80 Femtocomputing
Novoober 1984 issue
Copyright © 1982 by Roger M. Wilcox. All rights reserved.
The original draft was written on my dad's mechanical typewriter, accompanied
by hand-drawn illustrations — such as they were. Every image you see was
scanned in from the original, although some pages suffered water damage over
the years. All non-image text was transcribed in exactly the format it
originally appeared. The lack of an = key on the original mechanical typewriter
means all = signs were originally written in by hand.
All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, etc. are as in the
original.
You have been warned.
3. 80-REMarks - Non-existing mail about our second issue
6. MOVIE REVIEW - See if you can guess this one.
10. CHROMATES - Twenty-three new formulas for Chromium Dioxide
12. TRSTOS 87.4 - Tape users get equal time!
15. SLODOUN - A new utility for disk users who want to get the
easy-to-handle 500 baud capability of tape systems.
20. SOWING MACHINE - The greatest simulator since Mars Rover
Adventure.
22. DATELINE: ASTEROID ALPHA - News from the chrome-and-plastic
mines.
26. NEWS FROM POKER TABLE SOFTWARE, INC. -- by David Bush again.
28. RADIO FLAK TAPE BASIC - GET, OPEN, CLOSE, PUT, KILL, and GO
NORTH commands.
31. A FAREWELL TO HARMS - Yes, friends, we do have a last page!
COMING NEXT MONTH:
those nasty little "five days"
--- this space reserved for MEM SIZE ---
2
BIG HIVE SOFTWARE
by Bill Hoagie
In response to the current influx of cutesy in the market
today, Bill Hoagie and Jeff Con-you have decided to FIGHT
BACK with ---
"GARY COLEMAN ATTACK"
Thrill to the sound of the dying spreader of cute-pollu-
tion as he cries, "What you talkin' about, dad?!" Watch the
low-res brains fly out of his head as you erase that trans-
fixed smile from his face! But watch out! If you get too good,
li'l Gary will yell for his dad, and then you're in big
trouble! (No, his dad does not look like a flagship!!)
Comes with VOICE sound effects such as, "How can you resist
a smile like this?", along with responses such as, "Like
this!! POW!" It's joystick compatible, but only if you know
how to go in and change the PEEK locations so they will read
off of the joystick. The tape version even saves the high
score for later use! (Whatever the later use might be...)
So get "GARY COLEMAN ATTACK!" It's one program that puts
"cute" in its place!
PRICE: $15.95 for one copy, or $4.95 for five copies (we'd
just love to get them off of our hands!
Big Hive Software
PO Box: about a foot cube
Van Doren, CA 4A00H
(213)-555-HINT (look at the first 3 digits
and dial them...)
3
80-REMarks
Dear 80-femto:
On your first two issues, you had this beautiful cover
depicting the words, "80-Femtocomputing." Now, you have this
boring, block-lettered cover saying, "80-Femto." I'd like to
know what happened.
--- Concerned
Dear Concerned:
We here at 80-Femto have a tradition. It's called, "Go
for whatever is cheapest." So what if our cover looks weird
and boring? It helps keep it separate from our first two
issues!
Dear 80-Finkto:
You dirty rat! That's the second time you've sent me an
issue without a last page! So far, I've missed the secret to
immortality and how to telekinese objects by thought! If you
do that once more, you're gonna receive that famous "letter-
bomb" you talked about in your first two issues!
--- Peeved
Dear Peeve Brain:
Don't worry. This issue is 100% guaranteed to have a last
page. If your copy doesn't have one, just go to the place you
bought it from, show the clerk the bad copy, and listen to
him say, "We sell all magazines as is!"
By the way, I'm glad you aren't sending any of those clair-
voyant letters like our friend Concerned did!
4
80-REMarks
Dear 80-Femto:
I really enjoyed running your "dice simulator" program.
I've always needed a program that would generate a random
number from one to six, and now I have one! Unfortunately,
it had a few bugs in it, and I have corrected them. Viz:
10 RANDOM:PRINTRND(6);:INPUTX:GOTO10
The above one-liner will do the job faster and more eff-
iciently than the program you had. Thanks again!
--- Corrector
The writer of the above letter was put in a mental insti-
tution just six short hours after we received the letter. We
don't know how or why he got there.
And if you'll believe that, you'll also believe that
Malcom X was a lifetime member of the Ku Klux Klan!
Deaw 80-Femtow:
What's 2 and 2?
--- Me
Dear Fellow Five-Year-Old:
2 and 2 is 2. Try typing in, "PRINT 2 AND 2," and see if
you don't get that! █
5
TROFF
In response to the movie, "TRON," TRaSh-80 users have at
last made the movie:
Thrill to the continuing advertures of Flynn as he tries
to break ten thousand points at light-cycles!
"Definitely the worst movie I've ever seen!"
--- People's Star Enquirer
"It really turned me off!"
--- Jeff Boeing, Tracer
"Really not all that bad, considering TRaSh-80 graphics."
--- 80-Femtocomputing
"What's 2 and 2?"
--- Me
6
MOVIE REVIEW
I'll give you one guess as to which movie we're reviewing.
Wrong! We're reviewing "TROFF," the freshest and most inno-
vative computer movie ever made since "You and your Eniac."
In this movie, Flynn, our TRON hero, decides to try his
luck at the new TRON video game being marketed by Midway.
Finding the game very similar to the experience he had in
the computer, he tries to bring Tron himself out of the com-
puter and into the real world by means of the same laser the
M.C.P. used on him.
However, Tron is not very used to the real world, although
Flynn did give him some idea of what the world outside would
be like. The first thing Tron does is enter himself in a
frisbee tournament. He fails miserably, since he thought the
objective was to throw the frisbee at the judges, and not
by them. He did, however, manage to blow a few of them up.
The next thing he does is learn how to program a TRaSh-80
by using the Level 1 manual. However, Tron can't read any
English; the only language he was ever taught was binary.
So, Flynn returns once more to the matter-creating laser
and brings Bit into the real world to help him read.
However, on the way back to Radio Flak, Bit wanders off
and Flynn loses him in a polyhedra dice store. Realizing that
he must get Bit returned to the computer, or destroyed, before
someone buys him and uses him in a role-playing game, Flynn
returns to the laser one last time to bring the Tank out
of the computer. In the process of doing this, though, he
ends up bringing in a Space Paranoid along with the tank.
The Paranoid leaves the building and begins wreaking havok
on the city, and Flynn knows that he must stop him with the
7
Movie Review
tank before he goes out to get rid of Bit.
Meanwhile, Tron is getting tired of waiting for Flynn
to arrive with Bit, so he begins to look around the Radio
Flak store. While looking at a six-inch high likeness of
himself, he bumps into Alan, his user. The two warmly
embrace each other, having never seen one another before,
and they go off to Silicon Valley and live happily ever
after.
Flynn, however, is still having problems. He found Bit
- or rather, Bit found him - and now they're in the tank
together trying to locate the fast-moving Space Paranoid.
Finally, after playing twenty questions with Bit, Flynn
discovers exactly the whereabouts of the Paranoid: inside a
K-Mart.
This then evolves into a wild chase scene, with the
Paranoid and the tank crashing through the isles and sending
various shoppers flying through windows. Finally, the chase
leads out of the store and through the city, eventually
ending up in - place of places - the Encom building with
the matter-creating laser. Tripping a secret access code,
the Paranoid sends the tank and its contents back into the
computer via the laser. The movie ends with Flynn, Bit, and
the tank all being De-Resed utterly by the new M.C.P. that
Flynn himself developed to replace the old one, while the
Paranoid is still roaming free and Tron and Alan are still
living happily ever after.
Probably the worst thing about this movie was the fact
that all of the pictures of Bit, the Space Paranoid, and
the Tank were done on a TRaSh-80. The movie itself is really
not all that bad, considering TRaSh-80 graphics. Other than
that, the theatre's popcorn was awful. █
8
AANT EATER SOFTWARE
KLINGON ATTACK: Level II plus 16 K minus
Model I plus English language
The Klingon empire has taken over the federation, thanks
to your lack of skill at Another Star-Trak Game. Armed only
with a hand phaser set on "annoy," you must subdue the
entire Klingon main fleet. You find a transporter, beam
aboard one of their battle cruisers, and then it's battle
time! Quickly, you knock out your first klingon soldier by
a surprise attack from the rear, and steal his phaser, which
has a few more settings than your own. And just think, you
only have about 55,678 Klingons to go!
PRICE: $ 55,678 (or your old hand phaser)
DRAGON SEARCH: only for tape because of this issue
It's time for another D & D swords & sorcery type adven-
ture that doesn't have any real sorcery and where all the
swords that you find are either foils or are so rusted over
that the slightest touch causes them to crumble. Armed only
with your wits, and that certainly isn't much, you must
destroy the nasty dragon Sū-ba-rū. Will you be able to kill
him before sunset, or will you have to wait another day to
see if you can kill him before sunset again?
PRICE: twenty gold pieces (g.p.)
ASTRO BLASTER: Level I & up 4 K tape
Model I & up machine language
Forget it. You don't really want this program.
9
CHROMATES
Here we go:
CrO2 Cr2O7 uh...uh...let's see...I promised 23
new formulas...uh...uh...that's two, right?...uh...how
about...naw, already done that....uh...oh, forget it!
CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2
CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2
CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2 CrO2
CrO2 CrO2 CrO2
There! That's twenty-one, plus two at the top, makes
twenty-three! Whew!
Now for what I really wanted to say:
Get new "Horizontal Line" for your TRaSh-80! Why spend
costly time copying this gem of a program from your Level
1 manual? It comes with loading instructions and directions
on how to move the line around, along with how to lengthen
it and shorten it. All-BASIC, instead of that icky machine
language that runs much too fast anyway. Uses the TRaSh-80's
brilliant, resonant low-res black-and-white graphics so the
line really stands out! With sound, but only if you listen
to the output port after typing in CSAVE.
┌──────────────────────┐
│ │
│ │ Actual-size picture
│ │
│ │ of a chromate molecule
│ │ │
│ │ ◄───────────┘
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
└──────────────────────┘
10
INSTANTANEOUS SOFTWARE
HARDWARE MANAGER: Extended BASIC 65 K (tape of course)
Color Computer Mind Language
Tired of all that stupid Color Computer hardware coming
out for your TRaSh-80 Color? Like stringy floppies (barf me
out!) and 64 K RAM expansions (gag me with a (fill in) !)
and - horror of horrors - disk drives (fer certain!)!!!!!!!
Well, then you need the new Color Computer version of the
late, great, Hardware Manager! This program tells you exactly
were to find that little needed hardware, and also tells
you where to tell the salesperson to put it. It also comes
with a little modification that lets you run TRSTOS 87.4
(or even TRSDOS 87.4) so that you don't need any hardware!
And if that isn't enough, the program draws out to the screen,
in large, friendly letters, "DON'T PANIC DUMP!" With sound!
PRICE: Er...well...uh...it really is a nice program!
NOT ANOTHER HARDWARE MODIFICATION: The usual
This is what Instantaneous Software is famous for! We
have nothing but hardware modifications, and programs des-
igned to run on them. And now, we're giving you the same
bull feathers again! But this time, we've added a twist,
because you have no idea exactly what this particular hard-
ware modification is! Could be a disk drive (yecch), could
be a memory expansion, could be a line printer, could even
be a sledge hammer to take care of that nasty keyboard bounce.
Remember our motto: Take a chance with us, if you can rig
your RND command in your favor!
PRICE: Also unknown! (Surprise!)
This advertizement continued next page...same time...same...
11
Instantaneous Software
ELEVATOR PENETRATOR STIMULATOR SIMULATOR
Made by John M. Ator so that he could popularize his
own name. This game program, playable only if you have 64
K, of course, puts you in an elevator with a joystick con-
trol, viewscreen, weapons system, and jammed door. You
must PENETRATE an enemy installation, STIMULATE their incre-
dibly sexy member-of-the-opposite-sex high leader, and then
SIMULATE reproduction so that you can break off the royal
strain, which by this time has developed hemophilia all over
the place. Then, of course, you have to open the elevator
door, which is where your strength, agility, and hand-eye
coordination really come in, because you only have two min-
utes to open it before the muzak drives you certifiably
insane. With sound effects (like "The Sound of Muzak").
PRICE: Yeah big...
Instantaneous Software
(not the same as "William's")
1313 13th street
Los Angeles, Denmark 000-1
1-(555)-678-9101112 (give or take a digit)
12
TRSTOS 87.4
"If you can't say something nice, then say something
nasty."
The above line was written by an ancient Latvian philos-
opher in the year 456 B.C.E. (We could tell - it was marked
as such). Notice something about the way it's structured?
I don't know about you, but since this is a computer maga-
zine, it looks like an IF-THEN statement in BASIC to me. You
see? Even in the ancient days of philosophical Latvia, they
used computer languages. So there. Nyaah!
By now many of you out there are probably asking, "Why
is this nitwit talking about an ancient Latvian twerp when
this article is about TRSTOS 87.4?" Well, I'll tell ya:
because!
Anywho, it seems that the TRaSh-80 company has come thr-
ough once again with this absolute finale ultimate operating
system permutation. Even though this is their very first (and
hopefully last) Tape Operating System (TOS for the thick
heads out there), they persisted in calling it "Version 87.4"
in honor of the dictatorial DOS counterpart they created.
The system itself lives up to the expectations of all who
have tried TRSDOS 87.4 and used it to take over alien worlds.
All the familiar commands are here (GET, PUT, OPEN,CLOSE,
KILL, GO NORTH, etc.), and the system impliments them in
exactly the same way that TRSDOS 87.4 does. The only limi-
tation seems to be the operating speed. It takes well over
a full minute to load the TOS in from tape, even at Sorta
High baud (1217½ bits/sec). If you want to use tape BASIC
(see the article coming up), that takes another one minute,
13
TRSTOS 87.4
thirty-three-and-a-third seconds of loading time. And
then the fun part: memory restrictions!
Like most versions of DOS (or TOS), TRSTOS 87.4 takes up
a little over 8 K of RAM. When implimenting tape BASIC on
top of this, the free memory (especially in non-expanded
systems) is severely limited. I loaded both into my 16 K
system, and found that it left me with two free bytes with
which to do whatever I pleased.
Still, it's nice to have a computer who talks like a HAL
9000, knows your every thought, and sometimes demolishes
entire star systems of its own volition. One nice advantage
of a TOS over a DOS is that a TOS can never accidentally
crash your tapes, especially when the tape drive is turned
off. However, as you have probably guessed, TRSTOS 87.4 over-
looks deactivated systems as simply having minor obstructions,
turns them on, and proceeds uninhibited to charge boldly
through at your whim and crash the tape anyway. One word of
warning: do not use a tape recorder that can record in the
fast-forward mode!
TRSTOS 87.4 is fast, slow, efficient, stupid, intelligent,
useless, and powerful. It has more adjectives going for it
than a common noun. Just remember to keep it well fed and
remain its friend. User-mean files oft times leave home and/
or lease bombers to use on your property. █
14
ROOSKY SOFTWARE
REVOLT! Level IV.V 57K or so (tape or safety pin)
Model II.V Russian Language
Tired of succumbing to the whims of capitalistic society,
but think the communist nations have all got the wrong idea?
Then Revolt! is for you! You probably read about this game
in the previous issue of 80-Femtocomputing, and got a bad
impression of it. That's because you didn't read the 375
pages of documentation (which look suspiciously like Marx's
"The Communist Manifesto!")!
You start out with x number of soldiers, y number of
weapons, and z number of supplies. Don't know what these
variables mean? Then read the documentation!
It comes with a joystick option as well as the normal
sentence-entry interpreter found in most adventures. Don't
listen to those pansies in the White House! REVOLT!
PRICE: 19.95 containers of Russian vodka (or yogurt)
Roosky Software
(not the same as "Williams")
1917 Castro lane
San Dune, El Salvador
phone: 1-(213)-555-4A00H
Ask about our special rates for members of the communist party!
15
SLODOUN
Since this issue is all pro-tape and anti-disk, the
disk user out there by now are probably feeling pretty
guilty about hogging all that baud to themselves. I mean,
some of us just can't afford sixty thousand baud! And then
you come down on us for being so slow! Hunh! Why, you oughta
be boiled in crankcase oil, you dirty, no-good...ahem! Now,
on with our story....
If you disk users are feeling exceptionally guilty right
now (which you should, you little bastard swords!), you're
probably thinking to yourselves, "Gee whiz, how can I slow
down my disk drive so that it goes at the same baud rate as
tape?" Well, disk users, you came to the right article!
Slodoun is actually quite a simple little program. Oper-
ated from superzap or superduperzap or crapzap, the user
simply inserts kilometer-long delay loops between the data
input steps. The only problem with this seems to be that the
disk is still operating at full speed, and therefore about
99¼% of the data is missed. But then again, who needs old
data anyway? Just convert the disks to about sixtieth-den-
sity, and you'll be able to keep up with the new-and-improved
five hundred bit/sec baud rate. Either that, or get Aant
Eater's new "Slodoun" for hardware!
Aant Eater hard-and-soft ware is becoming so confident
that Slodoun will catch on (either in software or hardware
form) that they've begun to produce 1/60 density disk pro-
grams. Their greatest hit so far is "Super Duper Hero," of
which they've sold a monstrous two copies (and what with the
big thing on pirating in this country, who knows how many
people now own this program?). Below is an exerp from a
16
Slodoun
typical game (nice way to seigue, eh?):
NONAME: We must stop Captain Communist before he releases his
goon platoon on the world!
SUPERGUY: I'll stop him with my freeze breath!
NONAME: You don't have any freeze breath.
SUPERGUY: Why doesn't anybody tell me these things!
ANNOUNCER: Sometimes, even your best friends won't tell you...
CAPTAIN COMMUNIST: Shut up, capitalist swine!
CAPT. COM'S ZAPGUN: Zap!
ANNOUNCER: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!
ANNOUNCER'S BODY: Sizzle!
SUPERGUY: Oh oh, he's just killed the announcer!
NONAME: Good riddance!
SPEEDY GONZALES: But señores, he iss getting away!
NONAME: Well, don't just stand there like a lump of unstable
molecules! Go get him!
SPEEDY: Okay, I do that! Ándale, ándale, hija, hija!!
SUPERGUY: I'll stop him with my super speed!
NONAME: You don't have any super speed.
SUPERGUY: Oh. Gee whiz, what do I have?
NONAME: A chest a few kilometers wide and a set of perfect
titanium teeth!
SUPERGUY: Okay, then, I'll stop him with my super teeth!
SPEEDY: No need, señor. I jave got heem.
CAPT. COM: You fools! You can't possibly hope to stop me! My
plan to destroy the world is perfect, and I won't deal
with incompetents such as you!
SPEEDY: But señor, in three seconds I jave run after you,
caught you, tied you up, secured your goon platoon, and
17
Slodoun
brought you back!
CAPT. COM: But even as we speak, my arch friend Lex Badguy
is on the other side of the Earth destroying it!
NONAME: How?
CAPT. COM: Don't ask me! He's the genius! I trust him; if
he says he's gonna destroy the world, he'll do it.
SUPERGUY: We've got to stop him!
SPEEDY: Okay, I weel take you to heem!
(The screen turns white and black, and the user is given
a feeling of incredible speed)
SPEEDY: Well, here we are!
SUPERGUY: Wow, that was fast!
NONAME: Too fast. Superguy, you just stepped in something.
SUPERGUY: Great Scott! It's craptonite! The radiation is...
affecting...my body! Can't...talk without...using strings
of...three periods...between my statements!
(Instantly, Speedy creates a super-duper whirlwind which
sucks the deadly craptonite up and out of the atmosphere)
SUPERGUY: Thanks, Speedy G.! I needed that.
NONAME: Look! Up in the sky!
LEX BADGUY: No, no, you super fools! Look over here!
SUPERGUY: Great Scott! It's Lex Badguy!
LEX: Congrats, noodles, on reading the subtitles!
SUPERGUY: Well, Lex, it looks like it's about time we had
that big fight we've always been talking about!
(The tone generator immediately begins outputting Batman
music as the words "Biff!" "Oof!" and "Wham!" randomly
appear on the screen. In a few short seconds, it's all
18
Slodoun
over, and a low-resolution Superguy is lying unconscious.)
LEX: It just goes to show you that a wide chest and perfect
teeth are no match for a good right hook.
NONAME: Oh yeah? Then try this!
(Noname instantly leaps across the six meters of distance
between herself and Lex Badguy. Startled, Lex fails to
move out of the way before Noname's vicious, deadly
hands dig into his flesh and literally tear him to
pieces. Small low-res fragments fly out and hit the CRT
with a digsgusting noise.)
SUPERGUY: What happened?
NONAME: I've proven once again that injustice and evil are
no match for...the super duper heroes!
SPEEDY GONZALES: Oh oh! Here comes the tweest ending! We are
being attacked by a flying floppy disk!
NONAME: Oh, no! Not again! It's TRSDOS 87.4!
SUPERGUY: Don't worry - I'll stop it with my freeze breath! █
19
BAD LODE SOFTWARE
Let's hear it out there for:
SOFTWARE
"The tape user's friend"
(mainly because I don't own disk!)
Just look at our lengthy line of
medium-quality softare:
1. All-Terrain Vehicle (a multi-arcade game)
2. Another Star-Trek Game (once again...)
3. Eighteen nineteen! separate adventures (twenty-one if you
count the Trash Island trilogy three times)
4. Anti-Aircraft Turret Strike (Let's hear it out
there for 4K BASIC programs!)
5. Goon Cresta (Just kidding - we don't have it)
6. Empire Wars (Bleaccccch!!!)
Write to us - or better yet, don't! We hate junk mail!
20
SOWING MACHINE
Well, what did you siriously expect? A blue-white star?
I mean, I'm only doing another one of those monogamous
product reviews like you see in here all the time! Gee whiz!
After all, nobody's forcing you to turn to this page and
read this article. So why are you reading it, you schmoe?
Get outta here! Go read a commercial or something!
Anywho, Pinecone Software, the makers of Mars Rover Adven-
ture, Basic on Basic, and Snail Attack in Slow Motion, have
really outdone themselves this time with regard to "accurate
slowness." As the titles suggests, "Sowing Machine" has to
do with planting your crops. The game is all text, but shows
cute little pictures of farm equipment in the top seven lines
of the screen (which will not scroll away on a model III if
you do a little poking around before you run this program).
At the start of the game, you choose which seeds to buy
with your allotment of twenty-seven dollars and fifty-six
Italian granookles. Then, after waiting a full thirty minutes
to make the arrangements and get the seeds back to your farm,
you can start plowing. Then the real fun comes in: the full
slowness of this program is at last shown when you wait six
months until the harvest.
Not wanting to run through the entire game, I decided to
look at the code,which was written in Basic-on-Basic. Usually,
the game ends in disaster when the sudden summer frost sets
in and kills everything you have (the frost is about the
temperature of liquid nitrogen). If you are extremely lucky,
though, your crop will survive and you'll make about four-and-
a-half dollars selling it. Now that's what I like: a real
challenge! █
21
TRaSh-80 HARDWEAR
THE VULCAN CANNON HARD DISK DRIVE
Tired of those old micro- and nano-computers of yester
decade that boasted mere "Megabytes" of storage on a Winches-
ter drive? Are the few hundred nanobytes of storage you get
on a laser disc getting a bit cramped with those "Real"
programs of yours that really know how to use up core? Well
then, this little beauty is for you! The vulcan cannon is
to the Winchester what the Winchester was to the musket.
A single vulcan cannon hard disk can store 300 Terabytes
per side, which means a total of 1½ quadrillion bytes of
storage. And these are the big, macho, industry standard
100 bit bytes, not those wimpy 16 or 32 bit models you saw
in antique shops. This is perfect for TRaSh-80 model VII
and model VIII computers that can nearly handle 100 bit
_
bytes and programs that take more than 10M of them. Don't
let the competition fool you! Vulcan Cannon Hard Drives are
the one to buy for the serious programmer-who-wants-to-store-
everything-he-knows-in-one-system!
POWER GRID PLUS
The hardware modification known as "Power Grid," the cute
little device that lets you draw power from Con Ed without
them knowing it, was a resounding success! And now we offer
the improved version of this award-winning pseudolegal device:
Power Grid Plus! With all the features of Power Grid, the
Plus version also has brownout, the boosting modification
which lets you drain whole cities for running those really
"Big" programs, as well as your subatomic accelerator. Designed
by 01567312, this is a virtual basic necessity.
22
DATELINE: ASTEROID ALPHA
Ever since their discovery in Julaugust 1983, the C-30
tape mines on asteroid Alpha have caused a complete reversal
of the computer revolution. Despite the 5¼" disk mines sup-
plying Earth with over half its floppy disk production, the
tape mines are so much richer that tapes can now be sold for
fractions of a cent each and the manufacturer still makes a
profit!
Here's what some of the people working there have to say
about the Hardware Revolution and Asteroid Alpha:
"Well, this place sure 'n heck is big. About twice as big
as Asteroid Beta. I go out here every morning at 4:30 pm and
strat diggin' up a storm. We get some real purty lookin' tapes
out o' these mines, dontcha think?"
"Hey, you got anything to eat? I'm starved. I haven't
eaten a byte (har har har) since breakfast time and all the
vending machines are shut down. Could you signal a nearby
supply ship or something? I'm starved."
"You'd think they'd have the decency to give us some arti-
ficial gravity, wouldn't you? But no-O-o! They just send us
out in 1982 space suits (which are horribly out of fashion)
armed with a few clamps and magnetic shoes. What the heck
are our magnetic shoes supposed to hold on to anyway? This
is a chrome-and-hydrocarbon asteroid, not an iron one! Say,
you wouldn't happen to have anything to eat on you, would
you?"
As you can see, the employees were very concerned about
their overwhelming production of C-30 cassette tapes.
'Way back in the dark ages of 1983, a software company
named Avenger Irrational (Snott Adama, Inc.) for some then-
23
Dateline: Asteroid Alpha
too-mysterious-to-do-anything-but-think-that-the-company-had-
gone-certifyably-insane reason laid down a property claim to
asteroid Beta. Later that year as you know (unless you are
a blithering moron) the mine produced its first floppy disk
of 5¼" size. The mines on asteroid Beta turned out to be so
much richer in 5¼" (and 8") disks than those on asteroid
Alpha that Avenger Irrational has been able to completely
undersell everyone else in terms of disk-stored programs.
Since this is the tapes issue of 80 femto, though, we
were seriously considering burning down AI's stockpile of
cheapo disks and destroying the asteroid they got them from.
But don't tell them, OK?
Many astronomers have spectulated as to the origin of the
pre-made tapes and disks of the asteroid belt. Some of the
more prominent theories follow:
"I think the asteroid belt is a giant parking lot for
extraterrestrials. What we're doing by mining the minor
planets is actually opening up their space ships and taking
the stuff from their computers. If you remember, one of the
tapes had some strange message recorded on it which I could
have sworn sounded like a bit or two. If we don't stop mining
the asteroids the aliens are going to find out and come to
Earth and disintegrate us with their Eludium PU-36 explosive
space modulators!"
"It's so obvious, you secular dummies! We designed tapes
and disks the way we did because they were at the root of
God's plan for the universe! When we mine other planets,
which are of course far more heavenly and uncorrupted than
Earth, we're naturally going to find tapes and disks because
24
Dateline: Asteroid Alpha
God placed them there at the time of the divine creation for
mankind to find when He chose the time of our worthiness. My
full account can be read in the Heavenly Journal, if you can
read Latin.
The above theorist was recently machine-gunned down by a
mob of Catholics who claimed he was a heretic.
"Well, there's no reason why it couldn't have happened!
Back when the solar system was just a condensing cloud of
interstellar gas, there were just enough variations in the dens-
ity and gravity in just the right places that they formed
whole takes and disks in the asteroid belt. I've run a com-
puter simulation of this account (on a TRaSh-80, of course!)
and I've figured the odds against it. The chances of this
occurring are not zero! And since this could have occurred,
there's no reason to suppose it didn't. QED."
"Actually, Avenger Irrational had a tremendous overstock
of tapes, and a smaller overstock of disks. If word had ever
gotten out about this, they would've been laughed right out
of the software industry. So, they proposed a new plan: buy
asteroid Beta, and when you fly out there to 'scout out the
property,' drop some tapes and a few disks on asteroid Alpha.
That way, you can claim that your overstock came from an
extraterrestrial mine on asteroid Beta and not from The Tape
Company here on Terra Firma. Have you ever actually seen
them working on asteroid Beta? No! The security is so thick
you can't get near the place. And have we ever tried looking
for tapes on disks on asteroid Gamma? or Delta? or Theeta?
No! This scandal is a great big plot put out by that pinko
AI! Commy scum!" █
25
THE PROGRAM STOAR
Er...uh...Well, we only market programs that are featured
on the front cover of 80 femto during the current month. This
month, though (the last month, I hear), we are in the midst
of an "annual" tapes issue which has no featured programs on
the front cover. So...no programs. Sorry.
However, if you'd be interested in some of the hard stuff
(you know, hardware), we can get you som real great under-
ground connections. They'll prove they're underground types
by riding the subway to your pickup location! How'd you like
a memory expansion kit to 32 or 48 K? Sure, the Nationalist
World Government outlawed 'em, but who's gonna know? Or
maybe you'd like a second-hand vulcan cannon drive for half
the list price.
Get in touch. We're in the Yellow Pages under "Seamy Out-
fits." Or write to this address:
The Program Stoar
5746 Sunset Bl.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
No tricks! I'm watching you!
26
NEWS FROM POKER TABLE SOFTWARE, INC.
by David Bush
Yes, PTI's really done it this time! No more hard wiring,
no more AlbatrossDOS, no more FISHNet, no more TMS-8F, and
no more Snott Nolan Adama (formerly Scott Nolan Adama until
he change his name to avoid getting flak from "The Mob").
This time, they've really outdone their Sri-Kandan selves
with the mose innovative thing ever created by sentient beings
anywhere in the universe.
It's SO new and innovative that they won't tell me what
it is!
I've had some ideas, though. It might be a Snobol program
that figures out everything the worker has to know to succeed
without even trying, called "SnoJob." Or it might be Albatr-
ossDOS 1.2, the version that even TRSDOS 87.4 must claim a
weak second-place to. Or, even worse, it might be the sequel
to TROFF, TRINBETWEEN, where Tron and Allen try to discover
the bit status that lies between off and on (½), which would
double the storage capacity of every digital computer ever
designed.
But personally, I think it's just POST MAN, another one
of those programs from the "Oh, man!" software package that
says "Ha, you got ripped off!" and locks up the keyboard.
Whatever it is, though, I'm sure the "Crunch, Scrunch,
and Concentrate" people will compress it into a couple of
bytes and sell it for twice the PTI price and make three
times the money. Then things'll be back to normal around
here again. █
27
AVENGER IRRATIONAL
starring
Snott Adama
(formerly Scott Adama until he changed his name to get away
from The Mob)
ADVENTURE 21: Planetary Nebula Adventure
Your spacecraft cannot go into hyperspace (ever seen one
that could?!). Deep within the heart of the Bubble Nebula,
an urgent cry for help is given. Can you survive the years
of total boredom as you plummet head-long through the glowing
sphere of gas and dust? Can you begin to comprehent the low
density of the "cloud" whose molecules and atoms are so
widely dispersed that you can count them as they pass by?
Will you dare to brave the alien environment which is closer
to a vacuum than any Terrestrial pumps can achieve? We chal-
lenge you to try!
PRICE: Please, no references to asteroid Beta despite the
program's subject matter! 25¢ tape, 35¢ disk, as usual (I
never thought the software wars would really go this far!).
Avenger Irrational
In the Alley behind Rocky's Pizza,
5746 Sunset Bl.
Los Angeles, RA 90028
(ask for "Snott")
No tricks! I'm watching you!
28
RADIO FLAK TAPE BASIC
The TRaSh-80 company, more commonly misnomered Radio
Flak, has never been known for its strong software support
of its products. The best Model I/III/IV program they've
come out with is Invadesion Force, which is bugged, and
they expect us to debug our software using T-Bug, the
Debugger of the '60s. Son when they announced they were
entering the Tape BASIC market, I was a bit skeptical.
And boy, was I right! Radio Flak Tape BASIC, more com-
monly acronymized as RaFTaB, is hardly more than Level II.V
BASIC with a few useless disk commands thrown in. OPENing
a file is perfectly OK when you're working with a disk (or
a virtual ROM disk), but OPENing a tape file just doesn't
make sense. When OPEN "I" is used, the screen blanks out
and the program freezes up until the "Play" button on the
tape recorder is pressed (after five seconds of this not
happening, Tape BASIC will flash the message, "Hey, stupid,
push play on the tape recorder!" for a few milliseconds in
line 0 of the screen). Similarly, OPEN "O" requires you to
push Play & Record.
Now while the tape file is opened, the tape drive is
chugging merrily along, the REM concrol continuously trans-
mitting a signal, whether you're doing tape I/O or not. This
means (especially at interpreter speeds) that outputs will
leave blank spots on the tape and inputs will miss vital
information if the program's blank spots don't coincide with
the tape's. CLOSE, fortunately, returns everything to normal
and waits until you push "Stop" on the tape recorder --
excuse me, low-speed linear data transfer drive unit.
29
Radio Flak Tape BASIC
GET and LOAD will search all over the tape for the
file you want, from beginning to end. PUT and SAVE are even
worse. They have you play (not record) the tape to the com-
puter from beginning to end, until they find a blank spot
big enough for their data to be stored in. If no such blank
spot exists, a "Tape full error reading drive 1 (or 2)"
results. If these is such a blank spot, it has you play
back the tape from the beginning until it finds where the
blank spot starts, then it tells you to push Play & Record
and finally transfers the data. This function is usually
foolproof if you realize one thing:
Radio Flak assumes you've been buying only Radio Flak
products for your computer; this means certified-leaderless-
type tapes. If PUT or SAVE hit the leader they are likely
to assume it's a blank spot and get you to dump the data
there. Not the best setup for someone whe reads 80 femto,
which I believe is outlawed from Radio Flak magazine stands.
KILL searches through the tape until it finds the file,
then asks you to rewind the tape just a smidge, then goes
over the title of the program (but not the program itself)
with a 00H steamroller and plands a 5DH flag which I am
told is a "Freebie" signal to SAVE and PUT but which I have
yet to see be proven. GO NORTH does just that -- it magnet-
izes the entire tape (and tape drive read-head) until it's
completely North-polarized. These items are thereafter
completely useless for data storage, but make great combin-
ation degaussers/compasses.
Tape BASIC is not for us macho tape users. TRSTOS is ok,
but give me a Level II.V BASIC any day. █
30
MICRO-CON
Wordquasar: Model II, XII, XVIa, XVIb, or MM
Machine lingo, requires some DOS or other
The famous word processor that would rather use meaning-
less on-screen control characters than the special effects
of the computer it's customized for! Who needs real under-
lined or highlighted characters for underlined or boldfaced
line-printer effects when you can use carat-S or carat-B
on almost any generic system so much more easily? This
piece of software might be overpriced, especially the
(yecch) tape version, but hey! We're MicroCon!
PRICE: $899.00, and that's the truth! (tape is 6½¢ less)
Numberquasar: Model I, II, III, IIII, IIIII, IIIIII, or IIIIIII
Requires some version of Pilot
Number processors are the new wave of the '80s! Believe
me! WE say so! So before the number processor police break
down your door and take you in for not hav ing the genuine
MicroCon Numberquasar word processor, rush right out and
buy one of these beauties! We aren't yet sure what it does,
but I'm sure you'll figure out something....
PRICE: only $699.00 this time (less 6½¢ if tape)
MicroCon
5746 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
1-(213)-555-CONU
that's
1-(213)-555-CONU
order now!
31
A FAREWELL TO HARMS
Just a good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm,
Been in trouble with the law since the day they was born,
Makin' their way, trappin' their kill,
Someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will....
'Cause they're the Dukes of M*A*S*H,
They run moonshine or hash,
And you can take or leave them as you please!
(sung to the tune of "Suicide is Painless")
Well, that's just about it. When a computer magazine has
three or four articles relating to movies, super-heroes, and
TV shows, you get the idea that the author's just about
run out of material.
These little signals let me, your friendly neighborhood
Roger M. Wilcox, know that it was about time to pack it in.
I love long goodbys, but I don't think you do, so I'll just
spare you the details and leave you with this one parting
thought:
If mankind had never existed, would we still have cassette
data tapes and think Australia was the biggest island?
Author's notes from 2014:
- Page 0: The change from "80 Femtocomputing" with the 80 in swooshy script,
to "80 femto" with the 80 in block lettering, paralleled the same change on the
cover of 80 Microcomputing starting with their June/July 1982 issue. I
guess the publishers of 80 micro thought it was cooler and hipper or
something.
- Radio Shack cassettes were always labelled with their total
recording time. A C-60 cassette, for example, could record 30 minutes on side A
and 30 minutes on side B. It wasn't uncommon for TRS-80 software cassettes to
be very short, e.g. C-15 or even C-10. C-5A, on the other hand, is the name of
the largest military cargo plane ever built.
- "Annual Tapes Issue" was a play on 80 Microcomputing's annual games
issue.
- Page 2: The crack about Gary Coleman's dad not looking like a flagship was
because every single game that Big Five Software put out had a flagship
in it somewhere. It was always the same design: An oblate spheroid 3 pixels
high, with a pixel moving left-to-right across the middle. If that sounds small
to you, remember that a pixel on the TRS-80 was 1/48th of the height of the
entire screen.
- Van Doren, CA was a reference to Vans tennis shoes. They were very popular
among Southern California skateboarders. When my brother wore them, he insisted
that they weren't shoes, they were Vans.
- Page 5: TRS-80 Level II BASIC had two debugging commands that enabled (or
disabled) printing out each line number as it began execution. They called it
the "tracer." Typing in the command TRON would turn the TRacer ON, and typing
in TROFF would turn the TRacer OFF.
- "People's Star Enquirer" was a play on the TV ads for The Star, a
supermarket checkout-stand tabloid that competed with the National
Enquirer. Their slogan was, "It's bigger than Life and more fun than
People!"
- Tracer (Jeff Boeing) was my favorite Champions character of all time. You
can find his character sheet here,
and his origin story here. I liked this
particular character so much, I still use "Tracer" as my online handle to this
very day (assuming someone else hasn't taken it already, grumble grumble).
- Page 8: "Dragon Search" was a play on a text adventure named
Dragon Quest. (It's amazing how many vaguely-Tolkien-esque things have been
named "Dragon Quest" over the years. There was the 1970 Anne MeCaffrey novel,
the 1980 paper-and-pencil fantasy role-playing game, the 1986 Nintendo console
video game, the 2009 tongue-in-cheek movie, and even a 1989 anime subtitled
"Legend of the Brave Abel." But I digress.)
In this adventure, you had to kill a dragon named Smeagor or some such.
Kinda sounds like a cross between Smaug and Smeagol from Tolkien. Anywho,
the ad chillingly asked, "Can you kill the dragon before sunset?", which from
my memory of playing the Scott Adams adventures The Count and Ghost
Town meant that if you couldn't, you'd have to (gasp!) go to sleep! And
then get up the next day! Oh, the horror!
- Page 11: Sorry, same-sex-preferers!
- "Simulate reproduction" came from my original 1980 draft of
Battlestar CRAP-tica. In the scene
where Captain Appalling [sic] shoots a beatiful female alien, then shoots a
Pylon, to emphasize how these two threats really were one and the same, he goes
even further by getting on top of the dead Pylon and "simulating reproduction."
There's a reason I cut that scene out of the 1983 rewrite....
- Page 14: You may be asking yourself, "Yogurt? But Russians aren't known for
eating yogurt!" No, but back in the 1970s, Dannon yogurt had a TV advertising
campaign called "In
Soviet Georgia". They claimed that because everyone in the
Soviet-at-the-time republic of Georgia ate yogurt, they lived to impossibly old
ages, thereby proving that yogurt was health food and you should rush right out
and buy some.
- Page 16: Noname is one of my more obscure Champions™ characters. Her
character sheet is here. She's
basically an acrobatic martial artist with a generic bad attitude. I don't
think I ever played her in any of Todd's Champions sessions. If she'd been
created today, I'd imagine her being played by Scarlett Johansson in a
form-fitting black leather body suit. Rrrrowr!
- Captain Communist and his goon platoon came from the first edition of
Villains and Vigilantes, which had the dubious distinction of being the
first super hero role-playing game ever published. Captain Communist wielded
a red laser, but when he missed Super Zarny, his foe quipped, "For a commie
you're not much of a Marx-man!"
- "Sometimes, even your best friends won't tell you" came from an ancient TV
advertising campaign for either mouthwash or deodorant soap. Even I am not old
enough to remember who did the ads.
- At one point, "unstable molecules" were Marvel Comics' excuse for
every super costume. Why do Reed Richards' clothes stretch with his
body? They're made of unstable molecules. Why don't the Human Torch's clothes
catch fire? Unstable molecules. Why don't The Thing's underpants rip when he
gets punched into a brick wall by the Hulk? Unstable molecules. I'm surprised
Captain America's shield and Wolverine's claws weren't made out of unstable
molecules too.
- Page 17: Lex Badguy makes another appearance, with a slightly different
spelling of his first name, in Infra
Man. (That's my Infra Man, not the Infra Man movie that came out
of Japan in the 1980s.)
- Why did Lex Badguy call Superguy "noodles"? Because of the Elliot S! Maggin
novel Superman: Last Son of Krypton. At one point in that novel, Lex
Luthor calls Superman "supe" and then quickly adds "Soup? May I call you turkey
noodle?" He calls Superman "noodles" for the rest of the book.
- Page 19: The crossing out of "Eighteen" and replacement with "nineteen!"
was done by hand with a ball point pen, probably in 1983 as a result of me
writing The Last City.
- Like Empire Wars and Another Star-Trek Game, All-Terrain Vehicle was a real
TRS-80 game I wrote back in the day. You can play it if you have a TRS-80
emulator; the .cas file is available on my old TRS-80 games
page. (It's listed under the title "ATV".)
- I have no memory of Anti-Aircraft Turret Strike. It sounds like a homespun
variant of the "shoot down the flying arrows" game in the Level II BASIC manual
that I might have toyed with. (I know I wasn't the only one to do so; the
professionally-published World War III game Slag also used that piece
of code.)
- Page 20: The blue-white star was, of course,
Sirius.
- The "poking around" referred to the Level II BASIC command "POKE 16916,7".
This was the video display scroll protect address on the Model III.
- Page 21: You kids these days are too young to remember, but back in the
Good Old Days™, the term "Winchester drive" was practically synonymous
with hard drives. It started out as the code name for the IBM 3340 Direct
Access Storage Facility in 1973; it got its codename from the fact that had
two removable 30 megabyte modules. (Winchester 30-30, get it?)
- "Nanobytes" was, of course, a slip-up. I meant to say "gigabytes." My
friends never let me live this gaffe down. Of course, I had the last laugh.
A nanobyte would be 1/125,000,000 of a bit, which you'd think would be
nonsensical since a bit can only be zero or one and can't be subdivided. Ah,
but you would be wrong! Under information theory, it does indeed make sense to
talk about fractional bits. For example, if you take an 8000 byte message and
subject it to data compression, which results in a 5500 byte compressed
message, you could say that each byte of the original message takes an average
of 5.5 bits to encode. A 125-millionth of a bit can have meaning!
- Note the mention of a laser disc. At the time I wrote this, optical disks
were only a rumor, mentioned in hushed tones by people in "the know." The "Jim"
that I mention in my author's notes to
Messiah to Super-Human first told me about them, gushing that "We could
have data storage in the terabytes!" Neither the video laserdisc, nor
even the good old-fashioned audio Compact Disk, existed yet — let alone
CD-ROM drives.
- In real life, the vulcan cannon is the high-speed machine gun used on
fighter planes since the F-104. It has multiple barrels on a rotary cylinder
like a gatling gun, to prevent overheating. Its rate of fire is in the
thousands of rounds per minute.
- I didn't realize it at the time, but "byte" was (and still is) industry
standard for 8 bits, period. Since the Z-80 at the heart of the TRS-80 had an
8-bit data bus, I incorrectly assumed that "byte" was synonymous with data bus
width. Instead of "100 bit bytes," I really should have said "100 bit machine
words." If I had known the term "machine word" at the time.
- The M with a macron over it was the Roman numeral for one million. Or so
I thought at the time. Turns out, using a macron to multiply a Roman numeral by
1000 was a late invention. The ancient Romans had their own special symbol for
a million; it looked like four C's, followed by an I, followed by four
backwards C's.
- I'm kinda perplexed by the mention of Con Ed here. Con Edison is the
power company for New York. I lived in Santa Monica at the time, and our power
company was the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. I guess all those
episodes of Sesame Street and The Electric Company that mentioned Con Ed had
wormed their way into my subconscious.
- Page 22: "Dateline: Asteroid Alpha" was a play on "Dateline: Sri Lanka,"
an offshoot of David Busch's "News from Kitchen Table Software, Inc." based
around the fictitious facility that made the TLS-8E.
- There is no such thing as an asteroid made principally of chromium and
hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons in the Earth's crust were made by the decaying
corpses of ancient plants and animals. All the other hydrocarbons in the solar
system exist in the atmospheres of Titan and the gas giant planets. Asteroids
are either rocky, rock-and-metal, or metallic, with the metals being
primarily iron with some nickel and a few other trace metals.
- Page 24: The conspiracy theorist throwing accusations of pinko "commy"
plots was inspired by Ralph, the next door neighbor on Wait 'Til Your Father
Gets Home. He blamed everything on the commies.
- Page 25: The notion of hardware as "the hard stuff" came from a humorous
column I read way back in the early 1980s. It was a "confession" story about
the author's addiction to TRS-80 software. While in a Radio Shack trying to
get a fix (you know, a KBFIX), he saw a guy strung out beyond the bounds of
sanity. "Watch out for him," the clerk said, "He's into the hard stuff." ("You
mean?" "Yeah. He's into hardware.")
- Behold the return of 5746 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028. It's just
like watching a game show!
- Page 27: A planetary nebula has nothing to do with planets. It's the
expanding cloud of gas given off by a red giant star at the very end of its
lifetime, when it sheds half its mass into deep space. They get their name
because in a low-powered telescope, they can look like the disk of a planet,
and could be confused for a planet if you didn't know what you were looking at.
As the text here states, despite their glowy cloudlike appearance, they're
more rarefied than the best laboratory vacuum here on Earth. It's only because
they can be light-years in diameter that they show up at all.
- Page 28: "Invadesion Force" was a play on Invasion Force, a 16K TRS-80 game
sold on cassette by Radio Shack for both Level I and Level II machines. It was
one of the first TRS-80 games to appear on Radio Shack's shelves. It was a
Star Trek game called TREK-80, but with all the Star Trek references removed so
they wouldn't have to worry about getting sued by Paramount. Although written
in machine language for speed, it only polled the keyboard about once every
half second, so you had to carefully hold the keys down while you typed.
- I have no memory of "virtual ROM disks." I'm guessing that since this
magazine was set in the far distant future year of 1984, it was one of those
pieces of technology that would surely come along and make the future vastly
different from 1982.
- I'm not sure, but I think the REM control here refers to the little
unlabelled jack on the side of the cassette player. The rest of the jacks were
1/8", but this one was smaller. You plugged a special "on/off" control into
this jack. If the plug was in, but not sending a signal, the tape's motor
wouldn't run. It allowed the TRS-80 to tell the tape drive when to turn on and
off, although the user still had to manually push either Play or
Play-and-Record first. Incidentally, the signal on this line was controlled by
an electromechanical relay inside the TRS-80's CPU cabinet (in the case of the
TRS-80 Model I, this cabinet was its keyboard). A Star Trek game named
Graphictrek 2000 by Simutek actually generated "sound effects" by
toggling this relay rapidly on and off. This ticked off Michael Gersten to no
end, who was convinced it would burn out the relay. It never did burn out
mine.
- Page 30: MicroCon was a play on MicroPro. (Con vs. Pro, get it?)
- Wordquasar was a play on WordStar, a very popular word processing program
in the early-to-mid 1980s (before WordPerfect eclipsed it). Early versions
were rather quick ports to various competing platforms, such as the Kaypro and
that pipsqueak upstart 8088-based "Personal Computer" that IBM put out. (Pah!
Such an overpriced, milquetoast hardware platform will never catch on!)
The PC's monochrome display, for example, did support character
highlighting and underlining, but WordStar didn't use them; it just drew ^S and
^B to the screen around the underlined/boldfaced word. Cheapos. I can't
believe they charged hundreds of dollars for their product. I also can't
believe that I'm seeing a reference to WordStar here in the pages of 80
Femtocomputing, since our household didn't have WordStar in 1982. We got it,
along with a 256K dual-floppy-drive IBM PC to run it on, in 1983 — which
implies that despite the 1982 copyright date on the cover, I didn't finish
typing up this parody magazine until some time in '83.
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