this short program crashes the spectrum

[equinox]

10 NEW

[worcestersource]

That made me chuckle.

This one will too.

10 RANDOMISE USR 0


(actually, is the keyword RANDOMISE or RANDOMIZE?)

[equinox]

(actually, is the keyword RANDOMISE or RANDOMIZE?)

Interestingly one of the benefits of the single-key BASIC entry system is that you don't have to care how it's spelled. Because it's (stupidly enough) T, a letter that doesn't even appear in the word.
And they say texting is making our kids stupid...

(Andrew Owen, a man who is particularly keen on UK-US spelling differences, may be along shortly... I won't forgive him for saying "don't mention literature in front of equinox" grrrrrr)

[1024MAK]

‘tis just a bit more important to spell it right on the 128 BASIC…

Mark

[equinox]

‘tis just a bit more important to spell it right on the 128 BASIC…

While doing my Screwball Scramble CSSCGC game (coming soon, promise, promise) I wanted a variable called "cat" to keep some catapult state information* and I thought "oh! no! you can't do that because of CAT" -- yes yes I could, but it feels dirty. Like ummm writing "void main" in C. Like I'd know or care.

I just want my sweet dead cat back.

* technically known as CSI

[1024MAK]

This one will too.

10 RANDOMISE USR 0

Nah, too much typing, use:
1 INK USR 0



Mark

[equinox]

Nah, too much typing, use:
1 INK USR 0

And we come back to ages ago, when I asked "how can we do USR without any side-effects" -- so no memory allocation or overwrite (LET y=USR x) and no touching anything (CIRCLE USR x,y). I think the best that we came up with was: BEEP 0,0*USR x. Not quite "functional programming" but there's no side-effect your ugly momma can hear. (The multiplication is necessary because BEEP 0,255 would still throw error B.)

Some BASICs allow CALL which is just "(dispose of) USR x" but if I'm bitching about VERIFY in another thread I'm certainly not going to support that kind of thugduggery.

Also, the people who said "the return value doesn't matter, just don't return!!" -- these people are idiots with no understanding of the beauty of a fine piece of code (in God's own language, Hebrew ZX BASIC). DI HALT

[AndyC]

Interestingly one of the benefits of the single-key BASIC entry system is that you don't have to care how it's spelled. Because it's (stupidly enough) T, a letter that doesn't even appear in the word.
And they say texting is making our kids stupid...

(Andrew Owen, a man who is particularly keen on UK-US spelling differences, may be along shortly... I won't forgive him for saying "don't mention literature in front of equinox" grrrrrr)

RANDOMIZE. Some people will tell you that is the American spelling, but that's because they don't know history.

[Sokurah]

10 NEW

Well, to be precise that command doesn't crash the Spectrum - it resets it. Big difference

[spider]

RUN USR 1298+USR 0

[firelord]

10 NEW

This reminded me this : My ZX spectrum + had a small button at the side. It never worked. Each time I pressed it my ZX crashed ...

[sn3j]

[Bedazzle]

And we come back to ages ago, when I asked "how can we do USR without any side-effects

POKE 0, USR XXXXX

[SkoolKid]

Code: Select all

10 RESTORE 60000

Looks benign, but don't RUN it unless you've already saved your work...

[Timmy]

And we come back to ages ago, when I asked "how can we do USR without any side-effects"

Code: Select all

PRINT USR "a"

of course.

[equinox]

Code: Select all

PRINT USR "a"

of course.

The real demoscener packs a tiny routine into 0xFF4C, and also wrote it so that it looks like a pretty UDG.

[equinox]

POKE 0, USR XXXXX

You never had a +2a did you?

(At least, some of the post-+2 machines were able to page out their own ROM. Gross!!! I like the grey one better.)

[equinox]

The real demoscener packs a tiny routine into 0xFF4C, and also wrote it so that it looks like a pretty UDG.

BTW I'm trying to remember who it was who wrote code that ended up requiring (truly double) USR USR "a".
Was it CSSCGC stuff? Anyway a great laugh.

[equinox]

(actually, is the keyword RANDOMISE or RANDOMIZE?)

This kind of dithering is what gave us Unicode

[equinox]

This reminded me this : My ZX spectrum + had a small button at the side. It never worked. Each time I pressed it my ZX crashed ...

The early Spectrum models like the 16K and 48K didn't have this crash button. It was necessary to buy extra hardware (RAM-pack or IF1), stick it in the back, and then half pull it out.
Sinclair rightly argued, "Why should we enforce the purchase of extra hardware for a crash, something that would naturally be expected from a ZX Spectrum? Why not engineer it in?" (see also: Datacorder)
And after a brief but dramatic boxing match with Chris Curry, the reset button was invented.
You can still see it today in Spectaculator, when you accidentally hit F5 and it says "UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS THIS WILL RESET THE SPECTRUM"-- Yeah yeah, *I want my N-M-I* like Dire Straits. What p's me off is when I accidentally hit Alt+R (because I want to type R for RUN, but my brain is still in Visual Studio mode) and I reset the thing with no warning whatsoever, and I hope my last snapshot was recent. Imagine snapshotting bloody BASIC. But it's quicker than a TZX.

mods, mods, please stop him, I think he got into the liquor cabinet again

P.S. I once carelessly ripped my Plus D disk interface out of the back of my +2. Oops! The poor +2 never booted again: it only guilted me with blocky flashing patterns. But the Plus D survived. Thank God. Much harder to get hold of those at the time.

[equinox]

Code: Select all

10 RESTORE 60000

Looks benign, but don't RUN it unless you've already saved your work...

Okay, what's the trick here? In empty BASIC, it reports "OK" without apparently fking things up (unlike DEF FN x()=FN x(), or CLOSE #8, which immediately causes screaming chaos). Is this a documented bug? What does it do?

[1024MAK]

Okay, what's the trick here?

https://skoolkid.github.io/rom/referenc ... ingRestore

Mark

[equinox]

https://skoolkid.github.io/rom/referenc ... ingRestore

Damn... when I put some code in a REM (using the classic old Outlook tool Remstore) I also found that it f-ked up RESTORE a bit, because errrr I suppose we don't expect those bytes to be in a BASIC listing.
(Then you think "is it literally counting through all the lines to find this line? Then you think about GO TO and GO SUB. Then you start writing C.)

[1024MAK]

Try writing code in a REM on a ZX80 if you really want a nightmare of BASIC crashing…

[Bedazzle]

You never had a +2a did you?

Never. :-/
48K clone, 128K clone, Next

ok, then something like
POKE NOT PI, PEEK NOT PI + NOT PI * USR xxxx