Hi Everyone, Most of you know of my work as a classroom teacher both in terms of teaching computer history and using vintage computer equipment to teach, particularly 6502 assembly. What you may not know is another of my specialties is teaching computer security (I hate the term cybersecurity.. of course, *we* all know computer security came long before all computers were internetworked! lol). Within the computer security field, there is a thing called a Capture the Flag (CTF) competition. I've been working with these since 2013 and am finally starting my own. Well, actually a couple of my own, but my focus for this message is vcfCTF. I'd rather show than tell you what a CTF is so I'll show you with a cool project. We all know BASIC and its origins at Dartmouth. Do we all know that there was a programming language designed by the makers of BASIC that predated BASIC called (unfortunately) DOPE - Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment? And, yes, there's an emulator for that! System Source (thanks Bob!) has been nice enough to host this customized version that lets you put in this very specific program, run it, and get a flag: https://museum.syssrc.com/static/dope.html 1'Z'A'1'16 2'.'A'A'E[A] 3'P'A 4'P'E[A] 5'N 6'E 7'F Customization and original code courtesy of Sean Haas at: https://adventofcomputing.com/ <https://adventofcomputing.com/dope/test.html> The BASIC (hah, see what I did there? I'll show myself out... ) idea is to put obstacles in the way of students and they get points for finding a flag. I decided to combine this with my love of vintage computers and am working on creating vcfCTF. How can you help? Check out the warmup problems I have at my upcoming high school CTF (which is going to let me test many of my problems for vcfCTF, but isn't only vintage computer problems). https://pgctf.portergaud.edu Check out my growing list of emulated web vintage computers at: http://ceos.io/emu Suggest any missing ones and, once you understand the mechanisms, the key is to find a way to hide a text flag that forces them to use a vintage computer. In the DOPE emulator, we had little choice but to customize the emulator itself, but there can be many ways to hide a flag that forces students to happily interact with vintage computers. A custom Atari 2600 ROM, for example. I've already created a problem with a flag that prints out when the .dsk is booted on a web based Apple IIe (or any Apple IIe). I'd love a similar one for C64 and 8bit Atari emulators. Did I mention there is a TRS-80 Model III emulator? Vintage programming languages are especially fun, as long as you can figure out a way to give the students raw code that hides the text flag and must be run. There is, btw, an online APL compiler at: https://repl.it/languages/apl I'm just saying... The problems don't have to be directly related to computer security, but the best ones are computer security related *and* require a vintage computer. The more programming, the better. Best wishes, -Adam