🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <PORTUESI.89...@tweezers.esd.sgi.com> port...@sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes:

>One day, either myself or another person got the idea for putting
>together a fake basic interpreter.  It accepted any line that began
>with a line number, just as if the user were talking to the
>interpreter.  Any immediate mode commands, such as "run" or "list"
>were greeted with "?syntax error".

hey Mike!
We had done a similar version of this that would allow you to type
in an entire program, but on the command "run" it would
start printing peeks of all the memory from 1 to some large number
and the machine would freak.  We had disabled the break key, so
there was no way for the user to halt the program short of a power
cycle, though there was an interrupt (control shift up-arrow I think)
that would allow us to stop the program and return to basic.
Kind of nasty, but occasionally fun....

The other high school hack I pulled on the old model 3's was to
have it slowly draw in crufty trs-80 graphics some basic lines in 
some generic pattern.  I got then memorize the pattern, and
showed the program to the teacher.  While the program was running,
I touched the screen, and moved my finger at the same speed and in
the same places that the machine was drawing graphic blocks.  To
the unaware observer (ie, my teacher) it appeared that I had written
something that made the model-3 monitor into a touch screen.
He was disappointed when I told him the truth, though I think
he did pull the same stunt on a few other people.


		steve