The hidden program on a blank tape...

[TMD2003]

No, really! Well, sort of. For anyone who's heard of 8-Bit Show And Tell (it's not The 8-Bit Guy, and they're not even in the same country), he was tipped off that there was a blank Computer Cassette available in 1982 that had a program printed inside the J-card for the computers of the day.

The rumours were true. He tracked one down - an unopened original! - and inside, there were two programs, one for the VIC-20 and one for the ZX81; likely as not, the Spectrum hadn't been released yet, and the C64 certainly hadn't. 41 years later, but the programs have resurfaced... and 8BSAT even types them in on real hardware as part of the video, having some trouble with finding how to make the ZX81 print INKEY$, and with the keyboard in general.



The program is so small that it doesn't trouble the unexpanded ZX81 with any intrusion into the screen memory, let alone the VIC-20's thromping three kilobytes, and anyone even remotely familiar with either kind of BASIC will clock what it's doing straight away, although Commodore BASIC makes it less obvious with its arcane POKEs. So I won't spoil the surprise. It takes a couple of minutes to type in yourself, and can be seen on screen clearly.

This might have been really exciting for someone who'd just obtained a VIC-20 or a ZX81 back in the day.

[Daveysloan]

That's really cool.

Spoiler

I mean, an actual make your own etch a sketch for a ZX81 would've been an awesome Easter egg to find back in the day. Great vid.

[ANDREWRYALS]

Yeah I remember seeing that program back in the day.