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Commodore 64 Still Beloved After All These Years
techsoldaten writes "CNN is running a story about the Commodore 64 and how people are still devoted to it after all these years. "Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever.'"
The C64 was my third computer. I loved that thing. I was 9 when I got a CPM/Pet and was programming it within 6 months. Later I moved on to the venerable Vic-20. Then I got the PC that changed my life - the C64. The article got it right - no PC will ever elicit the same emotions that a C64 did for the owners of them of the time.
The C64 has what many console lovers would dream of:
:-/
It is an open platform. You can write your own games, and give them away to your friends. Remember the listings in C64 magazines? You can't do that with consoles like the Playstation, which is HARDWIRED so only "authorized" games can be booted on it. Nice move, really
When I was 8 my first computer was an Atari 800XL. I grew up on that computer and I really loved computers...until I entered the corporate IT environment. Now I hate computers and the last thing I want to do is go home and use one if I don't have to. To me they are a tool, not a toy. I use them to get work done, do research and lookup information. Yes, I look at the occasional YouTube video or whatnot, but my "love of computers" is certainly no longer strong.
Honestly, I was logging on to my university Windows XP domain about a week ago and was saying to one of my friends about how it made me nostalgic for how quick a C64 could load up.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Granted. Although I started on the Atari 800XL, not the Commodore (they were too expensive when I was growing up back in Chile), I'm sure the feeling is the same...
What I consider more relevant about those days is that as kids we had to be "creators" instead of "users" as it happens today. The most fascinating idea about the computer was that you could "tell it" what to do, and it would just do it. The potential was endless, but you HAD to learn some form of programming language. The more control you wanted to have, the lower in the stack you had to go. I can't emphasize enough how "mind shaping" was learning assembly language on the 6502 (with only 1 accumulator and 2 registers)...
It is hard to find the same in today's environment. You don't see a lot of 12-year-olds programming the computer any more. We have created a whole generation of "users" and I don't see an easy way to change that...
If you had spent a couple of years using a C64 with a tape drive first, you would have loved the disk drives, believe me.
I had a PC XT with CGA when all my friends had C=64 systems. The XT was horrible for games, CGA + PC speaker really sucked.
The C=64 did so much more for games on so much less, it was incredible.
... but when it came to any real work, it was shocking how much I took for granted. I did not envy people swapping floppies while editing documents, submitting assignments with 7pin printouts with nines instead of the letter "g". Spending heaps of cash to replace power supplies or drives in the middle of the night. Just having an RS232 port, a reliable power supply, reliable floppy drive, an OS which was miles above the basic interpreter.
It wasn't until I patched together a 286 with EGA and a sound card that games started to beat out the C=64. The C=64 still had more creative titles though :-)
One thing that many people do not understand these days is why those old systems are still remembered so fondly. People scratch their heads and just don't understand it. As one of the people who got started on computers with machines like the TRS-80 model 1, Commodore PET(4016 and 4032), I like to think I have a bit of insight about what it was about those early days that makes many look back fondly on the games of the era.
If you look back, you see a lot of text based games, or ugly graphics by the standards of today, so it's no wonder that people do not understand. One thing that was true of most of the games back then, they all were NEW, and many really pushed the abilities of the computers of the time. Story, and fun were key, and while many were pretty bad, there was no shortage of good ideas that were different.
The differences are really what stand out in the minds of us "old timers". Think about it, you had a grand total of 16 colors that could be displayed at one time on a C-64, and yet, good games could be written that were not only fun, but had a story that stuck with us. Even into the early days of the PC, there were some really great games in those early days. The original Kings Quest with those really ugly 16 color graphics is an example of that same innovative spirit that makes those early days seem so wonderful. It wasn't the C-64 that was so great, it was the spirit of the game developers that made things seem to amazing.
Trying to say it was the computer just doesn't fit, because the old Apple 2 series had it, in the same way the Amiga had it. It was a love for experimentation and creation, and it seems that these things that made those old games so amazing is all but dead. How much innovation is out there in the game industry these days? New features or abilities added to older games with new graphics will NEVER seem as amazing as the "old days".
When I got my C64, it came with a 300 page manual with detailed documentation on e.g. how to program the built-in sound and graphic chips. Which values you had to write to which registers and so on. I learned how to program assembler by reading this thing, at age 11.
Of course there was also tons of undocumented stuff that you could only learn by doing. Some years ago I found out (using an emulator) that I still remembered carefully crafted tables of timing values to trick the VIC into showing nice animated color bars without flickering.
When I bought my first Intel PC, there was a piece of paper which basically mentioned how to turn the thing on. Took me years to figure out how to do file i/o and draw some pixels in VGA mode.
Another option would be something like 64HDD. That way he could still use the C64 and not have to worry about any significant difference from his current interface other than having a PC emulating his floppy drives.
I used a linux driver and a floppy disk server application along with a home made sio to rs232 adapter to emulate eight floppy drives connected to my old Atari 130XE 8 bit computer. It works great, I copied all my floppies onto images on the server and the put the Indus 5-1/4" floppy drive into storage. Swapping floppies or creating new ones now requires a few key strokes on the PC.
My setup is a small Via Epia based PC as the floppy drive emulator server, a Samsung 910MP LCD monitor which has a built in NTSC tuner, composite video input, and the standard VGA input, and a KVM switch so the floppy server shares a keyboard with my regular PC. When using the Atari I can display it full screen on the LCD monitor or I can view is as a PiP on top of the PC/Via floppy server display.
Dual duty on the LCD monitor, a cheap low power Via Epia server, and sharing a keyboard/mouse/monitor between the Via Epia server and a regular PC through a KVM switch has minimized the pain of running an extra PC as a floppy server for the Atari.
Soldering your way to an upgrade.
No support for anything beyond the stock ram.
Trivial parts that you just had to have to make shit work, hard to find and cost too damned much.
Trivial upgrades being sold as a new model "Now with tint control", and software geared toward that upgrade.
Having to buy upgrades that were processed through the main company, which are no different than the stock part with the exception of a minor Rom tweak.
Spending hundreds/thousands on a given platform only to have it be abandoned.
Rats nest of wires. Wires for your disc drive, extra wires for your printer port, each requiring it's own power supply.
I know it's popular on Slashdot to bitch about Microsoft, but imagine if Commodore won the computer revolution, or Atari.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.