Ahhh i made my very first game on this machine, a multiple choice text adventure. :O)
And a little filter enjoyment. Beware this is quite hardcore for those who are not familiar to the SID. Sadly all the sound emulations don’t do it 100% right and you’re missing some awesome filters tricks in this one. They also don’t come close to the warm sound of the SID.
Before i could play the first games on the C64 i always had to type in the listing before because i had no dataset in the beginning. This teaches you to write quickly with your own 2-4 finger system and makes you appreciate games.
Hiya, i did a search on the web and here is a SID recording. Although mine sounded a little bit different which is quite possible due to that there were different versions of the SID.
This time the SID himself - really listen to this version!
I’m reading “On the Edge - the spectacular rise and fall of Commodore.” This is an amazing book. Definitely worth a read.
My first computer was a vic20. I didn’t get a C64 until a bit later.
Definitely the beginning of my career. I LOVE Commodore. I still have my Amiga 2000 Video Toaster. That got me started with Lightwave and video editing, and game creation. I owe my Career to Commodore. I used AMOS Professional to make games.
They were responsible for a LOT of things we take for grated today.
My first computer was a Sinclair Cambridge ZX-80 (a.k.a. the Timex computer in the US). You haven’t done it hard until you’ve done it with 1kB of RAM.
The computer I learned to program on – and loved dearly – was the Apple ][ plus, but it cost as much as a compact car (in Australia). So I coded at home on the Sinclair (expanded to 16kB of RAM) and then ported to the Apple ][. (I can one up you Taumel – I wrote a text parser-based dungeon adventure, after being frustrated that Adventure on the University’s DEC-10 did not have as good a parser as it obviously should.)
The sad thing is that for all its annoyances (membrane keyboard) the ZX-80 was incredibly productive to code on, because each keystroke typed a whole word (context-sensitive) and you couldn’t enter a line with a syntax error into your program. My adventure program (with working parser) was implemented in an afternoon on my Sinclair, and took weeks to get working on the Apple ][ at school.
The C64 still had a fantastic library of games for its time. Paradroid!
The Commodore 64 was my introduction to computers. I researched for months and was very tempted to buy a Timex Sinclair 1000 or TI-99/4A, but the Commodore’s graphics and music eventually won me over in December, 1983. (My foolish wife gave it to me as a Christmas present. Little did she know the monster she was unleashing!)
I considered a Commodore 128 the next year, but I couldn’t justify the price difference and just kept buying as many peripherals as I could afford.
In October 1985, I bought my Amiga 1000 and I became a true believer!
Apple ][ was the first computer I programmed on. Mom would bring one home from the elementary school where she teached (we eventually got a IIc for ourselves.)
However, I knew several in the C64 camp and when my cousins got one I bought Gary Kitchen’s Gamemaker and made a couple games on it. Working with real graphics and animation was pretty mind blowing at the time. Fun times!
Wow. I wish I could ever have played with these old guys (oldest computer I’ve used was an Apple ][ in my elementary school music class). My first computer was a PowerComputing Mac Clone running System 7.
@podperson
I wasn’t ready for a parser at that time. However from the very beginning my plans involved excessive studies of game mechanics and so i did a lot of practical research which means gaming… ;O) This was a pleasure as the C64 brought so many unique games to life.
It was the A1000 which thaught me how to code with it’s wonderful 68k assembly and all her nice friends like denise, copper, blitter and the always noisy paula. Sometimes it happens that you get in contact with something really special and you feel that something wonderful is happening - and i don’t mean the SCA virus with that. The amiga years were a very special and wonderful time. I never ever again had a computer with so much soul.
The Mini could be a nice machine if they only wouldn’t build it for the purpose of being a cheap thing and instead fill it up with nice and valuable hardware - call it a new cube if you want. Just a reasonable thought out sytem without any obvious bottlenecks. But i guess this is not gonna happen as long as Jobs is around.
You can still enjoy the Amiga experience (legally, I mean). Cloanto now own the intellectual property and you can buy the ROM images and OS from their website, http://www.amigaforever.com/. You can download the UAE emulator for free (eg, from RCDRUMMOND.NET: E-UAE) and there’s even a nice graphic front-end for the configuration file (http://www.pimley.net/projects/).
The 8-bits (C64, Spectrum, etc) are a bit different. There are emulators and I dare say you can download the ROMs from somewhere, but you aren’t strictly allowed to use them without a licence. Then again, it’s unlikely that long dead companies are going to prosecute you for copyright theft, I suppose…
After a brief encounter with a Texas Instruments machine, my first real computer was a Dragon 32. Anyone remember those?
Wow, it is very interesting to read eveyones’ computer-history. I guess I am a bit surprised to see that we all have very similar backgrounds.
My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, I was in the 6th grade. It had 2k of RAM, no sound, no color… but I loved it. I was obsessed with it.
Within a year or so I got the Vic 20 and used it for quite a while before finally getting the C64. I was in geek heaven with the C64, I finally had a computer that was popular enough to actually have real games to buy.
Do any of you remember the Computer Gazette magazine? I had a subscription to it. Awesome.
Do any of you think that there is an equivalent to the C64 in today’s market for kids? I mean is there anything that captures their attention enough and makes them want to learn computer programming? Or are we (us old-time c64 guys) a unique occurrence?
I had one of my games purchased by computer gazette. It was at the very end of their ‘life’ and it never actually got published in the magazine but I did get paid for it. At the time that was the highlight of my basic programming days! I think I got paid $600.
The game was called ‘Temple of Doom’, though they were going to change the name for obvious reasons and was loosely based on a cross between load runner and the indiana jones movies.
No, it was a unique episode in computing history, very much a product of the times.
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before social networking sites offer user scripting (if they don’t already). If it was done via a simple front end, perhaps like Quartz Composer, and if it involved mobile phones somehow, then I think kids would warm to it and some would start thinking like programmers. Still very different from early eighties computing, though.
I also do think that those days were a unique epsiode as the media was new, fascinating, affordable and capable. If you want a similar effect then it needs again something which rises above the average. This might be hardware which is a lot better than the rest and so enables new ways of doing things or it might be a software which doing things in a new and better way. It also might be something which you just feed with your computer with. Maybe people can order capable and affordable Aibos some das and program them for their needs. It just has to be fascinating and a little bit revolution inside.
I wish I could ever have played with these old guys (oldest computer I’ve used was an Apple ][ in my elementary school music class). My first computer was a PowerComputing Mac Clone running System 7. 
