Why? Just for fun.

I’ve been kind of sick for the past couple of days. I’ve just basically been taking it easy around the house.  I’ve been playing around with some classic computer emulators lately and I’ve been reading On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore and combined they have me thinking about the early days of personal computing.

Well, since I haven’t been feeling that great, I decided I would sit down with a classic TI-99/4A emulator (Not Commodore, I know.  That’ll probably be next week.) and I’ve been re-creating one of my first programming projects:

So, that rather funny-looking screen shot above is my low-tech attempt to copy the scoreboard at the “New Mountaineer Field” in Morgantown.  Of course, this is the 1980 scoreboard, created with 1980 technology.  I was always fascinated with scoreboards when I was a kid.  And then I saw the hi-tech (for its time) scoreboard at the new stadium, and after my first Mountaineer game, I came back home and started writing this in TI BASIC.  Yes, I’ve always been a nerd.

Just for fun I’ve been re-coding it, just to see if I can do it.  I think I’ve forgotten more than I remember when it comes to TI BASIC.  But considering I haven’t actually used it in twenty years… eh, it’s not going too bad.

I’m not done yet.  The screen shot you see is only partially functional.  Plus I don’t have the message board (cyan square in the top-center) working at all.  But it’s been fun.  I imagine the project to be very similar to someone who works on cars getting a hold of their first car and re-tooling it.  Just to see if they can still do it.

So, anyway, West Virginia really is getting beat 14-7 right now, in the second quarter.  But I don’t know if I’ll make it through the whole game or not.  I’m still not 100% well…