I'll never forget my first computer. Rest in peace, Jack Tramiel.
http://imgur.com/GYHVR
Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#42Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#43My first computer was a C64. 30 years ago, I learned to program Basic and assembly language with it. God bless
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#44It's people like Jack Tramiel, Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others that remind you that individuals, even within powerful teams, can be extremely innovative and important. When that carries from company to company and industries it validates it further: Commodore, Atari, Apple, Pixar etc. I spent about 2 summers at my friends house playing Summer Games on C64 and wrote my first lines of BASIC…
3583 BYTES FREERe: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#45Without him, the world would be a different place. The Commodore computers inspired so many people (adults now) and made all "our" business world, start-up world and hacker world what it is now. By bringing home computers to a huge number of houses, a lot of kids got the chance to experience first-hand what it is like to be in control of a "personal" computer.
There is still a C64 scene alive! http://noname.c64.org/csdb/
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#46It's people like Jack Tramiel, Steve Wozniak, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others that remind you that individuals, even within powerful teams, can be extremely innovative and important. When that carries from company to company and industries it validates it further: Commodore, Atari, Apple, Pixar etc. I spent about 2 summers at my friends house playing Summer Games on C64 and wrote my first lines of BASIC…
3583 BYTES FREE
No matter if it is 3583 BYTES FREE or 38911 BYTES FREE or some other number - the start-up text was an important message to all users: There's this language (BASIC) available right here at the prompt, ready for you, just type away. And there are N bytes free, available for you to do whatever you want to do.
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#47Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#48Jack did some amazing things while owner of Atari Corporation too (his son, Sam, was CEO). They helped bring the Lynx to market, developed by Epyx, which was "miles" ahead of other consoles at the time. It had amazing sound, color graphics, and 3D graphics, on a portable in 1989!
Wasn't the Atari ST during his tenure as well? That was an excellent little machine that doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
Yeah. The wiki article has a list of what they released: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Corporation
One neat thing they were developing, but never came to light, was Jaguar VR. It was a virtual reality headset, using IR-tracking, which let you play VR games. Only a few working prototypes exists:
VR headset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFZCgNBxkcM
Game shown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJmnmRzWipo
Another of VR headset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCQJrd-4rk
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#49The Commodore 64 is what inspired my career in tech. Many firsts including machine language, pascal and game/utility programming.
The first software I ever created and sold was Disk Ease, which brought low level control of the 1541 to the normal person. Sold it through ads in the back of Computer Shopper magazine; I was 14. Let me tell you, there is nothing more inspirational than people sending money to your post office box from all around the country for something you built.
It wasn't a big seller by any means, but it laid the groundwork for my future.
Re: Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, dies at age 83
#50TOS stood for Tramiel Operating System. Yes, he is the one who brought in the Atari ST.
No, it didn't. It stood for "The Operating System".
[I worked on it, and Leonard Tramiel, who was in charge of the software team, named it. I think you can attribute the lack of a creative name to the fact that we were all very tired: The software was started in September 1984, and we shipped the 1.0 ROMs in May].