Setting Up

Introduction

If you followed the Turbo Pascal course you already have MAME, the Einstein ROM and the habit of typing TURBO at 0:. This primer needs only a different disc. If you are starting here, the Turbo course's S2, Setting Up, installs everything; come back when you have the Einstein showing 0:.

If You Have A Real Einstein

Put the primer's disc image on whatever you use to get images onto your machine, and boot it. Its Turbo Pascal is the Turbo course's copy, set up for the 40-column screen and the DELETE key. Lines beginning In MAME are not for you.

The Disc

Download the Text Adventure Primer disc and keep it beside the Turbo course disc:

~/einstein/textadventure.mfi

It is an .mfi, like the Turbo course's, for the same reason: Turbo saves your programs to its disc, and MAME will not write to a .dsk. Keep a spare copy of the file you downloaded.

Start the machine with it:

mame -rompath ~/roms einstein -flop1 ~/einstein/textadventure.mfi -window

The Einstein boots to 0: as before. Type TURBO, wait for the sign-on (Version 2.00A, EINSTEIN 40col.), and answer Y to error messages.

What Is On It

At the menu press D, then ENTER:

Dir mask:
TURBO    MSG : TURBO    COM
TURBOMSG OVR : BEACON   TXT
TURBO    OVR : VOCAB    TXT
MAKEDAT  PAS : BEACON   PAS
BEACON   MSG : BEACON   DAT
BEACON   COM

Bytes Remaining On A: 110k
>

Turbo's directory of the primer's disc

File	What it is	Used in
`TURBO` files	Turbo Pascal and its messages	everywhere
`BEACON.TXT`	BEACON's world as plain text: every room, its exits, and everything the game says	S12, S17
`VOCAB.TXT`	121 words, in alphabetical order, one to a line	S9
`MAKEDAT.PAS`	a program that turns `BEACON.TXT` into the two files below	S17
`BEACON.DAT`	the twelve rooms, as records	S17 on
`BEACON.MSG`	the 27 messages, as records you can go straight to	S13 on
`BEACON.PAS`, `BEACON.COM`	the finished game: its source, and compiled to run on its own	S21

That leaves 110k of the disc for your own programs, which is plenty: the biggest thing you will save is the game, at about 9k.

The data files are the game's, and some sections read them. If you ever damage one, MAKEDAT (S17) makes BEACON.DAT and BEACON.MSG again from BEACON.TXT, and your spare copy of the disc has all three.

The Code

No program yet. At 0:, before starting Turbo, type BEACON and play for a minute.

Starting from

A fresh boot of the primer's disc.

What you should see

BEACON's title, then the beach, and a > waiting for a command. Try LOOK, N, S, INVENTORY. QUIT brings you back to 0:.

Change One Thing

At the game's >, type a word it cannot know, such as HELLO. What does it say, and does it tell you which word was the trouble?
Press CAPS LOCK once, so that letters come out small, and type look. Watch the screen as you type. What appears, and does the game understand it? (Press CAPS LOCK again before QUIT.)

When It Goes Wrong

Symptom	Cause
Your work is not there after a restart	You are running from a `.dsk`. Use the `.mfi`.

Stopping A Program That Will Not Stop

As in the Turbo course: CONTROL and C stops a program that is waiting at a Readln, and a loop only if the program starts with {$U+}. In MAME: CONTROL is Ctrl. Several programs in this primer read the keyboard one key at a time; each tells you how to leave it. Otherwise, restart the Einstein. Save before you run something new.

Summary

One new disc: Turbo Pascal as before, BEACON finished, and the files its world lives in. 110k is yours.

S3, Strings Up Close: what a string really is in memory, and what Turbo does at its edges.

← Previous Next →