Flying a simulated spacecraft controlled by a ZX Spectrum and Sinclair BASIC my first computer and programming language. Terribly inefficient right now because the serial port is so slow and the CPU spends lots of cycles bit banging to talk to it. There's a Python program in between which... talks to KRPC and translates the important numbers to the serial port for the Spectrum to work from.show more

10 PRINT "Rubber Keys." 20 GOTO 10

This is absolutely brilliant. I'd love to know what Frankenstein horror you have constructed that gives the speccy a serial port

I had completely forgotten about that and I'm amazed they still exist! Are you doing full handshaking or just winging it over tx and rx

I’m just using the BASIC input/output streams.

This is so cool, Scott! Definitely scratches the old-school computer itch. I came from that same generation, cutting my teeth on BASIC and 6502/Z80/6809 assembly languages.

Next up: running a nuclear power station using Forth on a ZX80.

Why am I not surprised that ZX spectrum expects you to bitbang, even when using a peripheral port.

I still remember poking all the Z80 machine code on my ZX81 starting at address 16514, which was the first byte of RAM on the first line (usually a "REM" ). Zilog only stopped making the Z80 a couple years ago. I still own a ZX81 and a TS2068.

Isn't a Spectrum some orders of mangnitude more CPU than the actual NASA program had to work with?

ZX Spectrum was my first computer too. Sinclair Basic and a Panasonic tape recorder

10 PRINT "To me" 20 PRINT "To you" 30 GOTO 10

Time to write some Z80 assembly

Sure it's a spectrum and not a ZX81? Those didn't have interrupts, and the screen refresh took a lot of cycles. The FAST command disabled the screen refresh. SLOW re-enabled it. On the Spectrum, the interrupt could be disabled poking on an address (manual needed).

We should organize a LAN party!

@KYKYPY3A_B Примунение (KSP) с помощью ZX Spectrum

Sinclair BASIC is the language of my soul <3 still remember some of the keyboard shortcuts, like pressing the key A quickly followed by Enter for a nice surprise 🙃😆🤣. Or Print Usr 1303 if you want an annoying chirp to blast out of the speakers.

Can tell you’re retired!

pretty fun watching this stuff play out in real-time

cool

Amazing feat, I wonder what's going on with the black bars in the border iirc the speccy didn't have fast mode

Yeah, Scott going retro💪🤘

I knew you were a nerd… but dang… you’re uber nerd.

You are finally posting about KSP. 👌🏻

Amazing to see 80's tech handling g&c calculations in a hardware in the loop like setup. Joy to watch.

nostalgia hitting hard rn ZX BASIC still slaps tho 🫡

Is that a stargate bottom middle?

Spectrum loading screen/sound is fused with my DNA. Awesome

Man, this is exactly the things we wanna players do in our Junkyard Space Agency upcoming space sim. Did you wire the the Spectrum through an USB-serial converter of some sort? How the I/O is exposed to KSP?

Good job!

this fucking rules, tho tbh idk how the hell anyone can stomach writing shit in commodore or sinclair basic w peek/poke (decimal) lmao. anything on my c64 is in asm or durexforth.

you save data to virtual tape ? As interface ?

very nice reminded me how the border could be controlled to a degree for l33t gfx skillz ^^

At this rate, we’re going to have full scale recreations of missions. Exact length and everything. It’s only a matter of time until we have a 24/7 stream of a moon mission in real time using some hyper-modded KSP

Just load up Daily Thomson's Decathlon. You know that you want to.

Oh man, I spent so much time on my TS1000 playing the flight simulator…..

Is that Pioneer Space Sim (=Elite offspring) thats driven by the Speccy? In the far past I’d spent many, many hours “exploring” both the worlds of Elite for Spectrum and PSS, and of course crashing :)