My first(?) piece of code. Around 1988.
This is probably the oldest preserved piece of software that I’ve ever written.
It’s called “Weihnachtsgruss” (Christmas greeting) and I guess the Christmas it refers to could be that of 1988, when I was 5 years old.
Could also be the 1989 one; sadly, the data on the tape doesn’t have a timestamp.
It’s a BASIC program for an Atari 600 XL (or maybe even an 800 XL, I don’t remember what I’ve owned) that I’ve found in my cassette tape collection.
I’ve included the high quality WAV file of the tape section as well as conversions to CAS and “raw“ format (as a8cas generates them) and the original source code (converted from the .raw
using mistalro/atariconv).
Oh, and also a photograph of the tape that it was stored on.
A 90 minute tape containing about 18 seconds of audio.
The code doesn’t do much and it also doesn’t make much sense (I like the unreachable “Guten Tag”), but I’m so happy that I’ve found it and that I was even able to restore it.
a8cas-convert weihnachtsgruss.wav weihnachtsgruss.cas
new block...
Attempting to recognize data block... succeeded: bit_length=0.001666
Adjusted bit_1_0_diff = 0.000002
End of data block at byte 132, found IRG=0.264733
new block...
Attempting to recognize data block... succeeded: bit_length=0.001668
Adjusted bit_1_0_diff = 0.000019
End of data block at byte 132, found IRG=0.246667
new block...
Attempting to recognize data block... succeeded: bit_length=0.001666
Adjusted bit_1_0_diff = 0.000020
End of data block at byte 132, found IRG=0.337937
new block...
Attempting to recognize data block... failed
new block...
Attempting to recognize data block... failed
atariconv
to create a text file from it again:
./atari weihnachtsgruss.bas
Error:
File number of variables= 0
Actual number of variables = 0
-----< Listing of file >-------------------------
1 PRINT "Ich wuensche allen von "
2 PRINT "ganzem Herzen"
3 PRINT "F R O H E WEIHNACHTEN!"
4 PRINT "MERRY CHRISTMAS !"
5 PRINT "MERRY CHRISTMAS !"
6 GOTO 1
7 END
9 PRINT "Guten Tag"
10 GOTO 9
-------------------------------------------------
This code was written by Tim Weber (scy), who also restored it in August of 2018.