🚀 go-pugleaf

>>Now if the user doesn't know what the space bar is, then you have a problem.
>Back when I did that sort of software, I used that prompt and accepted
>'any' key.  This of course means anything the OS doesn't steal.

Like the little depressed space/key on the TRS80 Model III...
The one where my hand naturally rests...

The one that resets the machine...

``Press any key''
[PRESS]
``Ooooooh!''
(Of course, sampled sound greatly improves this machine response.)

Schools had Apple][s.... fine.  You could sample sounds on those
beasts!  All you had to do was sample a 1/4-2/3 second sample of
``OUCH!'' and tie it to any [normal] keypress to confuse new
students.  Oh, that an run gremlins, of course, it would be nice if it
were harder to reboot those machines --> ``This machine is acting
strangely! [CLICK]''

Since this is folklore...

The Atari 410, that write only device, used multiple tracks.
One for data and another for other things such as an audio recording.

I managed to cook up a geography project when I was in 8th grade that
showed some climate zones of Africa and gave an audio report while the
program was running.  The only problem was that the tape device could
not rewind the tape on command....  but it could be turned on and off
through simple memory writes.  It was pretty impressive when the
computer was visible (with it's membrane keyboard and 16k!) and yet it
talked like a human, in fact, it talked a lot like I did!  :-)

ps:  gr8 took 8k (8192bytes, at least) which left me with some 8k to program!
     It reminds me of my casio ~400 step programmable calculators... In that
     space I have programmed a few games, such as hunt the wumpus, Xstory,
     Stop Thief and Sahara Death-- Yes, high school can be boring.
--
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 Scott D. Yelich                         scott@[xanth.]cs.odu.edu [128.82.8.1]
 After he pushed me off the cliff, he asked me, as I fell, ``Why'd you jump?''
 Administrator of:    Game-Design requests to <game-desi...@cs.odu.edu>
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