Who remembers Commodore 64?

[ChiefHappyButt]

I was so amazed. I learned BASIC, and went to college to learn 5 other archaic languages, and then decided it was boring.

But -

I remember the thrill I first got learning to program!

You?

[theorist]

1. I DO! (I never had one, though.)

I code in FORTRAN 77 (as well as the new standards) and I write scripts in bash. (Not exactly COBOL, but still pretty nonstandard when compared to what's taught in CS departments these days.)

[ChiefHappyButt]

5. COBOL damn near killed me

42 pages of code to spit out:

yup, it's $42.00!!!!

[priller]

2. I do. I was working on a Commodore PET at the time

and thought the 64 was cool. Color, you know.

[Book Lover]

6. I have two PETs!

In storage. My spouse rescued them from some store before we moved to California...

[priller]

7. I had the external dual-floppy unit, too

Such luxury! No more cassette tapes!

[Book Lover]

3. Many boyfriends were into it

One was even so kind as to buy a 1000 when we were dating because of the Amiga's music capabilities. I myself at the time was not into the hardware or software. Now, of course, I pine for the days when making your computer do what you wanted was that easy...

[POed_Ex_Repub]

4. I started with a Commodore Vic 20

Expanded up to 8k of memory. Learned basic and like a dozen other archaic languages... Became a computer programmer...

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

[ChiefHappyButt]

8. Well, mistakes can be rewritten

is your memory ram or rom?

[POed_Ex_Repub]

12. It would be RAM

But I have yet to find the program I want to imprint upon it.

[blackcat77]

15. Same here

I was SOOOOO impressed with it.

Once I spent hours typing in code for some silly Star Trek game and messed it up somewhere and it wouldn't play. No way to save anything then either. It wasn't really good for much but I guess every addiction has to start somewhere.

[AntiCoup2K4]

28. Started out with the Vic20 myself, but I had the 19 K expansion.

It was a joke... Bought the c-64 about a month later. Hey, at the time it was the state of the art for home computers. Even with that godawful tape drive.

I also had a Timex/Sinclair 1000, but I don't think I ever even took that one out of the box.

[jayfish]

9. I Liked Learning Elite And Wizardry More.

Not another trip to Fomalhaut. That might have been the c128 though.

Jay

[ChoralScholar]

10. my parents bought me a Tandy CoCo3 (Commodore 64 competitor)

They wouldn't buy me any games. Instead, they bought me a BASIC programming book and told me to write my own games.

I spent many hours, however on the Commodore 64 trying to port my Color BASIC games to Commodore BASIC. Great system!

Permanently etched on my brain is:

LOAD "OTHELLO",8,1
RUN

[ChiefHappyButt]

11. Man, if anyone had the patience to code those pixels

I commend you as a knight of the realm!

[ChiefHappyButt]

14. I used to tell my 64

for a party game, just to "search for slimeballs"

It would never stop searching for slimeballs. I still crack up at the dumb thought of that!

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Me.

I still remember the thrill I got the first time I coded a program and it ran as I intended it.

Eventually, after the medical field punked out (for everybody except physicians and administrators) I became a programmer. Right now, it seems like so much wasted time and so many lost opportunities.

I still get that thrill from coding, though. Only once again, I'm doing it for pleasure.

--bkl

If President = Jackass Then
....President = Swap(President, Candidate(D))
EndIf

[Syrinx]

16. I love your code snippet!

Is it open source?

[Dogmudgeon]

17. Steal This Code!

Open source? You bet!

It's in VB syntax, but (much to my delight) there are several VB clones emerging under Linux and Mac as well as Windows. For instance, OpenOffice has a 90% complete VBA clone implementation.

C comes next, but I'm trying to finesse a career change right now. I have given up on programming for money again any time soon. I can't compete with people who can code for $5 an hour ... and pay $75 per month in rent.

--bkl

[Syrinx]

18. have you considered academia

I have a friend that does programming for a University computer science department. He's not getting rich, but he makes about 50 or 60 grand, has fun at work, excellent working conditions, and benefits galore. I actually envy the guy.

[regnaD kciN]

22. Speaking of "stealing code"...

Does anyone remember one of the key factors of the C-64...namely, that it was the software pirate's computer par excellence?

:evilgrin:

Maybe I was naive, but Atari (my first computer) owners seemed to be law-abiding citizens who were satisfied with the programs they could afford to buy. Not the C-64 crowd! One of the biggest shocks of my life was the first time I visited a C-64 user's group, held at the "conference room" at a local shopping mall, with security guards patrolling right outside the door. While the adults sat and listened to some presentation or another, the teenage contingent had set up at least twenty C-64/monitor/floppy combinations around the perimeter of the room, and they were busily (and quite openly) copying hundreds of disks filled with "cracked" programs. Talk about an eye-opener. Arrrrrr!

;-)

[tridim]

26. I think I had about 2000 cracked games by 84

Commodore BBS's were amazing.. I was downloading something almost every night for several years of C-64 ownership.. at 300baud (~450baud via hacking). Mom and Dad wouldn't let me use the phone line during the day. :)

[regnaD kciN]

19. Remember it? I've got one in the garage!

Along with an Atari 800 and three Amigas (a 1000, a 2000, and a 1200)...when I got WinUAE (Universal Amiga Emulator) running on my PC, I immediately called my wife in to show her that, finally, after all these years, someone had figured out how to do something worthwhile on a Windows machine.

;-)

Anyway, although I had all these computers, they weren't what I first learned to program on. That would have been a teletype at my boarding school, connected up to the Dartmouth mainframe -- learning to program in BASIC on the computer on which BASIC was first created.

:wow:

Eventually, I learned C (on the C-64), then got a job programming the Amiga, then learned C++ and started writing games for the Amy, DOS, color Mac, and Sega Genesis. But that was then, this is now...is every programmer here on DU currently unemployed? Sure seems like it...

:-(

[cprise]

20. I have a portable SX-64 to this day

...with a collection of software. Sometimes I bring it into work so we can all play videogames. B-)

[AntiCoup2K4]

29. "portable"?? That thing should be in a gym

...for weightlifting. A laptop, it was not!

[MrSlayer]

21. Anyone have Q-LINK on the Commodore 64?

One of the first Internet type things even before AOL. Was based in Virginia and you got the software if you bought a modem. Having a 1200 baud modem was huge in those days. My friends and I used to terrorize the message boards and chat rooms before flaming was even a term. The BBS and Phone Phreaking days were great.

[regnaD kciN]

23. I think I may have...

What I do remember, from a much-later era, was "PC-Pursuit." This was a monthly-fee service that would allow you to call a local phone access number that would then allow you to connect with BBSs in a number of major cities without having to pay long-distance charges. It was cumbersome as #*%@ to use, but, in the years just before the Internet, I was addicted to it.

[tridim]

24. I phreaked and did all kinds of bad stuff

with my 64 back in the old days. War dialers were the coolest killer app ever.. I even found the RAND login prompt once. :)

I had a Vic-20 for about 6 months before my 64. Gawd I loved that thing. It'll be fun to tell my grandkids about them.

I play M.U.L.E. on a c-64 emulator every once in awhile. I'd use my original 64 if I still had a working 1541.

[Spirochete]

25. I was on Quantum Link

with my Commodore 64 and 1200 baud modem, until AOL took it over and started really messing it up. I remember you always had to watch for the little + signs, or you could run up a pretty hefty bill.

[AntiCoup2K4]

27. Q Link wasn't before AOL, it WAS actually AOL!

No shit! Q link became America Online in the early 90's when they abandoned Commodore machines for the Macintosh market and eventually included the emerging (and soon to be overwhelming) PC clones.

And it sucked then too! :D

[Mick Knox]

30. Yep, I had one..

Had Apple IIe too.. and that was High Tech..

Remmber my first 20 mb hard drive IBMPC too and programming my autoexec to great me when it booted..

ahhh the crappy days of computing...

[balloon_guy]

31. Once I programmed my 64 to plot the Mandelbrot set...

and it did, at a rate of one pixel every 3 or 4 seconds. I went to bed and when I got up, there it was! Such a geek. I still have it in the basement, complete with a thermal printer.

[420]

32. Kikstart!

I remember how my toes danced and my brain ached for the loading time to just HURRY UUUUUUP!!!!!!! Then came Excitebike.... oh Excitebike, thank you for delivering me from the depths of Comm 64 Hell! Comm 64 Flight Sims were excellent til Win 95 though :smoke:

[TreasonousBastard]

33. Sure do...

although I never owned one. Had an Atari XL and wrote some games and a word processor on it.

Got to use C64's and CoCo's every so often, and they were a lot of fun.

Back then, could anyone have imagined...

[Screaming Lord Byron]

34. I had the Sinclairs - ZX81, Spectrums and so on.

[MaineDem]

35. Oh man, we had one!

I remember some sort of Adventure game that was all text based. It was fun.

Also we had a cassette memory thing.

But, I remember punch cards, too. :)

[nuxvomica]

36. I used to play games on it

I still play them with an emulator. I remember loading a GUI interface called "GEOS" that was pretty cool but extremely slow.

[Bonhomme Richard]

37. My very first of many computers.

The best thing about it, and the investment at the time, was the advantage it gave my kids. My oldest is now a IT guy and loves his work.
I always looked at money spent on computers as an investment in the kids and the commodore 64 was only the beginning.