Type-Ins

[Gryzor]

Ah, it's from the Turkish mag Sizin Amstrad. Well, copying happened all the time with type-ins - we had the problem in Greece, too, where Pixel magazine used to publicly shame those found copying listings.

I realised I've played this pinball (if you can call that) sim!

[AMSDOS]

Ah, it's from the Turkish mag Sizin Amstrad. Well, copying happened all the time with type-ins - we had the problem in Greece, too, where Pixel magazine used to publicly shame those found copying listings.

I realised I've played this pinball (if you can call that) sim!

Well I can't only presume whoever had this program first is the rightful owner of it. I'm getting frustrated that Listings were published elsewhere, this happened to me when I typed in a game called "Aliens" which had a nice intro leading into the game, but then the game (which I couldn't get working) was a game called "Trap 'em" and it had already been done. I don't know what happened there, I was under the impression the game had some bugs in it and was trying to correct them (which was true and accurate), but then I found this other game which was in Your Computer and was all working.


But getting back to the Pinball game, it appears that "Your Computer" is in the wrong cause they printing their copy after (March 1987) it was in the ACU mag (December 1986). Though having read Nich Campbells comments about ACU printing other peoples programs in their magazine without checking to see if it was in another source, it's possible ACU might have received that type-in from somewhere else.

[Border_7]

Just on type-ins & Aliens, I remember typing in a 10-liner from a CWTA magazine (1987?) and the thing is, it was a decent sized listing "packed hard" into 10 lines, lots of : separators between commands etc and the thing that tripped Dad & I up many times, is that after typing in one of the lines, the cursor ended up on the beginning of the next line, so somehow our brains decided that we didn't need to press Enter - and hence just starting typing in the next line................ Oh my gosh.......... every time we tried to run it, we got Syntax error in line x. We pored over and over and over - and could not figure out what were were doing wrong.   


We even re-typed the whole lot (tried a few times over the next few weeks). Eventually I twigged and it ran! but I had made another typo so it didn't play properly... that took a while to fix too.


Man, those type-ins! Memories - good and bad!

[AMSDOS]

Just on type-ins & Aliens, I remember typing in a 10-liner from a CWTA magazine (1987?) and the thing is, it was a decent sized listing "packed hard" into 10 lines, lots of : separators between commands etc and the thing that tripped Dad & I up many times, is that after typing in one of the lines, the cursor ended up on the beginning of the next line, so somehow our brains decided that we didn't need to press Enter - and hence just starting typing in the next line................ Oh my gosh.......... every time we tried to run it, we got Syntax error in line x. We pored over and over and over - and could not figure out what were were doing wrong.   


We even re-typed the whole lot (tried a few times over the next few weeks). Eventually I twigged and it ran! but I had made another typo so it didn't play properly... that took a while to fix too.


Man, those type-ins! Memories - good and bad!

I cannot remember how old I was when I was trying to type-in David Hall's "Space Storm II" which was in the October 1990 issue of ACU. I was still going to Primary School when that magazine was printed, though given the Lag time it took for UK mags to come over here to Oz, it was probably February 1991 when I was just starting Secondary School.    Anyway I just remember typing in all those DATA statements which was close to the 255 Character Length and remember getting to some point where Line 10 wouldn't go any further. So I ended up hitting Enter and typing in the rest of the program, saved it (to tape), running it and naturally it would crash after the little Distance Bar was drawn. Obviously I would of check it, though given my impatience and little knowledge of M/C, I ended up giving up in frustration due to the amount of time I spent typing it in and my brother probably would of said something like "Half them programs are Bugged". It would of been a few years later when I tried it again and probably by then I was more detailed in following the program correctly.

[XFile2708]

I used to do the Type-Ins every month - 9 times out of 10 they wouldn't work and then next months issue they'd print a correction to the code that they'd printed incorrectly... very infuriating but it still didn't stop me typing them in every issue... lol

[Gryzor]

Same for all of us to some extend, I would guess  One of the magazines I was totally obsessed with was Pixel Junior, an offshoot of Pixel (THE computer magazine in Greece back then) filled with type-ins. I was in love with it...

[AMSDOS]

I couldn't figure out at first why "Graphics Pen 1" wouldn't work on my 464 - I just changed it to PEN 1 and it worked. 
COPYCHR$(), FILL, MOVE and MASK were also annoying. AA should of done some workarounds or have someone do some series on making BASIC 1.0 programs. The "6128 Emulator" program they had in AA68 was about as close as it got to doing something about it which was good.


Another program I just recently found is some kind of Scrolling Demo program which was a type-in in an Issue of Your Computer (October 1986) I think, though in order for the program to work, it needs another program with the appropriate RSXs, I thought it might of been an earlier program which was in Your Computer called 60 RSX Commands, though their commands were in that set, so I don't know where they came from and Your Computer doesn't even say what you need in order to get the program to work.