Gaming Commodore 64 turns 30: What do today's kids make of it?

[Andy44]

My first computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000, which I still have and it still works. Once in a while I fire it up just to see it run, and I store it in the original box and foam for protection. I have thought of trying to use it for some project or other but I don't have the know-how and don't have the time to learn it.

I knew people who had Commodores and loved them, they were popular machines, along with the Atari 400/800/800XL and the Apple IIe, which were more expensive.

I also remember those coder magazines that would have articles on how to use BASIC and a few sample programs. I learned to code on my Sinclair and still have some of the programs on cassettes, although I don't know what shape those tapes are in.

If you have one of these old computers there are fan sites on the web that describe all kinds of cool projects you can do with them.

 

[n72.75]

I own one that I got on ebay; the first computer I used was an Apple II clone.

 

[Loru]

Ah my first computer. First with tape and then I (my dad actually) bought me floppy disk drive (1541 II AFAIK) and dedicated cartridge with disk turbo and most awesome button. Freeze and save game on disk - every game (it just dumped memory and saved it as executable?? to run later from state you've pressed the button).

Also it was my first oportunity to fly the shuttle: Hallley Mission

 

[Quick_Nick]

Well, I've only used one in my lifetime, and that was to help my Dad fix it. It was his brother's Commodore 64; and I thought it was very interesting. I'll never know how to use it, since it is beyond my time, I still use the Atari 2600 computer system, which is a subject for a different topic.



SE

You could count the NES too, its processor had the same base.

Epic machine. Awesome sprite graphics, tape drives - as used by CERN, may I add...

What do today's kids make of it?
"uh... so, it doesn't do Facebook, right? So... what's the point?" :lol:

Hey, I think I count(ed) as a kid! I at least looked into the processor and general info at around 16. I may soon try my hand at its BASIC programming though I'm 18 now. The 2600 had some BASIC program but, I really can't conceive of what that could possibly be used for.
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Programming"]BASIC Programming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
I think if I can handle the 2600, I can figure out the C64. The Atari is one monster of a hack; making a ROM would be hell even compared to making an emulator. (which I was semi-successful at)

 

[Tommy]

Freeze and save game on disk - every game (it just dumped memory and saved it as executable?? to run later from state you've pressed the button).

The C-64 would "boot" from the cartridge if a flag on the cartridge was set, and also made extensive use of "vectors". A vector was a sequential pair of memory adresses that stored another memory address (in low bit/high bit format).

What this cartridge did was load the kernel from RAM to ROM (just like a regular "boot"), then modified the kernal a bit. When you pressed the button, it caused an interrupt that saved the contents of the memory - which included the vector that served as the executable stack pointer. Reloading essentially "restored" the entire memory to the exact state as when you pushed the button, then "jumped" to the memory location pointed to in the stack vector. This essentially restored the computer to the exact state as when you pushed the button - and the original game never even knew it had been "saved".

 

[fsci123]

Im a kid and i do have an emulator for the commodore 64 on my modern pc. I like the commodore and its SID chip for its role in the making of kernkraft 400, red nation, and ayo technology and i try to use it to make rap tunes...

 

[DaveS]

BTW, somebody told me that the first shuttle flew on Amiga DOS because it was a lot less likely to crash than MS DOS.
Any thruth in that?

None whatsoever. The shuttle General Purpose Computers (GPCs) were IBM AP-101's, later upgraded to AP-101S. Both the Primary Avionics Software Sysem (PASS) and Backup Flight Software (BFS) were written in an assembly language called HAL/S.

 

[Urwumpe]

Both the Primary Avionics Software Sysem (PASS) and Backup Flight Software (BFS) were written in an assembly language called HAL/S.

Correction: Both PASS and BFS are written in AP-101S high-level assembly language (about 60% of the source code lines... but actually just a tiny part of the software) and HAL/s. HAL/S is no assembly language, but a Pascal-like high-level language.

 

[Spacethingy]

Sorry for the OT, but...

HAL?! As in, "open the door"?! :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Sorry for the OT, but...

HAL?! As in, "open the door"?! :lol:

No, HAL as in J. Halcomb Laning...

 

[FADEC]

Thanks for bringing back memories of the 1980s and 1990s. Commodore was and remains my favourite computer company. Back to the days when the marked was not flooded with MS Windows and Apple computers, the Commodore C64 and early Amiga series was the best thing you could get at Christmas or for your birthday. And the games back then were awesome.

The following video is a short part of The Deathbed Vigil and other Tales of Digital Angst, which was filmed and edited by Dave Haynie, a known developer of Commodore. It shows the last day (April 27, 1994) of the already empty Commodore headquarters. The company was located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and today houses the QVC studios.

The following video is the extended trailer of the movie. And it's the Youtube channel of Dave Haynie by the way What a nice bunch of people. At least they laugh away their end as Commodore employees...

As for Shuttle - The Space Flight Simulator: there were a few bugs while running it on Amiga. But it's still the best stand-alone Shuttle simulator which was ever created so far. It gives me something which neither Orbiter, nor any other simulator can give me. I don't even exactly know what it is. Maybe it's the entire Amiga era which is related to that product. But it was also something from which kids really could learn something. 150 pages of systems descriptions and historic missions descriptions (beside game menu descriptions etc.). Not to mention the simulation itself. It starts in the VAB at T-24 hours.

I don't only still own Shuttle, I even still use it from time to time

The poster:

German version:

English version:

But I don't use the original manuals. I use a printed pdf copy:

But actually I don't have to read it anymore. I memorised it already 18 years ago. It just feels good to have it in the bookshelf.

 

[KC013]

It's truly unfortunate the the management was so incompetent and ran the company under - it was the best of it's time as far as design and usability.

At the time, Commodore had the best "mousetrap" in the world, but unfortunately nobody in management and sales knew what a mousetrap was let alone how to properly market it.

 

[80mileshigh]

Another former Amiga 500 user here (as per my profile ). I had wanted a C64 and begged my parents but it took them a few years to come around, by which time the Amiga was the big thing.

My introduction to flight simulation was Interceptor in 1988:

I often argued the superiority of the Amiga to my PC using friends, but when new flight sims stopped getting released on the Amiga around 1990/1991 I realised I'd backed the wrong horse.

I also remember getting an external hard drive that plugged in to the side of the Amiga - useful for my work in 'Deluxe Paint.' It had an awesome capacity - 50MB! - and was about the size of a shoebox

 

[Keatah]

I ran into the same problem with the Amiga. It was full of promises but delivered little real value to the home user. I was thoroughly into the Apple II as my computer of choice. Had it since 1978, and still have it today. I eventually threw out the a1000 and a500 to dust cart. Heck, I couldn't even give it away for postage-only!

After the amiga fiasco I got into the PC and had a blast playing Doom and Raptor. And of course nowadays Orbiter and X-plane.

 

[John_L]

back in those days we used a radio shack color computer. While the 64 had superior sound and graphics, the color computer had better disk i/o and a better processor. What impressed me alot about the 64 was the video chip had 9 sprite levels, which made programming games alot easier, the chip itself even had a 10th sprite level that could accept a video signal, so you could effectively create text or graphics with video behind it (like you see on the news for example) the 64 itself didn't support it, but the chip did. and SID was extremely advanced for sound. The biggest drawback to the 64 was it's disk drive. It had a serial interface, so loading off of a disk took just as long as tape. The color computer had a true disk system that supported both floppy and hard drives.

Overall we viewed the coco as the better system as it was far more powerful of a computer system, yet "good graphics and sound" goes a long way, and the C64 had those advantages. The color computer also had a rudimentary OS with functions to get a directory entry, copy, delete, etc. C64 lacked ANY OS whatsoever, so to get a directory listing (get this) you had to type:
LOAD "$",8,1
LIST
to get a folder listing!!!
Meanwhile Color Computer's DOS had "dir" for directory. Oh, the fun of the old days... looking back both machines were good in their areas of strength, and overall albeit different strengths, about equal machines.

 

[Andy44]

Was the Radio Shack color computer also the TRS-80 (aka "Trash 80")?

 

[Keatah]

No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer

 

[Blacklight]

The C64 is to this day, my all time favorite computer. I consider it one of the first true "hacker" machines. It was the first machine I ever accessed a BBS with using it's blazingly fast 300 baud dial up modem!

 

[Andy44]

Ah, the old BBS's! Before the World Wide Web, before the Internet as we know it, there was the local Joe and his BBS! And news groups, and Fidonet, etc. I kind of miss those days. No going back; modern tech and speed and data rates have jaded us and spoiled the simpler times.

 

[Blacklight]

Thankfully, there's STILL a lot of hobbyists running BBS's now. The difference is that now we can access most of them through the web. Finding content on them is more difficult now than it used to be in the old days. A large portion of them are set up just to play "Door Games". Still much fun. Who can forget "Legend of Red Dragon" and "Tradewars"?
I still check around on the BBS's sometimes. There's a few sites with links to them. Using them as file exchanges seems to be a thing of the past now though.