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Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

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Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

#51

Post by stevekemp »

noir_lord wrote: post #13

Grew up in that era, I always wanted a C64 (I had a Spectrum and as much as we'd argue about the relative merits on the playground, deep down us Speccy users knew the C64 was better). I still occasionally consider buying one but then I remember it'll just sit on a shelf collecting dust, better someone who actually uses it gets one.

Hey now! The C64 might have been technically better with sprites, etc, but the Spectrum was way more quirky and British.

Something about the scrappy underdog making awesome games despite the attribute clash, and having the terrible keyboard really set the vibe. Plus the Z80 processor was way more interesting than the 6502, and really set the speccy-folks up for the move to intel in later years.

Back in the day I don't think many would have switched from the Spectrum to the Commodore.

Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

#54

Post by b800h »

radicalbyte wrote: post #24

I'm loving my C64U. The original C64 got me into tech. The most accessible way to get into assembly / machine code. Those of the engineers who skipped that (including most in their mid-40s like me) just don't have that level of understanding of computers. It's a shame. I think that everyone should start on machines like this. Or even a level lower.

Same, got it last Christmas and it became the "family computer". At the moment I'm trying to beat Wizball on it. Great stuff!

Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

#55

Post by reaperducer »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #37
wateralien wrote: post #32

Greetings, fellow old people.

my first internet was on a commodore, on a C128, with a modem hand cut from copper clad, plugged into the user port, and hooked up to pirate radio, that connected to another country. we got insane speeds! seconds per character!

a modem hand cut from copper clad, plugged into the user port, and hooked up to pirate radio, that connected to another country.

Whenever I see people on HN talking about the insane levels of abstraction and indirection the tech industry has built for itself, I remember the crazy things we used to do with little more than bare wires and curiosity.

People on HN complain that they can't get work done because their 48-inch monitor isn't OLED. We would hack mainframes on the other side of the planet with a 40x7 character unlit LCD, and no internet.

Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

#56

Post by the_af »

mkovach wrote: post #30

Ahh, the Commodore 64. I never had one. I had a TI-99/4A with a Forth cartridge, while my friends had VIC-20s and C64s. Such an odd and wonderful time to be into computers. I managed to put together a decent Space Invaders clone in Forth that beat their Commodore BASIC version. I considered this an important victory and still have bragging rights when I see one of them. Eventually my parents realized that, despite th…

The 8 Bit Guy has a pretty good video about the Tandy 1000, a great machine.

Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

#58

Post by reaperducer »

le-mark wrote: post #41
gxd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Speccy is mostly unknown in the US but in some ways it's more important than the mighty C64. It was way less capable but much more affordable. In many poor countries, as well in large portions of Europe, the Speccy dominated because people could actually afford one. It was the VW Beetle of computers. Can you tell which one I had as a kid? :)

I was jealous of the speccy basic. The ms basic the c64 shipped was anemic, you had to have deep, hard to obtain hardware knowledge to do anything with it. Custom characters and character gfx were the most accessible for kids. I pieced together switching out character ram by comparing games in magazines when I was 13. Really impressed my father.

deep, hard to obtain hardware knowledge

It came with a very detailed book. And Commodore sold another even-more-detailed-yet-still-cheap book that was so complete that it even included a big fold-out schematic diagram of the motherboard.

Would I have preferred to be able to do DRAW CIRCLE 0, 1, 23 instead of a long series of POKEs? Sure, because I was a kid and wanted to do things the easy way.

But those POKEs taught you about bits vs. bytes, and how computer memory worked, and how bitmaps worked, and about raster, and optimizing for speed, and ML interrupts, and math, and concepts like XOR, and all the important parts of the computer.

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