Memory lane
 

Vintage tech: Looking back at the Commodore 64 - News - PC & Tech Authority

I remember bringing home my powerful Commodore - 64 to replace my pitiful Commodore Vic 20. I had a 300 baud modem that was not even an autodial. It was technically illegal to use the modem since I did not call the phone company and register it. I got on Compuserve and ordered a pair of jeans in the early 80s. That was my first on-line purchase.

How many of you remember the days when NO ONE owned a phone? We all just rented them from the Bell Telephone. The one and only phone company.

And they were hard-wired.

...and on a "party line" with a nosey 'ole biddy as a neighbor (who like to listen in) :)

. . . . and we were glad to have it!

Yea, in the first house I bought there was one phone in the center of the house. There was not one other phone wire anywhere. I had to go to Bell telephone and pick up a phone that I had to rent. There was simply no other option.

That's nothing guys. I remember back before we had the wheel. It was a pain to get around. And don't get me started on the cuisine before we captured fire... :)

Seriously, I had a VIC 20 as a kid. My parents wouldn't buy me an Atari and I liked that you could at least get cartridge games for it. My dad tried to get me interested in BASIC, but I didn't like that you spent all this time writing a program, and it just went away when you turned off the computer. Later on my dad got a tape drive, but I seem to recall it took forever to store stuff and by that time I'd lost interest in everything but the video games.

I think it would be cool to take the old keyboard and use it to house a modern PC and an LED projector...

I grew up in a household that had the local telephone exchange switchboard. A couple of party lines had over 12 phones each, because they went 'way the heck and gone' up the mountain. A phone number might be listed in the book as 25-22: So when someone asked for that number, you would jack into the 25 line, and use the toggle to ring two long and two short.By age ten, I was entrusted with putting calls through. On Sunday mornings, when the folks went to church, I was the operator 'on duty'.
Talk about an early immersion in Customer Service!

"Number, please?" :D

Best
Les

Yep, we bought a C64 when I was about 12. I think my parents paid about $600 for the "keyboard". The floppy drive hadn't been released yet, so for the first few months we used
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...1530-c2n_1.jpg

Until the floppy drive came out. I think we paid about $400 for the floppy drive. Do you remember when you discovered that the disks were dual sided and you could just cut a notch out of the other side of the 5.25 to use the back side?

Yes, about the same time, we still had "rented" phones, except that my parents had a phone that we owned and plugged it in. At some point the telco called and said something like "you're only renting one phone, but you have 2 rings on the line" and wanted us to pay extra or something. I remember my parents plugging and unplugging the second extension to fool the telco for a while.

We also had a remote control TV that was not IR. If you opened a beer can, soda can or sneezed, the sound would sometimes trigger the TV to change channels. I never did understand that because the remote wasn't noisy when you used it.

http://krapps.com/wp-content/uploads...IIBoxFINAL.gif

Funny thing is...

there's an app for that!

http://theportablegamer.com/wp-conte...-1978-2009.jpg

The phone on the wall in my garage righ now was a phone that I bought from Bell when they finally started selling phones. It still works great.

I had/have one of these.

http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk/se...es/23_main.jpg

The New Commodore 64, Updated With Its Old Exterior - NYTimes.com

My first computer experience was learning to program in binary onto a paper tape at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania in 1967. The class was called Finite Mathematics for some reason. I found it fascinating.

Had one as a kid, and got one recently again.

Evel Knievel was my hero as a kid. :)

-Z

I had one of those as well, with the van for him to jump over.

Had a C64 as well. Programmed my own games and had lots of fun. even had my own cheat codes but was found out when I drag raced a Dodge Omni against a 426 Charger and won. My friend was both ticked and impressed at the same time. Of course back then I didn't have a way to simulate traction but we had weight, gear ratios, red line and torque curves in a sequential database on the disk. (and the hidden NOS button for me :) ) A good reaction time and shifting properly were the only interactions but it was fun in Jr High.

My first computer was a DEC PDP-11. No, I didn't own it, heck I couldn't afford the annual maintenance contract, but it was "mine" in the lab.

Cool, I had 3 or 4 different bikes IIRC. I think I had the stunt cycle and a chopper and another thing or two. Didn't they work either by a pull strap or by the hand crank (much better). I loved mine, but I think I was only about 5 at the time.

Tonka Trucks, Matchbox/Hot Wheels, and Evel Knievel stuff, those are the toys that I mostly remember from when I was 3-5 or so.

I still have a lot of my matchbox cars, but the rest is gone.

i had one and we too had compuserve..we had no idea what to do with it. it wasnt until 1990 when i went to college at a highly technical school that actually conducted an entire semester's class via email....

i still have all my C64 floppy discs including those coveted code breaking programs that you could use to copy games from friends. i wonder if they even work and what i can do with them? ive never had the heart to toss em in the trash

I had a 64, set it up and thought, what now??? Speaking of old phones anyone remember in a rural area your "ring" was like two short rings and a long ring. Always screwed me up when we were at my grandmothers house. I thought when the phone rang you answered it. Loved the old party lines...

I remember lusting after a USRobotics dual standard HST 14.4 modem. It was a speed demon!!

I bought that USR dual standard with my tax refund. It was over 500 bucks as I remember. I used it to run my BBS.

That modem was the size of a net book of today, a big external unit!

Our first computer was an Apple 2C, with the small green monitor, and then later a larger color one. My dad still has it, all packed up in the original boxes, etc.

Remember Summer Games on C64 and Apple? In order to run fast you had to move the joystick back and forth as fast as you could. LIttle did I know that would be a motion that would come in handy later on when I didnt have a date for a saturday night.

Bill

I played more than a few games on my C-64. I moved on to the world of DOS and then Windows I have not played a game on my computer since Windows 3.3.

I had one of these as a teenager:
http://www.spacious-mind.com/assets/...9-4a_large.gif
That's a Texas Instruments TI-99 4a - the first 'home' computer with a true 16-bit processor.

And speaking of DEC's - in college, I learned all sorts of stuff (PASCAL, COBOL...etc) on a DEC PDP-1170. Back then, GUI meant you sat on an old carmel candy bar. :eek:

-Z-man.

I had one of those too Z-man. TI/4A..... games weren't as good as Commodore or Colecovision

My first was one of these.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1325863975.jpg