• Zombiepirate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    2 months ago

    Loading a program from disk on the Commodore 64

    LOAD"*",8,1

    I haven’t loaded a game on that system since I was probably 10 or so, but I’ll never forget the command.

    I memorized it as L-O-A-D shift-2 star shift-2 comma eight comma one.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      25·
      2 months ago

      Fun fact: There’s a common misconception that this would load the first program on a disk, but it actually loads the most recently loaded program from the disk. If the disk is detected as being freshly inserted (as determined by the 2-character identifier in the disk’s directory header), that defaulted to the first program in the disk’s directory.

      Admittedly, most of the time that makes it a distinction without a difference, but if you’d loaded something else from the same disk first, and you then wanted to load the first in the directory, you would need to use LOAD":*",8,1 instead.

      That extra colon is vaguely related to the colon in C:\ on Windows computers. A lone colon was taken as an abbreviation of 0:, because in Commodore DOS(es) the drive “letters” were numbers. Dual slot drives were possible and then the two slots were 0: and 1:.

      “So what’s the 8 for in the LOAD command?” you might ask; "Isn’t that the drive “letter” "? No, that’s the device number. Note that drives on the 8-bit Commodores were always external. The 8 was more like the drive’s “IP address” on the serial bus.

      “What about the ,1?” That meant to LOAD the program at the memory address specified by the program’s header on the disk. Without that, the computer would ignore the header and try to load into BASIC memory.

      The neat part about loading at any address meant that it could overwrite parts of zero-page where the computer kept pointers to important internal functions. Overwrite the right one of those and the computer could be convinced to jump to a routine in the program that had just loaded without the user needing to type RUN.

      So, if you wanted to be i) certain of loading the first program in the directory of ii) the disk in the second slot of iii) a dual-slot drive on the serial bus identifying as device/address 9, and then iv) have the program load at its preferred memory location, you’d need to use LOAD"1:*",9,1

      The number of people who found the need to type that command in earnest, even back in the heyday of Commodore, probably numbers in the low tens, but there it is.

      How’s that for an obscure info dump?

  • superkret@feddit.org
    22·
    2 months ago

    The “Turbo” button on a 486 PC was actually a CPU clock speed limiter. It was necessary to play older games who had a hardcoded framerate that depended on clock cycles, because they would otherwise run too fast.
    But for marketing reasons, IBM labelled the toggle as “turbo” instead of a speed limiter.

    • Gurfaild@feddit.org
      7·
      2 months ago

      well, actually… It usually changed the clock speed on 286 PCs, but on 486s it often disabled the L1 cache or introduced additional waitstates instead

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    I might as well go first. A friend read this to me once over the phone in 1997 or thereabouts, and it stuck:
    Cracked
    09B9085A

    …Sadly, winzip stopped accepting that as a valid reg key some time in the 2000’s.

    • Vince@lemmy.world
      18·
      2 months ago

      Lol, just reminded me about win XP CD key. Not 100% sure it’s still accurate but:

      fckgw rhqq2 yxrkt 2b7q8 8tg6w

      Edit: aww, I fucked up the ordering of the last two

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    17·
    2 months ago

    in GTA 2, naming your player “GOURANGA” activates the cheat code mode. “IAMDAVEJ” gives you all guns.

    in half-life 2, typing ent_fire !picker in the console makes the thing you are looking at catch fire. it’s also the base command for a lot of other things; if you’re looking at a door and add “unlock” to the command, the door will open.

    when stacking firewood, always put the pieces with the bark facing up. that way, rain can’t get the wood wet, and the logs dry quicker.

    paper maps fold long side first.

    the modern graphical interface of the personal computer was developed by Xerox and plagiarized by Steve jobs after he got a factory tour in 1972, but he missed the most important part of the computer that he saw: it was fully networked using what we today call Ethernet.

    • Rogue@feddit.uk
      14·
      2 months ago

      when stacking firewood, always put the pieces with the bark facing up. that way, rain can’t get the wood wet, and the logs dry quicker.

      I read this as being another feature of half life. I was very impressed by the level of detail the devs put into such an early game. Although slightly confused why log stacking would be part of a game

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeMEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    The password for the final level of Crazy Castle on the Gameboy is GIFT.

    (I have a friend with hyperthymesia and this was the last thing we spoke about)

  • Bob@feddit.nl
    10·
    2 months ago

    My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas was the mnemonic when Pluto was still a planet. I suppose not totally obsolete but I find myself ending at “nine” instead of something you’d serve beginning with N.

    • oozynozh@lemm.ee
      4·
      2 months ago

      System FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem FailureSystem Failure

  • Mitsu@pawb.social
    8·
    2 months ago

    ZAPHODBEEBLEBROX is the code for level select in the wonderful game “The 7th Guest”.

      • Ozymandias1688@feddit.org
        2·
        2 months ago

        That’s true! I still play it from time to time, although I do not need the cheats nowadays anymore. There is something about the design that was never matched by any of the new doom games. For me, all the demons look the same in the modern games.

        So in that regard it has not yet been superseded, at least for me.

  • Addv4@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 months ago

    The model codes to 2nd and 3rd Gen Intel I series chips. Made figuring out what processors were in used laptops quite easy back in the day. Now I have to Google them (doesn’t help that their naming scheme is more confusing).

  • frezik@midwest.social
    6·
    2 months ago

    Back when wr used parallel IDE, most motherboards only had two IDE connections. Each connection could support two devices, a master and a slave. If you had a hard drive and a CD-ROM, it was best to put them on separate channels. This is because only one device could talk at a time, and the slower CD-ROM would block the faster hard drive from operating. If you had to put them on the same channel, then the hard drive should be the master so it gets priority.

    Then there’s scsi. My family wasn’t rich enough to have scsi shit when I was growing up, but I do know a few things. On paper, it’s very simple; give each device a unique ID on the bus, and then attach terminator blocks at each end. I’m also aware that, in practice, this description is a cruel joke.