My First GOOD Computer − December, 1985
It didn't take long for my love affair with the Timex Sinclair 1000 to fade. Thumbing through various catalogs and magazines, I came across an advertisement for the Commodore 64.
Must. Have. It.
I spent many an hour over the course of many days explaining to my parents how this was vast improvement over the Timex and how I could do so much more with it. Good graphics (even color), input ports compatible with our Atari joysticks, and arguably the best sound capabilities of any computer at the time.
It was a very good present I unwrapped for my birthday that year. Not just the C64, but a 5.25" floppy drive, a game disk (Super Huey II), and a 300 baud modem.
A 300 baud modem. Good lord, I think I sported some serious wood for a week. Re-enactments of War Games kept playing through my head.
It didn't take long to master (and get bored with) Super Huey II. Though, I still get chills down my spine when I think of the radio voice at the beginning of one of the missions: "Uh, UH-2X, you are cleared for recon patrol. Arm at your discretion." Oh, man. It just doesn't get any cooler than that.
Good God, I was a fucking dork at an early age, wasn't I?
I couldn't even guess at the number of hours I spent on the various BBSs I discovered. My parents couldn't understand why they never got a big phone bill from all the time I spent "on-line." Let's not dwell on that...
Now, I didn't spend every waking hour on my new toy, but I used the hell out of it. The C64 solidified my passion for computers. Yeah, even at this young age the notion crept into my thoughts: I'm never going to get laid.
In this small town, not many people had computers at home. A couple of my friends did, though.
One had an Apple Macintosh. I never really cared for it. It seemed so sterile and I always felt like there wasn't much you could really do with it. The mouse was interesting, though.
Another friend had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Oh, how I wish I had one of those. But it really wasn't his -- it was his mom's. He eventually got a Commodore 128. Now I really wanted one of those! I drooled whenever I was over at his house.
Nothing screams "geek" like computer envy.
I can't say much for the computers at school. In 5th grade, we had TI-99/4As. In 6th through 9th we had the standard Apple IIE (anyone remember the LOGO turtle?). In 10th grade, the school finally upgraded to the Apple IIGS. Oh, that was big time. We could play "Bard's Tale" on it! After school, of course.
Right about that time, schools started to wake up and figure out that noone outside the schools was using Apple computers. Thus it was my senior year in high school that I finally got my hands on an IBM PC -- a lightning-fast 286, no less. I was also in the first class of computer programming (PASCAL) the high school had. A few of my friends and I pressured one of the math teachers into offering the class.
Ah, memories. I wish I still had that C64. I think I eventually sold it to some guy who wanted to use it to track data for his bowling team.
Yeah, I know: it would be a travesty to use a C64 for bowling stats. I should have kept it and told him to fuck off, but I needed the money for a new computer...
Must. Have. It.
I spent many an hour over the course of many days explaining to my parents how this was vast improvement over the Timex and how I could do so much more with it. Good graphics (even color), input ports compatible with our Atari joysticks, and arguably the best sound capabilities of any computer at the time.
It was a very good present I unwrapped for my birthday that year. Not just the C64, but a 5.25" floppy drive, a game disk (Super Huey II), and a 300 baud modem.
A 300 baud modem. Good lord, I think I sported some serious wood for a week. Re-enactments of War Games kept playing through my head.
It didn't take long to master (and get bored with) Super Huey II. Though, I still get chills down my spine when I think of the radio voice at the beginning of one of the missions: "Uh, UH-2X, you are cleared for recon patrol. Arm at your discretion." Oh, man. It just doesn't get any cooler than that.
Good God, I was a fucking dork at an early age, wasn't I?
I couldn't even guess at the number of hours I spent on the various BBSs I discovered. My parents couldn't understand why they never got a big phone bill from all the time I spent "on-line." Let's not dwell on that...
Now, I didn't spend every waking hour on my new toy, but I used the hell out of it. The C64 solidified my passion for computers. Yeah, even at this young age the notion crept into my thoughts: I'm never going to get laid.
In this small town, not many people had computers at home. A couple of my friends did, though.
One had an Apple Macintosh. I never really cared for it. It seemed so sterile and I always felt like there wasn't much you could really do with it. The mouse was interesting, though.
Another friend had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Oh, how I wish I had one of those. But it really wasn't his -- it was his mom's. He eventually got a Commodore 128. Now I really wanted one of those! I drooled whenever I was over at his house.
Nothing screams "geek" like computer envy.
I can't say much for the computers at school. In 5th grade, we had TI-99/4As. In 6th through 9th we had the standard Apple IIE (anyone remember the LOGO turtle?). In 10th grade, the school finally upgraded to the Apple IIGS. Oh, that was big time. We could play "Bard's Tale" on it! After school, of course.
Right about that time, schools started to wake up and figure out that noone outside the schools was using Apple computers. Thus it was my senior year in high school that I finally got my hands on an IBM PC -- a lightning-fast 286, no less. I was also in the first class of computer programming (PASCAL) the high school had. A few of my friends and I pressured one of the math teachers into offering the class.
Ah, memories. I wish I still had that C64. I think I eventually sold it to some guy who wanted to use it to track data for his bowling team.
Yeah, I know: it would be a travesty to use a C64 for bowling stats. I should have kept it and told him to fuck off, but I needed the money for a new computer...
online now
Comments:
bmccosar (March 12, 2008. 09:38pm)
I had a TRS-80 ... it gave me the advantage of learning BASIC, Pascal, Z80 Assembly language, and elementary shell scripting (it was called JCL or 'job control language' in TRSDOS). However, it was rotten for graphics. I knew that going in, but always sort of wondered how things would have turned out if I'd had a C64 with its weird version of BASIC (didn't you have to type in strings of unrecognizable characters for some commands, like some Necronomicon version of APL ? ( Or Perl as written using tangrams ? ) Still, I think playing "Wizardry" on a friend's C64 taught me computers were going to be more than just the HAL 9000 one day and maybe something like Second Life. [And for the record, MAHALITO (boom!) ]
intrepideddie (March 13, 2008. 12:29am)
One of my friends had a Trash 80. I always liked those, too. Oddly, I never had one. Yeah, the C64 version of BASIC had some... quirks. Fortunately, I got a hold of a PASCAL compiler for it and was much better off after that. Wizardry, holy crap I'd forgotten about that. How about the "Misison Impossible" text adventure? [CHEW GUM > Ok. It tastes AWFUL!]
bmccosar (March 13, 2008. 11:27am)
TRS-80 BASIC was pretty straightforward, but I still remember the hackish way to introduce snippets of machine language code into a program ... store the bytes in a string, get the string's address using VARPTR, and 'CALL' the address of the string. Any system where you can arbitrarily 'POKE' any byte into any memory location is definitely the Wild Wild West.
peahayes (March 14, 2008. 02:15am)
Oy vey, this is quite the geekfest!
bmccosar (March 14, 2008. 11:25am)
If you're going to go for the Yiddish, I prefer the title 'techno-meshugginah'.