The Speedscript Experiment
Jul. 7th, 2013 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWorking my way through the scanned copies of various old computer magazines found in different corners online, I've made it to Compute. It seems to not just have been popular at the time but also remembered nowadays, although it just might have been that some period comments in an opinionated "semi-pro" magazine made me slow to get to it. In any case, as I read through the magazine's evolution from a Commodore PET journal that had just added a bit of coverage for the Atari computers, the Apple II, and assorted other systems using the 6502 microprocessor to a more general-level publication geared for the home user (it even had versions of its type-in programs for the Radio Shack Color Computer for a while, although they did seem to tend towards the lowest resolution graphics mode) with an awareness it survived long enough to get to a point of covering nothing but Microsoft Windows 3.1, I took note of the machine language word processor Speedscript it had developed for the Commodore 64 and VIC 20 and then ported to the Atari computers and Apple II. With all my emulator programs, I have tried entering shorter type-in programs promised to draw patterns on the screen or something similar (even if some of them are longer than just one line), but something about experiencing what it would have been to be a real cheapskate back then and type in a full application (even if it was promised to be just "5.5 K" in length, the size of a lengthy post perhaps) did begin to get my attention.
First, I had to enter the program promised to make the whole experience a bit less frustrating. After starting up one of my Apple II emulators with its familiar "beep! rattle rattle rattle" boot sounds, it took just as long to debug Compute's "MLX" program as it did to type it in, but at last I had it saved to a disk image and could start with the columns of hexadecimal codes. By the end of the first column, I'd decided to try the "save progress and continue later" function promised for MLX. The long columns of codes following didn't have much meaning for me (although Compute did publish the original assembly language source code in some books), but that might have just meant I was noticing meaningless patterns among them.
After off-and-on work filling a whole long weekend, I'd entered the last codes at last, and with a trace of trepidation as to whether it would all fit together in the end I started the application. It did in fact appear on the screen, although the cursor-moving commands seemed a little odd compared to what I'd read in the magazine. Even so, I did try writing a first draft inside my less feature-packed but better-looking emulator itself, knowing my other Apple II emulator could break the file out. The thought of trying to format it to use the emulator's "virtual printer," though, just made me think all over again MacWrite had been the start of something important. In any case, it was an interesting experience.
First, I had to enter the program promised to make the whole experience a bit less frustrating. After starting up one of my Apple II emulators with its familiar "beep! rattle rattle rattle" boot sounds, it took just as long to debug Compute's "MLX" program as it did to type it in, but at last I had it saved to a disk image and could start with the columns of hexadecimal codes. By the end of the first column, I'd decided to try the "save progress and continue later" function promised for MLX. The long columns of codes following didn't have much meaning for me (although Compute did publish the original assembly language source code in some books), but that might have just meant I was noticing meaningless patterns among them.
After off-and-on work filling a whole long weekend, I'd entered the last codes at last, and with a trace of trepidation as to whether it would all fit together in the end I started the application. It did in fact appear on the screen, although the cursor-moving commands seemed a little odd compared to what I'd read in the magazine. Even so, I did try writing a first draft inside my less feature-packed but better-looking emulator itself, knowing my other Apple II emulator could break the file out. The thought of trying to format it to use the emulator's "virtual printer," though, just made me think all over again MacWrite had been the start of something important. In any case, it was an interesting experience.
