The New Commodore 64

[RicharD]

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

 

I just drooled all over my pocket protector.

[Ritchie200]

WOW!  THat brings back memories!  Did you look under "Classic Models"?  That was a walk down memory lane...  If I had some mad money, I would buy one - just because!  I'm not sure when that would fit into my budget...  Too cool!
Jim

[LooseChange]

Wow!  I love the C64.  I had a Vic 20, C64 and a C128.  I was a beta tester for the GEOS operating system too.  Loooong time ago.

Gotta gat one!!!

[simonallaway]

That site must be running on a C64, and his tape cassette volume is all wrong, because I'm getting :

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

When I was growing up in the UK I had a Sinclair ZX81 and a ZX Spectrum. In my day you were either a Sinclair fan or a Commodore fan...never both. So I am trying to recall some disparaging remarks to aim at you C64 fans ;)

[thermion]

Wow. My first computer in 1984... learned to program in basic on that thing.
Without a hard drive the storage medium on our early model was an outboard cassette tape drive.
Things certainly have come a long way.

[EL34]

Never had a C64
I started on a Commodore PET 2001 series in 1978 with 8k memory -  

Programs were loaded via a built in cassette.
I wrote a bunch of software on this machine.



The keyboard was real strange



Sometime in the early 80's I upgraded to the Commodore 8032 - 32k memory


The disk drive was twin floppies at 500K each.
I had a whopping 1 meg of storage


I also bought a commodore dot matrix printer
The whole package was around $5000
I took out a bank loan and paid it off over time.

I think the next computer was a Tandy I bought some time in the mid 80's

[Ritchie200]

Yeah, I had a Vic20 and then bought a Tandy something.....  Nobody I knew could afford a REAL IBM!   remember I used to go to the store and lust over the C128!  I would then input a little counter program: x=1, y=x+1 and then lock out the keyboard.  None of the sales nerds could figure out how to stop it.  I thought it was funny, my wife thought I was a total goof...  Gee, nothing much has changed over the years!

It's funny to look at the old designs - style over function!  Sci-Fi/Googie designs that killed your wrists to use, but they sure looked cool!

Jim

[EL34]

I remember saving and loading my programs to cassette.
You could go fry an egg and be back in time.

[Fresh_Start]

Anybody remember the original "portable" computer?  The KayPro!  Damned thing weighed a ton but I knew a guy who dropped his down a flight of concrete stairs.  Banged up the box pretty well but the computer ran fine!  Turned out KayPro made electrical test equipment and knew how to make some pretty rugged electronics.  Don't try that with your new MacBook!!!

Part of my first job out of college was programming on a legacy IBM 360 in something called "COBOL D" (iow before ANSI COBOL).  Punch cards, lots of hexadecimal arithmetic, and a "Go Back" function that was the weirdest way out of a loop you can imagine.  It used chain drive printers too - try to imagine the noise from an industrial strength daisy wheel printer running at Mach 5 and you begin to get the idea...

Cheers,

Chip

[DummyLoad]

Anybody remember the original "portable" computer?  The KayPro!

yup... have one in closet here along with an osborne 1.   

--DL

[EL34]

I took classes at a local college and had to learn IBM 360 assembly language.
Well I really never "Learned it" very well.

I remember loading my stack of punch cards into the card reader and waiting for my programs to crash.  

I still remember the profs name. Alton Kindred JR
He wrote the freakin IBM 360 assembly language text book we used in class.
He was less than exited about all the idiots in his class.  
 
The students were dropping like flies every day.  
I quit the course half way through.
I held out as long as I could.
It was was the wrong class to take having only used Commodore basic up to that point.

[PRR]

> lots of hexadecimal arithmetic

Octal.

[RicharD]

I was late getting into the computer thang.  I started at Windows 3.11 and I was happy.  What really prompted me was having my first child.  I figured I'd better get a head start.  I can remember years before that Dummy Load and his roommate at the time had set up this new thang called a network.  They were sending obscenities back and fourth to each others blinking green screens across a piece of RG59 running down the hallway.  My first PC was a used Packard Bell that DL upgraded to something usable.  He added a CD player and a whopping 8MB of memory.  I brought it back to him later on to fix something that had gone south.  He fixed it and said, "DON'T YOU EVER BRING THIS POS BACK INTO MY HOUSE!"  My next machine was a Win95 box that DL passed on to me.  I built every computer I have owned since except the one I have now which is a used Precision 690.  I feel like I'm standing in tall cotton.