Date   : Wed, 06 Apr 1988 09:49:46 EDT
From   : Paul.Birkel@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Software for kids ...

My son turned three a couple of months ago and has taken an inordinate
interest in my wifes PC-compatible. Actually its not so inordinate since
Daddy spends his entire day playing with 'puters. He's got his own floppy
now, but it doesn't do anything (yet). Anyway, the PC compatible was moved
to work (for my wife) and I'm thinking about giving him an older CP/M
system. So far his interest has been based on getting characters to print
at the dos-prompt, and overloading the buffer 'til it beeps. Pretty simple.

He's only three, so at this stage I envision that a simple program which
displays a *BIG* character on the display in response to a keystrike will be
pretty entertaining 'til he learns where most of the keys are. Then I
figured that I could down-size the characters from 80x24 to maybe 5x7 so
that he could work on words. As I'm under severe pressure to finish my
dissertation I would prefer not to spend the time writing this (admittedly
simple) code.

Actually, any simple program that would respond to keystrokes with pretty
significant environmental changes would probably be interesting. Adventure-like
games are a little too advanced, might as well hack at the system prompt ...

Anyway, can anyone point me to CP/M "kiddy"/"educational" software? Anything
public-domain? I'd bet that there must be some for the C64/128, but it's
probably in cartridge form. I need 5 1/4" format.

I haven't a C compiler and am not prepared to go back to ASM. I do have
an old BASIC somewhere ... maybe BASIC source would be my best bet. Anyone
have any source? Even PC-based BASIC code for a mono, non-graphic environment
would be useful. The terminal is an ADM31 I believe (a Morrow system);
don't recall whether there is a graphic font.

BTW, what's the easiest way to get a beep into a CP/M system? Seems I could
cycle a bit on a parallel port and drive an amp; I could simply gate an
oscillator with the bit (NE555?); or I could drive a synthesizer chip.
Suggestions? What's a cheap, easy-to-use synthesizer chip?

Pointers, help, suggestions gratefully accepted. Other folks must have
(have had) kids in a CP/M world. What do (did) they do?

paul

Paul A. Birkel
Dept. of Computer Science
Carnegie-Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA  15213

(412) 268-8893


End of INFO-CPM Digest
******************************