Is The Mac The Amiga Of Today – Part II

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 Back in July of 2015, I wrote a technical op-ed piece comparing the Macintosh with the Commodore Amiga, contrasting their technical strengths, marketing strategies and popularity with the creative crown.  In hind sight knowing what happened to the Commodore Amiga; I am not sure it is fair to use the words marketing and Amiga in the same sentence. After looking at Apples latest offerings from the WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference),  I am beginning to wonder if my post was just a little too prophetic.

2 years later let us draw some more similarities between the two companies, and what now seems eerily similar in that it appears Apple may be poised to take a page right out of Commodore’s managements playbook.  The ability to “Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Let’s start out by recognizing that with the Amiga; Commodore had a potential winner on their hands!  In 1995 they had a 7MHz desktop computer that could display high resolution graphics, displaying 16 colors out of a palette of 4096.  4 voice digital audio, and a preemptive multitasking operating system.  At the time the best the Macintosh could do was 2 colors on a built in 9 inch screen.  The Macintosh II would not be released for another 2 years, to finally bring color to the Macintosh line, Apple was able to somewhat fill the gap with the Apple IIGS.  However, this was still an 8bit computer, which Apple further crippled so it would not directly compete directly with the Macintosh.

Due to the fact that the Amiga used a standard NTCS / PAL output and had the capability to genlock (Display computer generated graphics and text over a standard TV signal)  Video production and TV studios went with the Commodore Amiga for their video production.  Sales of the Amiga did not fully hit their stride with consumers however until the release of the Amgia 500, which was snapped up as an inexpensive home/gaming computer, with hit titles such as Lemmings, or Shadow Of The Beast appearing first on the Amiga before being ported to the PC, Atari, or even console games at the time such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or Sega. 

Commodores problem however was that even with their past successes in the home computer market coupled with the strengths of the Amiga management never really could figure out just what the Amiga was, who it should be targeted at, and most importantly where the product line should go to make it successful in the future.  Commodore did release milestone updates to the Amiga, such as the A3000, which was the first true 32 bit Amiga, which was followed by the 1200, and 4000 which brought the AGA chipset.  Capable of displaying 14bit video to the Amiga and gave the user the ability to display 256 colors on the screen at one time with a palette of 16.8 million colors.  However by this time VGA and SVGA were already pretty much standard on the PCs being release and could do more for less money.  Many saw this as too little too late and jumped ship.  Commodore was a sinking ship and finally closed their doors in 1994.

If you know your Commodore history, you know I left out a very important Amiga model.  The Amiga 600.  Here is where we start drawing comparisons to the last days of Commodore and the current Apple line up.

The Amiga 600, originally started out as the proposed Amgia 300.  It was supposed to be cheaper to product then the Amiga 500 (which at the time was the top selling Amiga computer.), and while it included the ability to add a built in hard drive, came standard with Amiga OS 2.0, and had a PCMCIA slot for the addition of extra RAM, modem, or network card.  It lacked a numerical keypad, ran slightly slower, and ended up costing more than the 500 and 500+ that it eventually replaced when released as the Amiga 600.  Commodore once again proved it could not sell igloo’s to the eskimos, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Now let’s take a look at Apple.  Oh were to begin?

I could lament over their decision to kill the xServe line, which led to their discontinuing the XRaid, which led to OS X Server becoming a dumbed down $20 consumer ad-on.  However, as this is probably one of Apple’s most niche we can more on in favor of getting into the meat and potatoes.

Ports and Peripherals –

Firewire, conventional USB ports, CD/DVD-Rom drives, and  SD-Card slots.  As I mentioned in my original article, I felt that one of the things Apple did right with the release of the iMac and the remarketing of the Macintosh for the creative users and professionals the Commodore failed when the Amiga took of in this realm was not only their choice of connection technologies but their close relation to third party vendors such as Canon or Sony, so that we were able to go out buy a Macintosh and a Sony camcorder and come right home and start editing our video.   When it came time to share the video we could burn it right to a DVD and mail it off to our relatives. 

While ejecting the SD or CFAST card from my camera to transfer my pictures to my computer, regardless of if I am at home or on the road is not part of my workflow,  I simply plug my camera into my computer via USB to transfer my files, it is part of the workflow of many professionals.

Over the last 8 years, Apple has done away with almost every port and peripheral mentioned above, yes even conventional USB.  While a few of these we have grown used to not having, such as Firewire, and optical drives.  I have a IEEE1394 card in my PC in case I ever need to get something off of one of my old Camcorder tapes,  You don’t always need an optical drive, but they are nice to have on occasion!  Others such as the removal of the SD-Card reader, and conventional USB ports are potentially a show stopper for your professionals.  Going back to Apple’s relationship with vendors,  I just upgraded to a Canon EOS 5D MKIV, which comes with their own proprietary USB cable.  Pondering the scenario of upgrading my aging 2010 Macbook Pro with a current model with USB-C, I GOOGLED Canon EOS 5D MKIV USB-C data cable and came up with ZILCH!  Nothing! 

This means that to transfer pictures from my brand new camera to a brand new Macbook Pro, I need to remember to carry around a separate dongle,  but more on dongles later.  It is discouraging to see Apple forgetting that cooperating with the companies that are going to be making products that will interface with your computers is a selling point, and makes things easier down the road for your consumers, and professional users.

Hardware

Desktops – I want an expandable desktop, not a Mac Mini plus

Apple!  PLEASE, as a former cheese grater Mac Pro user, I am begging you to bring back a full desktop to your Macintosh line!  There were so many advantages to the original Mac Pro, for instance.  its expandability which saw me go through 3 versions of video cards, and from it’s original 4GB to 16GBs of RAM.  Desktops are more clutter free.  I loved the ability to have 4 hard drives without having to keep either a 4 bay or multiple external drive enclouse on my desk, each with their own data cable and power cord, not to mention the fact that I could have any one of the 4 drives a bootable boot camp device.  Something you cannot do with the current Mac Pro.  Apple traded form over function and expandability with its current Mac Pro, and has let it sit stagnant for 3 years. 

 

Current Macbook Pro – “It just works!  If you remembered your dongle.”

This I already touched upon in the last section, but there are so many things for a PRO not to like with the current interation of Macbok Pro’s.  First let’s start out with the ports.  4 USB-C ports and a headphone jack?  Is this your way of giving the bird to those who complained about the removal of our beloved 3.5mm jack in the iPhone7?  I just don’t get it.  Considering the fact that one of the ports must be used as a charging cable, thay leaves me with just 3 ports.  Which being USB-C I also have to bring along adaptors to plug in things like my camera, charge my iPhone, or even plug in a USB media stick.  For those that also use their Macbook Pro’s as desktop.  That leaves them with 1 free USB-C port after plugging in the power adapter and 2 displays.  On my current 2010 Macbook PRO, I could have my power adaptor plugged in, using an external monitor, have an external hard drive connected via Firewire 800, Wired to my LAN, transferring pictures via my SD Card slot, and still have one legacy USB port free!  The only dongle I would have to use is the Video Port to HDMI dongle. 

Oh did I also forget to mention that I can upgrade the RAM from 4GB to 8GB (The 2011 models you can upgrade to 16GB).  Another feature stripped from the current models. 

Even with the inclusions of the new touch strip, which looks like it will be a really cool feature, Apple is trading too much form over functionality to be considered as a professional option any more.  Which is too bad considering Apple still has one of the best portable form factors in mobile computing.

Software

Now let’s take a look at the other side of the house, because this has been another strength in product placement and product homogeny that has given Apple an edge over its competition,  and yet again another reason that Apple is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, just like Commodore .

OS X – Unreasonable and arbitrary obsolescence of hardware. 

Okay Apple, while I understand why OS X Sierra might not be functionally useable of a first generation intel Macbook, I fail to see the reason why it won’t run on say an 8 Core 3.0GHz Mac Pro from 2008, with 16GB of RAM, and 1GB of VRAM.  For the record my Mac Pro died 2 years ago, so I am just using the specs above as an example, not as a display of bitterness.  That is more than enough horsepower to run almost anything you can throw at it, so why is it unsupported hardware for your current OS?  It makes no sense.  It also made me decide not to repair my Mac Pro.  Since I do not want to get another all in one Mac like an iMac, the Mac Mini is not powerful enough for my needs, and I feel the current Mac Pro is a joke I have been using Windows 7 for the past year. 

Aperture –  Apple what the bloody hell were you thinking? 

You were the company who INVENTED professional photo workflow on a computer!  To discontinue the product and give your customers the option of using the consumer grade product Photo or move to Adobe Lightroom is laughably pathetic! 

Final Cut Pro X – It needs to be more like iMovie.

I am not a professional videographer, so there really is not much I can add to this that has not been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the internet, just another example of Apple grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, though this product is still alive somewhat.  Who knows maybe next month Apple will kill this one, and expect everyone to use iMovie.

As this has already become one of my longest articles to date, it is time to wrap this up.  It has been a wild is not somber ride for the past 5 years following Steve Jobs death.  As I watch Apple making more an more mistakes and replace more and more of their products with ones from their competitors.  I cannot help but feel that history is repeating itself and I am once again finding myself comparing the Apple, with Commodore Business machines.  Pretty much who’s computers were cutting edge, and loved by many, and in their prime were the masters of their own downfall, due to development delays, poor management, and marketing blunders snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  I hope I don’t have a write a third article, proclaiming that in the end, “The Mac Was The Amiga Of Today, as Apple Decides To No Longer Manufacture Computers.”

To read the original “Is The Mac The Amiga Of Today” click HERE! 

Wednesday Quickie – Outlook 2016 Attachment Reminder 

I accidently discovered a new feature in Outlook 2016 the other evening that I thought I would share.   I know we have all done this at work, I know I am guilty of this quite often.  In the process of sending an email that is supposed to contain an attachment, we become so focused on the content of the email that we forget the attachment when everything is said and done.

Depending on the content, this can either be embarrassing, or if you were sending your resume for that perfect employment opportunity, catastrophic!

So I was quite surprised this evening when I was helping someone troubleshoot an issue with an Amiga startup script, and was doing a poor mans attachment (Copy and Past) into the email text, when I hit Send, I received a message stating ,” You may have forgotten to attach a file.  (Don’t Send), (Send Anyway)”.

I do not know if I should be scared, as my apps now actually seem to be reading my email while I type them, or delighted over this potentially life saving feature.   On the paranoid side it kind of brings back memories of this Clippy meme.

 

 

Anyway,  it has been awhile since I have posted a Wednesday Quickie, and was so pleased to stumble upon this feature, that I just thought I would share!

 

 

 

 

Thanks for visiting Brent’s World, and I hope you check out our other great article
Also be sure to check out and participate in our forums, at www.catracing.org/hendrb/forum.

Brent P Hendricks (Blog and forum administrator)

 

CentOS 7 – Resetting Lost Root Password

You have just discovered that you have forgotten the root password of your CentOS 7 workstation or server.  What are you going to do?

 

 

If you have access to an account that is a member of the group ‘wheel’, you only need to login with that account and type the following at the shell prompt

$sudo passwd root

[sudo] password for (username) : **********

Changing password for user root.
New password: (Enter New Password)
Retype new password: (Retype New Password)
If you entered and confirmed the password correctly, the shell will return the following, and return you to the shell prompt. For Example.

passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
$

Now we can try switching user to the root account with the new password.

$ su –

NOTE: The switch user ‘su’ command defaults to the account root unless another account is specified. The ‘-‘ option tells the switch user command to load the accounts environment variables.

You then should be prompted with the password prompt, and if the change performed above was successful you should be logged in.

$ su –
Password: *******
Last login: Sun May 29 10:43:00 KST 2016 on tty1

“Wish I had a decent book of quotes!”

-Sysop

#

Notice the shell prompt is now a #, this indicates you are using the root account.

So what if you do not have an account that is a member of the group ‘wheels’?
You will need to boot your system into single user mode.

Here is where it gets rather sticky, as you do not have access to the root account, you will be unable to gracefully shut your server down (unless there is an account that has been given access to the reboot, or shutdown command through the sudoers file), if you run applications on this server that have a database backend like MySQL or MariaBD there is a possibility that data corruption will occur! Proceed at your own risk.

Physically reboot your Centos box.

From the grub bootloader, enter ‘e’ for edit

 

On the next screen use your cursor keys, and cursor down until you see an entry starting with ‘linux16’, we will be making the following changed on this line. NOTE using your cursor keys, move the cursor keys with your UP / DOWN cursor keys to the beginning of the block of text and use your left cursor key to position the cursor at the end of ‘ro’

Change ‘ro’ to ‘rw init=/sysroot/bin/sh’

NOTE: DO NO COPY THE SINGLE QUOTES. (See screen shots!)

The grub screen should now look like this. (NOTE: What looks like an underscore between init=/sysroot/bin/sh and rd.lvm.kv…. is actually your cursor. There should just be a space here.

Now press ‘Ctrl-x’ to exit and boot into single user mode.

Once you are in single user mode, issue the chroot command as follows.

:/# chroot /sysroot

We can then issue the passwd command to change the root password.

:/# passwd root

Your screen will look like this.

 

Now update selinux

:/# touch /.autorelabel

Now exit chroot

:/# exit

Finally reboot the system, and test logging in a root.

:/# reboot

This brings up a good point, with it being this easy to change the root password, isn’t this a possible security issue, and if so what can be done to harden the system and prevent someone from coming along, rebooting our Linux machine and changing the root password?  The answer to this question is YES!  This is a big security hole and there are several things that can and should be done to prevent this sort of attack.

• Set a grub bootloader password.
• Enable root password for single user mode.
• Enable root password for recovery mode.

Performing options 2 and 3, will require you to boot from the CentOS live CD in order to reset a lost root password, and can be circumvented if password is required to access the system BIOS. We will go over these 3 options in next month’s Brent’s World technical blog.

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Active Directory Authentication Breaks After Installing SAMBA 4.2.10-6.el7_2

This Issue Has Been Resolved! See Post – https://www.catracing.org/hendrb/post-update-active-directory-authentication-fixed-samba-update-4-2-10-6-2-el7_2/ For additional information!

This is not going to be a very long technical post, but I did want to get the word out that the latest update to the SAMBA client broke Active Directory authentication on my web server, and how to fix the issue.

While applying Windows Update fixes to my Windows servers, I also checked for updates on my CENT-OS box, and lo and behold there were quite a bit of updates, one being another SAMBA update. I can not remember a time where a package update broke something on my production box, the only other times I have had serious issue is after installing kernel updates.  So needless to say I was quite shocked after rebooting the server (Runs as a virtual machine on top of the Windows box that had rebootable updates installed).  I could no longer login with my AD account.  NOT GOOD!  Fortunately checking to make sure I can login as root and my local account is part of my pre-update checks.

After the updates and a reboot of the server you can see it is not allowing me to login with my domain account.

Here are the error message logged in /var/log/secure
(Server hostname has been replaced with ****)

Apr 14 13:50:53 **** polkitd[804]: Registered Authentication Agent for unix-session:c1 (system bus name :1.28 [gnome-shell --mode=gdm], object path /org/freedesktop/PolicyKit1/AuthenticationAgent, locale en_US.UTF-8)

Apr 14 13:51:33 **** gdm-password]: pam_unix(gdm-password:auth): check pass; user unknown

Apr 14 13:51:33 **** gdm-password]: pam_unix(gdm-password:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty= ruser= rhost=

I promptly removed the updated version of SAMBA and reinstalled the previous version. I always take a screen capture of the what yum is going to update before answering yes.  This makes an easy reference in case I need to go back and remove anything.  In this case I need to remove the following packages.

 samba                                 x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   614 k
 samba-client                       x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   496k
 samba-client-libs                 x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   4.3 M    
 samba-common                  noarch   4.2.10-6.el7_2                                updates   272 k
 samba-common-libs            x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                              updates   156 k
 samba-common-tools          x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                              updates   444 k
 samba-libs                           x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   260 k
 samba-winbind                    x86_64   4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   465 k
 samba-winbind-modules      x86_64  4.2.10-6.el7_2                               updates   105 k

$ yum remove samba samba-client samb-client-libs samba-common samba-common-libs samba-common-tools samba-libs samba-winbind samba-winbind-modules

Once samba, and samba-winbind have been uninstalled, we need to install the previous version, again the listing I keep of all updates installed on the server come in handy, as I know SAMBA was updated back in January.

samba-client             x86_64     4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     496 k
samba-client-libs       x86_64     4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     4.3 M
samba-common        noarch     4.2.3-11.el7_2           updates     269 k
samba-common-libs  x86_64     4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     156 k
samba-common-tools x86_64    4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     443 k
samba-libs                  x86_64     4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     259 k
samba-winbind           x86_64     4.2.3-11.el7_2          updates     463 k
samba-winbind-modules x86_64 4.2.3-11.el7_2         updates     104 k

First let’s get the package names for all available versions of samba

$ yum –showduplicates list samba

The update we want 4.2.3-11.el7-2 is available. So let’s go ahead and install them.

$ yum install samba-0:4.2.3-11.el7_2.x86_64

Once the samba client is installed we need to install samba-winbind

$ yum install samba_winbind-0:4.2.3-11.el7_2.x86_64

Once this was complete, I rebooted the server, but was still unable to connect to the domain controller. Comparing files on my development server, I noticed that the /etc/samba/smb.conf file was modified on the server during the removal of the samba package.  Not to worry yum made a backup first.

So let’s remove the new smb.conf

$ rm smb.conf

Now let’s rename the smb.conf.rpmsave to smb.conf

$ mv smb.conf.rpmsave smb.conf

Now let’s go ahead and reboot (You don’t need to, you can just shutdown your networking and samba service.), but a reboot never hurts.

$ reboot

Test logging in with a domain account, if the login still fails, log back in as your local account and troubleshoot the AD connection.

1. Is the time on the LINUX box within 5 minutes of the time on the Active Directory server? If no this will cause the Kerberos ticket issuance to fail
2. Can you issue wbinfo commands.IE wbinfo -g or wbinfo -u. If not, you may have to rejoin the domain.

These instructions should repair your domain authentication until the issue with the new version of SAMBA is resolved. I will keep working on a fix, unless another update fixes the problem.

NOTE: If you know the fix for this issue with SAMBA update, please either shoot me an email, or post it to our forums or as a comment.  You will get full credit for providing the fix.

Back To BASIC – Chipmunk BASIC 3.1 on CENTOS 7

Back in December of 2014, I posted an article where I converted a BASIC program from the 1982 Commodore 64 Users Guide and converted it to a BASH script on CENTOS 6.5, you can read the article by clicking here (https://www.catracing.org/hendrb/bash-script-guess-number/). Month after month this has been one the most popular posts on my blog.  So Ibegan to wonder, instead of converting the program to BASH, what options are there for us to actually program and run BASIC programs natively under LINUX.

When I primarily used a Mac computer, there was a version of BASIC written for MacOSX called Chipmunk BASIC. So off I went to Google, and found the authors web page.  Sure enough there is a compiled version for LINUX.  So just what is Chipmunk BASIC?  Direct from the authors website, “  Programming Language. Chipmunk Basic presents a vintage traditional command-line console programming environment, and supports a very simple, old-fashioned, and easy-to-learn Basic Programming Language syntax.”  This sounds like what I am looking for!
There are a couple of catches. one is that you have to download and install the program and the MAN pages manually. No sweat, I am up for the challenge!  The second catch is that this version of BASIC must be run in a GUI under X Windows. Once XWindows server has been installed and started, you can access Chipmunk BASIC from a terminal or remote session however.

Actually, it turned out to be a very very simple process.   Let’s take a look by installing it on my demo virtual box.
First lets see if we have some prerequisite utilities installed that will allow us to download and uncompress  the BASIC program files.  An easy way to check to see if you already have these utilities installed is to see if the MAN pages are installed
$ man wget

If the man page displays then the utility is installed.

If the utility is not installed (As is the case of unzip), you will receive an error message, which is displayed below when I try and view the MAN page for unzip.

So lets go ahead and install unzip using the yum command.

$ sudo yum install unzip

You must also have a desktop environment installed, so if you installed CENTOS 7 using the minimum install and only use via a console, or a remote shell. We will install GNOME Desktop now.

$sudo yum groups install “GNOME Desktop”
You can either start the X Windows Server now, or after we install Chipmunk BASIC install. To do this, simply execute the following command.

$ startx

We are now ready to download Chipmunk BASIC, Cd to the directory that you want the file to be downloaded to, I have a subdirectory in my HOME directory called Downloads, which I will make sure I am in and if not I will change to that directory.

$ pwd

/home/username

I am not in the correct directory, but since I am in my home directory, a simple cd to Downloads will work.

$ cd Downloads

[username@cr-demo Downloads]$

As you can see, the CD was successful. If I was somewhere else on the system, say /etc.  I can easily get to my home directory using the ~ shortcut.

[username@cr-demo etc]$ cd ~
[username@cr-demo ~]$ pwd

/home/username

Example II:

[username@cr-demo etc]$ cd ~/Downloads
[username@cr-demo Downloads]$
As mentioned above, to actually download the Chipmunk BASIC archive, we use the wget command, with the URL as noted below.

Example I:

$ wget http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/files/cbas367b5-linux-x86_64.zip

You will then see the following screen, and the file should be downloaded.

If you now do a directory listing, you will see your file.

[username@cr-demo Downloads]$ ll

total 180
-rw-rw-r--. 1 local_hendrb01 local_hendrb01 183652 Jun 24 2014 cbas367b5-linux-x86_64.zip

Now we must unzip the file

Usage: unzip filename.zip -d destination_folder

Since we just want the file unzipped to our current directory, we will just enter unzip filename.zip

Example I:

 

We now have 4 new files in our Downloads directory, you can delete the zip file using the rm command if you want to.

$ rm cbas367b5-linux-x86_64.zip

The 4 new files are

-r-xr-xr-x. 1 username groupname 335192 Jun 24 2014 basic
-r--r--r--. 1 username groupname 52635 Apr 22  2011 basic.man.txt
drwxrwxr-x. 2 username groupname     20 Dec 30 20:28 man
-r--r--r--. 1 username groupname   3412 Jun 24  2014 README

File descriptions:basic is the main basic executable, you will want to move this file to /usr/bin
Example:

$ mv basic /usr/bin

Lets also make sure that the owner and group are set to root root. Since it was unzipped under out normal user account, it will most likely show your username.  Not sure if this will cause issues or not, but better be safe than sorry!

Example:

$ ll basic

-r-xr-xr-x. 1 username groupname 335192 Jun 24 2014 basic

$sudo chown root:root basic

$ ll basic

-r-xr-xr-x. 1 root root 335192 Jun 24 2014 basic

Now let’s put the man file where they belong, if we currently try and perform a man on BASIC, we will receive the following error.

EXAMPLE:

$ man basic

No manual entry for basic

How do we know where our man files are located anyway? Simply use the manpath command.
Example:

$manpath

/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/man/overrides:/usr/share/man
Now we need to determine where the specific man page belongs, have you ever wondered what the number in parentheses means next to the command in a man page? It denotes what type of command it is.  Here is a cheat sheet.
1.General commands
2.System calls
3.C library functions
4.Special files (usually devices, those found in /dev) and drivers
5.File formats and conventions
6.Games and screensavers
7.Miscellanea
8.System administration commands and daemons
So let’s go ahead and put basic in the man1 folder, change the owner to the root user and the root group.

First cd to ~\Downloads
Then let’s move the file.

Example:

$ mv man/basic 1 /usr/share/man/man1
$ sudo chown root:root /usr/share/man/man1/basic.1

Now let’ test.

$ man basic

The following screen should now be displayed.

We are now finished installing BASIC. You can now delete the files from your Downloads directory if you wish.
We are however not done with this tutorial! Why go to all this trouble, just to install a programming language, if we are not going to use it to write programs?

So let’s take the number guessing game from the Commodore Users Guide again and see how it works in Chipmunk Basic!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can either enter the program from within Chipmunk BASIC, by entering basic at a prompt.

$ basic

 

 

 

Or you can enter the program in any text editor, such as vi, or nano.  Like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So go ahead and load a text editor of your choice. Then have fun typing in the below program!

1 rem  **************************************************************************
2 rem  *      Guess Random Number                                                        *
3 rem  * Originally Published In The 1982 Commodore 64 Users Guide *
4 rem  * Converted to Chipmunk Basic By: Brent Hendricks                   *
5 rem  * Used for a programming demo for installing Chipmunk BASIC *
6 rem  * on CentOS Linux 7, March 12 2016.                                          *
7 rem  * BASIC program released into the public domain.                      *
8 rem  * Article text is copyright Brent’s World.  Reproduction                *
9 rem  * in part of in whole may be done only with permission from       *
10 rem * the author.                                                                                *
11 rem *                                                                                                  *
12 rem * Please visit Brent’s World “An American Expat Living In         *
13 rem * South Korea, for this and other great articles.                         *
14 rem * www.catracing.org/hendrb                                                       *
15 rem ************************************************************************
20 clear
22 cls
23 gosub 120
25 input “Enter Upper Limit For Guess. “,li
30 nm = rnd(li)+1
35  cn = 0
40 print “OK, I’ve got the number.” : print
50 input “What is your guess? “,gu
55 cn = cn+1
60 if gu > nm then print “Nope! My number is lower!” : print : goto 50
70 if gu < nm then print “Nope! My number is higher!” : print : goto 50
80 print “GREAT!! You got my number!”
85 print “In Only “;cn;”guesses.” : print
90 print “Do you want to try another? “;an$
92 get an$ : if an$ = “” then 90
95 if an$ = “Y” or an$ = “YES” or an$ = “y” or an$ = “yes” then 22
110 end
120 print “**************************************************************************”
122 print “*                   Guess Random Number                                           *”
123 print “* Originally Published In The 1982 Commodore 64 Users Guide *”
124 print “* Converted to Chipmunk Basic By: Brent Hendricks.                  *”
125 print “* Used for a programming demo for installing Chipmunk BASIC *”
126 print “* on CentOS Linux 7, March 12 2016.                                         *”
127 print “* BASIC program released into the public domain.                      *”
128 print “* Article text is copyright Brent’s World.  Reproduction                *”
129 print “* in part of in whole may be done only with permission from       *”
130 print “* the author.                                                                                 *”
140 print “*                                                                                                   *”
150 print “* Please visit Brent’s World. An American Expat Living In          *”
160 print “* South Korea, for this and other great articles.                          *”
170 print “* www.catracing.org/hendrb                                                        *”
180 print “**************************************************************”*********”
200 return

I hope you enjoyed the blog, and that you will enjoy Chipmunk BASIC.  Please continue to come back for more great articles from Brent’s World.