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Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

2-Dec-14 10:40

Holy crap, I just altered the code to use the -1 instead of 1 for true and this has helped me decrypt more of the data.
This is amazing.
I will show more about this as I post back to this main thread.

Your single point that true = -1 on old systems really put me over the top on this code.
This is a silly 30 year old program but it is the first program I ever attempted to write -- copied from a magazine and tried to program it into my Coleco Adam[^] and it failed.

So, you're helping me solve a bug I've considered for 30 years. Big Grin | :-D

DaveX862-Dec-14 10:14

DaveX86

2-Dec-14 10:14

SYNTAX ERROR Smile | :)

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

DaveAuld2-Dec-14 10:14

DaveAuld

2-Dec-14 10:14

I suspect that the N<32 is checking to see if that N is a non readable character. i.e. space = 32 and everything lower in the ASCII tables is non-readable.

Dave
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Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

ozTechnocrat2-Dec-14 10:18

ozTechnocrat

2-Dec-14 10:18

VAX VMS BASIC Smile | :)

SEG$ is the same as mid$

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

newton.saber2-Dec-14 10:19

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

2-Dec-14 10:19

Thanks for adding to the conversation. Smile | :)

It's amazing that there are people out here that have seen this old stuff before.

Slacker0072-Dec-14 10:19

Slacker007

2-Dec-14 10:19

doesn't N get assigned a value in line 30?

so let's say N == 5. 5 - 26 if (5 < 32) ??

just guessing.

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

newton.saber2-Dec-14 10:31

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

2-Dec-14 10:31

Right you are.
And with what you've said and what another commenter said (about true = -1 -- not 1 like I thought) I believe it is possible that what the dev was trying to do is just insure that the byte value was not a negative value -- by multiplying any value which is negative by -1 to get a positive number.

Thanks for your input.

Jeremy Falcon2-Dec-14 10:49

Jeremy Falcon

2-Dec-14 10:49

newton.saber wrote:
1. weird data read syntax READ T$ just reads that data in

In BASIC, putting a dollar sign at the end of a variable was shorthand for ensuring the variable is a string.

newton.saber wrote:
2. odd function called SEG$()

It's just a substring type function. Also, ASC() converts a character to its numerical equivalent, such as A to 65.

newton.saber wrote:
But this one I can't look up, because N<32 means something quite different when involved with an if statement.

BASIC doesn't have a bit-wise operator like that. It's doing a less than comparison operation.

Jeremy Falcon

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

newton.saber2-Dec-14 10:58

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

2-Dec-14 10:58

Great information. Thanks very much for reading and giving me some more clues.
I really appreciate your time.
Thanks to everyone's help and clues, I've cracked the code / "encryption" and I'm going to post another entry in this thread explaining where this all came from.
Thanks again.

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter2-Dec-14 10:50

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

2-Dec-14 10:50

You may play with this here:
http://calormen.com/jsbasic/[^]

(N<32) will return 1 (true) or 0 (false)
64 is the @ char, and 26 is the number of Latin letters...
Also remember that T$ can contain only characters you can input from keyboard (printable ones)...
An ASCII table for reference: http://www.asciitable.com/[^]

Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

Jeremy Falcon2-Dec-14 10:52

Jeremy Falcon

2-Dec-14 10:52

That's cool. Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:

Jeremy Falcon

Re: BASIC Puzzle (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instructional Code)

newton.saber2-Dec-14 11:00

2-Dec-14 11:00

Thanks very much for reading my crazy little thread and replying with helpful insights.
I really appreciate it.
Because of everyone posting, I've cracked it and I will post an answer at the bottom of this thread. Thanks again.

newton.saber2-Dec-14 11:29

2-Dec-14 11:29

I know this is long, but it took me 30 years to figure this code out. Big Grin | :-D

Seriously.

Thanks To All
First of all, thanks to everyone who contributed information.
Everyone got me looking at the odd code (N<32) and thinking about it differently.
The big trick was that old BASIC considers -1 (negative 1) to be value for TRUE.
That was the KEY to solving this.

Coleco Adam
The code is from a program found in a magazine (Family Computing) from November 1984. I was but a lad then and owned my first computer a Coleco Adam[^]. I didn't know anything but tried to type this program in and it never worked.

Flash Forward to Now
30 Years later I did a google for Lapis Lazuli Coleco Adam and someone has archived the magazine online. CRAZY!!! I guess I've just always thought of this because it was my first programming experience.

You can see it here:
THe Case of the Missing Lapis Lazuli[^]
I just had to know the answer to the Mystery. Why didn't it work? And what were the real words that the data represented?

Old BASIC Code
I started examining the code and the first thing I found out was that the TI-99 code was the nicest so I used it to try to crack the code.
If you want to just see the code listing look at this page of the article (left page)[^]:

Cracked The Code- Rewritten In C#

If you have the great LINQPad C# TOOL[^] you can copy my final code below and run it and see the data is cracked.

The original data looks like:

4000 DATA 3,THINBCHA,BURGEKCN,TUVI0N,4,CMKHUH*V 
4010 DATA KABGUVAT,SYBLAR,6HIVBA,S,HLBH4ER,KHLDETYR 
4020 DATA NHCIF,NHWAS,KHTES,5,PIXUHBESA,FNUfiSKY 
4030 DATA HJBHYQA4G,SUX,CHADPLQLeJ,1 ,HPYBPX,1 ,DAEXGL 
4040 DATA 1 ,8YTKUVYCVEJ,1 ,C5=7<1 ,1 ,HZVEEBE,1S 
4050 DATA DGSVVI6X):,AQIPUP,J=,LIME,GAHRLU,IRW,SMAX 
4060 DATA dqhvvsv2,fznk,satgwl,hba,kesp,twfiwe,h-ij:h 
4070 DATA CUHYHUVHG1,4,HERSYRPG,LAZ,TNBY,I8LNWN7

There's an interesting part of the algorithm which reads the integer from the data, determines that is the number of words that it should read, then it reads the next N data items as words.
You can see all of this in the code at the previous link.

Here's the final C# code just to decrypt the data.

void Main()
{
	string [] allStrings = { "THINBCHA","BURGEKCN","TUVION",
			"CWKHUH*V","MABGUVAT","SYBLAR","GHIVBA",
			"MLBH4ER","KHLDETYR","NMCIF","NHWAS","KHTES",
			"PIXUHBESA","FNURSKY","MJBHYQA4G","SUX","CHADPLQLQJ",
			"MPYBPX",
			"DAEXGL",
			"BYTKUVYCVEJ",
			"C5=7<1",
			"MZVEEBE",
			"DGSVVIGX%","AQIPUP","J=","LIME","GAHRLU","IRW","SMAX","DQMVVSV2","FZNK","SATGWL","MBA","KESP","TWFIWE","HIZM","CUHYHUVHG1",
			"MERSYRPG","LAZ","TNBY","IBLNWN7" };
	
	foreach (string strIn in allStrings)
	{
		byte encryptor = (byte)(Convert.ToByte(strIn[0]) - 64);
		// Console.WriteLine("encryptor value: {0} ", encryptor); // used in XOR
		string outWord = string.Empty;
		int elseCounter = 0;
		for(int x=1; x<strIn.Length;x++)
		{
			byte outByte = (byte)(Convert.ToByte(strIn[x]) - encryptor);
			// Console.Write(string.Format("{0} ", outByte));
			if ((outByte + encryptor) >= 65)
			{
				if (outByte < 65)
				{
					outWord += Convert.ToChar((byte)((outByte-26*-1)));
				}
				else
				{
					outWord += Convert.ToChar((byte)((outByte)));
					
				}
			}
			else
			{
				
				//outWord += Convert.ToChar((byte)((outByte+-11*33*(outByte^encryptor))));
				elseCounter++;
				if (outByte < 32)
				{
					outWord += Convert.ToChar((byte)((outByte-33*-1)));
				}
				else
				{
					outWord += Convert.ToChar((byte)((outByte)));
				}

				outWord += Convert.ToChar(outByte);
			}
		}
		// Console.WriteLine("**** STAGE 2 *****");
		Console.WriteLine(outWord);
		//Console.WriteLine();
		//Console.WriteLine("elseCounter : {0}", elseCounter);
		//Console.WriteLine();
		//Console.WriteLine();
	}
}

After that I can figure out the answer to the puzzle. Even though it is in weird order and there are still a couple of scrambled ones--- due to my mistyping or something.

Lapis Lazuli Puzzle ANSWER SPOILER ALERT!!!!
NOTHING
SPECIAL
ABOUT
THERE''S
NOTHING
FISHY
ABOUT
YOU''RE
WASTING
YOUR
TIME
WITH
SHERLOCK
HOLMES
WOULDN''T
BE
EXAMINING
CLOCK
WATCH
WRISTWATCH
22::4499..
MIRROR
CORRECT!!
PHOTO
33
WAS
TAKEN
IN
THE
MIRROR..
THE
HANDS
ON
THE
CLOCK
ARE
REVERSED..
REFLECT
ON
THE
SCENE..

modified 2-Dec-14 17:50pm.

Jeremy Falcon2-Dec-14 11:41

Jeremy Falcon

2-Dec-14 11:41

Good work man.

Jeremy Falcon

newton.saber2-Dec-14 11:46

2-Dec-14 11:46

Thank you so much for reading my thread and replying and responding to me.
I'm sitting here thinking about how I can't believe I solved this old problem for myself and I want to shout from the hilltops, "I figured this out!!!"

It's not even a truly meaningful problem, but it is just so interesting to go back to something that stumped the person you were and now to figure it out as the person you are. Smile | :)

I feel a bit of poetry coming on. Big Grin | :-D

Dave Kreskowiak2-Dec-14 12:12

Dave Kreskowiak

2-Dec-14 12:12

I have a TI-99/4A emulator that I would have just run it on.

The thing works great and brings back a ton of memories from back in the day.

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject

Click this: Asking questions is a skill.
Seriously, do it.

Dave Kreskowiak

kmoorevs3-Dec-14 3:26

kmoorevs

3-Dec-14 3:26

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
I have a TI-99/4A emulator

Wow, didn't even know there was one. Thanks!

I have my original TI-99/4A out in the garage. It has probably been close to 20 years since I fired it up. It was a real life changer for me and I can't bring myself to throw it away. Smile | :)

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

Dave Kreskowiak3-Dec-14 17:26

Dave Kreskowiak

3-Dec-14 17:26

Just Google for "Classic99"

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject

Click this: Asking questions is a skill.
Seriously, do it.

Dave Kreskowiak

Andy Brummer2-Dec-14 15:54

Andy Brummer

2-Dec-14 15:54

congrats.

Curvature of the Mind now with 3D

Natural Disasters

Vivi Chellappa2-Dec-14 6:45

Vivi Chellappa

2-Dec-14 6:45

No one teaches a Volcano how to Erupt....
No one teaches a Tsunami how to Rise.....
No one teaches a Hurricane how to Sway...
No one teaches a MAN or a WOMAN how to choose a WIFE or HUSBAND!!!!!!

Natural Disasters Just Happen.😜😁😁😜😜😜

modified 2-Dec-14 13:03pm.

PIEBALDconsult2-Dec-14 7:08

PIEBALDconsult

2-Dec-14 7:08

Take it to the Soapbox.

Johnny J.4-Dec-14 23:15

Johnny J.

4-Dec-14 23:15

I would have said: Take it to Stackoverflow... D'Oh! | :doh:

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-----
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Me, all the time

jeron12-Dec-14 7:25

jeron1

2-Dec-14 7:25

Vivic wrote:
No one teaches a Volcano how to Erupt....

You obviously haven't met my missus.

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