Another RetroChallenge Ends
My last week of RetroChallenge 2010 has been unbelievably busy. Because of my PyOhio presentation, a golf tournament, and various other items which I’ve since forgotten, my time available for RetroChallenge was somewhat compressed. However, even with those obstacles, I’d call my RetroChallenge a success.
For the initial 2 weeks of the challenge, dabbled in the wonders of User RPL on an HP 48G calculator. The product of this fun was not only familiarity with this oddball language but also two nontrivial programs. I simply can’t get enough of the music player I authored. While it is rather simple and restricted to one octave, it does in fact play arbitrary songs. The math program was far more difficult to author, but perhaps not as novel.
Creating a boot sector for a Tandy 1000 was a terribly interesting project, at least to me. By attempting to create a valid boot sector, I was able to get my hands dirty in x86 assembly, something I usually don’t get near. On top of learning some additional assembly, I was introduced to PC bios calls which I had personally never seen before. Fun stuff! I was unable to bootstrap arbitrary code, but perhaps another time I’ll overcome that problem.
The RetroChallenge this year was a delight, although I didn’t devote nearly as much time to it as my last Warm Up, much to the joy of my wife.
Success! Congratulations to my other challengers as well!
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