Number-Colour-Phoneme Associations: From IBM CGA Colours to Mnemonic Systems
3 comments
·March 1, 20252mlWQbCK
Screenshot shows program in GW-BASIC 3.23 from 1988. I tried it in GW-BASIC 1.0 (the version Microsoft released with a free license a few years ago) and it worked as expected. It also worked well in PC-BASIC.
https://gitlab.com/tkchia/GW-BASIC
https://robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/ (or just pip install pcbasic)
The debug-commands seemed to work fine with the debug included by default in DOSBox-X, but I was too lazy to input all of the digits. I never had any idea how to use debug, so I learned something new here in addition to some more things about mnemonics.
susam
The DEBUG.EXE example in my post demonstrates using the E command to enter bytes directly into video memory. While that's certainly one way to use DEBUG.EXE, I'd say it's not the most typical use case.
Back in the day, I primarily used DEBUG.EXE to disassemble existing executables or assemble small programs from scratch. It almost felt like "scripting" in assembly language. If you're curious, I wrote a couple of blog posts in 2002–2003 documenting how I used to do this:
* https://susam.net/programming-with-dos-debugger.html
* https://susam.net/editing-binaries-in-dos.html
I'd love to know if others have similar experiences!
This delights me.
I’ve worked with Soundex, which uses a rather different set of digit/consonant associations, but the “major system” Susam uses was new to me. Apparently [0] it has centuries of pedigree—with the specific pattern Harry Lorayne used dating to the turn of the 19th century, laid out by a delightfully named Mr. Von Feinaigle.
[0] https://artofmemory.com/blog/history-of-the-major-system/