Number 1#
Number 1 – WORMS
I guess every programmer has a genesis moment. One where everything starts to make sense and it’s the true beginning of their love of programming. This was mine. I was 14 and must have had my ZX81 for about 6 months or so when I bought this magazine. I was at my grans in reading this and suddenly all those HEX numbers I’d been typing in made sense. There in front of me was a true assembler listing. I suddenly realised what all the codes at the back of the manual meant, and how you used them. I poured over this article for days, playing with it, trying new values, changing little bits to see what would happen. Up until now I’d been doing ZX81 BASIC and was getting on okay. However when I got this article I saw the routine that drew the border and called it directly.
Number 2 – 3D Graphics
So this one was published when I was just 13, and it had the key equations for doing very basic 3D and perspective. I used these equations for years before real full matrices were possible, but it still holds a special place in my heart. And yes… there’s a chunk missing from it. I got it 2nd hand, and someone had sent off for something ripping a big bit out of the article. Fortunately, it wasn’t important as I didn’t really care about the program, just the method and equations.
I have managed to buy a copy of this magazine, so at some point I’ll rescan it to get rid of that hole!!
Number 3 – ZX Spectrum Turbo Loader
So, I got this I think around 1985, second hand again. This was very cool though, it showed how to make your own turbo loader! Now I still didn’t really understand it at this point, but I was able (with the aid of an amazing tape deck) to make a screen grab load at an amazing 6,000 baud! This is Microdrive speed; from a NORMAL tape deck! It just blasted in! I was also able to load data in via a slightly odd pattern so the screen would come in backwards, and even from both directions at once! Normal spectrum turbos were 3,000Baud (with the original ROM routine at 1,500), so I had great fun fiddling with these routines.
I’ve also got a fresh copy of this one, and would be nice to rescan this one too.
Number 4 – My Character Editor
So this one is a little simpler. It’s my first published work. I was 16 when I sent it off, so in the 2 years from reading the WORMS program listing, I had learnt basic Z80, gotten a spectrum, written a Database for my Mums work, was without a computer for a almost a year(spectrum went back to my mums work), and then gotten a Plus4 and learnt 6502. I find this frightning as these days, YEARS seem to slip by without anything appearingto happen!
So here is the letter I wrote, the reply I got, and the final article. I was well miffed that they didn’t put my name on it however – everyone else got that! Story of my life that…. everyone’s always taking credit for my work in some shape or form….
From now on, they’re not that “life changing”… just important, or funny. There was one other one, but I appear to have lost that. It was a turbo loader for the Commodore Plus/4 which I used a lot, but I then adapted it to be an interrupt driven one on the C64, which then allowed me to play a game while things were loading. Aside from this one, the rest were all after I “turned pro”, and so weren’t important, just funny/cool/etc.