Gaming Donkey Kong easter egg found after 26 years!

[TSPenguin]

Topic says it all
Read more: http://www.donhodges.com/donkey_kong_easter_egg.htm

 

[Andy44]

He disassembled the executable? Wow.

And Landon made the trigger so intricate for such a minor easter egg. I wonder how many people stumbled across it over the years and didn't realize what they has found.

 

[TSPenguin]

I wonder how many people stumbled across it over the years and didn't realize what they has found.

Given the procedure... Not many, not even a few. Maybe 1 or 2 if even someone at all...

 

[Tommy]

He disassembled the executable? Wow.

Disassembly was fairly common back then, on the old 8 bit computers. I myself disassembled many games on a C-64 with a "SpeedLoad" cartrige (had disassembler built in). That's a big part of how I learned ML for that computer.

 

[Andy44]

What is ML?

Back in the 80s I was using a Sinclair 1000 machine; all my programming was done in the native Sinclair BASIC and compiled on the fly. I didn't even know what "compile" meant back then. I used to think machine code was all written by hand and I marveled at the pros.

Sounds dumb, but I was one of the few 14-year-olds who knew any programming in my neighborhood.

 

[NukeET]

What is ML?

Back in the 80s I was using a Sinclair 1000 machine; all my programming was done in the native Sinclair BASIC and compiled on the fly. I didn't even know what "compile" meant back then. I used to think machine code was all written by hand and I marveled at the pros.

Sounds dumb, but I was one of the few 14-year-olds who knew any programming in my neighborhood.

"ML" is "Machine Language".

I learned ZX-81/Sinclair 1000 ML in the early '80s because the BASIC was so damn slow.

 

[Tommy]

ML = Machine Language. THis means programming an executable in the processors native language, controlling every action the processor takes. It can be used to create an app that is much more streamlined and efficient than compiling from BASIC (or other language). A ML program is just a series of numbers between zero and 255 inclusive (on an 8 bit machine). Each number is either a specific processor command (such as "load the accumulator with this data"), data, or the memory address to be used in the process. Note that many of the commands (such as LDA, or "load accumulator") often had several versions, each with it's own "command" depending on whether you are using direct mode, indirect-x, indirect-y, zero page, etc.

An "assembler" was an app that would show the "assembly" instruction (ie, LDA) rather than the number for that particular instruction, making the code a bit more "human readable". It also allowed "flags" to be set for jump points, and variables by name (instead of by memory address).

Due to the increased complexity of todays apps, vastly larger "instruction sets" available with modern processors, increased memory available, and sheer speed of todays processors (which make the absolute optimization of code less important) ML and Assembly are rarely used today. Some of Steve Gibson's stuff (at GRC.com) is still done in assembly, but these tend to be very small, simple apps that perform only one fairly simple task.

 

[Andy44]

I know what machine language is; I just don't know what random letters strung together mean.

I've programmed microcontrollers in ML before. For short programs it's easier than higher level language because you are telling every part of the chip exactly what to do, which is good when you want to optimize for speed and efficiency. But that's going back ten years or so now.

I have also forgotten everything I knew about C and C++, mostly because I despised it in college. Come to find out the world finds it useful including Orbiter add-ons, and now I'm regretting my brain dump.

 

[computerex]

Old people. :lol: I started out with pascal. :rofl: