[Coco] Down the 8 bit BASIC rabbithole

[John Guin]

I opened this web page this morning:
https://www.bbcmicrobot.com/learn/index.html

Seemed interesting - 8 bit BASIC was (and is!) a good learning tool.  But I noticed the red and white bouncing ball image - that seemed familiar.

I think it was Rainbowfest in Chicago in 84/85 that (Steve Bjork?) broke out a grey Coco for a demo.  It had some special hardware attached to it and demonstrated that same bouncing ball.  Obviously, everyone asked him about that, the (not yet announced/confirmed Coco3) but all I remember him doing was quickly disconnecting that hardware and saying "No comment."

Anyway, that site led me to this one: https://www.bbcmicrobot.com/  which is a twitter feed of running code.  What you can do is send your basic program to the twitter bot, and it runs it and replied with a video - neat!

Some examples:
The bouncing red ball:  https://bbcmic.ro/?load=1240071203487965184 (weird setup, but great once it gets animated)
Kraftwerk's Tour de France album cover:  https://bbcmic.ro/?load=1248312174054948864

And of course, Conway's game of Life:  https://bbcmic.ro/?load=1230644568326053888


I'm off to write some 8 bit code, in 140 bytes (?) to see what I can get running - enjoy everyone!

John