Twas Thursday, March 21st when n2qfd said...

So my dad still has the 1st computer we had growing up. An old Interact One in the box and asked if I wanted that today. I don't really know what I'd even do with it but keep it in a box here! I don't even know what I'd interface it to if I wanted to see if it would still run!

I'm sure it'll still run, or at worst you may have to "recap" it (replace electrolytic capacitors).

It looks like the only interface is the cassette recorder. You would have to create audio streams of BASIC programs and "play" them into the audio interface. You could use a tape deck as an intermediary or just hook directly into the machine from your computer.

The Apple 2, for example, has an audio port for the cassette interface, and there is a great website that allows you to "play" game files into your apple 2 for loading, http://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/readme.html

As for what programs to load, anything from the book "BASIC Computer Games" should work, it looks like it uses Microsoft's BASIC which is the most popular dialect, so pretty much anything will work. It also has a generous amount of RAM for the time so pretty much any game should fit.

I played a BASIC game from my childhood, "HAMURABI.BAS" recently, then, I came up with the best "winning strategy" by hand, and eventually automated it into a program to play against my Apple 1 computer. I played about 2,000 games with 99.7% win rate. The trick was to systematically starve 3% of the population each round, lol.

More about it here, https://www.jeffquast.com/post/hamurabi_bas/ -- HAMURABI.BAS and its dystopian lessons.



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So my dad still has the 1st computer we had growing up.
An old Interact One in the box and asked if I wanted
that today. I don't really know what I'd even do with it
but keep it in a box here! I don't even know what I'd
interface it to if I wanted to see if it would still run!

I hadn't heard of the Interact One before, looking it up online that looks like a neat system.

http://oldcomputers.net/interact.html

The oldcomputers page says it does 17 columns by 12 rows, maybe a bit cramped, there is mention that a RS-232 expansion board existed - potentially you could call a BBS with your Interact One. :) (the 17x12 text mode would certainly limit options there..)

Kay Savetz did an interview with Dave Johnson, who programmed for the Interact One, and later for Atari: https://archive.org/details/dave-johnson


Chris/akacastor

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Oh yeah I remember the tape deck.

Dad had this spiral bound book of basic programs and we'd type them in line by line then tape it if it ran well.
The TI-99 was much more versatile for interfacing. I think I still have the tape deck for that.

N2

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Hello dingo!

** On Thursday 21.03.24 - 16:21, dingo wrote to n2qfd:

I played a BASIC game from my childhood, "HAMURABI.BAS" recently, then, I came up with the best "winning strategy" by hand, and eventually automated it into a program to play against my Apple 1 computer. I played about
2,000 games with 99.7% win rate. The trick was to systematically starve 3% of the population each round, lol.

More about it here, https://www.jeffquast.com/post/hamurabi_bas/ -- HAMURABI.BAS and its dystopian lessons.

Very interesting report of your gaming experience. Well done.


Maybe the world leaders are simply playing hamuabri in making
their decisions to bomb, invade lands, starve people, release
bio weapons, etc! :|


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dingo wrote to n2qfd <=-

The Apple 2, for example, has an audio port for the cassette interface, and there is a great website that allows you to "play" game files into your apple 2 for loading,
http://asciiexpress.net/gameserver/readme.html

When I whistled games into my VIC 20, my lips would get chapped.


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Very interesting report of your gaming experience. Well done.

Maybe the world leaders are simply playing hamuabri in making their decisions to bomb, invade lands, starve people, release bio
weapons, etc! :|

They could be playing Resident Evil too...

Spec


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Here are some resources if you haven't found them already:

OldComputers.net
https://oldcomputers.net/interact.html

Service manual, poor scan though https://oldcomputers.net/interact/interact_service_manual.pdf

This is a computer I've never, ever heard of before. I'm researching it a bit just for the heck of it.

Newtype Len
Blog@www.SaturdayAnime.com
#Calling from Shurato's Heavenly Sphere#


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Hello Spectre!

** On Saturday 23.03.24 - 16:46, Spectre wrote to Ogg:

Maybe the world leaders are simply playing hamuabri in
making their decisions to bomb, invade lands, starve
people, release bio weapons, etc! :|

They could be playing Resident Evil too...

Not familiar with that one. However.. I am sure politicians/
military have analysis tools that simulate and predict various
scenarios for outcomes. Perhaps chaos theory is part of that
too.

But even then, all these games/tools are merely inventions
programmed by humans. So, it could be easy to miss a perfectly
relevant variable into the predictive formula.

Hamurabi could have included cats to help control the rat
population. Instead the programmer simply designed it to be "if
no grain, then no rats."

--

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They could be playing Resident Evil too...

Not familiar with that one. However.. I am sure politicians/

Chuckle, you been living under a rock? I'm not sure when the games
originally came out, probably late 90s. Have to admit I paid no attention to them they weren't in my wheel house. But then Mila Jovovich turned up in
a movie of the same name, that covered the initial game story, and went on
from there.

1996 apparently for the game, 2002 for the first movie.

Spec


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Re: Interact One
By: Spectre to Ogg on Tue Mar 26 2024 07:29 pm

They could be playing Resident Evil too...

1996 apparently for the game, 2002 for the first movie.

I think I saw the movie in the theater.. I remember it wasn't that great. And there was a scene where they were obviously going for a joke, but nobody laughed (it just wasn't funny).

Nightfox
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I think I saw the movie in the theater.. I remember it wasn't that great.

While it was no cerebral feast, I found it entertaining when I saw it, would have to have been in the 2000s somewhere. I think it all started going downhill not to long after though...

Spec


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n2qfd wrote to dingo <=-

Oh yeah I remember the tape deck.

Dad had this spiral bound book of basic programs and we'd type them in line by line then tape it if it ran well.
The TI-99 was much more versatile for interfacing. I think I still
have the tape deck for that.

My CoCo 2 had a tape deck. Man I was uptown when I upgraded to a
disk drive YEARS later. :-)




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