Author: scruss

Lovely automata: bbcbasicbot

bbcbasicbot rendering of my one-liner

BBC BASIC bot [beta2] on Twitter is lovely. You tweet a BBC BASIC program to it and it replies with an animation rendering of what your program would look like on a BBC Micro.

I sent it this:

1MODE4:VDU23,224,24,48,96,193,131,6,12,24:VDU23,225,24,12,6,131,193,96,48,24
2PRINTCHR$(224.5+RND(1));:GOTO2

which readers might recognize as 10 PRINT, the endless random maze one-liner for the C64. This program even inspired its own book – also called 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 – about simple generative art.

You can run it in your browser thanks to the amazing JSBeeb.

Weird thrift-store find: homebrew CD player

I killed some time this lunchtime in a thrift store. I was half-looking for a case for a kit computer, but wasn’t expecting much to turn up. But I found this:

  • No identifying marks on this device
  • Back panel looks hand cut – and is that a PC power supply?
  • Inside is just … wow!
  • Power supply is from EWE Comp in Belgrade, Serbia
  • DVD decoder/preamp board
  • looks like a full DVD player output board
  • surprisingly tidy displays
  • more of the board
  • nice simple front panel
  • surprise inside
  • hey, free CanCon!
  • that tray’s a bit flimsy

There really are no identifying marks on this. No idea how it got to be in Canada.