ce63c91ff3
Also preserves the original features where some threads are spaces and not characters. The loop forever is accomplished with a never-ending for loop allowing the init line to be combined with the start of the main loop. Next statements work the same as GOTO but they allow jumping back to the middle of a line. 😄 The INT statements are mostly unnecessary since apple basic treats everything as floating point and it is the functions themselves that strip off the mantissa and use the integer portion. If you run a value through INT and store it into a variable, it will be converted back to float anyway so it just wastes CPU cycles. I do use INT in one place to normalize a value as 0 or 1, and that is also how I eliminate an if statement by just multiplying the result by 96 -- it will either be 0 (space) or some other character as a result, etc.
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| LICENSE | ||
| MATRIX | ||
| MATWEEX | ||
| README.md | ||
README.md
apple-ii-matrix
A BASIC program that produces a Matrix-like display on Apple II computers.
Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid on Flickr
If you don't have an old Apple machine or emulator handy, try this:
- copy the source
- paste it into Joshua Bell's Applesoft BASIC in Javascript.
- press the Run button
If you do have an Apple or emulator, you need to get to the Apple's BASIC prompt, and then type in the lines as shown. There is no text editor; simply typing in a line preceded by a number adds it to the program buffer. Then type RUN.
history and sightings
I first wrote this at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire, in June 2012. I saw an old Apple II running a lacklustre demo and I decided to bust out some quarter-century old skills. The owner of the machine graciously let me use it for a half hour or so, and with the help of some other bystanders we got this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brevity/7429579820/
Next, I saw an Apple II at Panic Software in Portland, during the XOXO Festival in September 2012, and decided to type it in. That's where the picture above was taken.
October 21, 2020: The @AppleIIBot account on Twitter will post recordings of an emulator running programs communicated by tweet. I managed to get a version of MATRIX into less than 280 characters, recorded here as MATWEEX
https://twitter.com/NeilKNet/status/1319060653064089600
March 23, 2021: @bruno185 created a similar program in Apple II assembly, Apple-II-another-Matrix, and was kind enough to credit this project for the inspiration