And in the I'm getting old category..

Pete OHanlon

Happy 30th birthday to the Commodore 64. What kids today make of it.[^]

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

Rage

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

What kids today make of it.[^]

Wrong. That's what kids today make of it[^].

Mark_Wallace

Rather poignant that it ends with him sitting alone, playing a bleepy, buggy game, when all the kids have gone off to update their facebook accounts with details of the dinosaur they just met.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

Mike Hankey

Now it seems like a lifetime ago but can still remember mine and how much fun I used to have with it. Happy birthday C64!

VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.0 ToDo Manager Extension
Version 3.0 now available. There is no place like 127.0.0.1

Dario Solera

I'm old enough to remember playing games on my dad's C64. I remember that it took forever to load a game from 5.25" floppies, but for some reason it helped building up suspence. Very good memories.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] My Blog

Pete OHanlon

I remember loading games from the dedicated Commodore cassette unit or from cartridge (in fact, Radar Rat Race was a firm favourite of my mothers).

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

S Becker

You think the floppies where slow??????? We waitet 30 minutes to load International Karate from tape. And sometimes it failed after 25 minutes. Unfortunatly it did not load with Turbo Tape.

Regards Sascha

Wjousts

Ah...happy days. :-D That was back when computers were fun.

derek9999

Relive those glory days, visit my site below (sorry for the shameless plug!)

Like developing Commodore software? CBM prg Studio

Gregory Gadow

It wasn't just the games, it was a damned fine hobby computer. The 6510 machine instruction set was one of the best available, and everything was programmable from the graphics banks to the sound chips to the RS-232 and parallel ports.

Pete OHanlon

Shameless plug accepted. That looks pretty cool.

*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington

"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos

CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier

Lost User

Gregory.Gadow wrote:

The 6510 machine instruction set was one of the best available

What? The 6502/6510 was not really known to be a fast or elegant processor. Its greatest merit was that it was sold much cheaper than the others.

At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity

Gregory Gadow

Its instruction set was one of the most comprehensive, which made it an excellent learning tool. The machine language had no moving parts: each opcode had one and only one possible hex representation, which made it easy to hand assemble when necessary (with short programs, it was actually easier to hand assemble and poke the values into memory than use the assembler/loader.) I was also learning the Z-80 at that time, and it was a pain. While the chip itself was not the fastest available at the time, it was a pretty sophisticated piece of etched silicon.

Marcus_2

S. Becker wrote:

We waitet 30 minutes to load International Karate from tape.

You think 30 minutes was long??????? Pirates[^] took a lot longer to load. And then you had a lot of loading time during the game. "Oh, you want to attack a ship??? Wait a while, it just has to be loaded..." and then "You won! Hurray for you, now wait a slightly longer while we try to resume the game". I think more time was spent loading various bits than actually playing it... :)

Slacker007

repost. ;)

"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012)

R Giskard Reventlov

My first computer! Remember it well. Think I bought it form Radio Shack though I don't recall the price. Couldn't wait to get it home! Ah, those were the days. :)

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me

Flynn Arrowstarr Regular Schmoe

My first computer. Bought it with money I received from an accident claim in 1986. Had it for a couple of years before getting a C=128 and then an Amiga 500. I had a ton of games for it (and still have PC versions of several of them), and my older brother and I spent a lot of time typing in programs from the different magazines. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_