Z88 Basic Lander

I tell you, it was no mean feat working out how to get a BASIC program off the Z88. The normal link program I have been using to pull down plain text blog entries is useless because basic programs on the Z88 are saved in binary format. I still haven't managed to get a basic program uploaded to the Z88 either.

The Z88 can control a printer via the serial port and ultimately this is how I did it - you can turn printing on, LIST the program, and then turn listing off. I used minicom on the X60 to capture the output, then edited the start and finish with a little 'vi'.

When running it produces a screen shot

(I've captured this from 'brandy' the open-source BBC Basic Emulator, which the code loaded and ran happily in without any modifications)

I will explain all in my next post. For now here is the delightful source code (those with a keen BASIC eye will no doubt be able to follow some of my code, although it did rapidly start looking like my mate Charlie's version of Yatzee on the BBC, with colourful single-character variable naming abound...

I will pen a description of this fiendish piece of logic tomorrow, in preparation for a rewrite (I really should be using DEF PROC and DEF FN more) followed hopefully with some extensions both in the output department and possibly an ascent stage (although the thing is very tricky indeed to coax a landing out of!)