ChipApr 22

Went on an #Aprilcot side quest today to calculate digits of pi (from https://oldbytes.space/@electron_greg/116409619073557779). I found some disk images with MSBASIC.COM and GWBASIC.EXE and tried it out. I'm guessing this is still very much operating as an 8-bit program, as the result was a leisurely 26 seconds.

I saved the MSBASIC program and GWBASIC did load it... but all the tokens were shifted around, so it required some editing. And GWBASIC was slower - 30 seconds. I'm guessing due to running in a pseudo-graphics mode. To run GWBASIC you must first load GRAPHICS.EXE, which loads some drawing routines. So despite looking nearly identical, the second screenshot here is actually in graphics mode and I think it's drawing those characters as graphics. Because you can do things like draw circles and lines on top of it.

Show threadChipApr 22

MSBASIC.COM was on a disk with a French language tutor (which I assume means the program was written in BASIC). It's a fairly basic (hah) tutorial system that tries to get you to memorize words through mnemonic devices. They are not very good.

#Aprilcot

Show threadChipApr 22

Ah, the two genders, boxing and perfume.

#Aprilcot

Show threadChipApr 22

To get GRAPHICS.EXE, I used the ACTIVITY/TUTOR disk. This is my first time using ACTIVITY, actually. My Apricot didn't have system disks with it (but it did have system disks for the Portable, weirdly), and when its hard drive was working, it just booted to DOS. It's... actually nice? Still stuck in the DOS world of file management, unfortunately, but a pretty slick launcher. And despite the mouse cursor, it works fine without a mouse.

#Aprilcot

Show threadChip

Oh, so the other part of this adventure was figuring out how to get my greaseweazle to write single-sided 70 track disks. There wasn't a definition for it, so I looked at the diskdefs and made my own. Or at least... there wasn't a definition in the stable release. Turns out @crashtestdev beat me to it last month. Thanks! :D https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/blob/master/src/greaseweazle/data/diskdefs_apricot.cfg

#Aprilcot

greaseweazle/src/greaseweazle/data/diskdefs_apricot.cfg at master · keirf/greaseweazle

Tools for accessing a floppy drive at the raw flux level - keirf/greaseweazle

GitHub
Apr 23 at 1:14amWeb