"Mommy, what's this?" I asked as I held up a 5.25" floppy that I had picked up from the table as I sat down for dinner.
"That's something that they're trying to sell me, it goes along with a magazine I get," she said as she continued serving.
"But what's on it, are there any games?" I asked. Looking back, it's clear that my cut-to-the-chase brutal honesty was something that I developed as a child. Truth be told, two games were on that disk, Trap and Treasure Diver. I wouldn't expect anyone to remember them, unless you also had many years of computer adventures on a Commodore 64 and subcribed to Compute's Gazette.
Much to my eight-year-old delight, I learned that a disk for the previous issue had also been sent, and that another disk was coming in the mail the next month. The wonders of 3-D Speedway, Spy Defense, Square Logix, Arcade Volleyball and Jericho were all mine to explore from those oversized floppies. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that the disks were only part of a three month free trial, and that the July issue was going to come unaccompanied. I was devastated.
Little did I know how that devastation would change my life. The lack of a disk coming with the July 1988 issue triggered a life-altering chain of events whereby my interest in computer programming began. Without the disk, the only way to obtain the programs in each issue of the magazine was to type them in, a concept that computer users today find bizarre. Literally, yes, the programs were typed into the computer from a printed listing in the back of the magazine in BASIC or hexadecimal machine language. My mother patiently helped me set up the program (called MLX) for typing in machine language programs, and with the 14 08 00 00 9E 28 32 30 47 that I typed to begin Bagger, I was enthralled by the ability that I had to control what the computer does.
5.25" floppies are old news, as are magazine type-ins, but they were a start. If my mother hadn't received that free 3 month trial of the Gazette Disk, I may never have developed the interest in computers that I have now. I could have entirely different friends, I may have majored in something entirely different in college, and there might be no BitWise Chat.
I still like to go out and get the mail, leafing through it, wondering if my life will change again with one piece of mail. Maybe a piece of mail has changed your life, or maybe a piece of mail will change your life. To whomever sent my mother the free trial Gazette disks, I thank you.
I remember writing some programs out in basic back in the day. With those 5.25" too! It was very fun and I was also amazed that you could control what the computer does. Its good to see how a programmer like yourself got started. I remember typing the code for super star trek in once and I was very proud of myself. Man it took forever to type in.
One distinct advantage of BASIC over ML for type-ins, though, was the fact that you could read it and try to understand it. Of course, when there were peeks and pokes I got lost, but the concepts of logic, flow control, I/O etc were all usually pretty visible still.