Commodore 64

[Guy Fawkes]

Who remembers the C64? I remember beating my friend's to death with a crow bar... that was around the time we got addicted to Half-Life (and the n64)...

Any fond memories? How about the Jaguar 64?

[toddzilla]

1. c64!!

i used to play some great games on it. usagi yojimbo, a few others i can't remember.

commodore/amiga were great computers in the day.

[mike_c]

2. TRS-80 with a cassette tape drive for storage....

Upper case fonts only, and "Pong" was the height of amusement. However, I began learning to write code on that beast. Kind of wish I still had it....

[disgruntled_goat]

3. c-64 in da hizouse!

I started programming on a c-64 back in the early 80's
a darn fine 3-osc. synthesizer in every c-64!

in 97 i was working in the TV industry, and I saw a TV station/head-end that still had a working c-64 in use! mainly for lowest-budget advertising on access channels, but there it was. :)

[Mojambo]

6. My buddy sent me a pic

of a Bus station in Indonesia or some place like that where they still use the Commodore 64 to display departures and arrivals. They had re-set the system and there was that familar blue startup screen...

Cool.

[JCMach1]

35. sinclair zx-81

was my first...

4 k of memory!!!

[Billy Burnett]

4. I still have 3 C-64's

Two brown desktops and one portable. All still work.

First computer to handle MIDI

[Mojambo]

5. I still have

2 C-64's
and 1 Amiga 500.

I played some of the best games of my life on that ol 64.
Bard's Tale series, Wasteland, Seven Cities of Gold, Pirates!, Jumpman, and tons more I'll never remember...

ohh man, I'm gonna have to fire that baby up again.

[jjmalonejr]

7. I remember upgrading from the cassette tape drive...

...to the humongous 5 1/4" floppy drive.

What a rush!

[AgadorSparticus]

8. oh wow. the cassette tape drive. still have it, too. n/t

[jjmalonejr]

10. I just used my own tape recorder...

...and bought the cables to connect it to the C64.

[tridim]

11. I still remember the day I got my floppy drive

My dad found a guy at work who was selling a used 1541 that was being realigned. So I had to wait an agonizing week knowing it was on it's way. I bought a 10 pack of pink Verbatim floppies and just admired them the entire week.

The other day I remember is the day that I got my 300 baud modem. I quickly happened upon all the local pirate BBS's and began my teenage life of petty computer crime, downloading disk after disk of pirated games. Those were the days. I was downloading stuff 10 hours a night constantly for the next few years until I got my Amiga.

[AgadorSparticus]

9. i remember it was a BIG deal for us to go from the c64 to the 128.

we really thought it was something else!

[nuxvomica]

25. I actually loaded GEOS on mine

Man, it was slow. But the graphics were breathtaking, at least compared to the standard C64 graphics. Plus you could do desktop publishing albeit fairly slowly. GEOS was basically a slower, lower res "homage" to the Macintosh GUI.

[AntiCoup2K4]

29. I thought I was the only one who actually bought that thing.

I mentioned GEOS to all the other C-64 owners at the time, and they had never heard of it. It was a blatant ripoff of the original Mac though.

[Senior citizen]

12. Ah, the good old days.....

.....when I could surf the web & post all I wanted without having to worry about hackers and viruses and I didn't need firewalls or security patches....

Sure it was slow, but Bill Gates couldn't jump in and take over my computer whenever he felt like it.

I went from C-64 to more than 15 years without a computer, and then to emachines with Windows. Imagine how I felt getting it set up when the Microsoft installation program took over my mouse....!

I got a Linux (Knoppix) disc last month, and intend to go to the library soon to see if there's a Linux for Dummies book....

[HornBuckler]

13. C64 Was Awesome

I Had A Vic-20 And Went To The 64 - It Blew Me Away! Anyways, All Those c64 Junkies Should Look Into CCS64 It's A Great Emulator! Play All The Old Games And Intro/Loaders It's Really Cool...

[Kellanved]

14. oh yes. Loading a game from a Datasette

Almost a hour of waiting, to see Elite ...

The Games rocked though: functional UI and great depth

[Spirochete]

15. I remember the C-64

it was a fun computer. I started out with a C64 and a tape drive. I'd spend hours typing in these program listings from magazines like Compute's Gazette, then trying to run them before saving them to tape, and locking up the system because I'd made a typing error - oops. Then I got a 1541, a 300 baud modem, and a copy of Fast Hackem, and I was loaded for bear. My favorite game was Leader Board golf. I no longer have any of my Commodores, but I did run across a whole box of disks for it in the garage a while back. Brought back some memories.

[Mojambo]

27. OMG, Fast Hackem

Ruled so much!

[ironflange]

16. Atari 800XL was better

It had more of a grown-up operating system. plus it had a cartridge slot for games, which were awesome for its period.

[Deja Q]

23. I second that!

Better graphics too.

And Load "*",8,1 and other commands were a bit tedious...

[ironflange]

26. Doesn't much matter

They're all in boxes in garages now.

[Old and In the Way]

17. I'm so old.....

I remember the VIC-20. Learned to program on the 6051....

[theoceansnerves]

18. download and emulator and then go here

www.c64.com
you can download pretty much every game ever made

[legin]

20. Thanks theoceansnerves

:-)

Manic Miner,
Boulderdash,
Uridium,
Head over Heals,
and others...

They had good gameplay. :toast:

[legin]

21. Almost forgot.... Football Manager

Me and my brother played that for a while on an emulator a few years ago. :-)

[legin]

22. I don't know why they don't do the Head over Heals type games

on the PC, I can't remember what the genre was called, but it was a good one. How many Dune II clones do we need ?

[Servo300]

19. no but I remember the Atari

[SmileyBoy]

24. Apple IIe

WIPED THE FLOOR with the Commosore 64.:D:D:D

[tjwash]

28. c-64's and those external floppy drives and copy disks...

nt

[Liberal Classic]

30. Anyone hook up a second floppy?

And open the case and warm up the gun to put a drop of solder on the gap switch to tell the drive to be a secondary?

Taking a hole punch to your floppies so you could use the other side.

Those were the days.

[ThoughtCriminal]

31. I had a Vic-20!

A c-65 predecessor. Actually made a little money developing games for it.

The sad thing about the C-64 were the crummy disk drives they made for it. Otherwise it was a terrific little machine.

[psychopomp]

32. My first computer was a Vic-20

I was just a kid and didn't even notice that it only had 4k of RAM. Do you remember the tape drive? I just used it to learn BASIC.
Thanks Mom!


"In 1981, Commodore dropped a bomb on the home computer market, releasing the inexpensive 3.5K Commodore VIC-20. A computer for the game console buyer! The computer was even more successful than Commodore predicted. At its height, the VIC-20 had a production run of over 9000 units a day!

The VIC-20, like all other Commodore 8-bit computers, greets the user with a flashing READY prompt. The operating system is built into the hardware of the computer, and the user interface is BASIC 2.0, a programming language Commodore purchased from Microsoft in the late 1970s. The VIC featured 5 kilobytes of memory, and color graphics at a time when that was very uncommon, though it's display is only capable of 22 characters per line. The joystick port and game cartridge port are prominent features, as Commodore meant to market the VIC-20 as a game console/computer hybrid. The cartridge port could also be used to expand the VIC's memory up to a whopping 28/32 kilobytes."

[ThoughtCriminal]

33. Programming the Vic-20

Writing games that fit in 3.5k was quite a challenge, but some of them hold up quite well. Most of them were written in 6502 Assembler using a "HesMon" cartridge. I think this was the last computer I had where I really understood how everything worked.

The market for Vic-20 games passed very quickly once the C-64 was released.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

34. Remembering the c64

********************Democratic Underground 64K*******************

Ready.
Yup

syntax error Ready.
load

Press play on tape

Memories:
* Typing code for hours just to see an animation of a ball to bounce around the screen
* Waiting 5-10 minutes for a game to load from tape
* The power adapter becoming very hot and supplying a temporary form of heating
* My favorite game was "Flimbo's Quest", which I think was a French game