Anyone here remember the Commodore days?

[mego73]

Did I remember it? Vic 20 and Commodore 64 was part of my family's livelihood back in the day. My father created computer games and sold them for the Commodore Vic 20 and 64.

They included Snakman, which was just like Pac Man (of course)



Pinball Wizard

and a couple others.

We made them on floppy and cassette and in the basement using about 12 Vic-20 or 64's. They sold quite well for a while.

[Hector]

Video Toaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

During the early 1990s the Toaster was used quite widely by many desktop video enthusiasts and local television studios and is even used during The Tonight Show regularly to produce special effects for comedy skits. It was frequently easy to detect a studio that used the Toaster by the unique and recognizable special switching effects. Also all of the external submarine shots in the TV series seaQuest DSV were created using Lightwave 3D, as were the outer space scenes in the TV series Babylon 5 (although Amiga hardware was used for all 5 seasons and in the following spinoffs like Excualiber). The fact is that the Amiga is still beign used to make movies like Iron Man and the game by the same name. Even Mac Format magazine is made on an Amiga a A1200 as said by the Editor and Chief ,"Macs cant handle the power we need." The list goes on. In summary the Amiga is still being used in alot of places

[Hector]

Ah...the Amiga. I remember it went hand-in-hand with the Video Toaster...that made for an excellent editing and video graphics machine.

[Bo8a_Fett]

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.

yeah on nthe London Underground certain stations still use pagers for updates on travel news...it's so annoying

[cjefferys]

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

Oh yeah, Realm of Impossiblity was a great game, very fun. It was an early Electronic Arts game (they made some really good video games even back then). That program I mentioned above really helped with load times. Cut them in less than half.

Some of my other favourites were:

Bruce Lee
Raid on Bungling (sp?) Bay
Space Taxi
H.E.R.O.
Toy Bizarre
Archon
Winter and Summer Olympics
Impossible Mission (although I could never figure out the whole puzzle thing, probably because I didn't have the instructions!)

[megoscott]

VI used to love playing the old text only adventure games(By Scott Adams?).

Yes, that was how I made my fortune before writing Dilbert.

[steshell]

Vic 20 was my first computer too, I used to love playing the old text only adventure games(By Scott Adams?).

I upgraded to a C64 and can remember paying a fortune for my external disk drive. I used to go into the local electrical stores and type a few lines of BASIC(Peeking and Poking) into the display models, filling the screen with different coloured stars. My mates thought that I was some kind of programming wizzard and I never let on that I had memorised those few lines of code and couldn't do anything else!!



Steve

[EmergencyIan]

Yeah, I had a C-64 and C-128. We used them some at school between '85 and '88, but I mostly played games on them. "Kung-Fu Master", "Winter Olympics", "Pogo Joe", "Dr. Jay vs. Larry Bird" and "Airborne Ranger" and another basketball game were some of my favorites.


- Ian

[Brue]

the vic 20 was my first computer. i learned basic on it and wrote several games - and a mortgage calculator.

i kept it until i decided it wasn't worht tinkering with AGAIN to keep it going.

i think i have the handwritten programs i wrote somewhere still.

i had a GORF carteidge - I LOVE THAT GAME.

I also had Radar Rat Race - a rip off of Rally X that played 3 blind mice over and over with one note wrong. - another gresat game.

i wanted to get compuserve in the 80's but never got it done. i didn't get on line until 1994 (though no one was on the www before 93.

[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.

[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.

[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 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.

[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.

[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.