Brunswick @Brunswick - 2mo
I hated those stupid magazines. They never explained how the program worked. Basically useless information
I was too young to try and figure it out. I had no way of knowing what "peek and poke" meant, or what it meant to write to the "frame buffer". None of that was explained in the Tandy books. Even if it was, it was over my head. I probably needed someone to explain it to me. My post above was describing my frustration with the magazines not explaining what the code was doing. I would have loved to know, but I could see I had no path to understanding it on my own. I pleaded with the librarians to show me books on computers and electronics, but they were ancient government employees and ignored me as an annoyance. Once someone told me I needed to go to the university library to find those books. So... I got on the bus, went to the next town and found the university library. (Back then you just had to go corner to corner and ask people which way to go, which was never reliable. You had to look for people that looked honest). I went through the doors and found a guard blocking my way. He said I couldn't go in without a student ID. Naturally I asked how I could get one. He said I needed to be a student at the university. I asked how to be a student at the university. He pointed me to admissions. So, I asked admissions how to get a student ID so I could use the library. They said I needed to finish high school. Well, as a 6th grader, that wouldn't be for some time. At that point I gave up on the university, and went to different library systems. They pointed me at the card index. Again... government employees. It wasn't until 3 years later when I had a student job at a large corporation that I finally found a library for the engineers. It had ALL the books I wanted... accept anything about Tandy computers or anything to do with writing video games.
