Anyone here remember the Commodore days?

[Bo8a_Fett]

I too started copying games...more on the amiga...remember x copy..lol so simple to use.....we would all swap games and have virtually everything that came out.....downside being if you got to a hard part you didn't persavere but just put the next game in.
Some favs on the Amiga were
Sensible Soccer
Gods
Speedball 2
Cineware games...loved wings and It came from the desert.
then I upgraded to a 286 pc just 'cos I wanted to play X-wing and secret weapons of the Luftwaffe, they never came out on amiga...remember having to learn dos becuse you had to turn windows off so that there was enough memory to play games...lol

[Hector]

Oh, and keeping with the theme of this thread...I have fond memories of my 64, yes, it was very frustrating to use, but it was also thrilling, since it was my very first computer, and I felt so important at the time.

[livnxxxl]

Gemco is basically Target now.

Gemco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ahh, I see.

I loved that store, my dad bought many Megos for me there.

Two main things Gemco was known for:

The store manager of each Gemco was always referred to over the intercom system as "Number 1," and the assistant manager was called "Number 2". The lowest paid staff member, the courtesy clerk, was called "29" or more frequently "29C" (C for shopping cart retrieval). There were not 29 levels of employees, however. The paging of "10 variety" meant help was needed at the check out registers. The paging of a "99" meant a janitor was needed, i.e., "99M" meant a mop to clean a spill or 99B" meant a broom to sweep up a mess.

I would not like being anything less than number one. Actually more like zero if that meant CEO. That is an definitely a unique system. Perhaps we should give it a try here at The Museum? NOT!!!

Karen Carpenter, of the Carpenters singing duo, lived about a quarter mile from the Downey Gemco. Legend states that she was getting ready to go to this particular store on the morning of February 4, 1983, when she suffered a heart attack in her parents' home and died. Her brother, Richard, was also a frequent shopper at the Downey store.

hmmm....that is a true shame about her having that heart attack and dying.

[livnxxxl]

Oh, and keeping with the theme of this thread...I have fond memories of my 64, yes, it was very frustrating to use, but it was also thrilling, since it was my very first computer, and I felt so important at the time.

I kind of figured that you were getting to that. You just wanted to build up the suspense first. Isn't it funny how certain things made us feel important back in those days. For me it was a pager. Do people even use those things any more? Everyone just had to have one eventually.

[Hector]

[livnxxxl]

I too started copying games...more on the amiga...remember x copy..lol so simple to use.....we would all swap games and have virtually everything that came out.....downside being if you got to a hard part you didn't persavere but just put the next game in.
Some favs on the Amiga were
Sensible Soccer
Gods
Speedball 2
Cineware games...loved wings and It came from the desert.
then I upgraded to a 286 pc just 'cos I wanted to play X-wing and secret weapons of the Luftwaffe, they never came out on amiga...remember having to learn dos becuse you had to turn windows off so that there was enough memory to play games...lol

Yeah Amiga was the bomb compared to Commodore. It was like the newest Xbox compared to the old Atari. Some good copy programs at the time I recall was Mr. Nibble, Fast Hack'em (had as many versions as Friday the 13th movies had sequels), Diskbusters, This really cool (at that time anyway) two sided disk put out by Prism soft. I cannot remember the name of it now, but it was the stuff back then. It had all the parameters for the current games at the time and the company released upgraded versions of course. Kind of like the radar detector vs the radar gun saga.


I eventually graduated from the C128 to a 386 and really thought that I was the stuff then. The 386 was my first IBM PC. I think it had like a 20 MB not GB drive on it. Now it is the total opposite. That was good for back then though. Being an old die hard Commie fan I had actually liked DOS so much a that time that I did not even want to upgrade to Windows.

[Adam West]

My only memory of it was that they sold it at Radio Shack at a local mall and they used to have it displayed so you couldn't miss it if you were walking past it.

It took no time for my brother and I to figure out the simple coding to have words scroll across the screen so we used to pretend like we were checking out the computer while we quickly typed in "Radio Shack Sucks!" and have it scroll across the screen as people walked by until one of the employees figured out what we were doing.

The good old days.

[Mikey]

My first computer was a Tandy TRS-80-Colour

After a few years I chucked it and bought the NEW Commodore 128

[toystalker]

although as a kid i never owned an atari or a comodore or a sinclair or any other computer come to that lol

my mates did though, i would go round there homes to play them, i suppose thats why i was never in

i remember them well, the sinclair zx spectrum, the comodores 64 and 128, the amstrad 128, amiga... yeah we used to make beats on that amiga, was something like qbase or simular music studio programme lol

used to love asteroids, yeah i remember it taking a life time to load up and with all this squealing noise going on just to load up space invaders, or if you was posh you had california games or outrun

but, in my later years ive owned all those vintage consoles and computer games, once on a toy stalking adventure i found a factory stock of consoles, there was atari carts, coleco vision, frogger, expansion modules, an old computer called aquarius and a great game on it called night stalker... partly where my name come from , and many many more items, all long gone now though

ah yes the good ol days, i think ive probably bought and sold just about every vintage games console there is, sadly i didnt get to play many of them as they were still sealed in the original packs i didnt want to spoil the collectible side of that, or if im honest the sales potential

[mitchedwards]

I cut my teeth on the Commodore 64, and the Commodore 128.
I remember wanting to buy an Amiga, due to the amazing graphics, but it was too expensive back then.

[cjefferys]

I sold a non working 1581 back a couple of years ago for parts. I was just going to throw it away like most then I ended up getting offered $20.00 for it so I guess it was worth holding onto after all. It is amazing what sells well and what does not. I did not think that it would have been worth $20.00 especially in non working condition. The guy said he wanted it for parts so who was I to disappoint.

You know, I could see that. Anyone who still has a 64 for nostalgia/collector reasons would want a disc drive for it, and that element is the weakest part (ie. hard to get a working one) of the whole system. So I'm sure there's a market for repairing them, and someone who does so would have a hard time getting parts, so that's why they value non-working ones like yours.

I remember that drive was pretty slow (but way faster than the cassette drive I had at first). Then I bought a cartridge software (I forget what it was called or who made it) that sped up the drive quite a bit. Best money I ever spent for my 64.

[livnxxxl]

I had bought another new computer a while back. Therefore, I have been consolidating my PC and Laptop files from about 3 different computers. Needless to say that this has taken a while. I was not that enthused about doing it to begin with. However, I am making backups and now finding files and pictures that I forgot I had in doing so. That is the fun part of it is finding pictures one has took years ago. It is like a trip to the attic without having to go up there. I keep an inventory of my collectibles for insurance and of course nostalgic purposes. Looking back through the pictures and reading these forums regarding the Commodore really brings back memories. I just happen to run across my C= pictures. Here are just a few of the many. NOTE: I do not want to bore you to death any more than I may already have.

This first picture is nothing but a bunch of 5.25 floppies. Remember the write protect stickers and the write protect punch to take advantage of the other side of the disk? BTW for those that do not know they used to be called disks back then instead of discs now a days.



Here is my original c128 box, I also have the 1571 drive and the 1902A monitor with boxes as well.



Apparently I had talked to a "Scott" back in 1994 about ordering some blank 5.25 disks at the then super low price of .19 each. That WAS a real bargain then.



Lastly, for now anyway is the actual c128 a bit dirty from tons of use over the years, but still worked like a champ the last time she was fired up.

[Mikey]

I still remember, one of my fav games on the Commodore 128 was called Realm Of Impossibility on discette

Everytime I wanted to play it, it would take 22 minutes for that damn disc to fully load in

[livnxxxl]

I still remember, one of my fav games on the Commodore 128 was called Realm Of Impossibility on discette

Everytime I wanted to play it, it would take 22 minutes for that damn disc to fully load in

Load times were definitely a killer. Looking back at the pictures I can still hear the disk drive in my head making that grinding noise that is made when it was loading a disk.

[Shanester]

I started with a Com Vic20. I started my code writing with that one and had a tape drive for it (cassettes!). I remember upgrading to the C64 and shelling out like $400 for the 5.25" drive for it. I learned most of my code skills and early encyption on this machine.

I never bothered with the 128 as I was custom building by then.