The Epson HX-20 Demo

My Epson HX-20 Demo. Coded with the built-in Basic language. Display size is 120x36 pixels. The Demo was written for the Buenzli 18 Demoparty in 2009 in Winterthur/Switzerland by Chainsaw.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Epson
• HX20
• Demo
• Final

[appsofint]

The demo is great - thanks for taking the time. I know at 600-ish KHz (yes Khz) processor speed *and* BASIC your work was always going to be cut out for you.

Any chance of seeing the source code for the demo?

[Chainsaw1974]

@appsofint Yes, the Basic is so slow, but I don't have the time and motivation to learn assembler on this machine. (And I think, I don't have enough knowledge about assembler). If I could, I would show you the source code. But how? The internal printer is broken and doesn't print anything. A video of the listing during it scrolls over the small display could be hard to read... And I only have a old camera, nothing professional. And I have no cable to connect the Epson to the TV. Any idea?

[NiTuS14]

Hello! I've just got one of these little machines. :P I tried to write a blackjack game for this computer (I've found it in artsci's), but I'm constantly getting a "MO Error ln 1940" when running, so that I can't play the game. I don't know what's wrong in the script, I get this error even if I correct line 2050, changing "2050 IF PC<22 THEN 2070" by "2050 IF PC<22 THEN GOTO 2070".

Could you please help me? I'm very enthusiastic about knowing more about this 80-ish machines. :D

[Chainsaw1974]

@NiTuS14 Mhhh MO = Missing Operand Error... The IF command should work with or without "GOTO" after the "THEN" in HX-20 Basic, so I don't see a mistake in your Basic Line 2050. But the MO Error says "in 1940", so there must be an error in the line 1940, not 2050... What commands are in line 1940 ?

[Chainsaw1974]

@NiTuS14 PS: I cant post links here, youtube seems to disallow this, but if you search in google for "epson hx-20 manual" you find the manuals on the epson page. Maybe they help you by programming the Epson in Basic language...

[ForViewingOnly]

Great video. Have you replaced your HX-20's Ni-Cad battery yet, or do you still use the original?

[Chainsaw1974]

@ForViewingOnly No the original battery was broken. I can't remember what I built in then,but it was some battery that is normaly used in remote-controlled cars.(And I soldered the original battery conntector to that new battery). But for all I used the correct voltage of the battery,I had over and over again trouble to load the battery. The Epson worked with the power plug,but without power plug,the battery worked only a few minutes, sometimes an hour. I think generally current supply problems

[Guill0rtiz]

holly shit! did that thing just make a cube rotate!!???

[LOPEZdJUNGLIST]

just a matter of time b4 that shitty rotating cube became grand theft auto

[petwir]

I wrote business applications on this device for an insurance company in the 80's. The most challanging part was they wanted a line-graph chart to print on the dot-matrix printer to mimic the output someone was getting from a radio-shack device that had a color pen plotter on it. I could never figure out how to address the printer at the pixil level, so I displayed the chart on the display window and used the "print screen" function. The chart was taller than the screen, so did mult times.

[mrbufon]

Hey man! Thank you for taking the time to put a smile on my face

[notbugs]

Me and a friend made a Pac-Man like game on the HX-20 back in the 80's. No actual Pac-Man graphics, but a dot that was chased by other dots in a maze. Took quite some time to get it smooth, but eventually it worked out and was quite fun to play.

[NiTuS14]

@sofstrad Hi Jean-Jacques! Eventually, I managed to get it to work some months ago. It's a fun game, I'd like to record a video showing it!

[sofstrad]

@NiTuS14

Hello NiTus14

I am the man who sent the listing to Artsci's boss William Smith. The listing of the blackjack game has been typed directly from the original listing printed by an Epson HX-20 in 1984. I re-entered the whole listing in the HX-20 I bought to another HX-20 fan, and the program worked fine, so there are no errors in the listing. Check if you made a mistake while typing the listing. MO error means Missing Operand error.

Regards

Jean-Jacques Cortes

[RealSkyDiver2]

but can it run Crysis?