Commodore 64 turns 30

Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:49 · Score: 3, Funny

Somehow it was easier for me to write assembly code on that machine to do animations than anything I have access to now. (I don't know Java.) What's up with that?

Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:55 · Score: 5, Funny

Because you were young back then. Your brain and body were at their peak. You could have learned Cantor's infinities at the same time as coding demos on the C64. You're probably middle-aged now, you're lucky if you're able to remember what you had for breakfast.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's more probably because there are now eight thousand layers of software between you and the machine.
Re:Remarkable by Smauler · 2012-08-01 14:46 · Score: 1

If you want to programme games there are. If you want to write machine code, just about every appliance has a computer in them, and they're all hardware limited. Depressingly, the best place to look for hardware limited code to write now commercially is with dishwashers and ovens and other simple appliances.
Re:Remarkable by Smauler · 2012-08-01 14:51 · Score: 0

Go right ahead and nurture the believe that aches and pains, forgetfulness, brain-fog, worsening vision are just a matter of age.
You're down on you oily fish, grandpa! Cod liver oil intravenously, pronto!
Re:Remarkable by Miamicanes · 2012-08-01 15:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

^^^ Amen.
Amount of time it took a 6th grader to figure out that POKE 53281,0 turns the screen black: about 5 minutes.
Amount of time it took me as an adult ~20 years later, with ~7 years of postgraduate professional development experience, to figure out how to create a JFrame, open a JPanel on it, and fill it with black: about 3 hours, and that was with a few years of Java experience already under my belt. I shudder to think what would be involved trying to do it in C++ under Windows with MFC.
30 years ago, the essence of programming a Commodore 64 could be boiled down into a book with 500 pages, and made comfortably accessible with the addition of 2 or 3 more good books. Now, the fucking EULA pdf ALONE rambles on for close to 80, and a fairly complete set of books documenting nothing but J2SE 7 (with comprehensive treatment of Swing) would fill a bookcase, and a comprehensive set of books with everything you need to know about Windows to do anything from write miniport drivers to create .net webapps would fill a building the size of my childhood's small town public library.
Plus, expectations of artistry were much lower. You could write a program that created an 8x8 smiley face in 2 colors. You weren't expected to master DirectX or OpenGL and learn about 47 different shadowing modes, or read a book the size of War & Peace on T&L theory. You didn't even have to be much of an artist. It helped if you were, but when you're dealing with the world one 8x8 custom character at a time, artistic finesse really didn't add much to the equation.
Ditto, for music. You could get a piece of sheet music, and your main programming task was figuring out how to efficiently represent frequency+duration with a finite number of DATA statements. Today, you practically need to have the background knowledge of a professional recording engineer. Even in the Amiga era, the hardest part about dealing with SoundTracker was the fact that it crashed like a third-world discount airline. Learning to use SoundTracker itself took maybe an hour, and learning how to play it back with assembly was almost a no-brainer.
I really feel sorry for kids learning to program for the first time today. Our videogames might have sucked compared to Half Life (or even Angry Birds), but at least we had computers that a single mortal could grasp, understand, and individually do cool & worthwhile things with after just a few days of practice and experimentation.
Re:Remarkable by White+Flame · 2012-08-01 15:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

It has nothing to do with "peak" age of anything. It's all about having tons of time free, and very few interests that are focused such that you'll spend 12 hours a day doing something that you'd not have the time or patience to do nowadays.
Re:Remarkable by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:45 · Score: 2

>>>You're probably middle-aged now, you're lucky if you're able to remember what you had for breakfast.
Turkey and potatoes.
With peas.
Yesterday was leftover pizza. The day before was popcorn (needed to eat at my desk because of a pressing deadline). The day before that was nothing, because I slept through breakfast.

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Re:Remarkable by hairyfeet · 2012-08-01 15:49 · Score: 1

Yeah Jim Fixx said the same thing...he dropped dead in his 50s, found by a couple of smokers. I've seen people that treated their body like garbage dumps live to be nearly 100, I've seen people that ate only the healthiest foods and clean water drop dead from cancer in their 50s. Steve Jobs anyone?
While doing all that may make you feel better, its really not gonna do much at the end of the day, either you have good genes or you don't, simple as that. In my family you either live to be in your 90s or you drop dead before 60, no in between there so who knows? Its just a toss up which genes you got from which part of the family friend, that's all.

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Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 16:23 · Score: 1

It's more probably because there are now eight thousand layers of software between you and the machine.
I thought buffer overflows solved that problem.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 17:00 · Score: 0

I'm also in my mid-40s and don't buy into this peak performance bullshit. However, I eat processed/junk crap, I drink sodas, I take medications, get vaccines, as well as do a whole lot of other things that would make a person like you shudder. I only exercise moderately, mostly to keep me from getting overweight. I'm in the middle of doing a master's degree in computer science after just completing a bachelor of computer science where I graduated with a 87% average (Americans can figure out the GPA). You're either born with it or you aren't. All that other crap you spouted is ... crap.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 17:28 · Score: 3, Informative

>Amount of time it took a 6th grader to figure out that POKE 53281,0 turns the screen black: about 5 minutes.
This only affects the center of screen. You need POKE 53280,0 for the frames.
I still remembered that after 25 years.
Re:Remarkable by rve · 2012-08-01 17:39 · Score: 2

Cut out the mega dose of vitamins. The case for mega doses of vitamin C was based on a very flawed thought experiment: Linus Pauling argued that dogs never got cancer, and his dog made so and so much of its own vitamin C, so people should eat so many grams of vitamin C each day to have the same vitamin C levels as dogs and never get cancer either.
Never mind the fact that dogs do get cancer, and that primates (including us, obviously), who don't make their own vitamin C, live much longer than other mammals of similar size, and have much better health in advanced age than dogs. Just look at a 20 year old dog, if you can find one.
The only study into the health effects of massive doses of vitamin C I could find, actually showed an increase in cancer. It turns out that our body actually uses free radicals for some things. White blood cells produce them to kill pathogens and dodgy cells.
Re:Remarkable by rve · 2012-08-01 17:58 · Score: 3, Funny

I really feel sorry for kids learning to program for the first time today. Our videogames might have sucked compared to Half Life (or even Angry Birds), but at least we had computers that a single mortal could grasp, understand, and individually do cool & worthwhile things with after just a few days of practice and experimentation.
You know, I don't think we need to feel sorry for them, they probably feel sorry for us, the way we used to feel sorry for our senior colleagues for having had to cut punch cards when they were our age.
We have an intern, about the age I was when I was learning to turn a screen black by writing a number to a memory address, or trying to eliminate a clock cycle from a line drawing routine. That was fun stuff, don't take me wrong, but it wasn't useful, and only cool and impressive to a very tiny subset of the human population. This intern is making a mobile app that interfaces with our server application via web services, paid work immediately useful to our customers. God knows what a 20 yr old geek will be doing when he's in his late 30s, probably not fucking web services, heh.
Re:Remarkable by ozmanjusri · 2012-08-01 18:19 · Score: 3, Funny

I shudder to think what would be involved trying to do it in C++ under Windows with MFC.
That's 'cos you chose the wrong colour.
On Windows, blue is the new black.

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Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 18:27 · Score: 0

It kinda helps that your booted straight into the programming interface as well.
And that if you got something wrong you could just power cycle and start over.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 18:40 · Score: 0

The reason you find it hard to code now is because you want to know how it works; you cant do that anymore. Now you just need to know where to find what you need and cut and paste like an maniac. Intelligence and problem solving has been replaced by memory and copying. When I started codeing I could get a week to write a single subroutine, and it turned out GREAT. Fast and "bugfree". Now... I am expected to produce a whole app in the same time. And "they" don't really CARE if there are a few bugs in there, just kick it out fast and we will fix it later... If we sell enough copies.
Re:Remarkable by 1s44c · 2012-08-01 19:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

It has nothing to do with "peak" age of anything. It's all about having tons of time free, and very few interests that are focused such that you'll spend 12 hours a day doing something that you'd not have the time or patience to do nowadays.
12 Hours a day doing something interesting. Wow, those were good days. Now I'm exceptionally lucky if I get 12 minutes to spend on the same task without interuption.
And to prove my point the phone rang while I was writting the above sentence.
Re:Remarkable by 1s44c · 2012-08-01 19:06 · Score: 1

I had nothing for breakfast. I had to get to work early to talk to electrical contractors.
Come to think of it I only have breakfast at weekends or when I can't sleep.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 19:57 · Score: 0

Your brain and body were at their peak.
You misspelled "PEEK".
Happy birthday C=64!
Re:Remarkable by craigtp · 2012-08-01 20:56 · Score: 2

Seriously, this shouldn't be moderated Funny. It should be moderated Insightful.
I'm sure I'm supposed to tell you something about my lawn now, too!
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:59 · Score: 1

That's where I started programming. I don't miss it one bit, but then I don't wear rose colored glasses either. Anytime I hit a bug on the C64 I wound up having to work through the algorithms involved with pen and paper to figure out where things went haywire. I love all the tools available now, can gain access to more information than I really need within seconds.
The only thing I don't like about modern systems compared to a system like C64 is all the cross chatter. I don't know how many times I've had one graphical resource out of thousands go corrupt when some background process caused my program to lose focus during an iteration of it's render loop. Not as bad as it was 5 to 10 years ago, mostly because both mine and the API's techniques to correct the problem have improved, but it still pops up when you least expect it. It's just silly that corruption introduced by multitasking has remained an issue for as long as it has, especially in an age where even toasters multitask.
Re:Remarkable by TheRaven64 · 2012-08-01 21:48 · Score: 2

If you want to create games of the same sort of complexity now, then you don't use DirectX or OpenGL, you use Flash. Or possibly HTML 5 canvas and JavaScript. And drawing with these is even easier: you can actually draw your sprites in a drawing tool and then you only need to write code for animating them. The underlying system handles compositing, so all that you need to do to move a sprite is set its coordinates. With HTML5, making a smiley face bounce across the screen is about a dozen lines of HTML and a dozen lines of JavaScript, and most of the HTML is boilerplate that is the same for any web page.
If you want something even simpler, take a look at Squeak eToys - a fully introspective object-oriented development environment where seven year olds with no experience in programming can get car sprites racing around their screen in an afternoon.

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Re:Remarkable by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 22:25 · Score: 1

It has nothing to do with "peak" age of anything. It's all about having tons of time free, and very few interests that are focused such that you'll spend 12 hours a day doing something that you'd not have the time or patience to do nowadays.
I have plenty of free time as I'm on disability, I still have an absurdly long attention span courtesy of being autistic, and I've continued pushing myself to learn new things -- but at 35, it still takes me a greater amount of time and effort to gain the same level of proficiency at something new that I would have as a kid or teenager.

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Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 23:16 · Score: 0

ROFL...thats what i thought when i got into computers in the late 90's.
after what we had at school and what was common place,they were complicated.
Talk about wearing a suit and tie in your bedroom just to program code
I learned HTML sortoff,but got stuck on PHP, the amount of background required to program such a lang. is unbelievable.
Kids are not subject to code in pre schools,its where they should be learning it,rather than in uni
Re:Remarkable by RaceProUK · 2012-08-01 23:41 · Score: 1

And that if you got something wrong you could just power cycle and start over.
To be fair, you can still do that on modern machines. It just takes longer.

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Re:Remarkable by RaceProUK · 2012-08-01 23:43 · Score: 1

Intelligence and problem solving has been replaced by memory and copying.
Intelligence and problem solving leads to good code. Memory and copypasta leads to The Daily WTF.

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Re:Remarkable by Miamicanes · 2012-08-02 00:57 · Score: 1

> And that if you got something wrong you could just power cycle and start over.
If you used assembly, it was even easier. I (and many others) had a momentary-contact SPST button from Radio Shack soldered onto the motherboard that did a warm restart. As long as you didn't use self-modifying code, all it took to recover from a crash was pressing the red button, and typing ! and (Enter) to relaunch Fastload's machine language monitor. ;-)
Re:Remarkable by Miamicanes · 2012-08-02 01:08 · Score: 2

Actually, it probably doesn't... it's just that now, your expectations about what constitutes "proficiency" are a lot higher, and you're more careful to avoid screwing things beyond your current project up. Thinking back to middle school, I really had no understanding of most of what I did. The fact that the OS was in ROM was hugely liberating -- short of having a program that did disk i/o go wildly wrong with a disc I cared about in the 1541, nothing we did software-wise really had any lasting consequences. And even overwriting a floppy was rarely a big deal -- everything we had, our friends had copies of (or we got our own copies from them), so it was kind of like universal sneakernet cloud backup via late-night copy parties ;-)
Contrast that to now, where you can smoke Windows or Linux badly enough to need reinstallation and blow away literally terrabytes of data without even trying. Pretty much the only consequence-free programming environment that exists on a modern PC is browser-hosted Javascript in a web page (as opposed to "Windows Scripting Host").
Re:Remarkable by CodeHxr · 2012-08-02 02:52 · Score: 1

Which is why Fizz Bizz (and its variants) will remain to weed out those that can actually develop from those that only know how to copy others' works.
Re:Remarkable by Wain13001 · 2012-08-02 03:46 · Score: 1

He was replying to a post that was entirely anecdotal...I fail to see why he has to adhere to one standard when the OP does not.
Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 06:53 · Score: 0

Interesting. Personally, I thought people weren't considered middle-aged until their 50's. I didn't realize that 39 was considered middle-aged.
Re:Remarkable by rusl · 2012-08-02 09:12 · Score: 1

I remember being really resistant to the Windoze power down/logout squence. Just turn it off with the power button was a right!

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Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 09:19 · Score: 1

And that if you got something wrong you could just power cycle and start over.
To be fair, you can still do that on modern machines. It just takes longer.
Which is so wrong. The c64 power-cycled in seconds, why not a newer machine? We should at least get to the stage where the bios start loading the boot sector faster - about a million times faster. The c64 needed a couple of seconds...
Re:Remarkable by Miamicanes · 2012-08-02 16:29 · Score: 1

Maybe, but I personally think this guy is way cooler. He didn't write a "retro 8-bit demo" -- he designed a whole 8-bit FPGA-based computer for itt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42neZVvoMY&list=UU8ge7La_vq48PVEmR-DJ5Wg&index=1&feature=plcp
He won 1st place ("wild" competition, for people who build their own FPGA/Microcontroller-based demo platforms) at Revision 2011 with it :-)
Re:Remarkable by cpu6502 · 2012-08-03 04:20 · Score: 1

Life expectancy is just below 80. So 40 is the midpoint. So 0-19 are your juvenile/growing years. 20-39 is young adult. 40-59 is middle age. 60-79 is elderly. 80 and up is the "waiting for death to strike" phase.

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Re:Remarkable by hairyfeet · 2012-08-03 09:43 · Score: 1

Thanks, and personally i thought it was obvious. i mean hello? Steve Jobs? Total veggie health food nut, no smoking, no red meat, had the money to eat only organically grown pesticide free foods...and died of cancer at 56.
I bet if you look into his birth family? History of cancer and dying in their 60s. Its all about the DNA folks, and all the health food and exercise simply can't rewrite your DNA. Until we get to the point we actually can go in there and flip the switches while eating right and exercise will certainly make you feel better it sure as hell isn't gonna buy you a single second on this earth if your DNA is craptastic.

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Let's not by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:49 · Score: 3, Informative

It's the name on a modern computer, not a modern version of the C64.

Are you keeping up? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:51 · Score: 2, Funny

Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!

LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:55 · Score: 3, Informative

or sometimes LOAD "$",8,1

Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by TheCycoONE · 2012-08-01 12:05 · Score: 5, Informative

iirc LOAD "$", 8 would work better for you. Just ,8 was definitely needed when loading any BASIC programs but ML programs would usually be ,8,1. Also I cut the solder to make my drives 8, 10, 11, and 12. :-)
http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/LOAD probably has more information than you care for.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:13 · Score: 5, Informative

The added ,1 was a directive to relocate the program into a certain address in memory. Without that, it would be loaded to the default memory location.
LOAD "*",8,1 meant to load the first thing on the disk (or reload the most recently loaded thing)
LOAD "$",8 meant to load a directory list from the disk. From there you could decide what you wanted to load. As you mention, if you added the ,1, it would relocate and not work.
Ah, this is reminding me of the smell of the C64. Who knows what toxins I was inhaling.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-08-01 13:10 · Score: 2, Funny

What's weird is when I was between the ages of 4 and 5 it took me next to no time to memorize the command to play the games. I entered it hundreds of times without fail. But, man, put me in front of a command line these days and big question marks appear over my head even after I've used the command thousands of times over my lifetime.
I miss having my five year old sponge brain.

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Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 14:09 · Score: 1

load "*",8,1
The ,1 makes the loader interpret the first two bytes of the image as the load address to
copy the image to. There is no relocation going on at all, the binary has to have already
been relocated to that address space beforehand.
Relocating means patching a binary as it is loaded so that absolute branch addresses and
data access line up with the new address space. For that purpose a binary format will have
a relocation table that specifies the location within the image to patch and what kind of
access that is.
Duh.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Jay+L · 2012-08-01 14:50 · Score: 1

You really wanted to LOAD "0:*",8,1, though, because if you left off the "0:" you'd trigger a bug in the 1541 ROMs that would eventually cause you to corrupt a program if you used save-and-replace. (The 0: indicated drive 0 of a dual drive; IIRC those were only produced for earlier PET/CBM computers with an IEEE-488 bus, and not for Commodores - though we did eventually see Lt. Kernal hard drives with partitions 0-9.)
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:09 · Score: 1

No, no, you don't have to enter 0: when you're just loading a program. I never used the 0: designator. What's the easiet way to avoid the save-with-replace bug? Don't use it! Ever. Save the file first under a different name and then erase the original. (I can't believe I remember that.) (I also can't believe I remember learning it in RUN magazine.)

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Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 18:51 · Score: 1

Tab-completion creates bad typists, memory protection creates bad programmers.
For education you should use neither, add that fluff on for real work.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:59 · Score: 0

Who knows what toxins I was inhaling.
Probably the Bromine in the plastic.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:54 · Score: 0

I too cut the solder but then soldered wires and switches onto both of my 1541 drives so I could switch them back and forth from 8 to 9... I did not want to wear out one of my drives so I split the difference in my usage.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by CodeHxr · 2012-08-02 02:58 · Score: 1

I learned a lot from RUN magazine... especially the importance of proofreading code listings if you're going to print them!
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by PhotoJim · 2012-08-02 03:01 · Score: 1

Transactor magazine proved that you could invoke the "save-with-replace" bug just by scratching (deleting) files and rewriting them, which completely avoids @. The probability is much less but it could still happen.
Transactor actually found the bug and corrected the ROM. I don't know if Commodore ever adopted it, but any modern Commodore user can burn new ROMs that are free of the bug, if he so chooses.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by The+Archon+V2.0 · 2012-08-02 09:34 · Score: 1

Actually, the MSD SD-2 was a dual drive that worked fine with a Commodore 64. Was quite weird to type LOAD "1:*",8,1 that first time!
Though due to copy protection and whatnot I usually kept using my trusty 1541. When I needed to format anything or copy files, though, the SD-2 saved me hours. (I still have that drive even though I lack a C64 at the moment.)
What makes it even more awesome was that it was a dumpster salvage from the school I was at. It had been declared broken and was to be pitched. I was the good student and volunteered to take it out to the dumpster for them. As far as they know, that's what I did.:) Bought a new fuse for it and it worked like a charm.
Re:LOAD "*",8,1 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-04 07:25 · Score: 0

You could actually use any non-zero number for the ,1 piece. For typing efficiency, I always used LOAD "*",8,8.

Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:56 · Score: 1

And this is probably the fifth anniversary since schools stopped using the C64 as the primary (or only) computing device. I know the C64 and the green monochrome Apple II (with floppies; no hard drives) were the only thing we had even as late as 1994.

Re:Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:16 · Score: 0

By '98 when I quit school they had at least 2-3 PC labs at my high school, one actually PCs and the other Macs (90s era at least!). Judging by the fact that the apple 2 labs were being ousted when I was leaving elementary school I'm pretty sure both the grade schoolers and middle schoolers are up to PCs by now and probably much younger ones that we were playing with.
Re:Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by Darkness404 · 2012-08-01 14:08 · Score: 1

I'd rather have a C64 than what I had (Windows 98/NT machines) in school. I'd much rather have an ability to program in class than learn Office. My school experience taught me absolutely nothing (other than you don't set up website filters to block Flash games by using an exact string using the HTTP and the www, easily bypassed by not adding in the www) and even using the DOS prompt was frowned upon, after all you could break the ever so expensive computers by changing the wallpaper!

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Re:Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 15:01 · Score: 0

(other than you don't set up website filters to block Flash games by using an exact string using the HTTP and the www, easily bypassed by not adding in the www)
Another trick is to put an extra "." on the end of the domain name, e.g. "http://slashdot.org./comments.pl".
Leaving of the "www" usually works but it does rely on the site having matching 'A' records for 'example.com' and 'www.example.com'.
Re:Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 22:56 · Score: 1

That's assuming you'd be given the chance to program them. Apple II+ or IIe systems were the norm at the schools I attended in the 80s & 90s, but we were always restricted to running existing software like educational games/simulations, typing tutorials, and word processing.
As far as I'm aware, the best time to be a student computer-wise was when Windows PCs were first being installed in the mid-late 90s, since the staff still didn't know how to properly lock them down. At least, that's what my little brother told me, as he and his friends used to have a lot of fun getting into minor mischief during computers class.

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Re:Fifth Anniversary Since C64... by CodeHxr · 2012-08-02 03:06 · Score: 1

I'll confirm what your brother told you.

I almost got suspended for using this on our high school's DOS machine around '90-'91:
prompt $e[1;31;40m-$e[0;33;40m=$e[1;33;40m$p$g
(typos may be present - it's been ~2 decades since I've used this!)

Of course, this won't work now - windows hasn't loaded ANSI.sys for quite some time that I'm aware of. It was good fun at the time though, especially when others were in awe that I was able to get a multi-colored DOS prompt.

Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 11:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

10 For x=1 to 30
20 Print "Hello World"
30 Next x

Re:Its just basic! by TheCycoONE · 2012-08-01 12:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

11 REM LETS ADD SOME COLOR
12 A=X
13 IF A > 15 THEN A = A - 15
15 POKE 646, A
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

16 POKE 53280, A
17 POKE 53281, A
Re:Its just basic! by ZorinLynx · 2012-08-01 12:30 · Score: 3, Insightful

Best Slashdot thread ever. Period. :)
Re:Its just basic! by emptinessitself · 2012-08-01 12:39 · Score: 3, Funny

Admit it, you were one of those guys in the department store, running endless loops printing obscene text on the screens to the annoyance of the salesmen...

10 PRINT "KARSTADT IST SCHEISSE!"
20 GOTO 10
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:51 · Score: 0

Errr...that will make the text invisible as all the colors are now the same, no? :p
Re:Its just basic! by Lieutenant_Dan · 2012-08-01 12:54 · Score: 1

Nice.
Reminded me how many times I wished that the C64 BASIC had a MOD function.

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Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:57 · Score: 0

The color is changed each line. That's what the "POKE 646, A" in line 15 is for.
I usually booby-trapped these programs so that anyone who tried to stop them on the store computers got a loud siren sound. I wrote (sort of) smooth scrollers in Basic, to make it more tempting.
Re:Its just basic! by tompaulco · 2012-08-01 13:03 · Score: 1

I used to do that at radio shack, minus the obscene text. I was more into making interesting graphical patterns, or making random bits of sand fall down into randomly placed lines boxes and circles on the screen. I could usually write something like that in about 5 minutes. Sometimes the salesmen got annoyed, but then if they didn't want people running programs on it, then why was it sitting there hooked up to a TV?

--
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Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:08 · Score: 0

Oh, right! For some reason I was forgetting there was no screen clearing happening here.
I think I still have most of the C64's and 1541's memory maps memorized to this day...
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:29 · Score: 1

It has AND which should do you fine in that situation.
12 A = X AND 15
Re:Its just basic! by Johann+Lau · 2012-08-01 13:34 · Score: 4, Funny

?SYNTAX ERROR
Re:Its just basic! by Majik+Sheff · 2012-08-01 13:40 · Score: 2

Holy Crap. It took me about 15 seconds to recall what those memory addresses pointed to.
That is somewhat startling to realize what information is still burned into the back of my mind.
Well played sir.

--
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Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:45 · Score: 0

You had me at "20." :)
Re:Its just basic! by Lieutenant_Dan · 2012-08-01 13:48 · Score: 1

Brilliant! Well done, sir.

--
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Re:Its just basic! by zifn4b · 2012-08-01 14:21 · Score: 1

Oh boy I'm rusty at this but I'll give it a go. The fond memories I have of writing stuff for the C64. I remember writing an application as a kid called Organizer where you could create user-defined lists of stuff and save it to disk. I found out much later that I had created a primitive database. Fun times!
18 FOR I = 1 TO 1000: POKE 55295 + I, INT(RND(0) * 16): NEXT I
That'll make things realllllly colorful ;)
Don't forget sound, turn the SID chip up! 19 POKE 54296, 15

--
We'll make great pets
Re:Its just basic! by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:14 · Score: 1

>>>I remember writing an application as a kid called Organizer where you could create user-defined lists of stuff and save it to disk.
(yawn). Bill Gates is that you? I created a video demo!
- Steve Jobs
No you didn't. *I* created the video and you just took the credit for it!
--- Jay Miner
Yeah but I got all the money. Muahahahahaha.
----- Ray Kassar (of Yar's Revenge)

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Re:Its just basic! by Miamicanes · 2012-08-01 15:19 · Score: 1

$FFD2 is burned into my brain forever. Someday, I'm going to be old, senile, and drooling on myself... but deep down inside, I'll still remember that loading a PETSCII value into the accumulator & calling $FFD2 will print it to the screen.
Re:Its just basic! by MobileTatsu-NJG · 2012-08-01 16:04 · Score: 1

RUN

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Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 17:14 · Score: 0

10 PRINT "FUCK YOU! ";
20 GOTO 10

The most common user supplied program running on a store display computer.
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 17:37 · Score: 0

18 REM WHOOPS NO MORE LINE NUMBERS
19 REM BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ... OH, CRAP
(Apparently you had to yell in those days...)
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 21:12 · Score: 0

OK
Re:Its just basic! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 22:47 · Score: 0

We had Assembly lang. for an IBM 370 system when I was in college in the early '90s (seriously) and I still remember we had to put BALR 12,0 at the beginning of every program and I still remember it stands for Branch And Load Registry; and I even remember some of the commands like AR for Add Registry and AI for Add immediate and LR for Load Registry. Never used any of that language after that course, but it did give me some insight into programming for efficiency and low resource usage.
But even at home in my DOS-based PC I had fairly complex CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files that I kept tweaking to squeeze the last bit of performance for my limited hardware to run the games I was into at the time. There was a time when we had a distinct difference for "Extended" (HIMEM.SYS) and "Expanded" (EMM386.SYS or .EXE) memory, which was IIRC anything above the 640 KB mark and it mattered which of these you had available for games (or just about any program you needed to run) and where did you load the drivers for each device you had plugged in... and how you handled Interrupt Requests (IRQ) and which areas of memory to exclude so the sound card worked alright and ..
You, kids, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Re:Its just basic! by PhotoJim · 2012-08-02 03:03 · Score: 1

Naah, the 1337 would just do this for speed and memory conservation:
0 forx=.to30:?"hello world":next
Re:Its just basic! by PhotoJim · 2012-08-02 03:03 · Score: 2

OK is modems. READY. is Commodore :)
Re:Its just basic! by istartedi · 2012-08-02 16:16 · Score: 1

Holy Crap. It took me about 15 seconds to recall what those memory addresses pointed to.
Sorry I can't remember how to set the raster interrupt vector. Just knowing that such things were possible on the C-64 brings back memories. I played with that a bit back in the day; but my skills weren't to the point where I could really exploit it for anything other than what (at the time) seemed like a silly site gag of having two cursors on the screen at once. The whole concept of multiple terminal windows and multitasking in the true sense hadn't occured to me, and nobody had taught me.
I think raster interrupt is most likely how they got the Defender cart to work so well. (Display high sprites, CPU jumps to raster interrupt halfway down the screen, reposition all the sprites to represent players and bogies on the bottom half, return from routine). It was the only cart game I ever bought. It was a fantastic home version for its time.
Actually, come to think of it, I did use raster interrupt in a program to display a few lines of text on the bottom of the screen, and graphics on most of the screen. That program allowed you to enter equations and graph them. I had no idea how to write an expression parser; but I knew enough about C-64 hacking to make it accept my equations as BASIC and then use the interpreter to run it. Sanity checking? That was the interpreter's job. I don't recall if I hooked an exception vector or anything like that to recover if you put in bad commands. I think I did. Once again, I knew nothing about parsers but I didn't have to because I could hack around in the C-64 internals, both software and hardware.
The software that did that went to the great bit bucket in the sky when I sold my machine to a teacher. I doubt the kids that got all my flopies ever did anything with it. I do think I have some screen printouts lying around somwhere. Maybe I'll dig them up.

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Yes it was a market leader by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 12:11 · Score: 3, Informative

"it did not become the market leader until the late 1980s."

According to ars technica's article on computer sales, the C64 was the #1 seller almost immediately (1983, 84, 85, 86). In the late 80s the IBM PC and clones became the #1 seller. I don't know..... maybe things were different in the UK.

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Re:Yes it was a market leader by mister2au · 2012-08-01 12:39 · Score: 1

I recall the same trend in Australia.
From 1982 to 1984 seems to be C64 glory years and likewise for the Apple IIe.
Seemed like from late 1984/early 1985 (around the time of MS-DOS 3 and CPUs jumping from 4.77MHz to 8 MHz) the clones started to take over
Certainly by 1987-88, the C64 may as well have been an Atari 2600 as the attitude of the time went.
Re:Yes it was a market leader by consorting-with-daem · 2012-08-01 14:23 · Score: 1

According to my faltering memory, I stood in line at K-Mart ( USA ) to buy mine when I was 22 years old. If my subraction is still solid that would be 1983. And it was a long line. Pre order.
There should be something about lawns here!

--
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Re:Yes it was a market leader by consorting-with-daem · 2012-08-01 14:43 · Score: 1

And did I mention my faltering spelling? Sorry!
Something about lawns here! Something. What was that?

--
Sent from my Amiga 500
Re:Yes it was a market leader by Empiric · 2012-08-01 14:51 · Score: 2

Being among Slashdot's Lawn Defenders, I can back this. The C64 was clearly dominant in 1984, with "the unfortunates" among the High School techie ("nerd" and "geek" were still quite insulting at the time) caste having a VIC-20, Atari 400/800, or TI-99/4A. IBM's disastrous initial foray with the "PCjr" held them up several years in sheer acquired negative goodwill.

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Re:Yes it was a market leader by Jay+L · 2012-08-01 14:53 · Score: 2

As I recall, the move that secured the C64's place in market history was the price drop. It originally sold for $595, but in 1984 a combination price drop (to $299) and a $100 trade-in rebate for your videogame console meant you could buy it for $200 at Toys-R-Us. That was the magic number.
Re:Yes it was a market leader by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:20 · Score: 1

I believe I asked you to remove yourself from my lawn so I could fly my model airplane. (Hey kid want a mohawk? Vroooooom.)

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Re:Yes it was a market leader by jools33 · 2012-08-01 18:59 · Score: 1

Yeah in the UK the C64 was up against the sinclair spectrum (which was probably more popular at least at the time most of my mates had these) - as well as the Amstrad machines and BBC micro machines - so it had some tough competition.
I had the C64 - in fact I still have mine - sat behind me right now in pieces - as it needs a keyboard repair - (need to get a replacement h key from somewhere).
I recently picked up my C64 from my mothers attic - even today I think it could well be the best way to get my son into programming - that and the new raspberry PI.
Re:Yes it was a market leader by TheRaven64 · 2012-08-01 21:57 · Score: 1

Things were very different in the UK. It was competing against the BBC Model B (later the Master) at the high end and against the Sinclair Spectrum and ZX81 (which completely owned the market prior to the C64's launch), the Amstrad CPC (a bit later), and possibly an Acorn Atom or Electron at the low end. Schools all bought BBCs because there was government funding that paid 50% of the cost of any computer that met a fairly strict set of requirements (e.g. a dialect of BASIC with full support for structured programming) and the BBC was the only computer to meet those requirements for a while and then the cheapest.
The C64 became very popular later on, when shops like Argos were selling them for £50 (a PC cost about £1000 then, and an Amiga or modern Acorn machine around £300-500). Supermarkets also had a load of C64 games on cassette for 50p-£3, so people amassed huge collections of them.

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Re:Yes it was a market leader by hoover · 2012-08-02 00:04 · Score: 1

What about the Dragon64? While it didn't have much software available, C64 owner's jaws dropped to the floor when the saw the floppy loading speed... parallel for the win! ;-)

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Re:Yes it was a market leader by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 03:46 · Score: 0

#1 selling computer of all time.
Re:Yes it was a market leader by toejam13 · 2012-08-02 05:17 · Score: 1

Correct. The Commodore 64 quickly became the lead selling home computer after its release. Tramel was engaged in a price war with his adversary Texas Instruments, so the price of the Commodore 64 was reduced several times. Eventually, Commodore 64 was selling for less than the price it took to manufacture competing home computers. Commodore was able to do this due its vertical integration of component suppliers.
The Commodore 64 wasn't the best home computer at the time, but it quickly became the best bang for your buck. It wasn't until the late 1980s with the fragmentation of the M68k market that PC clone makers were able to lead in sales.
Re:Yes it was a market leader by toejam13 · 2012-08-02 05:45 · Score: 1

Supposedly sales of the updated Commodore 64C and 1541-II were strong through 1988. It did well in budget and emerging markets where the Amiga 500 would have been prohibitively expensive.
Commodore might have even gotten another few years out of their 8-bit series had they released a competent successor to the C64. The Plus/4 and C128 always struggled to find a niche.

BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by skids · 2012-08-01 12:13 · Score: 1

You know I once tried to figure out what it might take to emulate a 80x24 VT100 on an unexpanded VIC-20. Couldn't be done.

--
Someone had to do it.

Atari 800 rules!!! by xzvf · 2012-08-01 12:15 · Score: 1

BBS wars, trolling in the 80's.

Re:Atari 800 rules!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:45 · Score: 0

BBS wars, trolling in the 80's.
300 baud modems connected to the joystick port...Wo0t!
Fuck! I'm old.
Re:Atari 800 rules!!! by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:25 · Score: 2

Atari 800 was the # 1 selling computer of 1980, 81, 82. So you have reason to brag. (Sadly Atari sales fell-off after the C64 arrived at only half the price.)

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When Ah'm Six-Tee-Fo-Wer by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-08-01 12:15 · Score: 1

Wake me up in another 34 years.

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WTS 1982 C-64 by NetNinja · 2012-08-01 12:16 · Score: 1

I still have my 1982 commodore 64 in it's original box.

Anyone want to buy it?

Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by YrWrstNtmr · 2012-08-01 12:34 · Score: 1

I still have my 1982 commodore 64 in it's original box.
Anyone want to buy it?

So do I, as well as a VIC-20. Both still working.
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by LurkingSince1999 · 2012-08-01 13:21 · Score: 1

As do I, along with the tape drive, disk drive and a copy of HHGTTG
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by similar_name · 2012-08-01 14:21 · Score: 1

You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see but you can't. HHGTTG
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by Miamicanes · 2012-08-01 15:27 · Score: 1

I connected my Vic-20 to my TV a few months ago, but I think something inside went bad -- all I could get was monochrome.
Someday, I'm going to learn how BASIC was tokenized, and try to recover my first real programming project from the cassette tape. The tape drive choked on it the last time I tried loading it, but I digitized the tape with another cassette player and burned it to archival-grade BD-R as a .wav file for safekeeping. I figure it's only ~1800 bytes. If I have to, I can go through byte by byte, compare the two values, and either pick the right one, or fill in the gaps crossword-style.
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 16:04 · Score: 0

I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're probably color blind. From what I've heard it happens to people older than thirty who still have to give themselves a hand because they haven't gotten a partner to do it for them. That is most likely YOU. :-D
Or... it could be a black and white TV? :D
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by GoingDown · 2012-08-01 16:11 · Score: 1

>turn on lights
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Bedroom, in the bed
>get up
Very difficult, but you manage it. The room is still spinning. It dips and sways a little.
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by LocalH · 2012-08-01 16:15 · Score: 1

WAV-PRG and Audiotap. Should convert that .WAV into either a .TAP or .PRG, both of which can be loaded into a modern emulator such as the excellent VICE. Just figured I'd save you the trouble of trying to decode the pulses by hand :P

--
FC Closer
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 00:02 · Score: 0

flashback city!
I never actually finished that game, even when i tried recently on the bbc.co.uk site.
Re:WTS 1982 C-64 by PhotoJim · 2012-08-02 03:07 · Score: 1

How did you connect it? You need the 5-pin video cable to give you a composite video output. The RCA jack is actually for output for an external RF modulator.

Not Really Hiding Anything by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-08-01 12:18 · Score: 4, Funny

The Commodore-64 Came Out 30 Years Ago

Yup, with that Rainbow Logo the Commodore-64 was Out And Proud from day one.

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Re:Not Really Hiding Anything by stud9920 · 2012-08-01 18:04 · Score: 2

I love how an openly gay computer image would be hosted on "Computer closet"
Re:Not Really Hiding Anything by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:58 · Score: 0, Troll

There is nothing 'gay' about the rainbow. Just because a group of perverts got together, took over the APA and FORCED it to redefine homosexuality as 'normal', and then terrorised the rest of us into submission, by threatening to sack us from our jobs if we dared to say one word against the 'wonders' of homosexuality, doesn't mean it's normal.
If you have to FORCE people to do something, it means they don't want to do it. Most people can't stand gays and don't want to be around them. The rainbow is nature's most beautiful sight, and is nothing whatsoever to do with perverts taking it up the ass.
What sort of man substitutes another man's anus for a woman's vagina. Was the anus designed for the penis? Were two penises designed to 'mate' with each other?
Quite obviously homosexuality is a paraphilia, because your genitals don't fit together.
Re:Not Really Hiding Anything by Nyder · 2012-08-02 00:46 · Score: 1

There is nothing 'gay' about the rainbow. Just because a group of perverts got together, took over the APA and FORCED it to redefine homosexuality as 'normal', and then terrorised the rest of us into submission, by threatening to sack us from our jobs if we dared to say one word against the 'wonders' of homosexuality, doesn't mean it's normal.
If you have to FORCE people to do something, it means they don't want to do it. Most people can't stand gays and don't want to be around them. The rainbow is nature's most beautiful sight, and is nothing whatsoever to do with perverts taking it up the ass.
What sort of man substitutes another man's anus for a woman's vagina. Was the anus designed for the penis? Were two penises designed to 'mate' with each other?
Quite obviously homosexuality is a paraphilia, because your genitals don't fit together.
I'm not gay, but it seems to me a penis fits inside an anus.
Now, a penis wouldn't normally fit inside a nose or ear, or even belly button, so wouldn't that be more a pervy move to try to fuck those places?
And after all, woman like it up the anus also.
The truth is, you are like the people that used to believe the earth was flat and would put people to death who said otherwise. Nothing wrong with homosexuals, just people. The problem you are having is you obviously like to get it up the butt, and you feel guilty about it, because your religious upbringing. Probably catholic and the priest didn't molest you or something. But either way, you want it bad, but feel guilty, so you lash out in public.

--
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Re:Not Really Hiding Anything by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:50 · Score: 0

"I'm not gay, but it seems to me a penis fits inside an anus."
You're no biologist either since the anus is not genitalia, except for lawyers.

C-64 Firsts? by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-08-01 12:20 · Score: 1

- first Rainbow-Logo computer?
- 64k should be enough for anybody
- ?
- Profit!

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Re:C-64 Firsts? by GrahamCox · 2012-08-01 13:09 · Score: 1

first Rainbow-Logo computer?

Nope: Apple logo
Re:C-64 Firsts? by narcc · 2012-08-01 14:27 · Score: 1

Fun fact, as there was no gap between the stripes to help keep the colors from overlapping, it made the logo difficult and costly to print. Apple's president, Mike Scott, called it "the most expensive bloody logo ever designed".
It's especially funny, as the stripes were only there to keep the logo from looking "like a cherry tomato", according to the designer.
I don't know that they were the first computer company with a rainbow logo. The colorful fruit was designed late in 1976, though I can't find any appearance before 1977 (Someone with better google-fu can check that for me).
Atari was using a rainbow theme in their logo, along with a zillion other tech companies, like RCA, around the same period. With the number of computer companies that popped up in the 1970's, and the popularity of the rainbow motif at the time, it's not difficult to image that some other computer company used a rainbow logo earlier.
I don't know that we could crown any company "the first computer company with a rainbow logo" with any degree of confidence.

--
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Game Nostalgia Thread by TaoPhoenix · 2012-08-01 12:23 · Score: 1

Okay, let's chat about the fun games of the day.

I'll open with Rags to Riches, Ultimate Wizard, and a Pacman clone PacLips.

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by FishOuttaWater · 2012-08-01 12:59 · Score: 2

Mule, Pinball Construction Set, Jumpman, Temple of Apshai (much lost sleep), Seven Cities of Gold (fried a floppy drive I played that one so hard)
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:08 · Score: 0

How is wizball not at the top of everyone's list?!?!?!
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by SternisheFan · 2012-08-01 13:27 · Score: 1

Racing Destruction Set, BeachHead, BeachHeadII (with rudimentary voice synth, "I'm hit!"), Archon, Mig Alley Ace, Zork & Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (text games), Elite, Flight Simulator and Karateka. Typing in pages of code from magazines for hours just for the satisfaction of seeing a red and white beach ball bounce around the screen. Pass that bottle over here...
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by jon_doh2.0 · 2012-08-01 13:33 · Score: 1

Flimbo's Quest - great music.
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by SydShamino · 2012-08-01 13:52 · Score: 3, Informative

My work computer right now is named "Archon", as is my cell phone. =P It's one of the names I rotate through machines. I loved that game.

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Trenchbroom · 2012-08-01 13:53 · Score: 1

Space Taxi, Castle Wolfenstein, Castles of Dr. Creep, Wizball, Raid on Bungeling Bay...and of course, Maniac Mansion.
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by SydShamino · 2012-08-01 13:54 · Score: 1

How many of the secret cities did you ever find in Seven Cities of Gold?
I could only ever locate one of them, even though I took the time to walk every single square in South America...

--
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by TheCycoONE · 2012-08-01 14:44 · Score: 1

I think my favourite was Sid Meier's Pirates!, played that game all night on several occasions.
Someone else in this thread mentioned Archon. That was one original creative board game. I also liked the sequel Archon 2: Adept, though it lost a bit of the simplicity that made the original brilliant.
Jumpman I felt was overrated, but I really liked a similar platformer called Ultimate Wizard, which included a level editor and some neat tricks.
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 14:49 · Score: 0

"Another visitor... stay a while. Staaaaay FOREVER!"
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by minvaren · 2012-08-01 14:49 · Score: 2

If you're nostalgic, check out http://www.archonclassic.com/.

I think they did a pretty good job, but my reflexes aren't what they used to be...

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:31 · Score: 1

DRIVE-IN. Where the goal is to feel-up your date's sweater puppies w/o getting slapped. And ultimately: Reach 4th base. I think I got my sex education from that game..... of course porn on the C64 sucked. It was much much better after I upgraded to the near-photo-realistic Amiga.
Other games: Silent Service (love subs), Red Storm Rising (low subs and World war 3), Pirates, Elite, and of course arcade classics like Pitfall/Missile Command though most of them were not on my C64 but the old Atari console.

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Miamicanes · 2012-08-01 15:39 · Score: 1

Jumpman, Pogo Joe, Toy Bizarre, Impossible Mission, Telengard, Suspended.
and of course, the app that made the C64 usable in the first place: Epyx FastLoad.
Oh, and my Alien Group Voicebox. Somewhere... SOMEWHERE at my parents' house, it's in a box. Must. Find. It. And the floppy that animated the funky alien face singing cheesy songs that I could never (at the time) figure out how to program myself.
Actually, I really do have to find my Alien Group voicebox. I blew my childhood's life savings on that thing, and it'll be totally cool if I can make a USB adapter for it to give it a second life today. The sad thing is, I had NO IDEA back then (or even before a few months ago) that it actually had a Votrax SC-01 inside. I totally loved playing with it, but had I known it had a SC-01, I probably would have stored it in a gold tabernacle and worshiped it ;-)
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Cico71 · 2012-08-01 19:26 · Score: 1

Mule, ,Fort Apocalypse!!, Bruce Lee!!, Seven Cities of Gold, Spelunker, Way of The Exploding Fist!!, International Karate (and +), Impossible Mission, Track & Fields and who knows how many more...
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 23:10 · Score: 1

Ultima series, Jinxter, Boulderdash, Repton, Paperboy, Xevious, Legacy of the Ancients...

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:06 · Score: 0

They never had any friends to play the cat.
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 01:40 · Score: 0

Hopefully your kids will call their computers "Skylanders"
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Christoffer777 · 2012-08-02 08:52 · Score: 1

Okay, let's chat about the fun games of the day.
I'll open with Rags to Riches, Ultimate Wizard, and a Pacman clone PacLips.
Kickstart II. The amount of time I wasted on that motorcycle trail like game was insane.
"Save New York"? The one where you flew planes to protect the city and also could land and go below ground. It was a coop game where you were supposed to protect against invaders, but it always turned into a free for all. We also turned on the buildings and tried to flatten the city without getting killed by the UFOs.
Fun times indeed. My whole computer experience started with the C64 and I still listen to SID tunes at work when I reaaaally need to get into a programming mode. I also have a ton of SID remixes.
Is http://remix.kwed.org/ still around? They had the most awesome remixes of SID tunes.
Ah, nothing beats nostalgia with some background tunes of International Karate or Last Ninja. Or Commando... Hmm, I'm off to listen to some tunes again :)
Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by KatchooNJ · 2012-08-02 09:14 · Score: 1

Nah... Elite should be at the top of everyone's lists. ;-)

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by crotherm · 2012-08-02 10:40 · Score: 2

Raid on Bungeling Bay... ahh what fun!

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Re:Game Nostalgia Thread by Hamsterdan · 2012-08-02 15:01 · Score: 1

Mission Impossible. Loved that game

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Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Mashiki · 2012-08-01 12:27 · Score: 1

Yeah I learned at the tender young age of 5 how to program first on a vic-20. My old man thought it would be a learning experience if I could write my own stuff, or copy stuff out of compute, and then play around with it.

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background colours by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 12:28 · Score: 1

I always swapped out the blue/light blue background for black when entering in my programs

POKE 53280,0
and
POKE 53281,0

ah the glory days :)

Re:background colours by emptinessitself · 2012-08-01 12:42 · Score: 2

PEEK and POKE were the introductory drugs to assembler.
Re:background colours by FishOuttaWater · 2012-08-01 13:02 · Score: 1

So succinctly you describe my downward spiral into college and career!
Re:background colours by istartedi · 2012-08-01 14:13 · Score: 2

P shift-O, and all the other "first letter, shift 2nd letter" abbreviations for BASIC commands were obligatory. Not only did it save you keystrokes, it also rendered the 2nd characters as a graphic. This made you look like some kind of computer god to the unintiated. I used to know a handful of opcodes in decimal. I'd POKE in a short program that SYS'd from basic in a loop. All it did was animate 8 square sprites on the screen randomly, but it impressed those who were non computer literate, which was a LOT of people in those days. Because of the horribly slow BASIC, this was the only way to make the sprites animate smoothly. The salesmen in the stores loved this. They were much less happy about time delayed SID blasting. Sorry. Kids like me resulted in all the display models being locked down.

--
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?

I fondly remember c64 by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-08-01 12:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

My cousin got one in 1984, just one year before Nintendo. I was an atari2600 die hard and when C64 came out, it was like a whole new world was opened to what games could be like. I remember playing Bruce Lee with my cousin and discovering the second player could take away one enemy and even fight the remaining enemy :) We played Bruce Lee coop for a while, and the game isn't exactly easy even then.

My favorite game of the 80s was on c64: Legacy of the Ancients. It was an easy to play RPG that was moderately complex for its time.
I remember Pool of Radiance, the beginning of all the AD&D series of games. Pool of Radience, Wasteland and Final Fantasy 1(not c64) was what inspired me to try and make the first MMORPG in 1992. It is pretty hilarious when your first video game ever is trying to be a MMORPG. I just saw MMORPGS as the future, along with instant messaging. I think many game designers wanting to code their game are guilty of trying too much on their first game.

I programmed some on C64, it is where I learned the "if" statement and graduated from print rockets I did in elementary school. The if statement opened a lot of doors for developing games, but unfortunately C64 didn't distribute a graphics library for basic, so unless you could learn how to peek/poke with no documentation, you're not making a commercial game.

If you want to write one of the wildest C64 programs ever which I don't recommend on these new systems who might not boot up if you do something bad:

Psuedo code:
10: Poke Random int,Random int;
20: print,"Hello"
30: goto 10

This program is like giving your computer drugs, you never know what might happen. The screen might melt, the sound might start playing, it might stop saying hello, and start saying different things. The screen might split up into 4 regions. If you have a C64 by, you should code it up and run it a few times. The biggest problem with this program is that there is no way to save one specific sequence, since the system changes itself over different times, and it might be referencing time.

--
God spoke to me

Re:I fondly remember c64 by FishOuttaWater · 2012-08-01 13:03 · Score: 1

Can you force the random seed?
Re:I fondly remember c64 by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-08-01 13:09 · Score: 0

You can force the random seed, but this still doesn't mean the results of the program will be the same as occasionally it pokes the timer.

You can't log this because everything in the machine changes. If you try and print, the printing will get skewed. Put it to disk, it might write strange things. If you go to a printer, its the same as the screen.

--
God spoke to me
Re:I fondly remember c64 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 14:14 · Score: 0

you should first copy the $a000-$bfff basic rom to ram first and switch the
address select from the rom to the underlying ram. This was done through
the memory mapped gpio register on the 6510, memory location $0001.
That way you can fuck up the basic interpreter even better.
Re:I fondly remember c64 by LocalH · 2012-08-01 16:23 · Score: 1

Yes. You do nothing special and RND() will generate the same random numbers in sequence each time.

--
FC Closer

Awesome. by Spit · 2012-08-01 12:40 · Score: 1

The c64 silicon really is amazing compared to contemporary systems. While the overall system arch is a bit of a hack, the silicon could only have come from a unique environment like Commodore.

--
POKE 36879,8

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by confused+one · 2012-08-01 12:40 · Score: 1

VIC-20? And you claim they're young... I remember when the PET came out. Programming Apple ]['s. The very first IBM PC's. PDP's and Pr1me's. Medusa CAD on Pr1me, that was cutting edge. When I interned we were using Honeywell computers. Take your VIC-20 and get off my lawn.

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by confused+one · 2012-08-01 12:41 · Score: 1

Damn. I just realized I'm getting old... *grabs bottle of whiskey*

M.U.L.E. by medcalf · 2012-08-01 12:51 · Score: 1

An now that M.U.L.E. is getting ported to modern platforms, I can finally have no further use for one.

--
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits

Re:M.U.L.E. by FishOuttaWater · 2012-08-01 13:01 · Score: 1

Really?!?! That was clearly the best one.
Re:M.U.L.E. by medcalf · 2012-08-02 03:29 · Score: 2

http://www.mulereturns.com/

--
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits

My C64 memories by jonwil · 2012-08-01 13:04 · Score: 0

I still have memories of playing C64 games (carts, not disks) on a C64 at an after-school-care center (the place where kids who's parents work and who are too young to stay at home alone go after school). The only game I remember was Kung Fu Master.

Then later that same place switched to a NES. The only games they had for it were one of those 5-in-1 unlicensed carts and a copy of Kung Fu (because the 5-in-1 needed a legit cart plugged into it to enable the lockout to work).

Aah, memories :)

Oh yeah... by hlavac · 2012-08-01 13:26 · Score: 1

SYS 64738 :)

C64 made my career by GrahamCox · 2012-08-01 13:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

The C64 was a vital machine in my understanding of computers and programming. I was a hardware designer in the early 80s, mostly analogue/RF with a smattering of digital. I had no idea how processors worked or the connection between the electronics and coding. The C64 changed all that.

I bought one to play games and explore in 1983, but programming in BASIC was too limited, though I wrote a few simple "apps" that way. One day I saw a listing in a magazine for a Space Invaders implementation and it was basically raw hex that had to be POKEd in. The source was listed, in assembler, and I had that light-bulb moment where the bridge between the electronics and the code came into focus. From then on, I never wrote in BASIC. Instead, I bought the MIKRO assembler cartridge and wrote various utilities and games in assembler. I also made an EPROM programmer that plugged into the cartridge port so I "saved" my efforts to EPROM instead of tape and just booted straight into them via the cartridge port.

It was timely. During the 80s most of the hardware I worked on as a designer migrated from discrete logic to microprocessor-based designs, and thanks to the C64 I was well-placed to keep up and even lead that trend. I moved on to the 8051 and then the 68000, but I never forgot the importance of the C64 and the 6502 in that learning.

I soo wanted a C64... by MarcoAtWork · 2012-08-01 13:33 · Score: 1

I had made a deal with my dad that if I scored well in my middle school exam he'd buy me a C64, I studied really hard and did better than he expected, I was so happy when he went to the store but when he came back he had a Sharp MZ-700 instead (apparently the salesperson told him that was a much better computer, cough cough)

As much as I had fond memories of learning how to program on the MZ-700 and trying to get the built-in plotter to plot 3d math functions, still I remember the afternoons spent at my friends' house playing Archon and listening to SID music and wishing my computer could do more than beep... amazing it's already been 30 years!

--
-- the cake is a lie

Re:I soo wanted a C64... by cpu6502 · 2012-08-01 15:38 · Score: 1

>>>if I scored well in my middle school exam he'd buy me a C64..... but when he came back he had a Sharp MZ-700 instead
So basically your dad broke a verbal contract!
You should sue the dummy.
(kidding)

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:I soo wanted a C64... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 22:41 · Score: 0

The sales person was right: the Sharp MZ-700 was a much better computer indeed!
I had a MZ-80K. While my friends were playing games (bought or copied), I was writing my own games, first in BASIC and later in Z80 machine code, because there was nowhere I could buy/copy any.
Re:I soo wanted a C64... by MarcoAtWork · 2012-08-02 11:39 · Score: 1

that is pretty much what I ended up doing myself, I do think it was one of the reasons why I ended up in computer programming as a career, as there wasn't really much to buy in terms of prepackaged software... having an internal tape recorder (which worked quite well, not flaky at all) and a plotter to print out code and do fun stuff with was definitely nice.

--
-- the cake is a lie

Epyx FastLoad by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:37 · Score: 0

Anyone remember that cartridge? :)

Re:Epyx FastLoad by toejam13 · 2012-08-01 17:59 · Score: 1

I had one for my C64. It still brings up a bit of a sore spot about Commodore.
Commodore was using the IEEE-488 parallel interface in the PET series to connect floppy drives. But Tramel complained that the cables were too expensive and difficult to obtain. So for the VIC-20, he had engineers come up with a home-grown serial version of the IEEE-488 bus that needed fewer pins. That allowed Commodore to switch to a cheaper cable.
Commodore used their new 6522 VIA chip to interface between the serial interface and the host (one in the VIC-20, one in the 1540 drive). Problem was, there was a design defect in the 6522 that caused the chip to drop bits under some scenarios. Rather than fix the chip and delay the release of the VIC-20 and 1540, Tramel had engineers write a patch in ROM that worked around the issue. The patch had each side fetch one bit at a time and shift it in software, which was really slow and CPU intensive. They never did fix the issue while the VIC-20 was in production, FYI...
When the Commodore 64 came around, they used the new 6525 CIA chip that was bug free. But Tramel had a warehouse filled with 1540 parts. Rather than design a new floppy controller board with the 6525 CIA, they wanted to use all of their old 1540 stock. But the ROM patch in the 1540 didn't work with the C64 due to some timing issues. So they rewrote a new ROM patch that was even slower than their old one.
The whole incident was a prime example of the arrogance and screw the customer attitude that Commodore had. We could have had something like the 1570 from the start had Commodore just fixed their error. Instead, we had to go out and buy $30 FastLoad carts.
Re:Epyx FastLoad by KatchooNJ · 2012-08-03 09:02 · Score: 1

I had one too. Great explanation there on the reason for why the 1541 was so dog slow! If I had mod points today, I'd toss ya one. :-)

--
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^

Had one? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:42 · Score: 0

Hell, I still have mine sitting here in the original box and 1541 disk drives.

First weekend with my C64 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 13:49 · Score: 0

I remember the first weekend I got my C64 was spent typing in the machine code for the game "Lawnmower Man" from Ahoy! magazine. I didn't have a disk drive or tape drive yet, so I just left the computer on for the next week and played the game over and over again. It was so awesome! Finally picked up the 5 1/4" disk drive the next weekend.

remembering the C64 by aflyingcat · 2012-08-01 13:54 · Score: 1

Ah, the Commodore 64. "An elegant computer, for a more civilized age." :-) I still have my C64 prototype, in the VIC-20 case. I wonder if it still works ? I should dig it out and see. One thing about those old, simpler computers; you could really get the feeling you understood the computer and program completely. Except for the occasional oddness in the custom chips, everything was under your control. We (or at least I) lost that along the way.

Happy Birthday C64 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 14:41 · Score: 0

8D

Ahh memories.. by Billlagr · 2012-08-01 14:42 · Score: 1

I still have my brown wedge C64 in it's box (including hacked in reset button!) along with a brown 1541, and a couple of 64C's and a 1541-II, one of those dinky little plotters that use the coloured pens and roll of paper (the number eludes me right now - 1520?) and various other bits and pieces, MPS-801 printer, cartridges (Freeze Frame FTW!). I still also have my original boxed Vic, cartridges, datasette/s. At various other times I had two Vics and for a while a PET-8032SK and the 8050 (I think?) dual drive, that thing was so heavy! I eventually went down the Amiga -> PC path, dabbled with the ZX-Spectrum, DEC Rainbow and others, but the C64 still is my favorite. My very first programming experience was Tank vs UFO out of the back of the C64 user manual.

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Jay+L · 2012-08-01 14:55 · Score: 1

80x24 even on a C64 was painful; the best one I saw was VIPTerm from SoftLaw, but there's only so much you can do with a 4x8 pixel grid.

WShats so special? by rossdee · 2012-08-01 15:01 · Score: 1

Whats so special about the age of 30? 21 I can understand (its the drinking age and age of maturity in some countries) 25 I can understand (silver anniversary) but whats so special about thirty?

Will there be another article in a years time : C=64 turns 31

BTW I didn't buy a C=64 until 1983 - 1982 was "the year I didn't buy a computer' I was content to expand my Apple ][

Re:WShats so special? by Cajun+Hell · 2012-08-01 15:35 · Score: 2

It's an excuse, and we old people are always looking for excuses to talk about "old" things (not that the C64 is old; it's not like we're talking about VIC20s).

Will there be another article in a years time : C=64 turns 31
Hopefully. It'll be introduced as the 30th anniversary of the price dropping from $595 to $195, but yeah, it'll happen, because that's how old people roll (most of us not in our wheelchairs yet, though).
Some day, you'll be old. We'll be dead but you'll be old and it will be hilarious, you fucking old fogee goddamn piece of shit crippled old motherfucker.

--
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Re:WShats so special? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 16:06 · Score: 0

all X0 birthdays are kinda big (though i agree on the sentiment that aging is not really a big deal, everything and everyone does it quite automatically) - but why would 25 be better than 30 due to some made up silver anniversary?
And yeah, next year it will be 31, and for those really into this they might actually celebrate that on the day too (as we do yearly with living beings)
As to why this is on slashdot for 30 years? slow news-day? Poster is interrested? at least the title was in no way misleading so anyone could avoid the nostalgia which we knew would come... if they wanted to, though it seems they decided to troll instead (no, i dont consider your post a troll, but others inhere are)
Re:WShats so special? by SuricouRaven · 2012-08-02 00:37 · Score: 1

But this is a computer. We should celebrate when it reaches 32 years!

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 15:54 · Score: 0

I actually just dug my null modem cable out last week, and have a VIC-1011A sitting on my desk making me ponder hooking it up and using it as a terminal to one of my servers, just for shits and giggles.

Re:Useless nostalgia. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 16:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

For many of us, our C64 wasn't "some little thing in our life" -- it WAS our life, or at least a staggeringly huge and important part of it.

Not only did we use it daily, to the nearly complete exclusion of almost everything else during summer, weekends, and vacations... back then, your computer defined everything about you that mattered in ways that make iPhone-vs-Android look like a pissing match. Back then, if you owned a c64, every single one of your friends did, too. If they didn't, you would have drifted apart by virtue of no longer having any shared interests. I remember sleep-overs in various living rooms with a half-dozen 1702 monitors, mountains of 1541 floppy drives (copying away all night), and barely enough room to walk. And one opened-up1541 with connectors exposed, so we could copy those few wacky games that required read errors that could only be created by yanking out the connector at the right moment in time.

Oh, and the floppy-notch cutter.

2 HOUR Video on youtube all about the C64.. L@@K by Cutting_Crew · 2012-08-01 16:22 · Score: 1

this is pretty entertaining.. get you some popcorn and relive history. Commodore 64 2 Hour Video

Re:2 HOUR Video on youtube all about the C64.. L@@ by Cutting_Crew · 2012-08-01 16:28 · Score: 1

look at 4:07 - look at the SIZE of the power supply. how much was the electricity bill back then?

Let's not forget the software progress by 50000BTU_barbecue · 2012-08-01 17:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

The most amazing thing to me is that coders are still trying to push the video chip to new heights. It is now possible to display all 16 colors any way you want in 320 x 200, and with enough external memory you can play back video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QATUjaFYbJ4&feature=player_detailpage

--
Mostly random stuff.

I didn't own a C64, but did use one... by antdude · 2012-08-01 17:15 · Score: 1

... My next door neighbor had a C64. I used to go over to his house and play so many games on it. It was SO fun during our childhood days. It was awesome to use my old Atari 2600 on it for two players games! It was way better than my Apple //c for gaming. ;)

--
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).

Damn, Got to go dig mine out now by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 17:30 · Score: 0

Damn, Got to go dig mine out now. I know it, my Atari and my TI-99 are in a box in the basement. Can't wait to hook up the Commodore 64 to see if it still works Have to see if I can hook the Atari to an old analog TV down there and play pong and crappy Pac-Man.

Re:2 HOUR Video on youtube all about the C64.. L@@ by thelexx · 2012-08-01 17:32 · Score: 1

It eliminated central heating from your electric bill in the winter, so it evened out...

--
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999

BBS by bobjr94 · 2012-08-01 18:07 · Score: 1

For maybe 2 years I ran a BBS (The Smurf Pit) out of my bedroom, must have been around 88-90. I think I had 2 or 3 1541's and a 1571 that would get stuck and crash my board from time to time. Looking back, I dont see how they made the drives so slow, 30-90 seconds to load a game, the disk only held 180k total. After I made my user port to rs232 adapter and got a 9600 modem, I could download games faster than it took to load it.

ZORK! by FishOuttaWater · 2012-08-01 18:18 · Score: 1

'nuff said

may no longer have useful computing power... by k6mfw · 2012-08-01 18:30 · Score: 2

... but make it into a keytar and you can wow the crowds like what Jeri Ellsworth did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LM2bom8fsw

--
mfwright@batnet.com

Re:Useless nostalgia. by toejam13 · 2012-08-01 18:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

Agreed. My Commodore equipment was a hugely important stepping stone to my current career. I mastered 65xx assembly on my C64, learned Z80 assembly on my C128 and learned 68k assembly, C programming and how to use a BSD TCP/IP stack on my Amiga. Installing NetBSD on my A3000 gave me an interest in BSD that forged a path to my current job in the embedded BSD field.

Had I gotten a KayPro or IBM PC instead of a C64, I'd probably still be in the tech field. But most likely, it'd be a different part. I most likely would have ended up living in a different part of the country, would have married a different woman, would have different friends, etc... Butterfly effect to the maximum.

I just can't imagine the same scenario if I had bought an HP calculator rather than a TI-81 in middle school. My life would have turned out roughly the same either way. Same goes for a lot of stuff from my youth. But my home computers were a huge influence. I imagine the same is for many people, which is why they have such a soft spot for them, defects and all.

HOW DO I PLAY ZORK? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 20:05 · Score: 0

READY.
LOAD "$",8

SEARCHING FOR $
LOADING
READY.
LIST

0 "ZORK1 " 64 2A
3 "STORY" PRG
661 BLOCKS FREE.

READY.

Re:2 HOUR Video on youtube all about the C64.. L@@ by CronoCloud · 2012-08-01 20:31 · Score: 1

thanks for posting that, it is interesting..

I love old video about computers, even that "Manetti's get a MAC" one, which isn't bad either in a "Wonder years meets Apple commercial sort of way"

Bring back BASIC to teach kids to code! by BeforeCoffee · 2012-08-01 20:47 · Score: 1

At ClubCompy there's a reimagined version of BASIC and virtual display reminiscent of the C64 (but vastly more powerful due to HTML5 and modern browsers).

You can write your own programs, save them, and share them with others. Here's one I wrote: game of life simulation.

The system guide (PDF) describing the language is here: ClubCompy System Guide. And there are sample programs on display at the little benchmarking page.

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Dr.+Hok · 2012-08-01 22:07 · Score: 1

I used to disassemble the BASIC interpreter for fun. My favourite part was the one which executes a BASIC command. It pushes the address of the subroutine minus one on the stack, and then calls it with RTS (return from subroutine). Poor man's indexed jump.

--
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...

Re:Useless nostalgia. by TheRaven64 · 2012-08-01 22:28 · Score: 1

Nostalgia is as much about the path as the destination. I wouldn't be doing the things I am now with modern hardware if I hadn't learned on those old 8- and 16-bit machines. Having to work around the resource limitations of the machines of the era was a valuable learning experience. Sure, now I'm happy to have a machine that's several orders of magnitude more powerful. Sure, I can do things on it in a few minutes of effort that would have been completely impossible on a C64. And no, I definitely wouldn't want to go back... but none of that means that I'm not glad that I had those experiences in the '80s.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

also, good blogs of guys playing old games by TheSeatOfMyPants · 2012-08-01 23:20 · Score: 1

I've been enjoying these a lot:
All-Time Favorite Games
CRPG Addict
The Adventure Gamer

The first one covers games from all early types (Spectrum, Amstrad, C64, etc.), and the other two are using DOS but most of their games appeared on other platforms as well. I've been enjoying them all enough that I figured I'd share.

Anyone know of any similar blogs that are active right now?

--
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 00:03 · Score: 0

That would be 3x7, if you want to be able to see where one character ends, and the next begins.

Gotta leave one pixel of space between them.

And for some reason, a single pixel horizontally would change color, at least on TVs and TV-like monitors. Either towards blue-ish or red-ish, depending on which pixel, so I guess it was a pixel clock thing. The standard fonts used two pixels horizontally to avoid this.

Cinnamon by eddy · 2012-08-02 00:07 · Score: 3, Funny

My power brick had a slight discoloration from when I used it to thaw a frozen cinnamon bun.

--
Belief is the currency of delusion.

Re:Useless nostalgia. by bensode · 2012-08-02 02:38 · Score: 1

Fast Hack'em was what we used to write those errors post-game copy. Then at some point the copy utility and the error-writing came bundled within Fast Hack'em. I have many fond memories of re-aligning the cans in the 1541 drives after so many hours of reading errors and head bouncing. Oh, and the Bard's Tale trilogy ... I still think I subconsciously name console RPG characters EL CID. I bought the failed reboot at Bard's Tale years ago just to get the original DOS versions.

--
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt

Re:Useless nostalgia. by NCG_Mike · 2012-08-02 02:48 · Score: 1

Good grief! Taking the drive apart! It's a whole load easier to crack the game. Often a lda #1 and a nop. Skate or Die was hard though - lots of self modifying xor code in loops.

sort of by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-08-02 02:54 · Score: 2

Comment there says:

Actually most of the work is done by the RAM expansion unit which comes with it's own DMA controller used to copy the video framesï much faster than the 6510 CPU ever could do.

So, yeah, it's being played through a C=64, but not by the C=64.

--
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)

Re:sort of by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 04:35 · Score: 0

Are you dense? The VIC chip IS displaying the video, the CPU is doing all the work of manipulating the VIC, it just couldn't also copy the frames for video. The C64 is perfectly able to display one still image in NUFLI mode. That's like arguing that the C64 isn't displaying a picture because the image is actually stored on a floppy, so it's just being displayed "through" the C64, whatever the hell that even means.

Ahh the good ole times. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-02 03:26 · Score: 0

My first machine was a Vic20 then C64 then C128. Feeling a little old now!

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by Andrewkov · 2012-08-02 03:38 · Score: 1

Yep, I cut my teeth on the Commodore Pet too.. When the C64 came out, it seemed light years ahead!

It's both by davidwr · 2012-08-02 08:00 · Score: 1

Having tons of free time is a big plus - just ask any scientist who gets a major multi-year grant or prize that also covers his salary for a few years.

But "peak" age is important, especially for tasks where experience isn't critical or when already-learned material simply gets in the way of learning new material.

For example, ON AVERAGE, it's a lot easier for a preschooler to learn to speak a language than someone over 40 or even a high school student, even if the high school student or adult are in an immersion environment.

--
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

Angry Birds? by KatchooNJ · 2012-08-02 09:02 · Score: 1

We had Angry Birds back in the 80s... it was just called "Artillery" back then. ;-)

--
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^

split focus by rusl · 2012-08-02 09:14 · Score: 1

I think it has to do with the fact that as we mature we can focus our mind on several things at once. Useful, mature and sophisticated. The brain does in fact improve into middle age, youth fetishism notwithstanding. However the trade off is that memories we produce are less intense. Life is more fuzzy as our brain constantly is aware of the issue of balance rather than diving in whole hog headfirst. Youth and age both have their various benefits.

--
Stupidity is its own reward.

Hooked one up today by Hamsterdan · 2012-08-02 15:06 · Score: 1

Hooked up one of my C64s to an old 27" TV. *STILL WORKS*. Even the ass-slow 1541 drives still work. Why is a 30-years old computer still working, yet I've had to recap 2 computers from 2005 and my home theater amp from 2003? The NES is still kicking too.

--
I've got better things to do tonight than die.

Re:BAH. Younguns. VIC-20 FTW. by markimusk · 2012-08-02 15:25 · Score: 1

yeah, and TWO disk drives!

and your own phone line!

How rich IS this guy???

Raid on Bungeling Bay by KatchooNJ · 2012-08-03 03:56 · Score: 1

Fun trivia bit about Raid on Bungeling Bay: When Will Wright was making that game, he discovered that he was having so much fun creating the little islands and factories and all that jazz, that he decided to make a game where you built stuff like that... we can all thank Raid on Bungeling Bay for SimCity. :-)

--
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^

Re:2 HOUR Video on youtube all about the C64.. L@@ by KatchooNJ · 2012-08-03 08:43 · Score: 1

The power supplies were kinda infamous for dying... I had a couple die on me. I remember even sending away for a 3rd party model that was superior. Still have it to this day and it still works fine. ;-)

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"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^

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