Commodore 64 & Amiga computers coming back!

[blueoval]

What are these worth? I didnt see it

[Riksta]

Shav - http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64Select.aspx

$595 for the basic (you can get barebones for $250 but that's just the case basically, no internals) up to $895 for the Ultimate.

$US of course, but exchange rate isn't too bad at the moment.

The link tells the specs of each one and the price, too much info to make in a post on here LOL.

[Professor Farnsworth]

did anyone else ever program these things, or was i the only nerdy one? Porgramming in Basic was, very.. basic. I remember making sprites, jumbo pixel by jumbo pixel then putting them into horribly basic games.

[Riksta]

I remember programming them.

As a kid I used to borrow books from the library that had programs in them, that you basically (pardon the pun!) had to re-type yourself on the computer, a lot of them were simple games, but you could change parameters in the programming to change various facets of the game.

I also used to get magazines which would have various programs to type and try. Up to a few years ago I still had these magazines, I wish I still did.

I also remember typing on the main screen that would come on when you turn on the POKE codes to change the colours of the screen border & background.

Alas, all my old C64 equipment (about four disk drives, three C64 units, 1 Commodore monitor and a C128D machine) were thrown out by my parents back in about 2001 when I was living out of home. I remember the conversation when I moved out, it was agreed that the stuff could stay in a cupboard in my old room that I wasn't taking with me. Fast forward a year when I wanted the stuff, I called them to arrange to go pick it up, mum pausing and passing the phone over to my dad to ask - she didn't wanna be the one to tell me he'd thrown it all out!!!! I'm still angry about that to this day! Now my only retro computer is the old Macintosh Plus I bought when my school sold them off to us students in year 12 (1997) for $15 each.

[Professor Farnsworth]

Originally Posted by Riksta

I remember programming them.

As a kid I used to borrow books from the library that had programs in them, that you basically (pardon the pun!) had to re-type yourself on the computer, a lot of them were simple games, but you could change parameters in the programming to change various facets of the game.

I also used to get magazines which would have various programs to type and try. Up to a few years ago I still had these magazines, I wish I still did.

I also remember typing on the main screen that would come on when you turn on the POKE codes to change the colours of the screen border & background.

Alas, all my old C64 equipment (about four disk drives, three C64 units, 1 Commodore monitor and a C128D machine) were thrown out by my parents back in about 2001 when I was living out of home. I remember the conversation when I moved out, it was agreed that the stuff could stay in a cupboard in my old room that I wasn't taking with me. Fast forward a year when I wanted the stuff, I called them to arrange to go pick it up, mum pausing and passing the phone over to my dad to ask - she didn't wanna be the one to tell me he'd thrown it all out!!!! I'm still angry about that to this day! Now my only retro computer is the old Macintosh Plus I bought when my school sold them off to us students in year 12 (1997) for $15 each.

haha my year 12 was 1997, what a good vintage. I'm pretty sure my dad still has all those books you're talking about, where you re-type the programs. That's a shame your parents through it all out, the original stuff is worth a bit now.

[Donny]

I did a bit of programming, basic first, then had a rip at machine language..
I had a good teacher tho, I was good mates with the guys who formed Cockroach Software (Ralph, Stu and Cliff).. Got to sample and beta test all their stuff before it was released, an they used to burn me custom versions of the Turbo Roms.. Oh the memories..

[redxm]

Originally Posted by Geez Louise

I remember we had a PC that was from Dick Smith if I remember correctly. A VZ something or other...You would type in code forever and a day just to make a smiley face...

VZ 200 & VZ 300 are the beasts. Theres a fairly active following of these things still. A couple of emulators around as well.
In the end they ended up fairly sofisticated. 5 1/4 floppy with (wait for it) 80k capacity. 64k RAM, modems, joysticks, all the cool things.
In the day I reverse engineered a hack to allow text & graphics on the screen at the same time. Mate was around the other day and said he still had my old Orange screen display. (he chucks nothing out)

Ive also owned a couple of Sinclair ZX81's (1 kb ram, thermal printer etc)
Amazing what you could code with such a small memory
Had a few Microbees as well. They werent a bad bit of kit. They suffered terribly from the keyboard not working. Between me and a mate we fixed all the ones at school.

ahh, memories

[mik]

Originally Posted by Rodp

Never got the card - wasn't it basically a PC on a card..? I had a 500 and then a 2000 and was able to emulate some rudimentary crap through WB and software - but back in ~91, I didn't really care about emulating a PC. My 500 replaced my monochrome AT.

yep it was almost another small mother board........... it cost a packet too , i must confess i never used the pc part of it too much, being a learner at the time with my ambitions mixed up with my capabilities

[FGII-XR6]

Originally Posted by Professor Farnsworth

did anyone else ever program these things, or was i the only nerdy one? Porgramming in Basic was, very.. basic. I remember making sprites, jumbo pixel by jumbo pixel then putting them into horribly basic games.

been there done that spending hours going back ove basic code trying to find that missing stop or comma that was killing the program. frustrating but I must admit it was fun ( does that say something weird about me or what )
first thing I bought for my C64 was the commodore 64 programmers refrence guide, that was my bible

[flappist]

Originally Posted by rux

LOL! I remember overclocking a MicroBee! 2MHz to 4MHz!

Oh yeh the fearless Microbee.

I bought the "solder and swearing" version. It was HUGE fun.

[Professor Farnsworth]

Did anyone here have the turbo-loader cartridge? The red one that speed-loaded games?

[FGII-XR6]

I had one It wasn't red but it loaded things faster and gave various advanced functions , was worth it's weight in gold

[richo77]

Many hours spent playing Afterburner, 1942 and those olympics games that came in a pack with 6 tapes!

[Geez Louise]

Originally Posted by redxm

VZ 200 & VZ 300 are the beasts. Theres a fairly active following of these things still.

That's them. There is one for sale on Ebay at the moment with all the kit. Ends soon and is already at $172.00.

[Professor Farnsworth]

Originally Posted by au3xr6

I had one It wasn't red but it loaded things faster and gave various advanced functions , was worth it's weight in gold

Yes it was indeed! Games loaded ultra quick.

Originally Posted by richo77

Many hours spent playing Afterburner, 1942 and those olympics games that came in a pack with 6 tapes!

haha flashbacks.. i remember playing the pole vaulting one for ages

there was also a soccer game i used to play, forget what it was called.

[04redxr8]

Originally Posted by Spudz27

Last I checked the old commodore 64 was still in it's original packaging. Not sure the model we had but it was the one with the floppy drive. I tried to play it 12yrs ago when I was 15, but could not remember the code to load games. The whole thing booted up fine and read the disks, just couldn't remember how to load them and as I had no net back then I wasn't able to find out how, so it was boxed back up. I remember playing it quite often as a child. My pop also had one and whenever I was at his house I would play pole position or whatever the F1 game was. I always chose the williams car.

Edit: Realised we had the 1541 version.

This just brought back heaps of memories, Space Taxi, Ghost Busters etc. We had about 100 disks.

Damn you for making me remember.

It was- load"*",8,1

Street sports baseball, street sports basketball, and California Games,

There was also a submarine game that was pretty epic for its day.

[LTDHO]

"Press play on tape"

[Professor Farnsworth]

Originally Posted by LTDHO

"Press play on tape"

haha

still got a whole lot of tape games.. should sell them

[FGII-XR6]

Originally Posted by Professor Farnsworth

haha

still got a whole lot of tape games.. should sell them

I had the high performance edition with a 5 1/4" floppy never got the tape drive . bought a clipper to make the disks double sided when you cliped a notch out of the other side of the disk you could turn the disk over and use both sides, talk about hig performance mods

[FGII-XR6]

just discovered these they are now freely available for download from Commodore http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_..._reference.htm

[Professor Farnsworth]

haha gold.

We had a c64 with the tape drive, then we got the 128 with the external 5.25" 360KB floppy drive, then obviously the 128D had the intergrated 5.25" drive.

[FGII-XR6]

Originally Posted by Professor Farnsworth

haha gold.

We had a c64 with the tape drive, then we got the 128 with the external 5.25" 360KB floppy drive, then obviously the 128D had the intergrated 5.25" drive.

I went straight from the 64 to a DX2/66 with 1 Mb of ram and a 210Mb HDD had a sound blaster16 with a CD rom using the panasonic interface on the sound card and thought I was in heaven ( that was a real preformance machine in it's day I later over clocked it to 80Mhz) and would never fill that enormous HDD but I still played with the C64 till the day it died of terminal power surge after a blackout

[Professor Farnsworth]

you sure it only had 1mb of ram? my first IBM clone was a 386 sx 16 with 1Mb of ram, we ended up upgrading it to 4Mb, by inserting about another million simms lol. The DX2 was considerably quicker and in another generation of machines, it must have had more than that. The 386 had a 40Mb HDD. And yeah i used to love the first soundblasters.. we had the first gen mono version, then got the SB Pro later on. Man were they pricey back then.

[FGII-XR6]

yes came standars with 4 256K 30 pin dimms I later upgraded to 8X1Mb and it cost a fortune

[flappist]

Ah the good old days.

The first "professional" computer I sold was a Sperry fitted with:
8088 @ 7.16 Mhz
256Kb RAM
monochrome text only screen
10 Mb HDD
5.25" 360k FDD
MSDOS 2.11
Dot Matrix printer

and sold for $14,000......

[FTE72]

Originally Posted by uranium_death

This game is the main reason I'd want another Commodore 64...

Wizball!!!!
Sooo many hours spent on this awesome game.

[TheGTCoupe]

SYS 49152 anyone?

Ahh the C64 days where copying a simple file required hack S/W - ICEPIK
Where i got my first virus that wiped my floppy HAHA!

not to mention the bloody copy protection that banged your heads so hard it would knock out the 1541

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by Ducati888

Commodore 64? Can I put Chev badges on that?

I'd put apple badges on mine.

[Spanrz]

OMG, memories of "Fast Hack'em", "Street Rod" and "DOTC (Defender Of The Crown)" comes flooding back. LOL

After many years of sitting in the cupboard resting in dust, I finally got the urge to turf the C64. It was sentimental to me to get rid of it, but I finally got the gumption to do it.
Oh well... It served me well. And now you tell me this....lol! ;)

Best scenes I remember : Getting punk'd by the black mustang in Street Rod, Winning over the girl in DOTC and getting jiggy with her (lol), hacked a 'Monopoly" game. Changed all the words to a drug reference. We called the game "Marajanopoly". LMAO! Felt a bit Cheech and Chong-ish.

[FGII-XR6]

Originally Posted by au3xr6

I had one It wasn't red but it loaded things faster and gave various advanced functions , was worth it's weight in gold

this was the accelerator I used