Greetings, fellow old people.
Yeah I had one of those as a kid and spent many happy hours learning about it and of course playing games.
Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
131–140 of 186 posts
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#132I may be alone in this but I really grew to despise the C64. It represented frustration and failure to me. The basic was so limited, it did not provide access to the otherwise excellent video and sound hardware. Information pre internet was hard to come by, and I never discovered the assembler pathway. I wanted to do cool stuff with it but a kid in rural US had zero access to resources. My biggest success was piecing…
I was in nearly the same boat, not quite rural, but close enough that I was one of a couple of "computer kids" in the whole school. I got my hands on the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide"[0] and it was literally life-changing. It simultaneously demystified computers for me ("oh, this is how it knows where to draw my sprite, and here's how to go from a hand-drawn picture to a pixel grid to a list of hex values") and made them more magical ("I can create an entire universe with my brain and hands").
Yeah, the BASIC sucked. I'm glad it sucked just enough to make me want to learn more on my own.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#133Blog poster's early computing history is remarkably similar to mine in terms of years/ages. Got a C64 (with a 1541 disk drive) around late 1983 (when I was 10). Hooked up to a 13 inch CRT TV at first. Got into games, computer magazines, magazine game listings (like the ones from old Compute!'s Gazette), taught myself MS BASIC and 6502/6510 assembly language, got into cracking games, got a 300 baud 1650 modem, got int…
Who are you, and why are you writing my biography? Your journey was nearly identical to mine. I truly, sincerely feel like we went through a golden age, where amazing things were starting to become possible but you hard to work hard enough to get them that you couldn't help but learn something new along the way.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#134I may be alone in this but I really grew to despise the C64. It represented frustration and failure to me. The basic was so limited, it did not provide access to the otherwise excellent video and sound hardware. Information pre internet was hard to come by, and I never discovered the assembler pathway. I wanted to do cool stuff with it but a kid in rural US had zero access to resources. My biggest success was piecing…
I was in nearly the same boat, not quite rural, but close enough that I was one of a couple of "computer kids" in the whole school. I got my hands on the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide"[0] and it was literally life-changing. It simultaneously demystified computers for me ("oh, this is how it knows where to draw my sprite, and here's how to go from a hand-drawn picture to a pixel grid to a list of hex valu…
Another useful tool was a debugging cartridge.
My C64 came with a Super Snapshot. It had a button on the cartridge that would freeze the running program and provide options like editing the memory, modify machine code, persist current state to disk, etc.
I would type programs in BASIC and then examine the machine code that it got compiled to. I learned a lot more than I would have without the cartridge.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#135In praise of "obsolete" technology: I got my C64 for Christmas 1987, when there were already much more powerful machines available, but the C64 was the only one my parents could afford. Unexpectedly to me, they stretched their budget to get me the disk drive as well.
I used it up into the 90's. There was enough to do and learn with this machine to satisfy a young mind forever, but there was still that nagging inferiority complex that came from not having the latest and greatest.
Despite the fact that genuine hardware improvements have slowed down and software is stuck in the mud, it's easier than ever to get infected by the FOMO that drives the endless churn. But now, a little older and hopefully wiser, I perceive how pointless all that is. When it comes to how I use technology on my own time, I try to mindfully use only what sparks my own joy of learning and creating, and disregard everything else.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#136I may be alone in this but I really grew to despise the C64. It represented frustration and failure to me. The basic was so limited, it did not provide access to the otherwise excellent video and sound hardware. Information pre internet was hard to come by, and I never discovered the assembler pathway. I wanted to do cool stuff with it but a kid in rural US had zero access to resources. My biggest success was piecing…
The User's Guide had a single bitmap mode example, but POKEs needed for hardware sprites and sound were adequately covered. Joystick polling in BASIC is a fool's errand however.
I recall joystick PEEKs being fine as long as you used port 2. Port 1 was muxed with the keyboard port and would type characters (2's and left arrows from what I remember).
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#137I may be alone in this but I really grew to despise the C64. It represented frustration and failure to me. The basic was so limited, it did not provide access to the otherwise excellent video and sound hardware. Information pre internet was hard to come by, and I never discovered the assembler pathway. I wanted to do cool stuff with it but a kid in rural US had zero access to resources. My biggest success was piecing…
I despised the limitations of the included BASIC but loved my C64. I also had a pirated Pascal and learned a bit with it (not much). It wasn't a good platform for programming, but it still made me fall in love with computers. Getting my first PC XT clone with GW BASIC felt liberating, suddenly I could write graphical games with ease! But to this day I still love my C64, wherever it is now.
My dad bought our first C64 from a co-worker and it came with hundreds of disks, mostly pirated and other "scene" stuff.
I don't know if I'll ever get around to "ripping" those disks to sort through and possibly find anything worthy of sending to the Internet Archive. And this is also assuming they still have anything readable on them.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#138I had a ZX Spectrum and learned Basic and played a ton of pirated games on that. My school had Commodore 64s - but I didn't use them much. They didn't really know how to teach for them and there was no hacking around allowed.
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? :)
Fewer Spectrum's of all models combined appears to have been sold than the C64 alone, so it dominated very few places.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in nearly the same boat, not quite rural, but close enough that I was one of a couple of "computer kids" in the whole school. I got my hands on the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide"[0] and it was literally life-changing. It simultaneously demystified computers for me ("oh, this is how it knows where to draw my sprite, and here's how to go from a hand-drawn picture to a pixel grid to a list of hex valu…
Another useful tool was a debugging cartridge. My C64 came with a Super Snapshot. It had a button on the cartridge that would freeze the running program and provide options like editing the memory, modify machine code, persist current state to disk, etc. I would type programs in BASIC and then examine the machine code that it got compiled to. I learned a lot more than I would have without the cartridge.
Young me is envious. I downloaded or typed in, I forget which, some monitor program[0] that I used a lot, but loading it was far more manual than what you described and was basically impossible to load while another machine code (i.e. non-BASIC) program was running.
I still learned so much from typing short programs into it. I talked my parents into buying me an assembler so that I could make changes without re-typing a whole program.
Re: Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
#140Blog poster's early computing history is remarkably similar to mine in terms of years/ages. Got a C64 (with a 1541 disk drive) around late 1983 (when I was 10). Hooked up to a 13 inch CRT TV at first. Got into games, computer magazines, magazine game listings (like the ones from old Compute!'s Gazette), taught myself MS BASIC and 6502/6510 assembly language, got into cracking games, got a 300 baud 1650 modem, got int…
Who are you, and why are you writing my biography? Your journey was nearly identical to mine. I truly, sincerely feel like we went through a golden age, where amazing things were starting to become possible but you hard to work hard enough to get them that you couldn't help but learn something new along the way.
I was going to post something similar. I think the Amiga's CLI helped me ease into unix/Linux which is how I got my first programming job.