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  • Compute! (October 1981)

    Source: Compute! – Issue Number 17 – October 1981

    Compute! is a home computer magazine that got its start all the way back in 1979. Later on, it tended to be less technical than something like Byte but by today’s standards, all computer magazines were somewhat technical when this issue was published in October 1981. At the time, Compute! covered computers based on the 6502 processors such as the Commodore PET, Apple II, Atari 400/800, VIC-20 and others. This issue includes:

    Columns

    • The Editor’s Notes – Atari reduces prices in the wake of the introduction of the VIC-20 (they would ultimately lose the price war later on vs. the Commodore 64), IBM enters the personal computer market, Atari wins school contract in Minnesota, and more.
    • Computers and Society – Appropriate applications for home computers.
    • Readers Feedback – A commentary on the maturing of the computer industry and Computer Aided Instruction.
    • Ask the Readers – A question answered about the Apple II and TV interference and questions asked about video terminal options for an OSI computer, the 3040 Floppy Disk Unit for the PET, and more.
    • Basically Useful BASIC: Automatic DATA Statements For CBM and Atari – A type-in program that converts machine language code into BASIC DATA statements.
    • The Beginner’s Page – Organizing and processing data with computers.
    • VIC-20 News – The latest released for the new VIC-20 including the VIC Graphics Printer from Axiom, a new disk drive (this would become the 1540), various memory expansion cartridges, an RS-232 adapter for connecting a modem, plus lots of software including Blackjack, Slither/Superslither, Biorhythm Compatibility, Space Math, Car Chase, Blue Meanies from outer Space, Programmer’s Aid (adds new BASIC commands), and more.
    • Guest Commentary: A Software Publisher’s View on Software Pricing and Service Policies – A commentary on software licensing from a publisher’s perspective.
    • What is a Modem, and Why Do I Need One? Part II – Part II of this multipart series includes information on how to use a modem, what type of modem to get, and technical modem details.
    • More Machine Language for Beginners – A program that provides a way to secure private files is used as a way to teach machine language techniques.
    • Undeleteable Lines – A technique for inserting lines of code in a BASIC program that cannot easily be deleted. Works on the Apple II and Commodore PETs.
    • Inverting a Matrix – A program for the TRS-80 for inverting a matrix.
    • New Products – A brief look at new products including the new 300bps AUTO-CAT modem from Novation, a TV/Monitor stand for the Apple II and Atari, VisiFile filing/database program for the Apple II, a software development system for the Commodore PET, Apple II, and Atari 400/800 from Eastern House Software, and more.

    The Apple Gazette

    • Budgeting On the Apple – A type in program for the Apple II that helps with budgeting tasks.
    • Named GOSUBs – A machine language routine that allows you to use named GOSUBs (instead of just line numbers) in BASIC programs.
    • A Tape “EXEC” For Applesoft: Loading Machine Language Programs Part II – A program that allows you to load both a BASIC program and ML routines it uses from tape.
    • Switching Cleanly From Text To Graphics – Normally when switching from text to graphics mode on the Apple II, garbage will briefly appear on the screen. This bit of code that you can implement in your own programs prevents that from happening creating cleaner transitions.
    • Interfacing the CCS 7710A Asynchronous Serial Card – Instructions for building a printer interface for the Apple II using the specified serial card.

    The Atari Gazette

    • Cassette Boot-Tape Generation From DOS 2.0S Binary Load File – A technique for creating a bootable tape on the Atari 400/800.
    • Beware The RAMTOP Dragon – A technique for creating protected memory areas…especially from Atari’s memory management.
    • Documented Atari Bugs – A detailed description of bugs in Atari OS and BASIC software.
    • Graph It On The Atari – A type in program for creating plots and graphs.
    • Extending Player Missile Graphics – A machine language program for enhancing the capabilities of Atari’s Player Missile Graphics (sprites).
    • Atari 400/800 Variable Name Utility – A type in program that will display the contents of the variable name table which lets you know which variable names are already in use.
    • Insight: Atari – How to use calculated GOTO and GOSUB statements.
    • Overview: “Letter Perfect” Word Processing on the Atari – A review of Letter Perfect, a $149 word processor for Atari computers.
    • Atari Disk File Dump – A type-in program that will provide a hex dump of any program on disk. This works with Atari 810 and 815 disk drives.
    • Atari Program Library – A type-in program that helps you catalog your software by comparing disk contents with what is already in the database and adding whatever is missing.

    The Pet Gazette

    • Practical Pet Printing Primer for Perplexed Programmers – A type-in program that helps you to print out program listings in a reasonable format.
    • Odds And Ends: A Fat Forty Bug – Illustration of a bug that sometimes occurs when running BASIC 4.0 programs on a PET with 12-inch screens that was originally written for 4-inch screens.
    • Machine Language: What’s Your Sign? – Using signed vs. unsigned numbers.
    • Train Your Pet To Run VIC Programs – A technique for getting VIC BASIC programs to run on the PET.
    • Converting To Fat-40 – A tutorial for converting programs written for 9/10-inch PET 4032 to the 12-inch 40-column PET 4032.
    • High Resolution Bar Graphs For The Pet – A type-in program for creating bar graphs on the PET
    • Waking Up The PET Screen – A software routine that can create reverse field blinking anywhere on the screen at variable rates.
    • Interfacing A BSR X-10 AC Remote Control System – Long before Alexa, X-10 systems were a way to create home automation. This article describes interfacing such a system with a Commodore PET.
    • Using Non-Pin-Feed Forms In The 2022 – A way to print on standard checks and bank deposit forms using the 2022 printer.
    • How And Why You Should Use PEEK (155) Instead Of Get – A better way to detect key presses when multiple keys are pressed at the same time (e.g. as might happen in two player games).

    The SBC Gazette

    • AIM 65 BASIC Floating Point Arithmetic From Machine Language – How to use floating point numbers on the SBC.
    • A General Purpose BCD-To-Binary Routine – A type-in program that will convert a BCD number with any number of digits to a binary number.

    …and more!


  • Ortho’s Computerized Gardening (1985)

    Source: Commodore Microcomputers – Issue Number 34 – March/April 1985

    In the early days of personal computing, I don’t think people quite new what to do with computers. Playing games was obvious. Spreadsheets and word processing were the early killer apps. Beyond that, it seemed that people were always searching for new use cases. People wanted to use computers, they just didn’t always know what to do with them.

    Likewise, software makers weren’t sure what kind of software to make. There was quite the variety of applications being released at an incredible rate by the early 1980s. Not all of it was terribly useful or quite worth the money. This ad is for one example of software I consider of questionable value. Of course, I’m no gardener…

    Basically, this software provided information on what kind of plants to plant in your garden based on your location, time of year and conditions. For someone who likes gardening and was into computers, no doubt this would have been tempting. But essentially, this is just a database of information. Something that could be handled just as easily with a book. I suppose that if you were interested in gardening in other parts of the country and liked to search around to see what grew best where, it could be of some interest.

    It’s interesting to note that this software, Orthos’s Computerized Gardening, was produced by Ortho Information Services. Even pesticide companies were getting in on the personal computer boom. From their perspective, this would have been software that was pretty easy to produce. Basically, it was taking information already available in books that they published, putting it on a disk for various personal computers (IBM PC, Apple II and Commodore 64 in this case), and adding search capabilities.

    I don’t think computerized gardening ever became a very big market. Of course, all of this information would be trivial to search on the Internet these days anyway. It was probably also available in one form or another on other online services before the Internet took off. In any case, at $49.95 a copy, I’m sure this software was able to cover the cost of development even if it only sold a few hundred copies.

    I looked for some screen shots for the Commodore 64 version and couldn’t find any. I also couldn’t find an emulator image in any of the usual places. This leads me to believe that it might not have been released on that platform despite the ad. Of course, this was probably mail order only software so it might just be that it was very rare.


  • Compute! (May 1981)

    Source: Compute! – Issue Number 12 – May 1981

    Compute! was one of the earliest and longest running multi-format computer magazines published in the U.S. In the early days, it covered the Atari 400/800, Apple II and Commodore PET as well as various kit computers. The May 1981 issue includes:

    • The Editor’s Notes – A look at some of the things seen at the West Coast Computer Faire, including the Votrax Type-‘N-Talk text to speech synthesizer, the Commodore Super-PET, A 256K memory expansion from Axlon for the Atari 800, and more.
    • The Readers’ Feedback – Praise for the magazine, small business programs for the Atari, improving magazine distribution, and more.
    • Computers and Society – Addressing computer phobia.
    • Computer Aided Instruction, Boon or Bust? – Analyzing the effects of computers in the classroom. Still a novel idea at the time.
    • They Mysterious and Unpredictable RND – The last part in a series on random numbers. This part presents solutions for finding maximum and minimum numbers in a sample of random numbers, simulating dice rolls and a number of other exercises.
    • Land of the Lost – A Program For a Cassette Filing System – A type-in menu-driven program to create labels for cassettes (the dominant home computer storage medium of the time).
    • Using The 6522 to Drive a Printer – How to construct an interface for a parallel printer and create a machine language program to drive it using a Comprint 912P printer and OSI computer.
    • Using the Aim 64 as a Remote Terminal for an Apple – Using a 6551 ACIA (Asynchronous Communications Interface Adapter) and RS-232C interface, NOVATION CAT modem, and AIM 65 single board computer to create a terminal for an Apple II.
    • EPIDEMIC – A Simulation of an Epidemic – A type-in BASIC program for the PET that simulates the spread of an epidemic based on your inputs.
    • A Floating Point Multiplication Routine – A type-in machine language program that converts two signed numbers to floating-point binary numbers and performs multiplication with 9 digit accuracy.
    • Naming Compounds – A type-in program for the PET designed for high school chemistry students that can test students on naming compounds and creating formulas from the names.

    The Apple Gazette

    • Using Named GOSUB and GOTO Statements in Applesoft BASIC – A simple way to create named subroutines vs. just using line numbers.
    • Commas, Colons, and Quote Marks Too – Writing BASIC programs that can accept commas, colons and quotation marks as part of their input.
    • Generating Lower Case Text on the Apple II Plus Using the Paymar Chip – By default the Apple II Plus could only display uppercase letters. However, it could be modified with a PAYMAR (LC-1) so that lower case letters could be used. The type-in program can then convert strings in your BASIC programs to lowercase.

    The Atari Gazette

    • A Cure for Atari BASIC or, Make Your Atari a Bit Wiser – An assembly language program that adds the ability to do bitwise operations in Atari BASIC.
    • Copy Your Atari Screen to Your Printer – A short BASIC program that will dump the contents of the screen to a printer.
    • Hardware Information at Last! – Three new Atari technical manuals, including Atari 400/800 Technical User Notes, Atari 400/800 Operating System, and Atari 400/800 Disk Operating System.
    • Using Strings for Graphics Storage – A method for using BASIC strings to create graphics on the Atari.
    • Atari Machine I/O – Three machine language routines for processing input.
    • Disk Directory Printer – A couple of BASIC programs for creating directory listings of your disks.
    • Condensing Data Statements on the Atari – Using characters instead of numbers in DATA statements used as input for machine language programs to save space (one character equates to one to three digits).
    • Real-Time Clock on the Atari – A BASIC program that can set, configure, and use the real-time clock included in Atari computers.
    • Review: Stud Poker – A simple poker game designed to run on Atari computers with 16K.

    The OSI Gazette

    • Through the Fill-The-Buffer Routine with Gun and Camera – Some technical info on how the “Fill-the-Buffer” routine (FTB) of OS BASIC works.
    • FOOTU: FOO Revisited – Converting FOO (a racing game for the OSI) to run on OSI systems with BASIC-in-ROM.

    The PET Gazette

    • A Fast Visible Memory Dump – A program for creating a graphical memory dump to a printer.
    • Machine Language: Getting to the Machine Language Program – Methods for combining BASIC programs with machine language routines.
    • A Thirteen Line BASIC Delete – A short BASIC program that allows you to delete any group of lines form an existing program.
    • Calculated Bar-graph Routines on the Pet – How to calculate the length of bars in a bar graph so that they can be properly printed.
    • The Revised Pet/CBM Personal Computer Guide – A look at the changes in the newest revision of the Osborne/McGraw-Hill Pet/CBM Personal Computer Guide.
    • Un-Compactor – A BASIC program that reverses the process of the Compactor program published in a previous issue. It would “compact” programs by doing thing like combining multiple programming lines onto one line and separating them by colons, etc.
    • Using the Hardware Interrupt Vector on the Pet – Making the PET execute your machine language program every 60th of a second using the hardware interrupt vector while BASIC programs run normally.
    • Pet as an IEEE-488 Logic Analyzer – Using another PET and a IEEE interface cable to see what is going on on the GPIB.
    • Running 40 Column Programs on a CBM 8032 – A way to make 80-Column PETs work like 40-Column PETs.

    The SBC Gazette

    • Nuts and Volts – Information about building your own microcontrollers.
    • A Kim-1 Music File in Microsoft Basic: Part 1
    • New Products – Atari sponsors contest for new software; the BYTEWRITER-1 dot matrix printer from Microtek; Hayes releases the Smartmodem, a 300 baud modem that set the standard for years to come for $279; and more.

    …and more!