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Commodore 64 turns 30
will_die writes "The Commodore 64 came out 30 years ago and to celebrate this the BBC went and got two groups of kids to try out an old system, complete with tape drive. It's sure to bring a few grins to people who had one of these old systems. From the article: 'The Commodore's ability to display 16 colours, smoothly scroll graphics and play back music through its superior SID (sound interface device) chip - even while loading programs off tape - helped win over fans, but it did not become the market leader until the late 1980s.'" Last spring a modern version of the C64 was released.
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?
It's the name on a modern computer, not a modern version of the C64.
or sometimes LOAD "$",8,1
11 REM LETS ADD SOME COLOR
12 A=X
13 IF A > 15 THEN A = A - 15
15 POKE 646, A
"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.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The Commodore-64 Came Out 30 Years Ago
Yup, with that Rainbow Logo the Commodore-64 was Out And Proud from day one.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Best Slashdot thread ever. Period. :)
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
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
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.
?SYNTAX ERROR
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.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QATUjaFYbJ4&feature=player_detailpage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QATUjaFYbJ4&feature=player_detailpage
Mostly random stuff.
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.
My power brick had a slight discoloration from when I used it to thaw a frozen cinnamon bun.
Belief is the currency of delusion.