December 3, 2009
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COMMODORE-64
I was a business machine technician in the fifties and sixties and worked on the old tube-type electronic computer equipment. Then from the seventies on, I operated computers and even helped design programs for manufacturing. But, I bought my first personal computer in 1982. It was a Commodore-64.
The C-64 was a groundbreaking computer and featured color and animation which was unheard of in a home computer. It used a regular television set for a monitor and was an 8-bit system with only 64kb of RAM memory. Internal disc drives hadn’t been developed yet, but I used a standard audio tape cartridge for input and storage.
Over 17 million C-64s were sold which is still the best selling model of all time.
Comments (2)
That’s old school. Being po’ folks, we couldn’t afford such things. I did take some computer programming classes back in the… early/mid 80s. The machine we used was the TRS 80. There were IBMs, too, but I prefered the TRS. Discovered programming was way too tedious of a process for someone with a limited attention span, too, lol.
The first machine I bought was an 8088 made by Zenith, of all people. I bought it used. It was outdated already by then, Windows had made it’s appearance. But… it was what I could afford. I think I messed around with that for… 6 to 9 months before buying my first Windows machine. (I screwed around with the insides as of the 8088 as much as I did anything else with it, quite honestly.)
Now I buy $3000 custom built machines from Alienware, lol. My, how times have changed.
Yes, a few of my teaching colleagues here in the UK had Commodores. I started with the ZX81 produced by Alan Sugar, with a 10k rampack. I used a cassette tape for storage, and since there was no verification in the system, I had to do triple tapings to be reasonably sure I had a good copy. On two occasions, at bedtime, my wife Madge pulled out the plug from the wall socket, losing over 3 hours work.
In 1983 I wrote a program database of the whole school population, with variables such as G for girls and B for boys. For students of German, I had to use the variable U (for U-boat !) I later moved on the the Amstrad computer with a proper keyboard, but still the telly as a monitor, and still having to write my own programs.