Blue... wait, is it April again already?

[drogon]

BigEd wrote:

To come very slightly more towards on-topic, there was a Basic guessing game called, I think, ANIMAL which self-modified, learning with play ever more examples of animals and their distinguishing characteristics. While ANIMAL can run on a microcomputer, it might be that 20Q requires just a little too much data. Or maybe not, maybe it's a good challenge to implement it on a 6502, or '816.

Animal Learning game. I've played & written a few variants. It's a simple binary tree search and the game usually starts off with just 2 animals and builds from there. It can work quit well.

It can also be corrupted trivially easy...

Think of an animal. Does it have red hair?
Yes
Is the animal you're thinking of an Orangutan?
No
OK. I give-up. What was the name of the animal you're thinking of?
Gordon
And what question might distinguish a Gordon from an Orangutan?
Does it have freckles?
And the answer for a Gordon is?
Yes.

and so on.

the first one I played was actually an example of a random access file held on an Apple II disc under apple DOS. Each record had pointers to Yes/No records depending on the answer. As school kids we managed to load up the database with dozens of people and things with hilarious results when teacher came to review...

The early Creative computing version (might be in 101 Basic games, not checked yet) used BASIC data statements and stored into an array - I guess it could be self modifying to write out a file of DATA statements to be merged into the program for the next run, but I've not checked.

Writing one in BASIC is just a data manipulation exercise. Can be made much easier if you have random access files.

This:

https://unicorn.drogon.net/animals.rtb

is my own implementation in my own BASIC but it was based on the Apple II Integer Basic version I played ~45 years back...

-Gordon

[sburrow]

Paganini wrote:

I've continued to tinker with this project a little bit - tidy up the wiring and so on.

One of the many containers in my workshop is a flat Sterilite box that I got a Publix a while back. At some point I noticed that my breadboard assembly fits really nicely into it, and I got the crazy idea of turning it into an enclosure for an honest-to-goodness breadboard retrocomputer. So... I did that.

PXL_20240517_162520309.jpg

As Mary Berry would say, "It does look home-made." The keyword here is "semipermanent." Everything is adhesive mounting foam, gorilla glue, and heavy card, rather than the ABS plastic, acrylic, and steel I have on the back burner for sturdier projects. Still, it's nice to have a power switch, reset button, and serial port that are away from the breadboards and able to take a little more pressure.

It indeed looks home made! But that doesn't make it bad.

Pretty cool setup, and it does seem to keep it from getting messed with. My biggest fear with breadboards is having one of the kids yank a random wire out and who knows where that should go back?! Nice job on the connectors through the enclosure too.

So, does this computer have an official name? Or did I miss it earlier? Surely it needs an official name, and if you have it in an enclosure, surely you need to put a sticker on the enclosure with it's name on it. A fancy sticker!

Well done, as always, thanks for the updates!

Chad

[Paganini]

sburrow wrote:

So, does this computer have an official name? Or did I miss it earlier? Surely it needs an official name, and if you have it in an enclosure, surely you need to put a sticker on the enclosure with it's name on it. A fancy sticker!

I agree! In my head I've been calling it Blue Board (because it's a breadboard), but that seems a little lame. The other night I forgot to wipe off the coffee table before setting it down, and it became a literal peanutbutter computer! So I briefly considered Peanutbutter-2. So, I don't really know.

Quote:

Nice job on the connectors through the enclosure too.

I understand now why so many cable connectors used to be round...

[sburrow]

Paganini wrote:

I understand now why so many cable connectors used to be round...

Yep, me too. I once tried to modify a pre-made plastic enclosure and sheesh was that a pain. Round holes are easy to drill. Rectangles took far longer, lots of filing by hand. Lots of mistakes. I know there are fancy tools out there to do it easy, but I don't own them

One of the professors I work with just bought herself a 3D printer, so I asked if she would print my next enclosure. If you want to go down that road in the future, I *highly* recommend using 'openscad' as it is FAR BETTER than any of the other tools I have tried. I had a very fancy enclosure modeled in just a few hours of fiddling with the program.

Looking good, when you decide on a name, let us know!

Chad