Laskys Atari Hack grafton centre cambridge

[atarigungfu]

Hi folks,

 

Sometimes in the 80's there was a LASKYS store in the Grafton Centre Cambridge. Many different computers were hooked up to TV sets so you could try them out. Being a fun loving prankster, I walked up to the atari 800xl turned the volume down, and begun to type in a program which would make a siren noise after 20 seconds. After finishing typing in the program, i ran it - it cleared the screen so all looked normal. I turned the TV volume up to full, and walked out of the shop (remember I have twenty seconds).

 

Well the twenty seconds was up, and suddenly "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

 

People started looking around, wondering what the hell was going on. Shop staff looking at each other, thinking it was a shop alarm.

 

I also did a better version, that the alarm would start when some unsuspecting punter pressed a key on the atari keyboard. Now that was a crack up!

 

Cheers.

[+therealbountybob]

Beat's my print "Hello "; loop

[Bryan]

I used to do a similar thing in my high school computer lab on the TRS-80's. A buddy and I would load our little program on them, turn down the brightness on the monitors and when the new class came in they'd all start beeping.

[Magic Knight]

Programming a static 'Ready' prompt is one that give laughs. Of course randomly hitting keys in frustration ends with break being hit!

[Tezz]

Back in the days when Boots the Chemist jumped in on the home computer sales and had a selection of 8-bits and games in-store, it was difficult to resist doing something.

the one I remember most was on the Spectrum..

10 cls
20 print "Program: [insert much anticipated game title here]"
30 randomise usr 1234
40 print " [insert amusing message here to indicate that everyone has stood around for nothing"

 

Whereby it appeared that the game was loading for several minutes. Despite the fact there was no cassette attached a crowd would form and wait with patience whilst you stood inocently by the game racks awaiting their reaction.

[jhd]

I had a Coco growing up, and I too liked to run "demo" programs whenever I found a Radio Shack store with a Coco on display. Nothing quite as cool as the siren sound effects, however.

[Caterpiggle]

Hello

atarigungfu,

 

 

Is possible for you to remember BASIC Lines code that you wrote 'Whoooo" sound in BASIC program ? I would love to typed out the old GOOD BASIC codes.

[sack-c0s]

i did a similar thing on the archimedes in school

 

a desktop app with no window that waited a random time and played a sample of 'OI! Over here!', only loaded on as many different machines as possible.

 

Annoyed teachers no end

[atarigungfu]

Hello

atarigungfu,

 

 

Is possible for you to remember BASIC Lines code that you wrote 'Whoooo" sound in BASIC program ? I would love to typed out the old GOOD BASIC codes.

 

I think I remember, but ive just started getting back into atari - and havent used atari basic for well over 30 years (other basics and languages i have).

 

It was a very basic and simple sound program, and it needed to be short and easy to type in the shops atari, and then leave pronto! Anyway, this is what i remember typing in.

 

 

Nothing special, but it didnt need to be! ;o)

 

Cheers.

[Mclaneinc]

The three 'joke' things I remember from the Atari was Gigantic Jerry for one, a rather crude animation made with Movie Maker.

 

A 'must see'

 

A multiboot a mate did that claimed to have Flight sim on it, the menu said it had to be write enabled to work, it then did this enormous load and then you suddenly realised it was formatting the disk. I saw people ripping the disk out of the drive in a panic.

 

It was of course just a cruel joke..

 

The best one was the Joke DOS 2.05, made me panic the first time I saw it running, a ghost had taken over my computer

 

Must dig it out for a laugh one day..

[+SoulBuster]

Even though this one was not on an Atari, the best computer joke program I ever saw was a popup stating it was formatting your hard drive with a cancel button. When you move the mouse to click cancel, the whole popup moved away from your pointer.