12/08/2014

Attempt to load my 22 years old programming debuts

Yesterday, I had nothing better to do, I pulled my C64 out of the shell and set my mind for getting the old programs written in BASIC to see the light again. It's been already few months since I bought (or better been given for a symbolic price) a C64 datasette (tape recorder) but still haven't had time to try it out. This was for me a special day because this day one old forgotten treasure of mine could get revealed.

I am talking here about a tape with my first programming debuts from early 90s when I was a teenager. As far as I remember it should contain some of my early programs written in BASIC for my then new Commodore 64. Nothing special the biggest thing was a skier (or a car?) skiing between the two curbs limiting his skiing area. All written in character mode - because for shiny graphics you would have to go to assembler / machine code which at that point of time was far beyond my understanding.

So I grabbed the tape, let it warm up a bit after the tape being at attic for few past years and then inserted it into my old walkman which I also discovered in the same box as the tape. The familiar sharp beeping sound was still clearly audible but after all those years it's generally known that such an attempt to load an old tape could fail.

Unfortunately this was also the case. After failing to remember what command to use for loading my content from the tape I managed to get it going however with this unsatisfying result. No matter what I did the loading resulted in either crooked characters or in a OUT OF MEMORY ERROR. Still don't know what that means and if I could fix that but it may also mean that my prehistoric programming efforts will remain only in my memory and thus one day will disappear completely.


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