Hex dump type-ins

[Sol_HSA]

Back when type-ins started they didn't have (much) hex data and you might be able to learn something by simply reading the listings. Eventually though these degenerated into short loaders and pages and pages of hex, because naturally writing things in assembly yielded more impressive programs.

I personally think they should have just banned listings that were more than half just hex dumps. Especially after cover disks/tapes became a thing.

(file this under "old man screams at cloud")

[WhatHoSnorkers]

I think it was better when they had the hex dump AND the assembly listing. I typed in some machine code for a game and it just didn't work because it was wrong. Knowing what the numbers meant AND what the author was trying to do, it was easy to fix. But just numbers? And without a checksum? No chance.

[Pobulous]

Having assembly along with the data to type in was brilliantly useful.

[Sol_HSA]

Most of them, at least in finland, were just hex dumps, no assembly listing.. so you literally couldn't learn anything from them.

[Pobulous]

When I first moved into PCs it was disappointing to find that there was no BASIC included with MS-DOS, but I was intrigued to find that there was an assembler and disassembler in debug.exe, and magazines of the time occasionally had useful assembly routines that you could type in to create a new command or TSR.

If only the Speccy had come with a standard assembler or could incorporate inline assembly like BBC BASIC.

[TMD2003]

If only the Speccy had come with a standard assembler or could incorporate inline assembly like BBC BASIC.

Now, that's useful to know... I must make a note of that for a future program.