SoftwarePlatformsMastodon users are crowd-running programs on a BBC Micro emulator in 2024 and the results look as spectacular as they did in ‘81When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

SoftwarePlatformsMastodon users are crowd-running programs on a BBC Micro emulator in 2024 and the results look as spectacular as they did in ‘81When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

BBC Micro Emulator

One such account is theBBC Micro Bot(via The Register), and it serves an interesting purpose: Feed it some BASIC via a toot (yep) and it’ll handily output the result into its gallery, often with an accompanying post featuring a photo or video file of its eventual creation, and some of them are just plain gorgeous.

Now in Mastodon-form, which is a phrase that seems like it should have been uttered in an 80s kids cartoon, many users of the site have taken to tooting their suggestions at the bot and admiring the results, and some of the images created are genuinely stunning to behold:

While I’m sure someone’s tried, the thing I admire most about this is the genuine level of creativity on display, and not the expected level of tomfoolery often created when you crowdsource your inputs from the internet at large.

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(Image credit: Future)

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Perhaps it speaks well of the users of Mastodon, or quite possibly some sort of censorship somewhere in the process to catch any inappropriate creations, but there does seem to be a reverence here for both the concept and the eventual results.

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Should you be unfamiliar with BBC BASIC and want to give it a go for yourself, there aremany online tutorialsthat I’m told are quite wonderful.

One of these days I’ll get around to it, I tell myself, but for now I’m quite happy to sit back and admire the results on display here, safe in the knowledge that all my school education ever taught me about computing was how to build an Excel spreadsheet-based cinema booking system.

Yep, thanks guys. A career at my local Odeon was never really on the cards, was it?

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