Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for April 30, 2013

Either way the commodore was just a toy computer and not a real one like the IBM XT. With that one I could write COBOL and Fortran code that would not only run on the XT but would also match up with the Honeywell 6500 that I used at Michigan State.

Commodore 64? Pfffft!

True geeks had a TI 99/4A.

Although, I will concede the XT did form the base for today’s desktops/laptops.

The Commodore 64 was the first true home computer for the world. It was advanced for its time.

The quantity and quality of games as well as serious programs available were amazing. The quality of the games especially in the latter days, in some ways can actually beat todays offerings.

Neither did I. I was too poor at the time to afford one.

@Adam Sherlock

Aye mate, ne’er a truer word was spoken. The Commodore 64 was 64 kilobytes, not megabytes, and yet it thrust home computing upon the world and made it accessible to just about everybody. I remember month after month playing the groundbreaking game Elite, which set the standard for all games since. Quite obviously Clark Kent, KenTheCoffinDweller and The Uncle grew up after 1990 and being so spoilt for choice just don’t understand the simple concept of origins.

P.S. John and Scott, how could allow Roy to deal Jay such a cruel blow? And will he ever recover?

The Commodore 64 was OK, but I really loved my Amiga 3000. You could do pre-emptive multi-tasking on just two megabytes of ram. The Amiga could display 4000 colors when the IBM could only do sixteen. Put a Video Toaster in an Amiga and you could do some awesome 3D animations with the Lightwave 3D modeling program. The Amiga OS didn’t have a registry like that crappy Micro Sloth, and your OS, Applications and Data could be in seperate partitions.

I loved my Atari 800 and my Amiga.

Bunch of newbies, my first computer was a ZX80.

I had a Trash (TRS) 80.

Damn Roy, that was low, man, real low.

A Radio Shack TRS 80. At first with a tape drive; then later got into the 5-1/4 discs.

Tandy 1000A here. There was a slight upgrade from 1000 to 1000A but forget the change. Only way to spot it was look at the back.

Well, I HAVE a Commodore 64 in working condition. So, there!

Telengard!

a Vic20, (2) C64, trs model 1, rs color computer 1,2 (5)and 3 (4), ZX80 (2) , atari 400, atari 800 , commodore pet, ibm (tape drive version), tandy 1000 (2)and then went to ibm xt and then on from there.. never had a ti99 or apple2 though… It was hard to keep that many different versions of basic straight though when trying to program them…….. My first 5 meg hard drive was almost $500….. much has changed………

In the beginning, before the 8800, there was the 8080, the 6502. and the 6809 and it was good.Real geeks rolled their own supermini with a TI 74ls181 , AMD 2901 bit slice before the Motorola 68000 and Intel 8087.

I first learned programming on Commodore PET and CBM2000’s with 4K – 32K of memory. They were Commodore’s first foray into the personal computer field, long befor the ’64.

What? No VIC-20s out there? 5 that FIVE kilobytes of memory. Used a cassette recorder to store programs

Mine was a commodore but I don’t think it was a 64… that was back in 85 when I was 8!

Two words: Datapoint 2200. Okay, so one of those is a number. It was still my first personal computer.

Go ahead. Look, it up. I’ll wait.

IBM Octopus w/ FORTRAN at college. ‘course I didn’t have a building large enough to house it. Thank goodness that TI 99 came along.

Before the 64, I had a VIC 20.

I had a Commodore Vic 20. I spent $70 to upgrade the factory 5k RAM to 18k. I also bought the cassette tape storage drive.

You have obviously hit on our core geekhood, given the number of posts enumerating our first computers. Next thing you know, we’ll find out who still remembers binary.

My first computer was an Interact Model R. 16k memory, cassette tape input, used the TV screen as a monitor(8 lines of 17 characters). After loading in the BASIC interpreter, there was a whopping 4k for the user program! I wrote two games on it, Battleship and Robotwar. Also, a couple of programs that played with sound and colors. It was one of the reasons I went from being a COBOL, RPG, and Assembler programmer to working with PCs. Good times!

Started out on a timeshare on GE mainframe with a teletype in the laundry room, then went to Atari 800. Then to a CP/M Kaypro Z80 system. My first DOS system was a passive backplane Kaypro where the mother board was on a replaceable card. Built my next one on AMD’s very first CPU… the 286-20. Never looked back. I’ve had my own computer consulting business since 1984.

The industry has come a long way in what is really a very short time.

Sharon

A couple of years ago someone tried to bring back the Commodore. Computer in the keyboard, styled the same. They had a couple of models but I think they closed shop.

Man went to the moon on a bunch of 64 K systems ganged together.

I had a Commodore 64 long time ago & ZX80 also too, and it was a lot of changes of computers & had floppy disk drive for the 64, and to program that has to be all typed and save it to disk & open program ran but today computers are lot better and faster :)

First computer we had was some Radio Shack modeled that needed a TV and an audio tape deck to play back the program. My brother was able to generate some simple graphics that simulated traveling through a canyon.

I started with a Commodore 64. Then progressed to the Trash 80. I found a couple of the big floppies for the 80 a few years back. What a hoot! I still marvel today at what we could do with 64k back then. Amazing.

Seequa Chameleon was the first PC I owned after selling and using most of those previously mentioned. Had two processors, Z80 and 8088. One would boot CPM and the other would boot MS-DOS. That was back when it was not obvious which OS would be dominant. Also, by contract, MS-DOS was always one version behind IBM PC-DOS so we were always looking for the latest IBM disk.

I bet non of you knew who wrote the operating system for the C64 huh I do but I wanna see if you do.tell ya tommorrow

I used to spend hours playing “Eliza” on the commodore 64 – and I even figured out how to end the game – two magic words that was weird then – common today .. my father never could figure out how to end Eliza ;-)

BBC model B with 32K of shadow RAM and side ROM slots and a DOUBLE sided 5 1/4" floppy disc drive

The first progamming class I had they issued us all a Timex Sinclair with a 16k ram pack. Miserable beast that it was I tried to do graphics with huge pixels. After that when the Commodore 128D came out I decided I could do a good job teaching my kids on that. It has since been passed on to my daughter. Who even though married with children, has a love for the games on the old beast.

He’s gonna go play with his original Apple. The one that only had a printed circuit board that laid open on the table.

Or you could have had an ALTAIR! Wait, that makes me really old, nevermind.

I remember learning to program in BASIC on a TRS 80. Good times.

My first computer was a VIC-20. I remember there was a BASIC program that I could use to play Pong. I had to write the program into the computer myself (copied from the user manual) and store it on my tape drive to load onto the computer.

Give him yours, Roy!

i had one, you had to program it yourself if you wanted it to do anything