Spectrum Computing

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(A reference to the pigeon disrupts play incident at the World Snooker Championship in case you didn't see it)

NSFW, but... phwoar!

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Factor Tractor

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Tractor

Hehe @Daveysloan. I have actually tried to use that screen for the Woot Tape magazine in the past, but even the best dithering in the world doesn't make it work at 256 x 192!

Something filmy and Commodory for a change....

So I did dare to POKE 59458,62. After all, it can't hurt on an emulator.

Does anyone more fluent in Commodore-ese know what this is supposed to do? What's that far up a PET's memory banks, anyway?

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 1:28 pm So I did dare to POKE 59458,62. After all, it can't hurt on an emulator.

Does anyone more fluent in Commodore-ese know what this is supposed to do? What's that far up a PET's memory banks, anyway?

It's one of the rare POKEs that can damage physical hardware. You'll be fine on an emulator, albeit confused that nothing happens!

Some very thorough research into it:

I didn't realise Wayne's World moved onto 8 bit micros.

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 10:51 am

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 1:54 pm It's one of the rare POKEs that can damage physical hardware. You'll be fine on an emulator, albeit confused that nothing happens!

It was made very clear in the +2 manual that there's nothing that any of us can do to harm the +2 - and, presumably, any Spectrum before it - with a command from BASIC.

I heard an apocryphal story - probably in the late 1990s - about a troll who would not stop being a monumental Double Polariod on (insert late 1990s forum here, and it wasn't 4chan). When said troll finally said "HURR HURR WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?", the admin, who was a nerd-beyond-nerd, discovered the troll's IP, and transmitted some code to that IP that made the troll's hard disc spin and stop and spin and stop rapidly until it caught fire. And while most of me says that must have been made up, part of me still thinks it might be possible...

I feel like 'the killer poke ' should be a cgc entry

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 9:14 pm I feel like 'the killer poke ' should be a cgc entry

There's already been something not a million miles off. In 2010 when @BloodBaz was the host, we had Speccy Russian Roulette. It still needs files, which I've just uploaded. On a 48K speccy, it picks a number up to 65536 (presumably intentionally not 65535 for that 1 in, well 65536 chance of an 'Integer out of range'!).



This^ is the code, and it jumps to whatever machine code is at whichever address in the Speccy's memory. Loaded from a fresh reset, the odds are not in your favour; there's a ~63% chance you will land where there is empty RAM (= it hangs), and if you are lucky enough to land in the remaining 37% where there is code, it's a complete lottery what it will do! (though generally it will hang or crash...)

Though yep - no hardware was hurt in the process.

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 8:32 pm

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 1:54 pm It's one of the rare POKEs that can damage physical hardware. You'll be fine on an emulator, albeit confused that nothing happens!

It was made very clear in the +2 manual that there's nothing that any of us can do to harm the +2 - and, presumably, any Spectrum before it - with a command from BASIC.

I'll go further and say I don't think there's anything in machine code that can harm a vanilla ZX Spectrum. And the idea of a computer virus hitting a ZX Spectrum, well, it's practically impossible to succeed. I think someone on comp.sys.sinclair explained that it'd need user intervention to spread and damage data.

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 8:32 pmI heard an apocryphal story - probably in the late 1990s - about a troll who would not stop being a monumental Double Polariod on (insert late 1990s forum here, and it wasn't 4chan). When said troll finally said "HURR HURR WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?", the admin, who was a nerd-beyond-nerd, discovered the troll's IP, and transmitted some code to that IP that made the troll's hard disc spin and stop and spin and stop rapidly until it caught fire. And while most of me says that must have been made up, part of me still thinks it might be possible...

Yeah, I've heard that one and I think there's a possibility for that to happen, but it sounds so heroic that it can be filed under 'Things I want to be true but likely aren't'. These days you get these anti-scammer videos on YouTube that boast some astounding triumphs, which amuse me but I think a pinch of salt should be required.

I remember the Inves Spectrum had a popular legend about a "killer randomize", https://www.teknoplof.com/2016/02/25/la ... -spectrum/ (use Google Translator or something, it's in Spanish).

EDIT (original research, in English): https://web.archive.org/web/20140802175 ... s-spectrum