Re: Beagle Bros and Wonderful disk drive noises

[tcompter@nyx.cs.du.edu (Thomas Compter)]

A.R. Duell (ard12@eng.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) writes:
: >In particular, there was one particular program called "Magic Pack"
: >on their "Beagle Bag" disk which had two amazing options:
: 
: >1.  "Card Scanner" would direct you to hold a playing card up to a
: >specified area on the CRT screen, then when it told you type "RUN"
: >and you pressed <Return> it would scan the card and tell you what
: >it was.  It was 100% accurate - every time I typed in the "RUN"
: >command, it always correctly reported the correct rank and suit
: >of card being held up (i.e. "Ace of Spades", "3 of Hearts", etc.).
: 
: I'm guessing here, as I've never seen the program in question, but did
: this do something like cycle through an internal 4-state counter (for the
: suit) and stop when the 'R' was typed, with the state of the counter being
: deducable from some non-obvious feature on the screen (colour of some
: pixel, something like that) and then do the same thing with a 13 state
: counter for the value of the card, stopping when the U is typed.  There's
: no way it could work _exactly_ as you described it, although the effect on
: a non-informed user could be as you described it. 

Someone is pulling someone's leg here.  I have that program, and it
was much simpler than that.  The operator simply typed in a code for
the card, like '4sn' for 4 of spades (the last character was
ignored).  The word 'RUN' would appear on the screen, of course, 
and the computer would buzz and click for a while until it 
triumphantly announced the card.  It was a cute parlour trick
which I was not above using on my less informed friends :)
 
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