Nanowatt

At Récursion (the Montréal demoparty), we (Nick Montfort, Michael C. Martin, and Patsy Baudoin) released Nanowatt, a single-loading VIC-20 demo.

You can download it and run it using a VIC-20 emulator (or, of course, an actual VIC-20). I run it in VICE on my Ubuntu system by typing “xvic nw” from the directory that contains the “nw” file. If it’s more convenient, you can also download a d64 disk image with Nanowatt on it and load “nw” from there.

It produces 8 KB of English text quoted exactly from Samuel Beckett’s second novel, Watt.

And it produces 8 KB of French text quoted exactly from the French translation of Samuel Beckett’s second novel, Watt.

And the entire demo (including two songs, sound system, code for decompression and display of text, and explanations and greetings at the end) is 3.5 KB: 3583 bytes.

When possible, I will upload a video of the demo running.

This rather esoteric demo was awarded 2nd place (out of 3 entries).

I also got 4th place (out of 5) for my one-line BASIC program that was done as a fast demo, based on today’s theme: “weaving.”

Demoscene.

UPDATE: You can run Nanowatt without leaving the comfort of your browser. First, copy this URL into your copy-and-paste buffer: << http://nickm.com/poems/nw >>. Then, go to the page for JS VIC-20. Select the “Storage” menu from the top and choose the option at the bottom of the list, “Carts/Programs,” and choose the top option, “Load Cart from URL.” Finally, paste in the URL that you copied and watch the demo run.

‘NOTHER UPDATE: Video of the demo running on a VIC-20 has been posted.

3 Replies to “Nanowatt

  1. That was Michael C. Martin (who is on ifMUD with you). He composed both songs and the VIC sound system Soundnaif.

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