Most of my time in my early youth was spent on my Commodore 64. It was a big step up from Atari and Nintendo wasn't out yet. This was the system of choice. Of course, it was meant to be an actual computer, but it is very limited. It runs on 64 kB of RAM. Thats kilobyte. 64. To put that in perspective my meager laptop runs on 4GB RAM.
1 kB = 1000 bytes
1GB = 1,000,000 bytes
The C64 has 20 kB of ROM, made up of the BASIC interpreter, the kernel, and the character ROM. As the processor could only address 64 kB at a time, the ROM was mapped into memory and only 38. 911 bytes of RAM were available at start up. (thanks wikipedia )
That's a ridiculous difference in processing considering that the C64 come out in 1982, only roughly 30 years ago.
Anyway, I pretty much used it as a gaming system cause despite the limited capability of the unit, there were some 10,000 titles available for the unit!! The games were incredible: Forbidden Forest, M.U.L.E., Raid Over Moscow, Pitstop, Winter Games, Spy Hunter.....I had hundreds!! The graphics were pretty good for the time, close enough to the arcade that you wouldn't bitch but a little off. one of the biggest memories for me is the music. Some of the soundtracks of these games are frikin epic!! I played Forbidden Forest and it was like a flood of memory through audio. You just cant buy this sort of memory!! Well....38.911 bytes of it!
Here's my C64:
Look at that power supply! I actually had one burn up on me. Melted a hole straight through it. Stunk like hell. I was glad my Dad could get another cause at the time I was pretty worried!
Had a paper route at the time and I spent big bucks on games. Those big ass floppys cost some dough.
Always happy to see that start up screen.....
For what I couldn't buy, there were multitudes of copiers and blank floppys.
Anybody want a game copied?? :)
I'll be posting the games as I play em with screenshots. The next C64 post will be about playing Test Drive with my cousin for the first time in 20 years and how we were blown away by discovering a part of our history stored away until then!!
Update: Click the link to find out about the time capsule hidden in Test Drive !!
Update: Click the link to find out about the time capsule hidden in Test Drive !!
I never had a Commodore, all I had was an Atari 2600. Looks crazy though. Floppies! Have not seen those in ages.
ReplyDeleteDan
It is a trip back in time!! I am having a ball playing these games!!
DeleteDON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!
ReplyDeleteHa! Too funny me and my pal Freddy say that once in a while.
Delete:) nice !! If my employer sees this I might fail all my ethics training :)
DeleteIs it bad that I've never heard that term before? Had to look it up on Wikipedia. Guessing the campaign never made it to our fair shores.
DeleteDont feel bad I had to look it up too....I remembered it when I saw the ad but it took me a bit.
DeleteAh i used to have a C64 and the awesome Tandy Color Computer 3 or CoCo3 for short.
ReplyDeleteMy wife had a Tandy but it was gone B4 I got to her :( never got a chance to play it. C64 just has a quality that just makes it cool as heck !!
DeleteWhat was the ol load shortcut? L, then Commodore key+O?
ReplyDeleteI loooooved my C=64!! So many awesome games. Forbidden Forest, Impossible Mission (hated the heck out of this difficult game but you can't beat a talking, taunting game!), Alter Ego, Realm of Impossibility, Labyrinth..and on and on....
L + SHIFT O
DeleteI knew it was one of those bottom left keys.
Delete: run stop and commodore key simultaniously is much easier :) WOW forgot about Mission Imossible!! Gonna play that next!!! Been playing Forbidden Forest....the music is haunting!!!! I Love It!!
DeleteActually...
ReplyDelete1KB = 1,024 bytes
1MB = 1,048,576 bytes
1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes
Yep,you are right, Thanks! I quoted the decimal equivalent and should have quoted the Binary. You are my first official No-Prize winner! I'd better tighten up my research for the technical posts :)
DeleteThe only game I remember playing on mine was the Californian Raisins game. They were trying to escape the factory or something... it was kind of dark now that I think back. Too bad I didn't learn anything about how to program in BASIC until high school, looong after my C64 was gone.
ReplyDeleteI dont remember that one but I'll check my cousin's games, between the two of us we have just about em all.
DeleteAh ha! A fellow Commodore 64 enthusiast. I had the later version of it. You know the one with the grey keys? What a cracking home computer for the time though. Nobody could tear me away from it. What does intrigue me a bit is that all your games were on floppy disk. In the UK you pretty much bought everything on cassette. Is that just a cultural difference like automatic and manual cars or did people use cassettes in the States as well? I just always assumed that was the case.
ReplyDeleteI had a Texas Instruments computer before the Commodore came out and it used a cassette drive. The C=64 did have them but most people I knew had the floppy drives for it.
DeleteThere were cassetes, floppys and cartridges for the C64. Cartridges were the quickest interface but I only had one...maybe they werent available much. I had the cassette player first and about five games but the problem as you probably know is WAAAY slow load time and probability of error. Floppys were the best alternative, better load times and you could hack the games and copy em:)
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