Bill Gates' Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit BASIC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Oct 2008 09:40 UTC, submitted by Michael Steil
Microsoft Pagetable.com has an interesting article on a Microsoft easter egg. "If you type 'WAIT6502,1' into a Commodore PET with BASIC V2 (1979), it will show the string 'MICROSOFT!' at the top left corner of the screen. Legend has it Bill Gates himself inserted this easter egg 'after he had had an argument with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel', 'just in case Commodore ever tried to claim that the code wasn't from Microsoft'. In this episode of Computer Archeology, we will not only examine this story, but also track down the history of Microsoft BASIC on various computers, and see see how Microsoft added a second easter egg to the TSR-80 Color Computer - because they had forgotten about the first one."
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That was a...
by jptros on Tue 7th Oct 2008 12:17 UTC
jptros
Member since:
2005-08-26

Great article!

Reply Score: 1

Jack Attack
by PLan on Tue 7th Oct 2008 12:49 UTC
PLan
Member since:
2006-01-10

"after he had had an argument with Commodore founder Jack Tramiel"

I would have paid to be a fly on the wall and watch Tramiel perform a "Jack Attack" on Gates.

Edited 2008-10-07 13:04 UTC

Reply Score: 3

RE: Jack Attack
by Earl Colby pottinger on Tue 7th Oct 2008 16:41 UTC in reply to "Jack Attack"
Earl Colby pottinger Member since:
2005-07-06

Jack of "Business is War" vs
Bill "I got IBM in my hip pocket"
equals an awesome meeting!

I wish i could have seen it too.

Reply Score: 2

TRS-80 Color Computer
by Jon Dough on Tue 7th Oct 2008 13:34 UTC
Jon Dough
Member since:
2005-11-30

Hah! The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was my first computer. I bought it in the spring of 1981. What a fun little box that was! Now that I see the article, I do remember the CLS9 command that brought up the word MICROSOFT!

Reply Score: 2

RISC OS has some silly ones too.
by quatermass on Tue 7th Oct 2008 14:56 UTC
quatermass
Member since:
2005-08-03

BBC BASIC had the error "Silly!" returned when you tried to renumber the lines in a daft way.

Reply Score: 1

Typical Microsoft aesthetics...
by AmigaRobbo on Tue 7th Oct 2008 17:43 UTC
AmigaRobbo
Member since:
2005-11-15

Couldn't he of least put something that resulted in ***Microsoft Basic***, not Microsoftdor basic***?

I know space was tight, but for gawd sake man, at least try!

Reply Score: 3

RE: Typical Microsoft aesthetics...
by chiwaw on Fri 10th Oct 2008 23:35 UTC in reply to "Typical Microsoft aesthetics..."
chiwaw Member since:
2006-02-05

I was wondering the same thing, but then I realized that the message "Commodore Basic" header must have been added by Commodore AFTER Microsoft delivered the software, so we can assume Bill tested his code when it was only saying "Ready" on the top of the screen, which then would work fine.

That would explain why in later versions, Bill actually call a clear screen command before writing his easter egg.

And wow, I've just re-read my message, and I'm such a NERD.

Reply Score: 1

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