Thirty-three years ago my brother and I got a new cassette player for Christmas.
That allowed us to write and save games for our ZX80 computer (like many ZX80 owners we found that an older cassette player just didn’t work) and in 1981 I wrote a Z80 machine code version of Conway’s Game of Life – still my proudest programming achievement.
Last year I sought to complete the circle by writing an interpreter/DSL that mimiced ZX80 BASIC and called it BINSIC as “BINSIC Is Not Sinclair Instruction Code” and then wrote a BASIC version of the Game of Life (see the screenshot below).
So, if you are from that generation computer users, or even if you are not, why not give it a try – more details here: BINSIC
Related articles
- How to Digitize/Backup Cassette Tapes and Other Old Media (howtogeek.com)
- Useful Gadget of the Week: USB Audio Cassette Tape Converter Revives Old Memories (automatedhome.co.uk)
- “I built everything from first principles.” (metafilter.com)
- JavaScript and Canvas version of Conway’s Game of Life (thomashunter.name)
- Brian Eno – Conway’s Game of Life (eoleary87.wordpress.com)
- Conway’s Game of Life in Racket (jeapostrophe.github.io)
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 