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38-436: Softstrip format never became very popular for program distribution. It was intended to replace the tedium of entering type-in programs from magazines, but the format encoded less than a thousand bytes per square inch, which meant that large files took up a lot of space in a magazine. The bar codes didn't work well if the magazine ink was smeared; and the reader hardware was relatively expensive at around US$ 200. The high cost of

76-537: A BASIC loader and machine code . In the latter case, the opcodes and operands of the machine code part were often simply given as DATA statements within the BASIC program, and were loaded using a POKE loop, since few users had access to an assembler . In some cases, a special program for entering machine code numerically was provided. Programs with a machine code component sometimes included assembly language listings for users who had assemblers and who were interested in

114-485: A hardware exception occurs that cannot be handled . Operating system crashes can also occur when internal sanity-checking logic within the operating system detects that the operating system has lost its internal self-consistency. Modern multi-tasking operating systems, such as Linux , and macOS , usually remain unharmed when an application program crashes. Some operating systems, e.g., z/OS , have facilities for Reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) and

152-414: A machine-readable format. Antic stated in 1985 that its staff "spends a good portion of our time diligently combing the incoming submissions for practical application programs. We receive a lot of disk directory programs, recipe file storers, mini word processors, and other rehashed versions of old ideas". While most type-ins were simple games or utilities and likely only to hold a user's interest for

190-786: A bimonthly magazine titled Creative Computing while serving as an educational marketing manager at AT&T. The inaugural issue was released in October of that year, and by the fourth year, a team of eight individuals were working on it. The magazine featured computer games and its debut coincided with the introduction of the Altair 8800 - the first widely accessible computer kit - which was announced in January 1975, according to Ahl. Most early computer magazines published type-in programs. The professional and business-oriented journals such as Byte and Popular Computing printed them less frequently, often as

228-409: A fraction of the cost of purchasing commercial software on removable media , but the user had to spend up to several hours typing each one in. Most listings were either in a system-specific BASIC dialect or machine code . Machine code programs were long lists of decimal or hexadecimal numbers, often in the form of DATA statements in BASIC. Most magazines had error checking software to make sure

266-532: A free flexi disc that played on a turntable connected to the microcomputer's cassette input. Other input methods, such as the Cauzin Softstrip , were tried, without much success. Not all type-ins were long. Run magazine's "Magic" column specialized in one-liner programs for the Commodore 64. These programs were often graphic demos or meant to illustrate a technical quirk of the computer's architecture;

304-430: A magazine or book, sit down at a computer, and manually enter the lines of code. Computers of this era automatically booted into a programming environment – even the commands to load and run a prepackaged program were really programming commands executed in direct mode . After typing the program in, the user would be able to run it and also to save it to disk or a cassette for future use. Users were often cautioned to save

342-445: A mailing address to send a small sum ( US$ 3 was typical) to buy the program on disk or tape. By the mid-1980s, recognising this demand from readers, many US-published magazines offered all of each issue's type-ins on an optional disk, often with a bonus program or two. Some of these disks became electronic publications in their own right, outlasting their parent magazine as happened with Loadstar . Some UK magazines occasionally offered

380-456: A program was typed correctly. Type-in programs did not carry over to 16-bit computers such as the Amiga and Atari ST in a significant way, as both programs and data (such as graphics) became much larger. It became common to include a covermount 3 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk or CD-ROM with each issue of a magazine. A reader would take a printed copy of the program listing, such as from

418-766: A short time, some were very ambitious, rivaling commercial software. Perhaps the most famous example is the type-in word processor SpeedScript , published by Compute!'s Gazette and Compute! for several 8-bit computers starting in 1984. Compute! also published SpeedScript , along with some accessory programs, in book form. It retained a following into the next decade as users refined and added capabilities to it. Compute! discontinued type-in programs in May 1988, stating "As computers and software have grown more powerful, we've realized it's not possible to offer top quality type-in programs for all machines. And we also realize that you're less inclined to type in those programs". As

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456-614: A test program to illustrate a technical topic covered in the magazine rather than an application for general use. Consumer-oriented publications such as Compute! and Family Computing ran several each issue. The programs were sometimes specific to a given home computer and sometimes compatible with several computers. Platform-specific magazines such as Compute!'s Gazette ( VIC-20 and Commodore 64 ) and Antic ( Atari 8-bit computers ), since they only had to print one version of each program, were able to print more, longer listings. Although type in programs were usually copyrighted, like

494-401: Is displayed, hence all the user sees as a result of the crash is the desktop. Many times there is no apparent action that causes a crash to desktop. During normal function, the program may freeze for a shorter period of time, and then close by itself. Also during normal function, the program may become a black screen and repeatedly play the last few seconds of sound (depending on the size of

532-413: Is not allowed by the operating system. The operating system then triggers an exception or signal in the application. Unix applications traditionally responded to the signal by dumping core . Most Windows and Unix GUI applications respond by displaying a dialogue box (such as the one shown to the right) with the option to attach a debugger if one is installed. Some applications attempt to recover from

570-454: The Motorola 6800 of the late 1970s incorporated a checksum into its hexadecimal program listings. Crash (computing) In computing , a crash , or system crash , occurs when a computer program such as a software application or an operating system stops functioning properly and exits . On some operating systems or individual applications, a crash reporting service will report

608-457: The code that actually triggered the crash. In early personal computers, attempting to write data to hardware addresses outside the system's main memory could cause hardware damage. Some crashes are exploitable and let a malicious program or hacker execute arbitrary code , allowing the replication of viruses or the acquisition of data which would normally be inaccessible. An application typically crashes when it performs an operation that

646-448: The program counter , buffer overflow , overwriting a portion of the affected program code due to an earlier bug, executing invalid machine instructions (an illegal or unauthorized opcode), or triggering an unhandled exception . The original software bug that started this chain of events is typically considered to be the cause of the crash, which is discovered through the process of debugging . The original bug can be far removed from

684-480: The German word " Abend " meaning "evening". Depending on the application, the crash may contain the user's sensitive and private information . Moreover, many software bugs which cause crashes are also exploitable for arbitrary code execution and other types of privilege escalation . For example, a stack buffer overflow can overwrite the return address of a subroutine with an invalid value, which will cause, e.g.,

722-519: The Internet, such as abend.org . This usage derives from the ABEND macro on IBM OS/360 , ..., z/OS operating systems. Usually capitalized, but may appear as "abend". Some common ABEND codes are System ABEND 0C7 (data exception) and System ABEND 0CB ( division by zero ). Abends can be "soft" (allowing automatic recovery) or "hard" (terminating the activity). The term is jocularly claimed to be derived from

760-528: The OS can recover from the crash of a critical component, whether due to hardware failure, e.g., uncorrectable ECC error, or to software failure, e.g., a reference to an unassigned page. An Abnormal end or ABEND is an abnormal termination of software , or a program crash. Errors or crashes on the Novell NetWare network operating system are usually called ABENDs. Communities of NetWare administrators sprung up around

798-534: The UK price of £200, I'm having a devil of a job deciding who could justify the price". He concluded that until a compelling business use appeared for it, Softstrip was "'all dressed up, with nowhere to go'". This computer data storage -related software article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This publishing -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Type-in programs A type-in program or type-in listing

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836-427: The audio buffer ) that was being played before it crashes to desktop. Other times it may appear to be triggered by a certain action, such as loading an area. Crash to desktop bugs are considered particularly problematic for users. Since they frequently display no error message, it can be very difficult to track down the source of the problem, especially if the times they occur and the actions taking place right before

874-433: The cost of cassette tapes and floppy disks declined, and as the sophistication of commercial programs and the technical capabilities of the computers they ran on steadily increased, the importance of the type-in declined. In Europe , magazine covermount disks became common, and type-ins became virtually non-existent. To prevent errors when typing in listings, most publications provided short programs to verify that code

912-426: The crash and any details relating to it (or give the user the option to do so), usually to the developer(s) of the application. If the program is a critical part of the operating system, the entire system may crash or hang, often resulting in a kernel panic or fatal system error . Most crashes are the result of a software bug . Typical causes include accessing invalid memory addresses, incorrect address values in

950-441: The crash do not appear to have any pattern or common ground. One way to track down the source of the problem for games is to run them in windowed-mode. Windows Vista has a feature that can help track down the cause of a CTD problem when it occurs on any program. Windows XP included a similar feature as well. Some computer programs, such as StepMania and BBC's Bamzooki , also crash to desktop if in full-screen, but display

988-407: The error and continue running instead of exiting . An application can also contain code to crash after detecting a severe error. Typical errors that result in application crashes include: A "crash to desktop" is said to occur when a program (commonly a video game ) unexpectedly quits, abruptly taking the user back to the desktop . Usually, the term is applied only to crashes where no error

1026-466: The error in a separate window when the user has returned to the desktop. The software running the web server behind a website may crash, rendering it inaccessible entirely or providing only an error message instead of normal content. For example: if a site is using an SQL database (such as MySQL ) for a script (such as PHP ) and that SQL database server crashes, then PHP will display a connection error. An operating system crash commonly occurs when

1064-415: The internal workings of the program. The downside of type-ins was labor. The work required to enter a medium-sized type-in was on the order of hours. If the resulting program turned out not to be to the user's taste, it was quite possible that the user spent more time keying in the program than using it. Additionally, type-ins were error-prone, both for users and for the magazines. This was especially true of

1102-434: The machine code parts of BASIC programs, which were nothing but line after line of data, e.g. DATA statements in the BASIC language. In some cases where the version of ASCII used on the type of computer the program was published for included printable characters for each value from 0–255, the code could have been printed using strings that contained the glyphs that the values mapped to, or a mnemonic such as [SHIFT-R] instructing

1140-566: The many games in BASIC Computer Games , authors often encouraged users to modify them, adding capabilities or otherwise changing them to suit their needs. Many authors used the article accompanying the type-ins to suggest modifications for the reader and programmer to perform. Users would sometimes send their changes back into the magazine for later publication. This could be considered a predecessor to open source software , but today most open source licenses specify that code be available in

1178-456: The program before running it, as errors could result in a crash requiring a reboot, which would render the program irretrievable unless it had been saved. While some type-in programs were short, simple utility or demonstration programs, many type-ins were fully functional games or application software, sometimes rivaling commercial packages. Type-ins were usually written in BASIC or a combination of

Cauzin Softstrip - Misplaced Pages Continue

1216-487: The response. I selected the best games and put them together in a book, 101 Basic Computer Games . After putting the book together on my own time, I convinced reluctant managers at DEC to publish it. They were convinced it wouldn't sell. It, plus its sequel, More Basic Computer Games have sold over half a million copies proving that people are intrigued by computer games. Upon Ahl's departure from DEC in July 1974, he initiated

1254-405: The text accompanying the graphics demo programs would avoid explicitly describing the resultant image, enticing the reader to type it in. Type-in programs preceded the home computer era. As David H. Ahl wrote in 1983: In 1971, while education product line manager at Digital Equipment Corp. , I put out a call for games to educational institutions throughout North America. I was overwhelmed with

1292-642: The unit and the added demands placed on publishers led to a chicken or egg dilemma between supply and demand where magazines were reluctant to publish listings in Softstrip format until there was a sizable user base, and users waited for the bar codes to become common in magazines before buying the unit. More recently, other applications for the code have been developed, including its use on identification cards and similar documents to encode text and biometric data. "The system works beautifully", David Tebbutt of Personal Computer World wrote in January 1987, "but, at

1330-428: The user which keys to press. While a BASIC program would often stop with an error at an incorrect statement, the machine code parts of a program could fail in untraceable ways. This made the correct entry of programs difficult. Other solutions existed for the tedium of typing in seemingly-endless lines of code. Freelance authors wrote most magazine type-in programs and, in the accompanying article, often provided readers

1368-420: Was an interactive program for entering data. ANALOG Computing presented machine code programs as BASIC DATA statements, then prepended a short program to compute checksums. Running the program output a list of values to be checked against those printed in the magazine. Upon successful validation, the program was saved as a binary file and the BASIC code no longer needed. The MIKBUG machine code monitor for

1406-746: Was computer source code printed in a home computer magazine or book. It was meant to be entered via the keyboard by the reader and then saved to cassette tape or floppy disk . The result was a usable game, utility, or application program. Type-in programs were common in the home computer era from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, when the RAM of 8-bit systems was measured in kilobytes and most computer owners did not have access to networks such as bulletin board systems . Magazines such as Softalk , Compute! , ANALOG Computing , and Ahoy! dedicated much of each issue to type-in programs. The magazines could contain multiple games or other programs for

1444-440: Was entered correctly. These were specific to a magazine or family of magazines, and different validation programs were usually used for BASIC source and binary data. Compute! and Compute!'s Gazette printed a short listing in each issue for The Automatic Proofreader to check BASIC programs, while ANALOG Computing used D:CHECK (for disk) and C:CHECK (for cassette tape). For binary listings, Compute! offered MLX , which

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