I think I'll need my big coat

Over the weekend beginning 19th February, I was due to meet an old colleague for a general catch up and a swift half pint. It just so happened that this was the second consecutive storm to hit the UK, I think it was Storm Eunice, and the weather was slightly unpleasant. I contacted said colleague to inform him that I'll probably need my big coat. No sooner had I sent that message when my partner decided that she actually needed my big coat. Anyway, as I don't feel the cold nearly as much, I used my summer jacket and braced myself. As it turned out, things were a little calmer. For a few moments, it felt like a Summer's Day in Manchester.

Anyway, the following day I found myself with some free time, and so I decided to load my Scrum Timer program into my C128. Initially, I was going to use the 80 columns screen and BASIC 7 to make a BASIC 2 listing. This is obviously easier than the sometimes cramped 40 columns C64 screen, and you can fit 160 characters per line, and more BASIC with some keyword abbreviations. But then I realised that I needed 40 columns just to make sure that the presentation was right. I knew what I wanted to do, and that was to add in some PETSCII style numbers to display. After some time messing about with the built in screen editor, I had my Arabic-styled numerals from 0 - 9 inclusive. So how was I going to implement that? Well, used a multi-dimensional string array. But the issue was that, at least at 1Mhz, the screen update will be slow. Of course, I could make it faster by minimising and obfuscating the BASIC listing, but this will only take me so far. Of course, those people who own something like the excellent Ultimate 64 or a CMD SuperCPU could run the BASIC no problem. As I wanted to keep the listing as "clean" as possible, there was only one option. And that was Blitz compiler.

It didn't take long to get the digits working, once I remembered how to perform a modulo in C64 BASIC anyway. And honestly, it was nice to be programming on a real Commodore again. The keyboard on my C128D-Cr is actually pretty nice to use. I had my version ready to go, but there was one problem; with the previous version, if you wanted to change the time limit before the warning colour was displayed on the border, you had to edit the program. This wouldn't be easy with a compiled version. Either you'd have to use a Monitor and work out where to edit the variables (I think), or you'd have to edit the source file and compile your own version. Not very convenient, I think.

So I needed to add in a routine to allow the end user to set the time limit, that is if the default of 3 minutes and 30 seconds was insufficient per contributor. This should be fine for stand up or daily scrums as these shouldn't drag. But I don't know every use case, and someone may want to time-box longer per contribution, or even time-box an entire meeting.

I created a sub-routine to set the time, allowing the minutes and seconds to be set between zero to 59 inclusive (each). This means that if you want your daily stand up to be 2 minutes per contributor, you just enter the SET TIME command and press the RETURN key on the start screen, and then follow the prompts. And if you want to make your own version for your own purposes, the BASIC symbolic listing is provided for you, and Blitz BASIC compiler is fairly easy to locate. Or of course, you could use the XSCPU emulator on VICE and not worry about this sort of thing. But at least the compiled version is good on non-accelerated hardware and THEC64, where this little program started.

Aside from making the minutes and seconds digits a bit easier to see, I also noticed and fixed a couple of bugs, and introduced another bug which I'm going to leave in (for now at least) as a feature, as it doesn't break anything.

Next will be adding in an audible ping for when the time is up for the contributor. And then I'll think of how else I can develop this. I know it's not setting the world on fire, but as a Scrum Master myself, I just like using Commodore professionally, not just during my breaks.