting the memory array, which stretched into
the three extra dimensions, hidden in this view. The data preloaded into most of the
processors was measured in terabytes: scan files, libraries, databases; the seed for
Planet Lambert – and its sun, and its three barren sibling planets. Everything had
been assembled, if not on one physical computer – the TVC automaton was probably spread
over fifteen or twenty processor clusters – at least as one logical whole. One pattern. . .
She just couldn’t bear the thought that he harbored the faintest hope that he’d persuaded
her to take the ‘dust hypothesis’ seriously. . .
At three minutes past ten, the money ran out – all but enough to pay for the final
tidying-up. The TVC automaton was shut down between clock ticks; the processors
and memory which had been allocated to the massive simulation were freed for other
users – the memory, as always, wiped to uniform zeroes first for the sake of security.
The whole elaborate structure was dissolved in a matter of nanoseconds. . .
The individual components of the Garden of Eden were still held in mass storage.
Maria deleted her scan file, carefully checking the audit records to be sure that
the data hadn’t been read more often than it should have been. The numbers checked out;
that was no guarantee, but it was reassuring.
Durham deleted everything else. . ."
++++
;->
Yep. I’ve seen videos of kids building simple computers inside of Minecraft, basically ALUs with displays, or in one impressive case, an Atari 2600 emulator. You could watch it actually playing a real 2600 game. The example you posted is equally impressive, a game within a game. That’s something! 
It’s too bad he had to go in and write a mod for the game just so the wiring logic wouldn’t bog the whole game engine down.
When I was a teenager, I played around with a couple games from The Learning Company for the Apple II that were explicitly designed for this sort of thing (though not building full computers), called “Rocky’s Boots” and “Robot Odyssey.” Both had logic gates that you were supposed to use to get through the game. You had to wire them up yourself, and test your circuits. I’ve seen a modern equivalent of this called “while true(): learn”.
You go through stages, solving customer problems, to eventually become an entrepreneur (eventually getting into machine learning stuff). It has some goal, as well, of creating a machine to “understand your cat,” too. It was gratifying to see, since I hadn’t seen a game like that in decades. I thought they had gone out of style.
I’ve never seen those in person but they sound excellent!
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They were excellent!
Here are a couple playthrough videos.
“Rocky’s Boots”
“Robot Odyssey” (I recorded myself on an emulator for this one)
Oh yeah, one thing: Turn down your volume before playing. I had the recording volume turned up too high. 
Both of these were made with basically the same game engine. RO added what’s called a “chip lab.” It’s a separate part of the game where you’re given some big mock up of a chip you can wire up with logic. You burn it into small size chips, which you save to disk, and then you can use the chips in the game for the robot logic. I thought the point was to save screen real estate, since the logic you’re required to implement gets increasingly complex, and the screen resolution couldn’t handle it. I had the chance to talk to a few of the game’s creators several years ago, and they said the point was something different. BTW, I seem to remember you were part of that discussion.
My video is not a complete walkthrough, just through the first couple levels.
I played both of these games in school, on the school’s computers and software.
The final level of Robot Odyssey was supposed to be a “killer.” I remember a classmate telling me about it. I only made it past the second level, and then other things in life intervened. I wondered what the point was of the robots having antennas. It turned out that was for the final level, because you’re supposed to make two of the robots send/receive signals wirelessly. You use logic gates for all of that, in addition to making the robots move, and sense their surroundings.
The goal is to get out of the “underworld” you fall into. You use the robots to do it.
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My first computer experience was in 1976, my junior (3rd) year of high school. I discovered a small room accessible from the school library that had two teletype machines in it. I watched one of my friends type in FOCAL code. At that moment I was hooked.
The next year I took the only computer / programming course our school offered - it was basic. Evidently during the summer break they changed who they were timesharing the computers with, and now were connecting to a PDP-11 running RSTS/E. All the programming was done in basic-plus.
After covering the basics in the class, our main project was to take the description of a game in the book 101 computer games in basic, and implement it.
I choose a skydiving game, where you could select from a list of different planets and the moon. It would use the gravity of that planet to determine your acceleration in free-fall.
That class set the future direction of my life…all because of a teletype with a paper tape reader/punch.
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Re. the skydiving game
I believe that game was called Splat. I saw it in the Best of Creative Computing issue Vol.1 (1978). Incidentally, I recently felt inspired to create Atari 8-bit versions of some of those games, in Atari Basic or Turbo Basic. I put them up on Github:
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I was able to find the 101 BASIC games as a PDF - I forget where (should have saved the link), but it’s in my PDF directory. I almost forgot I had it…
so now I may implement a few just for the nostalgia of it. I have an Altair emulator (software, not hardware) and I also have Chipmunk BASIC on my MAC for such occasions.
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This earlier topic might be of interest:
BASIC Computer Games
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Thanks!
so many good memories…