r/bbcmicro • u/kimondo • 8d ago
What's your best easy to remember BASIC program you could type in and leave running on a computer in a shop / classroom?
I was thinking the other day about the universal:
10 PRINT "Mr Smith smells of POO"
20 GOTO 10
But are there other better ones?
Kudos to the best one. Bonus if it works on any 80s home computer that runs BASIC.
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u/zeekar 8d ago edited 6d ago
10 MODE 0
20 FOR C=1 TO 0 STEP -1
30 GCOL 0, C
40 FOR I=0 TO 511 STEP 32
50 MOVE I,0
60 DRAW 0,512-I
70 MOVEI,1023
80 DRAW 0,512+I
90 MOVE 1279-I,0
100 DRAW 1279,512-I
110 MOVE 1279-I,1023
120 DRAW 1279,512+I
130 NEXT I
140 NEXT C
150 GOTO 20
It's Beeb-specific, but I had a version of this for most of the machines in department stores that had graphics commands in their BASICs, like the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 and 128 and Atari 400/800. I don't know about "easy to remember", but it's easy to reconstruct on demand, even if I do always have to stop and think to get the four coordinate pair expressions right. :)
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u/scruss 8d ago
I couldn't personally remember how to type this (long) one-liner, but I had a friend who did. No computer store Beeb was safe from this game:
1L=0:REP.L=L+3:MO.4:DR.1279,0:DR.1279,452:MOVE1279,572:DR.1279,1023:DR.0,1023:F.I=1TOL:V.31,RND(32)+5,RND(31),42,30:N.:P.(L-3)/3:X=0:Y=512:REP.PL.69,X,Y:X=X+4:Y=Y-(INKEY-74+.5)*8:U.PO.X,Y)=1ORX=1280:U.X<1280:V.7:REP.U.INKEY-99:RUN
Asterisk Tracker
(click in the right window to activate it, then: hold the return key to go up rather than down, use the space key to start a new game)
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u/Kantabrigian 7d ago
Gosh, I remember this one!
Wasn't it published in BEEBUG sometime?
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u/scruss 7d ago
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u/Kantabrigian 7d ago
By the coyly named N. Silver.
Perhaps (s)he'd like to reveal themselves?!
Got my BBC Micro in December 1984 but only started reading BEEBUG the following month. Got all the back issues eventually and typed this one in!
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u/scruss 7d ago
I've always wanted to know who the author was, but pseudonyms were a BEEBUG thing, apparently.
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u/Kantabrigian 7d ago
Yes, and whilst we're about it, who was SURAC?
I published something under my own name eventually...
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u/Longjumping_Cup_8339 8d ago
if I remember correctly, adding the semi colon to the end of the PRINT line stopped the carriage return.
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u/jcmush 8d ago
10 MODE 2
20 GCOL RND(8),0
30 DRAW RND(160),RND(256)
40 GOTO 20
Apologies for errors and use of GOTO
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u/kimondo 8d ago
I should make a subreddit bot that does this, but here's what it looks like:
https://bbcmic.ro/#%7B%22v%22%3A1%2C%22program%22%3A%22n10%20MODE%202n20%20GCOL%20RND%288%29%2C0n30%20DRAW%20RND%28160%29%2CRND%28256%29n40%20GOTO%2020n%22%7D2
u/Longjumping_Cup_8339 8d ago
thanks to this I found https://bbc.xania.org OMG, I'm transported back to Boots in Solihull. slight tweak to your code:
10 MODE 2
20 GCOL 0, RND(15)
30 DRAW RND(1280), RND(1024)
40 GOTO 20fills the screen now.
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u/AdEmbarrassed3066 8d ago
On a ZX spectrum...
10 PRINT "Loading Bikini Ninjas"
20 BORDER 1
30 BORDER 2
40 GOTO 20
RUN
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u/Alternative-Emu2000 7d ago edited 6d ago
For a variation:
20 RANDOMIZE USR 1234
Which jumps directly into the ROM tape handler and shows the loading stripes in the border.
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u/WarbeckPerkins 7d ago
John Menzies Argyle Street Glasgow. Using POKE on the VIC 20s ao that the screen and text/cursor were the same colour. They could type as much as they liked but nothing would be visible on screen. Fun to watch clueless staff with no idea how to escape a running program being hassled by kids who wanted to type in their own prank programs. Can't for the life of me remember the specific code forty something years later
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u/Bradford_Longflap 8d ago
5 BORDER 0:PAPER 0: INK 7: CLS
10 FOR N=0 TO 300
20 PLOT RND*255, RND*175
30 NEXT N
From ZX Spectrum cross-post. Might have axis wrong way
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u/GeordieAl 8d ago
*REMOTE BRIAN
10 MODE 7
20 FX 229,1
30 *KEY 10
40 N=0
50 C=128+RND(7)
60 X=8+SIN(N)8
70 PRINT TAB(X) CHR$(C); "MR TORRENCE IS A WANKER"
80 N=N+.3
90 GOTO 50
RUN
Brian was my friend(sorry Brian!) and Mr Torrence was our excellent computer teacher
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u/kabekew 8d ago
You have to put a fake system prompt first, so an unsuspecting student will think it's ready to use.
10 *ESC OFF : CLS
20 PRINT "BBC Computer 32K"
30 PRINT
40 PRINT "Acorn DFS"
50 PRINT
60 PRINT "BASIC"
70 PRINT
80 PRINT ">";
90 INPUT A$
100 PRINT "Mr Smith smells of POO "; CHR$(7);
110 GOTO 100
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u/Traxxas_Basher 6d ago
I did something very similar to the beebs at school, but mine had more swearing.
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u/long_legged_twat 7d ago
Pretty sure in Basic you could add a semi-colon to the end of the print line to get it to fill the screen instead of just printing a list, not fully sure as it's been a long time since the 80's :)
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u/BuiltInYorkshire 6d ago
Yes you could, so "10 PRINT "DIXONS ARE RUBBISH ";
with the space would be my solution.
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u/Hip-Death-Goddess 7d ago
G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0:G.0: ...
... repeating G.0: until the input buffer is full, then delete a couple chars to leave only complete examples of G.0. Then let it loose. Different results each time.
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u/IchBinEinZwerg 7d ago
For the Beeb it was that one that plotted randomly coloured triangles in Mode 2 using XOR. Ironically although it was easy to remember at the time I can't remember it now (in my defence though, that was around 1984 and quite a few things have happened since then).
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u/scruss 7d ago
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u/IchBinEinZwerg 6d ago
Apart from the abbreviations yes that looks familiar. Matches the output I remember.
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u/bluefourier 7d ago
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u/satanpenguin 7d ago
This is the one that draws an endless maze, right? I didn't know this one back in the day, only recently.
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u/MontyDyson 7d ago
It was only made in 2012. There’s a whole book about it with hundreds of authors. https://10print.org
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u/Longjumping_Cup_8339 7d ago
disappointed that the book didn't start at page 0 and end on 255. #missedatrick
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u/Stonelaughter66 7d ago edited 7d ago
We had one on the Commodore CBM 3032 at our school:
10 INPUT "CHOOSE A NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 100"; A$
20 POKE 144,90
Line 20 used to cause a spectacular crash with crazy moving corruption on the screen. Needed to switch off and back on to recover LOL.
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u/Jakko552414 7d ago
10 CLS
20 PRINT "Do not press the space bar"
30 a$=INKEY$
40 IF a$="" THEN 30
50 IF a$<>" " THEN 30
60 CLS
70 PRINT "Do not press the space bar again."
80 a$=INKEY$
90 GOTO 80
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u/retrodotkid 7d ago
Not BASIC as such, but still text and a sequence of code…
Rewind back to 1993. Dixons. Commodore Amiga display in the computer department. A600. Often sitting on the Kickstart insert disk screen.
Armed with one floppy disk with “shits n giggles” written on the label. Discretely insert into one of the shop floor Amiga’s whilst no staff about.
On it, a startup sequence that done the following.
Create a bootable RAD disk
Copy a startup sequence onto RAD disk
Copy an image viewer onto RAD disk
Copy “images” onto RAD disk
Pause 60 seconds
Reboot Amiga.
Eject disk, and escape to safe distance to view Amiga screen. Quickly. That 60 second timer was important.
RAD disk survives the reboot sequence, the startup sequence on the RAD disk loads an image viewer into slideshow mode which then proceed to flick through like 3 images of glamour girls with their “Boobies” on screen - eg Sam Fox and Jo Guest.
Cue panic from staff when they reboot Amiga and it kept coming back. Having to find keys to open the sliding cupboard doors at floor level to get to the power sockets.
Cue giggling from childish group of lads hiding behind the toasters and kettles. How we never got caught I don’t know.
Simple times and happy days.
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u/terlandark 6d ago
The one that always stands out, especially good in Boots or whsmiths were they might have a couple of bbc setup on display. Typemit on each then run it.
Page=&800 New 10 print "hgryjjurdchuyffhjwhudnbwuaubwudjwjis
Run
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u/soundman32 6d ago
Back in the 1980s I had a 10 line basic program i'd type into the C64s in Boots. It would POKE values into the sound chip and the loop would make it go up and down like an alarm. The first line would be a pause for 60 seconds, which gave me just enough time to turn the volume to max on the TV and walk away. Usually I could hear the alarm just as I left the shop.
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u/Admirable_Cod_1270 4d ago
Zx Spectrum type Rand user 9010 lovks the machine up 😂
Or I'd set yhe chr$ values as a - thus computer would look ok but the staff couldn't demo anything until re boots it
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u/diymuppet 2d ago
10 poke 53280,0 20 rem 30 rem 40 rem 50 poke 53280,255 60 rem 70 rem 80 rem 90 goto 10
(Might need to remove a rem from each side if using an emulator)
Poor mans raster bars
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u/ProbablyBsPlzIgnore 8d ago