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Looking Back At the Commodore 64
An anonymous reader writes "It's the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64 this week — news that has made more than a few gaming enthusiasts feel their age. This story looks back at some of the peculiarities that made the machine so special — a true mass-market computer well into the era where a computer in every home was a novelty idea, not a near reality."
It may be hard for kids today to believe, but there was a time when home computers were WAY out of the price range of anyone below the HIGH upper middle class. In the early 80's, I had a friend whose dad was a yuppie who actually had an Apple II. All the kids used to go over to his house and marvel at Zork and all the neat stuff it could do. But it was a $2000 computer, and that was in early-80's dollars too (that would be about $5000 today). As much as we marveled at it, we all knew that one of those amazing machines would never sit in our homes.
So when the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 came out right about that time, it was like a godsend to those of us whose parents worked for a living. $200 for a computer that could do almost as much as that fancy $2000 Apple?!? Suddenly computers and programming didn't just seem like something for the yuppie kids, it was within reach of all of us. And the Commodores even came with BASIC built in (my Apple-user friend had to load his from a disc).
And you could get free games by typing them in from magazines! You could learn to do you own graphics by learning peeks and pokes. It's because of my Commodore 64 that I first made the connection between programming and mathematics (wait, I can draw this line a lot easier using a simple equation!). It's how I learned the importance of an if...then conditional.
10 Print " It's where I learned that even us nobodies could one day grow up to be computer programmers."
20 Goto 10
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...to a computer, EVER, was through the Commodore 64 for me. I suppose this is true for many thousands of us ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
This made me feel so good I had to run downstairs and cut a notch into a single-sided floppy to make it a DS DD. And damn those disk-notchers. A pen knife is the tool of the true hardware hacker!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I loved the C64 because of its hackable nature. Unlike my dads Digital Group and TRS80, the C64 was very accessible from both software and hardware perspective, and easy to mess with for a highschooler like I was back then. I built tape copiers,font cartridges and light control modules for the thing, and later on I started modifying the machine itself. I picked up the C64 Reference Guide early on, it had a fold-out schematic of the complete machine in the back. How cool is that?
Part of the charm was that it was not all that hard to know and understand the complete machine, yet with some outside-the-box tricks it could be made to do amazing stuff.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Still owning one... one day I showed it to my 4 and 6 year old sons. I expected some loud "Boo!"s as they do play games on my PC but they enjoyed it a lot :) I guess the C64 has a charm that does not fade with time.
Man, the C64...does it bring back the memories. Load "*", 8 I got one when I was 6th grade, and I would spend hours messing around with it. Then in middle school, we started getting them set up on a network. It was really awesome! I also had a modem for it, where I would have to dial a number on the phone, the put the hand set on it to communicate. Nothing like getting on the boards at 16k.
For the FASTLOAD Cartridge!!!!!
Submitter is commodore64love. Admit it!
sorry people if ya weren't in this generation the c-64 means naught.
the Vic was really neat and the c64 was just a fairly decent upgrade to what the vic already had, if ya added memory expanders you could do all the c64 mostly could do.
and that joystick port having a gram a gold is cool
The C64 was my 2nd computer (first was an Acorn Electron) and it's still my favourite computer of all time.
I still have a C128 with several disk drives, cartridges and other peripherals. I've even got a couple of flashable carts and an SD-card based reader with an ethernet port, so I guess I'd be classed as a Commodore enthusiast :P
Commodore were amazing. They should have remained on top, but a confluence of a factors drove them from the market.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone with fond memories of Commodore machines.
(Sneaks up to the C64 in Dixons)
10 PRINT "THE BBC MODEL B IS BETTER!"
20 GOTO 10:REM ** FOR STARTERS, BBC BASIC COULD DO THIS AS A REPEAT/UNTIL FALSE LOOP **
Oh, the biting wit of the 1980s teenager...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Smooth scroller in 2 lines of BASIC (compressed with shift of course, the magic is the WAIT command):
1 F=53270:POKEF,PEEK(F)AND247:S=PEEK(F)AND248:P=1063:G=Address:U=F-4:V=128:PRINT"InverseheartInverseclosingsquarebracket";
2 POKEP,PEEK(G):FORX=7TO1STEP-1:WAITU,V:POKEF,S+X:NEXT:G=G+1:WaitU,V:POKEF,S+7:PRINT"InverseTInverseclosingsquarebracket";:GOTO2
And theres a note written under it: "enter text from Address in memory, using a monitor (I*Address-)"
Inverseheart I believe either cleared the screen or went to the top left, Inverseclosingsquarebracket was the left cursor, InverseT was delete which I remember only worked when an odd number of quotes were entered and after doing a shifted space. All the other methods of compacting the commands were needed to fit this on 2 lines, like P shift O for POKE and ? for PRINT, etc.
This only worked smoothly on the original C64, and jittered with the Action Replay fastload enabled, Also when I did it on an emulator a few years back it jittered on it. Not quite perfect timing on the emulator I guess.
My C64 (Serial #600) has a very strage bug: If you started a line at the end of the screen, entered more than 80 chars and backspaced into the previous line, it executed a "run" and the program would be non-interruptible. Used this to prevent my brother from stopping my programs and using the C64 for himself.
The C-64 was my second computer (the VIC-20 being the first) and my first experience with the on-line world (and a modem that used the sound output from the computer to generate touch tones). Not knowing what I was doing I remember spending hours looking for something with the Punter Protocol ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punter_(protocol) ) so I could partake in downloading of software...
The C-64 was later replaced with a C-128 (and a 3.5" floppy drive *gasp*) which turned into my first attempt at running a BBS.
Ah the memories
I probably owe my career to one of those.
My dad's friends couldn't believe he was letting his CHILDREN touch a COMPUTER, he would tell them "this is the future, these are life skills now". I learned to load programs before I could write by hand. My older brother and I typed in a game from a magazine. The rest is history, I have been a hacker ever since, it's how I make my living and how I pass the time.
I was very fortunate to be born at a time when computers were suddenly affordable.
The number or programmers who cut their teeth on the C=64 is huge. The number of people who did hardware hacks is enormous.
But what's most impressive about the Commodore 64 is the number of people who continue to use it, or pieces of it to this day. The SID chip is still used by electronic musicians, and the number of people who either emulate the machine on other hardware or create new hardware to expand it's original capabilities is simply astounding.
While the exact number of C=64's sold is debatable (some say 33 million, others about 21 million), it's clearly the "Model T" (or Volkswagen Beetle) of computers, having sold MORE than any other single "PC" model, ever.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Purchased a Commodore 64 and the tape drive at Sears. Learned some about Basic programing but never enough to encourage me to lean other programing languages. Overall experience was great, Eventually I sent for a interface device that would connect the Commodore 64 to my ham radio and decode Radio Teletype over the air called ACT?. I thought for that time the program that came with the interface the graphics were excellent. I believe the RTTY program had a 'cross-hair' tuning indicator, much like a oscilloscope used on RTTY Terminal Units that used vacuum tubes: http://www.qsl.net/n4xy/Images/Electronics/Ham_Radio/RTTY/rtty_electrocom-402_fsk_tu.jpg
I was 20 when the C64 came on the scene, and was an apprentice electronics engineer, mostly in the analogue/RF field. Digital logic was something I understood, but microprocessors, as such, were not. I bought a C64 because I'd used a PET and thought BASIC would be something worth learning, with half a mind on a game idea I had. BASIC soon proved useless, so I turned to an assembler cartridge (bought rather expensively at the time) called MIKRO64. This unlocked the full available power of the machine, but more importantly, it made me understand how a microprocessor actually worked. Back then, the whole architecture was easily understood down to the last register, plus the 64 came with full schematics! This proved to be a most important eye-opener because in the industry I worked in, within a few years, nearly all designs had moved to having a processor at their heart, and programming replaced the old-school logic and analogue design I'd come up with. Without the 64, chances are I would not have been able to keep up in electronics, and eventually go into programming as a career.
And the Commodore 64 community is still far from dead.
There are several hardware projects in active development on the C64 - including a few forms of solid state and HD mass storage (IDE64, SD2IEC, 1541 Ultimate, MMC64, EasyFlash), Internet connectivity (The Final Ethernet/Retro Replay), Commodore in the cloud (commodoreserver.com), hardware accelerators/enhancements (Turbo Chameleon 64).
Besides many of the mas storage mediums being cross-platform usable, there are a few conversion methods to get files to/from the C64 (ZoomFloppy, x1541 cables and utilities, and commodore server are two notable ones)
Programming continues on the 64, including stock c64 demos (the demo coder are still amazing us with what they can crank out of a 1Mgz 64), GEOS related productivity, music, and most notably games. For the game users there are now popular 4 player adapters that games have been developed and a couple involving Playstation controls (the guitar heroish Shredz64 comes to mind)
If developers want the luxury of a modern computer there are cross assemblers (i.e. xa 6502) and now also a textBASIC conversion utility: C64List
Regional commodore gatherings are not uncommon in North America (Commodore Vegas Expo, C4 Commodore Expo, Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention, TPUG World of Commodore Expo) as well as Europe and other parts around the globe (someone comment with a list of those) which includes those cool demo scene parties
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Yes, it was marketed as having 5k, but only 3.5k was actually available as RAM, since the other 1.5k was used for video processing. I still own a Vic-20 and it didn't take long for me to get the 16k expansion cartridge to make the thing far more usable. Eventually, I got a C64, which was an awesome step-up. I still own that one, as well! :-D
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Apple at this time was pursuing the business market - something they could no hope to compete in - and was nowhere. Almost no one I knew had one and they were vastly overpriced. The great myth of Apple is that they somehow pioneered the computer. They were trivial at the time.
Commodore had a great dealer network in every small town. It was the 1-on-1 customer service at this time that was important in making the difference. With the purchase of a machine you also got somewhere to ask questions, buy accessories and magazines, and most importantly somewhere to network with other users.
C64 had a quite large "border" or margin around the 320x200 frame, to avoid nonlinear distortion at CRT's edges and probably to make the resolution more manageable for a 64k machine. The programmers discovered a trick, though, of disabling the border -- when VIC was drawing the 25th text line, the mode was changed to 24 lines for a while, and a similar trick was performed with the number of columns. This made VIC never "see" the begin of either the "vertical" or the "side" border. And -- sprites everywhere, including the border! Add raster tracing for putting sprites just where a pixel is drawn on a CRT, and you have tens of sprites instead of the "factory" eight ones.
One of the things I loved about the C64 (even more so in retrospect) is the fact that entire address space of it (including the ROM OS) was mapped and documented. The background color of the display could be read from this byte in RAM. The character set was bitmapped in that address space. You could generate a sound by poking values to these addresses. You could grok the whole damn machine, which is simply impossible for any human dealing with a 2012 desktop (or even pocket) computer.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
0 poke 32788+p,65; p=p+peek(151)*2-1; print tab(rnd()*37),"###"; if (peek(32788+p)==32) goto
((Not sure of exact syntax and rnd() operation, it fit in the character limit using the short forms of the commands.
p starts at zero of course. clear the screen. scroll to the bottom. RUN
An "A" is your space ship. Starts in the middle of the top of the screen. It moves left or right depending on if shift is pressed or not. Update of P based on shift detected with the peek.
A block "###" is put in a random location at the bottom of the screen and screen scrolled. so it looks like the "###" are appearing at the bottom and flying up.
The game ends if your A would hit a ###. Use the shift key to avoid them as they fly up from the bottom.
The Atari 800 offered a comparable performance performance level (faster CPU, 5 sprites, 4-voice sound, 128 colors) in 1979 and in my opinion, the 800 was a much cleaner ergonomic design and had a much better OS. Plus, it was much cheaper than an Apple II. Atari's attempts to keep the system closed to outside developers for the first year greatly harmed its adoption, though.
In 1982 the 64 was cheap. They had a high failure rate, a bizarre keyboard layout, a confusing array of unlabled ports, the slowest disk drive known to man, and it was all shoehorned into a recycled Vic-20 case. The only good part was an excellent chipset.
Check out the "Drunk Chessboard" demo for the Atari on youtube. It was really any amazing machine 3 years before the 64.
I was given the Commodore 128. Just missed out on all the ability to reminisce.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
There is is still a very active user community centered around the Commodore 64 (and to a lesser extent, the VIC-20 and other Commodore machines). There are active user groups, vendors, new hardware and software under development, you name it. Yes, in 2012.
Check out this link for a partial list of what's out there!
Modern Commodore C64X (dual core D525 with nVidia ION2) contest until March 31st: http://www.commodore-amiga.org/en/forum/34-site-news/11318-commodore-amgaorgs-first-great-giveaway
> LOAD "MY BRAIN",8,1
> SEARCHING FOR MY BRAIN.....
> COULD NOT FIND MY BRAIN
>
Still funny after all these years.
This was my most prized possession. When I asked for a C64 for Christmas, I never thought I would actually get it. $200 does not grow on trees! Then the presents were placed under the tree and one of them was the size and shape of a boxed C64! Could it be? What was in that box? Christmas morning was one of the happiest days of my life. It was torture waiting for Christmas that year. It was just the C64... no tape or disk drive. I could care less. I had a stack of Compute! magazines ready to go. I typed in my own games out of the magazine. I would leave it turned on for days to enjoy the program because once I turned it off, it was gone.
I once typed in a program for three days to see it generate a three dimensional donut on my TV. It took the program hours to calculate and display that donut. When I finally got a tape drive I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I didn't have to type in my game every time I wanted to play. I could save it and then mangle the code figuring out how to adjust the programming to create my own game without fear of screwing up the code so badly it wouldn't run anymore.
I feel sorry for people who didn't get the opportunity to enjoy the early computers. Things were so simple and fun back then. Now when a kid gets a computer there is so much information to absorb in order to become an expert that one doesn't even know where to start. Back then, you just needed the Commodore 64 Reference book purchased from your local book store and everything you could ever want to know was at your fingertips.
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
I didn't have a C64 as a kid, moving straight from the whole Apple series and Atari, to 486 DX66 (a monster of gaming power at its inception). However, for those with C64 memories, Commodore isn't dead - check out http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx - you can actually buy a perfect replica C64 keyboard/chassis in which to build a modern PC, or you can buy a prefab one with either Intel Atom or Sandy-Bridge based kit (personally, I'm a little underwhelmed by the hardware chosen in both the prefabs, you can probably do better yourself). Commodore has gone even further by creating a new Linux distribution "Commodore OS Vision" which gives a full featured Linux system (based on Mint) and has all the old Commodore software built in and accessible as well, free to download for anyone (which will spur Linux adoption as well). So if you want to create a retro gaming system, a unique HTPC, or just want to dive into the old C64 software your remember, give it a look! Cool that they're introducing fun, user-controlled computing to a new generation and making a fleshed out Linux distribution that pays homage to the old ways while showing how far we've come.
I cut my teeth on a Commodore PET that was donated to my school as part of a grant program. Most kids (and teachers) ran away, and I couldn't keep my hands off it. I actually had my mother drop me off at school early in order to get a couple of hours on it each morning. At night, I would hand-write out more program code.
By the time the VIC-20 and C64 rolled around I was hooked. We were poor and couldn't afford them, but a teacher at school brought his C64 in. From there, I saved (and saved... and saved) and eventually got into the Atari line for the better (to me) graphics and gaming potential. I lusted after the Apple ][ but certainly couldn't afford that.
Ahhhh, memories of direct memory manipulation, no look-asides, no threads. Back in my day....
I was in high school at the time and did all my essays on the C64. Boy did it make things so much easier than using a typewriter (or pen and paper for that matter!). The only problem was that you couldn't type more than about 10 pages at a time before it ran out of memory. Most of my assignments ended up being done in parts...
Best game of my childhood by far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Mission
Those square Joysticks that used to give you RSI and a throbbing red patch on your hand at the base of the thumb. I can still feel it to this day.
Whoever designed those Joysticks clearly never played on those Sports games where you had to thrape the stick backward and forward as fast as you could like a masturbating lunatic. Joysticks didn't last long in those days.
But fortunately more than 30 years on and despite taking a battering that far exceeded any Commodore 64 Joystick, my **ck is still in one piece.
Every time I masturbate I think of Daley Thompson's Decathlon.
Happy times indeed..
LOAD "*",8,1
That is all.
http://www.cc65.org/ Free compiler for 65xx CPU targets
http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/ Multi-platform emulation of all Commodore 8bit computers
Libraries and repositories
http://www.gb64.com/index.php
http://www.lemon64.com/
"The 1541 disk drive helped speed load times up a significant amount"
I think this floppy drive was even slower than the tape drive....
Nail clippers, with the attached file. The multitool of choice.
Indeed; I still use them as wire strippers and cutters....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
There were beefier computers (who didn't want a Lisa?) and cheaper computers (who did want a TS-1000?), but especially in 1983 as the price fell from around $600 to under $200, it got into the sweet spot. That got the machines into people's hands, and the best computer is the one you have.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And you needed a BBC Master to have as much RAM as the C64.
That's probably why those lucky C64 users got "The Blue Danube" docking computer music and cute furry trumbles when they eventually got Elite... Not fair.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I was a huge Atari fanboy, we used to laugh when our C64 friends would begin loading Frogger on a tape drive. We'd run outside and throw some hoops while it was loading.
The real fun of those days (no matter what the machine of choice) was getting the latest Compute! magazine to see what type-in programs it came with. Usually a game or a word processor or something, and the hope was always that the cool program was actually listed for your machine. The fun was actually in the fact that the programs rarely worked right... you'd spend an hour or two getting it all typed in, it would run funky or not at all, then spend another 30 minutes trying to track down your typo. Eventually they included CRC codes to help with verifying entry. The days.
load "*",8,1
I found a large part of which 8bit machine you cut your teeth on was more about where you lived and what your friends had, than anything else. And of course what age you were when they came out.
When you boil it down, even tho we all fought like cats and dogs 'ours was better', most of the machines of the same generation were pretty similar and ultimately it didn't matter if you had a Commodore, or an Atari, Apple, TRS-80 or a host of others.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I owe it all to those guys, especially Butterfield (RIP). That guy was like a hero to us back then.
A C64, Jim Butterfield's memory maps, Brad Templeton's PAL assembler and The Transactor Anthology (thanks too Karl J.H. Hildon). Man, what computing fun! I spent thousands of hours on C64's (and the PET too). I think I have that PET green phosphor glow permanently burned into my brain.
Jim Butterfield was a major force for that platform. Without his detailed hardware and ROM breakdowns of the machine, I don't think it would have reached the audience it did.
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
Wow, 30 years! It is hard for me to believe it has been that long, the C64 and the C64 community was a HUGE part of my youth. I first got in to computing in the very late 70's or extremely early 80's. I learned BASIC before I even had computer and began writing text based BASIC games in a notebook before I received my first computer. I begged my parents for a computer for Christmas and in 1982 I received a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a with no storage device. I spent many hours typing in programs and not turning the machine off so my work was not wasted. Eventually I got a tape drive but the TI kicked the bucket about 8 months after I got it.
I desperately wanted a C64 with a 1541 disk drive but back then the whole package was close to $1000.00 and my parents couldn’t afford it. My dad suggested I get a job and made a deal with me; if I could earn 1/2 of the money he would front the other 1/2. I was 13-14 so job options were limited, we lived in an exceptionally large trailer park near the army base my dad was stationed at and they had LOTS of vacant lots with overgrown grass. They agreed to pay me $3.00 a yard to keep them mowed. I worked my tail off and by the end of the summer I had made more than enough money and was able to get the C64 and 1541 along with a printer, joysticks and a few games.
I LOVED that C64 and quickly fell into the C64 scene in whatever area we were in. I went to copy parties, we spent uncountable hours in my room playing C64 games and programming. Not long after I got my C64 I discovered BBS's and spent an enormous amount of hours calling BBS's to download the latest C64 games and programs and play the latest BBS games.
However, my first love was always programming. Although I collected a large number of C64 games, I spent most of my time exploring the machine. Delving in to it, learning everything it could do. I had the C64 programmer’s reference and lots of magazines and other materials and devoured them. Coding was my creative outlet, I was not a great writer, I couldn’t draw, but coding was how I explored my creative side and it absolutely lit me up, it fired something deep within me. I LOVED hitting problems and spending every waking hour trying to solve that problem and once you did, it was the greatest feeling.
Around 1985 I decided to code my own BBS software and spent a few years working on it and eventually got my own BBS up and running on dual 4040 CBM drives around 1988 or 89 in Norman, OK.
The C64 was special (along with many of the old 8-bit machines) in that you HAD to know something about the machine to operate it, and when you booted it up, it booted into a development environment, begging you to write your own programs. Todays machines don’t have that same appeal.
One thing that bothers me is that the C64 is largely ignored in the retelling of the history of the PC. The C64 absolutely demolished the sales of the Apple ][ and every other 8 bit machine of that era. Commodore beat Apple to market with their PET machine. The Apple ][ was not as big of a hit has most documentaries want you to believe. The C64 may have been more important in that era than the Apple ][ ever was but most retellings of that era leave the C64 out completely.
I am a teacher today (middle school science) and I look around and I don’t see kids excited about programming because most don’t realize you can. The machines that are on the market today come with no development environment, in addition, the complexities of coding in an object-oriented GUI world turn many kids away. There are easier options available, but you have to go out and actively search for them and as a young kid you might not find them.
I run a robotics club and teach kids as young as 6th grade C and they LOVE it. I started an interactive fiction club and taught kids TADS and they ATE IT UP!!! You would think in todays world of high definition 3D graphics kids would be bored to tears with a text adventure game but the
As a previous poster noted, there is still a BIG worldwide user community for the Commodore 64, along with the PET, VIC-20, 128, SX-64, Plus 4, and Amiga lines. In fact, I'm told there will be a Commodore 8-bit maintenance/repair clinic at this year's Vintage Computer Festival East (May 5-6, New Jersey) with the clinic led by ex-Commodore engineer Bil Herd who designed the 128. The event's web site is just being built but details should be online in the next few days; meanwhile they've got a Facebook page. Also noteworthy: a few years ago the keynote speaker was Chuck Peddle, who designed the MOST 6502 chip! That's on YouTube in four parts. It starts around 16 minutes into part 1.
Couldn't live without the "Fast Load Cartridge", what a difference it made in loading times. I wonder how many Epix sold?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
My family's first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000. I then began to lust after the Apple IIe at school. A friend of mine turned me on to the Commodore 64 and I never looked back. Truely an awesome machine. I still own one today with (2) 1541 drives and a 1702 monitor along with a box of real floppies. And it all STILL WORKS (even the floppies!). I built an interface (easy instructions online) to connect a 1541 to an modern PC which allows one to actually download real C=64 software on the internet and then put it on a floppy. Incredible!
While modern computers are much more powerful, I often wonder why we have to wait for them to boot. Why don't the mobo makers just put an EEPROM on the board and OS makers give us an OS we can load into the EEPROM? Instant boot up (like my C=64) would then be possible. All HD space and memory would be free for apps and data. Upgrades would require a simple re-load (like a BIOS flash) of the EEPROM. Yet here we are, still loading our OS like we did in the DOS days.
Like an STB, game console, yotube able tv or web browser. Load and save programs to pastebin or similar.
The 1541 was essentially an extra C64 without the SID and video chips. Epyx sold a lot of FASTLOAD cartridges because somewhere in the bowels of the 1541 firmware, some joker messed up the CRC checksum code -- this caused the stock 1541 to think every sector was bad, re-reading each sector six times before finally accepting it. Speed-wise, a stock 1541 was barely faster than the tape drive but it was a lot more reliable -- and random access.
Ah yes, the C64 memories:
1) LOAD *,8,1
2) Fast Hackem
3) building my own RS232 interface to my manual-originate 300 baud modem (non-Hayes)
4) Ultima IV (music still stuck in my head)
5) Commodore Gazette magazine (after typing in 1400 lines and finding misprints that cause CRC mismatch, argh)
One of the best games in my childhood and experienced on the C64.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Amiga always had an Eprom and software to load on the HD.
Go get an SSD. Probably the closest thing that's available to what you want.
FC Closer
The C64 was the second computer I ever used in my life, the first was of course the CVic-20, with it oh so glorious tape drive. I own a working C64, currently, I only own one game for it, will eventually have to approach the PET Computer Club of Toronto to buy some C64 games as well as a better controller.
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
The Commodore 64 was the first computer I ever had. I convinced my mother and grandmother I just had to have a computer. I got to pick it out at K-mart and they took it home and wrapped it up. I, of course, couldn't wait. I offered to clean the living room. While all the stuff was loaded into the bedroom I opened the box, unpacked the computer, put bricks in the box, sealed it up and put it back under the tree. I kept it in my room and took it out after everyone was asleep. I repeated the living room cleaning routine and reversed the process. I was so excited to be able to finally play with my computer on Christmas Day. I was amazingly good for someone who had never actually used a computer.
Sure, the C64 booted instantly. But if you wanted to do anything with it, you had to wait 5 minutes for the 1541 to read the disk.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The only good thing (IMO) about the ZX81 was the cheap, cheap price, otherwise it was a pretty awful machine.
The Vic-20 would have looked a poor second choice too if you had the money and inclination to splash out significantly more on an Atari 800. So yeah, the ZX81's selling feature undoubtedly *was* its "cheap, cheap price", but that doesn't make it the trashy, worthless machine the phrase implies.
In fact, the ZX80 was the first computer under £100 in the UK, and the ZX81 was significantly cheaper still, bringing computing to the masses here. It had its limitations- those were undeniable- but it still fulfilled the basic essentials of a hobbyist home computer. (Though I wouldn't ever claim it was a great choice for arcade games or business computing!)
The likes of the Vic 20 was never that cheap here.
I don't know if you're American, but I do note that Americans seem to slag off the ZX81 and TS-1000 (the US version) a lot. I'm *guessing* this dislike is for a number of reasons:-
(a) The TS-1000 came out properly over a *year* later(!) there- around the time we were getting the ZX Spectrum- and things had moved on fast,
(b) Americans had more disposable income- and could probably stretch to the Vic- so possibly the TS-1000's low price wasn't the difference between "having a computer" and "not having a computer"
(c) Commodore's Jack Tramiel seemed to be more aggressive in pushing prices down on the US market (*) so I assume the Vic 20 was probably cheaper over there; being US-made probably helped
(d) AFAIK there was a US shortage of the 16K RAM-packs that made the ZX81 far more capable, and they weren't that cheap either
(*) I'm basing this on what I've heard about the C64. I get the impression that it was a "cheap" machine on the US market in the way it never quite was in the UK- I do know that Jack Tramiel was ruthlessly aggressive in his pricing over there (to the point that Commodore's eventual victory in the market may have been pyrrhic). However, it was always enough more expensive than the ZX Spectrum in the UK that the latter was the best-selling machine here, even though it wasn't technically as good.
The VIC-20 had lots of stuff the ZX81 did not have. A proper keyboard, color graphics, disk drive(s)
Disk drive interface, yes, but the drives themselves sure as heck weren't standard. In fact, Wikipedia says they cost more than the computer itself, and I can believe that- even "cheap" drives were expensive back then. That's why cassette-based storage was so "popular" (cough!) at the time.
I doubt anyone buying a ZX81 could have afforded even the Vic's disk drives.
FWIW, I remember reading an old magazine article mentioning a disk drive system for the ZX81. IIRC it was ludicrously expensive in relation to the machine itself, but it *was* possible(!)
a real video chip so the processor didn't have to draw the screen (that's why you can either run a program or have screen output.
You're thinking of the ZX80. The ZX81 was capable of running a program and displaying the output without the screen flicker, albeit at a slower speed. (You could revert to flickery "FAST" mode if you wanted to).
I don't want this post to come across as an attempt to say that the ZX81 wasn't a very simplistic and somewhat limited machine. It was. However, it was a usable machine that fulfilled the essentials, and that "cheap, cheap price" opened up computing to a whole new audience. Even the disliked flat keyboard served its part in keeping the price down. About the only thing that wasn't forgivable in that context was the notorious "RAM pack wobble", which was just bad design (apparently Sinclair reused the ZX80 ram pack case that was moulded to fit the older machine).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asy6Cpbtwfs
SID Music starts at 0:17.
While modern computers are much more powerful, I often wonder why we have to wait for them to boot. Why don't the mobo makers just put an EEPROM on the board and OS makers give us an OS we can load into the EEPROM? Instant boot up (like my C=64) would then be possible. All HD space and memory would be free for apps and data. Upgrades would require a simple re-load (like a BIOS flash) of the EEPROM. Yet here we are, still loading our OS like we did in the DOS days.
Your C=64 didn't even use EEPROM, it used mask ROM, and was probably soldered (both as cost reduction measures).
Operating systems today are much too big for EEPROM or mask ROM. The only practical option is NAND flash, which operates like a block device and is therefore impossible to directly boot from in most systems.
Even if you solve that problem with some chipset/SoC magic, you still don't want to run an OS directly from NAND, because it's much slower than DRAM (the C=64 mask ROM had no performance penalty). You'll still want to use the NAND boot tech for nothing more complex than a bootloader which copies the real OS into DRAM.
Like LocalH said, boot from a SSD and have fun. I have a MacBook Air, and it takes under 15 seconds to boot, and at most 1-2 seconds to launch most software. Under 20 seconds from powerup to using an application is not bad at all. Also, in practice a C64+1541 took a hell of a lot longer than 20 seconds to load any real program. "Boot" was fast, but "doing something" sure wasn't.
P.S. in practice the MBA "boot" is even better than 15 seconds, because I rarely boot it. I just close it when I want to stop using it, which causes it to go to sleep and automatically transition to hibernation. When I open it, it almost always wakes up and reconnects to WiFi in at most 2-3 seconds, and whatever I had open when I put it to sleep is still right there.
Ah, the joy of programming on the Commodore Pet in 9th grade. I remember feeling so high on my programming skills when I wrote a game which required almost all of the Pet's 8K memory. On a similar subject, a friend who didn't possess "the art" required to be an intuitive programmer, worked on a game of his own. As with most games now as then, there is a delay while the game loads up, does preliminary calculations, etc. To add this "feature" to his game, at startup he added a large, empty loop.
I was there back in the days, writing them little games on my C64...
But for once TFA mentions something amazing: the *fact* that the C64's shoundchip is still used *today* in the music scene (the real one, not the demoscene, where the C64 is still used too btw).
There are several bands that are now using the soundchip of the C64 to add the "8 bit feeling" to their tracks. It may be due to their target demographic being "nostalgic" about these kind of sounds or it may just be that these "weird" sounds were actually simply objectively great and that people now are re-discovering them.
And I'm not talking about some low-profile "8-bit music" group or anything like that. I'm talking about mainstream "commercial" artists.
And I think that this is quite simply just amazing.
30-f*cking-years-old-soundchip still in use today!
May some of them 12 millions built still work in another 30 years : )
I've loved reading these posts. I started as a teenager with a KIM-1 my Dad and I bought and built the power supply for by hand. Then I sold that to buy a Commodore PET through a local school teacher, Jack Woelfel, who sold them and I did some work for. I wrote software in BASIC for that for education called PetTeach (really, Peteach, but hard to understand that), and a Purchase Order organizer for our school district, and Conways' game of life, part of that in assembler. I also wrote some AI stuff with triples that became my Pointrel system eventually on other platforms -- so still working on it :-). Then I bought a VIC-20 (I wrote a video game for that called Intruder Scramble in Assembler which earned a bunch of money for a summer's work on my own). And then I bought a C64 (I missed my chance to be rich porting that video game to the C64 but I had started at a college and was distracted).
Great times. I still have a VIC and a C64 somewhere packed away and hope they still run to show my kid sometime. (I think old capacitors can go bad...)
I agree the great thing about them was they were understandable all the way down.
I especially liked the HESForth cartridges that let you have a (for the time) high-level language right on the system that was still really fast, and you could easily restart the system and still keep what you had in memory. That was a great way to learn more about programming interactively. I just with I had been able to deliver code back then in Forth (but you needed the cartridge for that system).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Can't believe I still remember this... Load "*",8,1 My first introduction to a graphical GUI was GEOS: http://toastytech.com/guis/c64g.html