Creativision Tapes

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carlsson
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Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 7:39 am
Location: Västerås, Sweden

Creativision Tapes

Post by carlsson » Sat Dec 04, 2010 9:35 pm

Tonight I have enjoyed my newly acquired tapes with my Creativision.

I began with the Demo Tape. It loads fine except for what follows right after the high resolution part, a short part of less than 10 rows of Basic that ends with ERROR 00. The strange thing is the cover says the high resolution part should draw triangles and squares on the screen, but the program on my demo tape draws a guy walking across the screen followed by a very detailed CreatiVision logotype in custom characters and carefully prepared lines drawn below. I haven't compared with the demo tape that is dumped on the site, but perhaps that is normal? The subsequent parts after the high resolution program load as they should though.

Then I went on to Statistics 1. Unfortunately the first part bails out with ERROR 00 in the middle of the loading. Also the background music is a bit muted at parts, so it could be a bad tape. The subsequent parts load OK though. It is a bit boring unless you really are a college student in statistics, a businessman or someone else who has a crazy interest in mathematical statistics. I failed that course on the university because I never got past the trivial parts. In any case, 10 PM on a Saturday evening is not the perfect time to try to understand something anyway. ;) I even managed to input such test data that one of the programs bailed out with ERROR 06 at A=EXP(Z)...

Onto the third, home recorded tape. I get the following listing:

Code: Select all

2 FORN=1TO10
3 CLS
9 REM LOTTO
10 DIM A(35)
ERROR 00
I wonder if there could be dirty heads on my Creativision tape recorder? As most of the programs load fine, I doubt it is a serious hardware fault.

The listing continues:

Code: Select all

60 S=35*RND(0)+1
65 S=INT(S)
70 IF A(S)<>0 THEN 60
80 A(S)=S
90 PRINT" ";S;
100 NEXT I
110 FORT=1TO10
120 PRINT
130 NEXTT
133 IFN=10THENGOTO165
ERROR 00
160 NEXTN
165 PLOT23,4,49
ERROR 00
(end of program?)
Next program loads fine:

Code: Select all

1 CLS
9 REM LOTTO
10 DIM A(35)
20 FOR I=1 TO 35
30 A(I)=0
40 NEXT I
50 FOR I=1 TO 7
60 S=35*RND(0)+1
65 S=INT(S)
70 IF A(S)<>0 THEN 60
80 A(S)=S
90 PRINT" ";S;
100 NEXT I
110 FORT=1TO10
120 PRINT
130 NEXTT
140 PRINT"VILL DU HA EN RAD TILL" (Do you want another set of Lotto numbers?)
150 INPUTC$
160 IFC$="JA"THENRUN
163 CLS
164 PRINT"SKIT I DET DA" (Well, never f*cking mind)
165 FORT=1TO10
166 PRINT
167 NEXTT
The same program is repeated again, minus the user interface and insults. Then comes a third version which makes use of colour and sound. Actually the sound is exactly the same as the final program on the Creativision Demo Tape, so the programmer didn't like to experiment with those strange numbers. :D

The next program is a totocalcio program, randomizing a 1X2 line for you to bet on. No inputs, just let the computer make a random line.

After a short delay, a new program is loaded:

Code: Select all

1 REM**PROGRAM A**
8 CLS
10 INPUT A$
20 L=LEN(A$)
30 POKE 300,L
40 FOR I=1 TO
50 X$=MID$(A$,I,1)
60 A=300+1
70 POKE A,ASC(X$)
80 NEXT I
90 PRINT"PROGRAM A KLART"
100 CRUN
I strongly believe line 60 should be A=300+I and somehow it stores the string A$ at address 300 and forward to preserve for the next program, which unfortunately bails out with ERROR 00 before we even get to see the first line. The end of "Program B" however is:

Code: Select all

40 V=PEEK(I)
50 PRINTCHR$(V);
60 NEXT I
After a long delay, Program A is repeated with a few differences:

Code: Select all

1 REM**PROGRAM A**
10 INPUT A$
20 L=LEN(A$)
30 POKE 300,L
40 FOR I=1 TO L
50 X$=MID$(A$,I,1)
60 A=300+I
70 POKE A,ASC(X$)
80 NEXT I
90 PRINT"PROGRAM A KLART"
100 CRUN
This time, program B follows:

Code: Select all

1 REM**PROGRAM B**
10 L=300+PEEK(300)
20 FOR I=301 TO L
40 V=PEEK(I)
50 PRINT CHR$(V);
60 NEXT I
However that seems to have been the last bit of Creativision programming the former owner got to.

Once I get ahold of a stereo tape recorder, I will dump the Statistics 1 tape.
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