←back to thread

Ward Christensen (of BBS and XMODEM fame) has died

(en.wikipedia.org)
322 points DamonHD | 2 comments | 13 Oct 24 15:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.524s | source
Show context
sokoloff ◴[13 Oct 24 16:58 UTC] No.41829570[source]▶
RIP.

My first paid programming gig ($20) was implementing the XMODEM checksum in 6502 assembly for a BBS sysop who had bought an early 1200 baud modem, only to find that his Atari BASIC BBS software was computing the checksum so slowly that it still created slowdowns in file transfers and needed a USR() that could compute it faster.

I learned a lot about protocols and algorithms from that exercise (now trivially simple, but wasn't for me at the time).

replies(2): >>41830789 #>>41832746 #
1. DonHopkins ◴[13 Oct 24 23:45 UTC] No.41832746[source]▶
AppleSoft had the enigmatic and cosmopolitan "&" command!
replies(1): >>41833240 #
2. flyinghamster ◴[14 Oct 24 01:14 UTC] No.41833240[source]▶
Even better, there were hooks that allowed a machine-code routine triggered by & to further interpret the rest of the statement, so you could have a special-purpose "&print" statement, for instance.