Comments on: Epic Win: Commodore 64

By: Razor

Razor — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:10:34 +0000

My parents bought me one of these but sad to say I could never figure out how to run the darn thing. I would mostly just switch the colors on the letters and type things in pretty colors.

We had a ‘Roger Rabbit’ game but could never figure out how it worked.

Poor neglected thing; I don’t know whatever became of it. I thought it was fun to play around with though, considering that the only other thing with keys in my house was an old cranky portable typewriter.

By: Badaxe41

Badaxe41 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:01:30 +0000

my brother bought me my C-64 for me when I was in the Army.. we had C-64s set up in the post library and I had games and even an Epyx Fastload Cartridge (I believe thats who made it) if you look on the web you can find emulators for all the Commodore machines for your PC. relieve those days again but DONT show it to the youngsters

By: Danny

Danny — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:04:23 +0000

This makes me want to cry. I miss the old days.

By: Taytay

Taytay — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:27:14 +0000

What is the first song in the video?

By: iami

iami — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:21:24 +0000

WE STILL HAVE THAT ****ING THING

By: dutchie

dutchie — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:36:32 +0000

I remember hours days and weeks of gametime, we had the c64 with powercardridge and floppy drive. We had some older neigbour kids that could copy ther games for us. we had like all the new games on floppy and for free !!!!. As technology goes on and computer nowadays have new great things, i still do miss the magic of the c64 stuff.

By: Nikki

Nikki — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:38:56 +0000

My mom and dad still have a monitor that works, we still play games on it to this day, mostly PS

By: Kelly

Kelly — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:46:37 +0000

I remember these. We played some kind of Olympic game on it, was basically a stick figure doing different things. Back then we thought it was so cool, now it is just sad that we thought it was cool back then.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:51:41 +0000

I remember getting one of these as an UPGRADE from my commodore 16. Never did get used to using the floppy drive. It was just too advanced for my uses. I preferred to retype all my lines of code to run my collection of self written programs. They did what they were supposed to do, but it would have been easier to do the work manually than to write the code and type it in each time you started the computer. Imagine my fright when I first experienced a computer with a HARD drive!

By: julie

julie — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:52:04 +0000

I had one of these but it wan’t until I got the SX-64, same brains but included a 4 inch color monitor and a floppy drive all in a portable (heavy) unit, that I got anything done. I carried the printer, a Commodore labeled Citizen 120D, in a briefcase in one hand and the computer in the other to and from work many nights. Using the manual’s basic instructions I wrote a phone directory program. Later I added the ability to print mailing labels. The software was cheap too!
I was surprised when I got a 8088 clone and couldn’t do as much. And I couldn’t carry it around either.

By: NDW

NDW — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:38:27 +0000

I remember getting the code for “hunt the wumpus” (anyone remember that game?) from this guy and spent days trying to put it all in and show off the finished product to my friends.

By: PChulpzutphen.nl

PChulpzutphen.nl — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:16:12 +0000

lol c64 owns!

By: Beanz

Beanz — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:42:03 +0000

And now, they have Micro SD cards, which are smaller than the size of a thumbnail and can store all the way up to 16GB of data… And it’s funny how we now think a 30GB is unusually small. I’m only 17, so I only remember days like when we got our FIRST 1GB HDD. All I could think was, “1GB! Holy cow, Dad! What are we gonna do with that!” I also have heard stories about when my dad got his first VIC20 and him saying, “What on earth am I gonna do with a whole 128 Kilobytes!? This is ridiculous!”

By: Lizzle

Lizzle — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:20:53 +0000

I’m totally too young to have had this. XD My first computer was some tiny black and white apple.

By: Fumiko

Fumiko — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:28:37 +0000

Still have a working one. Cassette player (and all tapes) are gone tho…

By: cannadie

cannadie — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:08:47 +0000

Omg…I learned how to type on a C64 of my grandfather’s. I still remember the prompt, too.

I spent hours playing Turtleland, Jepoardy, and Alphabet Soup. I typed papers on it, too. I can’t remember JANE and another company…I think it was BankStreet. I made banners and cards using Print Shop.

My grandfather had the one where you could switch between C128 and C64 if you held a certain key and restarted it.

By: kaptainkommie

kaptainkommie — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:27:31 +0000

win, win, win all the way

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:24:02 +0000

The 64 we had at home was light years beyond the Radio Shack TRS-80s we had in computer classes at school. The one thing I still remember after all these years is “SYS64738″.

By: J!

J! — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:35:05 +0000

Poll position!

By: Harui

Harui — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:05:03 +0000

Ack, I accidentally hit enter too early. I meant say…

OMG YES! I still have my Commodore 64, and it still works. In fact, I just played it about a month ago. I’ve got a nice collection of over 100 games, too. (Not sure on the exact count.)

By: Harui

Harui — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:03:24 +0000

OMG YES!

By: domorvedar

domorvedar — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:52:46 +0000

No need to JSR and then immediately RTS. Just JMP $FFD2 and you’ll be done with it, as the RTS at the end of the subroutine will take care of returning to the caller of this subroutine. Saves not only an RTS instruction, but also many clock cycles that would go into needlessly pushing and popping the PC from the stack.

By: StupidMan

StupidMan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:01:19 +0000

10 PRINT “(CLR/HOME)”
20 FOR I=0 TO 15
30 POKE 53280,I
40 POKE 53281,I
50 FOR J=1 TO 1000
60 NEXT J
70 NEXT I
80 GOTO 10

By: StupidMan

StupidMan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:46:34 +0000

Thou shalt have BLACK!

Ronnie

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:51:36 +0000

This was the first computer we ever had. I remember the keyboard and floppy drive all connected to a standard TV. I had a few games that were on the cartridges that plugged into the back of the keyboard: Delta Drawing, Kindercomp, some storytelling game where you named the characters, and it worked like a Dick and Jane book, and some spelling game involving a penguin and a train. I had a couple of games on the floppy, including another storytelling game dealing with some space race and another that was a piano-teaching game, with a plastic piano keyboard that fit over the actual keyboard. I never learned to play with that, rather I’d listen to the songs that were pre-recorded, and I’d try to play songs I had learned in school, usually by ear, and all of them terrible. We also had a few floppies that had a several games, but none of them were shown in the video above. I remember Ms. Pacman being one of them.

By: Beth

Beth — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:52:45 +0000

Never actually played this, but we still have it in my brother’s room.

By: Javin

Javin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:39:08 +0000

I was about to say that without “Ghostbusters” I couldn’t consider this an epic win, but then it popped up at the 9:00 mark! Epicest win…

By: Oddlyeven

Oddlyeven — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:29:11 +0000

unless you were a zit faced kid like me and you programmed whatever your parents bought
I learned to program on those “throw outs” and it propelled me into the successful career I have now

By: EvilPoliticians

EvilPoliticians — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:38:04 +0000

If you were “savvy enough” to program, you certainly wouldn’t have done so on a Commodore piece of junk. I learned to desolder with those throw outs.

By: Oddlyeven

Oddlyeven — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:55:34 +0000

10 Poke 53280, 0
20 Poke 53281, 0

By: Darinthal

Darinthal — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:26:03 +0000

The MOST AWESOME computer ever. I still have mine with it’s Dataset (Tape Drive) and I even have games for it. Yes it still works. Ahhh. The memories of getting the Commadore 64 Magazine and religiously typing out the programs that came in it. Being so happy when that pixilated baloon floated across the screen when it had compiled. Then carefully saving that program onto a new tape and being so proud.

By: LCP

LCP — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:36:46 +0000

Little Computer People and it was awesome. Of course, every version had a different guy, so I am too nostalgic to have another one emulated

By: halfmadgenius

halfmadgenius — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:08:40 +0000

My fiancee was able to get online with his commodore 64 a few years back. He had to modify it a bit. Built an expansion board for extra memory. Took 15 minutes for it to load Google. He has a Polaroid of it around here somewhere.

By: Artifex

Artifex — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:12:01 +0000

Yes! The ‘internet’ before spam and porn.

By: BigAl1976

BigAl1976 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:59:13 +0000

My family’s first computer – purchased not long after my family moved from Chicago to Jacksonville, FL. We had numerous games (and many I enjoyed, such as Below the Root, Archon, Park Patrol, and Jumpman).

By: Kendra

Kendra — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:12:29 +0000

Loved the C128 we had!!!!

By: fixman88

fixman88 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:33:29 +0000

The C=64 is absolute win! I cut my computing teeth on one back in 1986! One of my cousins ran a C=64 BBS back in 1994!

By: Dr. Optigan

Dr. Optigan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:00:12 +0000

Oddly, I had few problems getting GEOS up and running; ‘course, the disks I got had already been set up, so I didn’t have to mess with their oddball copy protection. Biggest issue I had was getting a printer to work right; once I figured out that a Commodore MPS-1250 in Epson mode would work with GEOS’ Epson FX-80 driver, everything went smoothly. Also had a cavernous 512KB RAM expansion unit as a RAM disk; once I copied my applications disk into that, I’d just double-click a file on the REU, and it and it’s associated program would open up almost instantly. Not bad for 1986 technology…

By: Azriel

Azriel — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:41:08 +0000

I had the Barbie game (getting ready for a date w/ Ken) and Donald Duck’s Playground… they were so much fun, I remember them clearly even though I was only about 3 or 4 years old. We had another game where you played as a guy in a house – kind of like an old-school version of the sims – but the house was only open on one side, like a dollhouse. I think he also had a dog, and they both walked up the stairs sideways because they weren’t programmed to face forward. I thought that was hilarious as a kid for some reason. I’m not sure if there was an actual OBJECT to the game or if it was just for BS. Does anyone know what it’s called? I also remember sending him to the bathroom, he would go in, close the door, and a few seconds later you’d hear water running and then a toilet flush.

I believe there was also a game where the screen showed a parrot, and when you would press a key he would say something. This *may* have been a regular PC game though, because I think I was closer to 8 when I played that, and I believe we had a PC by then. I can’t remember.

By: BravoOrig

BravoOrig — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:06:08 +0000

Ready.
Load “*”,8,1

and/or

Run

By: Dexaan

Dexaan — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:24:46 +0000

Hey, i remember that game, i kept running into the cats!

By: cgrymala

cgrymala — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:54:33 +0000

My brother had the “portable” C64 and I had the VIC20. We played the heck out of the games for the VIC20. My favorites (that I remember) were Radar RatRace, Congo Bongo, Zaxxon and Super Zaxxon (which, I believe, we played on the C64) and FLOG.

I distinctly remember playing our VIC20 cassettes in our cassette players and listening to the sounds that came from them. IIRC, they sounded a lot like the sound of a dial-up modem.

By: Rachel of Cyberia

Rachel of Cyberia — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:19:17 +0000

I must second all of this, except the datassette. I played the hell out of Radar Ratrace.

By: Outback Jon

Outback Jon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:28:34 +0000

I had my 800XL modded to 256k. Only the Amiga or ST guys had more memory than I did. Those 8 chips cost something like $80 when I bought them. Plus $50 for the “RamboXL” module that replaced the memory addressing chip. Since hard drives weren’t a reality for most home users yet, being able to load the OS and several programs into a RAMdisk so I would have instant access to them was a really wonderful thing.

A few years ago, I acquired a 130XE, XF551 floppy drive, and a couple more bits and pieces. I’ve got to drag them out and show my kids what computers used to be like…

By: CtothaM

CtothaM — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:42:13 +0000

That brought some meories back….I remember playing Impossible Mission for hours and never got anywhere. I didnt see my three favorites tho, Potty Pigeon, Nuts and Bolts, and that one with the magic carpet, and you had to ride it through the giant shapes.

By: regularg0nz0

regularg0nz0 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:45:13 +0000

POKE 53281, 0
POKE 53280, 0

By: Doug Glendower

Doug Glendower — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:33:51 +0000

The Commodore C=64 is the definative moment where computing went from business to personal. Anyone could come up with the scratch to pay for one (I did by saving my lunch money for the 1st Quarter of school) and it had a software library that dwarfed it’s competition.

Couple that with the sheer capability of the hardware and the ingenuity of the software developers, and it’s little wonder that this machine strode across the 8-bit landscape like the colossus it was.

Red Storm Rising, on the Commodore C=64, is still to me the Greatest. Game. Ever.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:19:34 +0000

I learned basic on my father’s C64. Still works!

By: Other side of the Fence

Other side of the Fence — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:53:07 +0000

For all you people that’s interested in the old games, there is an opensource project called OpenPandora. It’s a handheld about the size of am old Nintendo DS. It suppose to emulate all these old machine and consoles.

By: SallySweet

SallySweet — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:49:21 +0000

I still have mine (all except the monitor). It proudly sits in our video game room with all our other old systems.