alt Hacker NewsCommodore 64 released September 1, 1982
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I happened to be the oldest teen in a new subdivision, so I earned a bunch of babysitting money from parents who no longer had to drive 20 minutes to pick up and drop off a sitter for date night.
So I was able to pre-order the C64 before it was released, which earned me a "free" tape drive to actually store programs--the disk drive had to wait a bit. But my serial number was something in the 700s.
I programed it, even if I never became a programmer. But having early and strong intuitions about computers paid off for years to come, and set me up enjoy being an "early adoptor" of things to come, rough edges and all.
Ahh, the Commodore 64. I never had one. I had a TI-99/4A with a Forth cartridge, while my friends had VIC-20s and C64s. Such an odd and wonderful time to be into computers.
I managed to put together a decent Space Invaders clone in Forth that beat their Commodore BASIC version. I considered this an important victory and still have bragging rights when I see one of them.
Eventually my parents realized that, despite the disk drives and accessories we'd accumulated, the TI probably wasn't the horse to keep betting on. One trip to Radio Shack later, I had a decked-out original Tandy 1000.
I kept both machines until my last move, when a neighbor's kid spotted them and wanted to play with them.
That seemed right. Time to put them back in young hands and let someone else figure out what the hell they could make them do.
To whom it may concern, I believe the year was 1987 or 1988. (I was around 9ish, I think.) My brothers and I stumbled upon a Commodore 64 amidst trash beside a country road. In the box, even the manual was in good shape.
This was promptly carried home and plugged into the TV via coax, if I remember correctly. Sample programs from the manual were entered, and before long, custom programs were written.
The power brick was large and hot. My dad would not let me leave the computer on overnight. Nor did I have a disk drive.
I got good at typing out programs from memory. By the time I reached college, code (at college course level, as well as fast touch-typing) was generally easy, and I felt like my fellow students were learning what felt "natural" to me. (Unfortunately, this also instilled a bad habit of preferring the easy route, and never being a diligent, hard-working programmer. Not to mention... dropping out.)
This machine was definitely instrumental in my chosen career path! I did not own a proper PC until sometime early in college when I bought an IBM from my second roommate, and upgraded the CPU to a Pentium 200Mhz...
We had one when i was growing up.
I only did a very little Basic on it, my mom used GEos (writer)? to write up her masters degree thesis. In fact, I think it and a bunch of floppies are still up in our Attic ... i really doubt it still works if I were to plug it in someplace :D I don't think we had the first generation c64. I enjoyed alot of the video games, I would go to our local Target store and buy games on floppies, especially when they were on sale for like $4.99....
Edit: sorry I said Target, I think I ment Gemco (which is now the building the Target is in) :D
Back when writing 500 lines of code by simply typing it line by line from the "handover" booklet the C64 shipped with. Then running it and it magically made a frog-game appear where you hit "space" and the tongue of the frog needs to catch a fly. Then forgot to save on the 5,25'' disk and everything was gone. Good times :)
I got my C64 (actually C64C) when I was 7, switched to a PC five years later just as I mastered BASIC and was starting to learn assembly.
To this day I can recite from memory a rough memory map, say which POKEs to do to switch background/border/text colors to my favourite scheme (white on black), and name the addresses of a few basic KERNAL routines.
Happy birthday, C64!
I had a ZX Spectrum and learned Basic and played a ton of pirated games on that. My school had Commodore 64s - but I didn't use them much. They didn't really know how to teach for them and there was no hacking around allowed.
Somewhat relevant
DOOM on C64 with variable height floor/ceilings
And my favorite, Quake on C64
Being behind Iron Curtain I sold (well, my parents, I was too young) my Atari 65 XE + tape reader (which I received as a gift in 1988) and got C64 (the original ovalish one) with 1541 in 1990, it was bundled together with a set of hundreds (pirated of course, that was the reality back then) of 5 1/4" discs with various software and games. It was like receiving internet in a package.
Entering incantations like: "LOAD .... 8,1" (I don't remember the middle part). Or playing with assembly with LDA, STA (or same for X and Y) was fun.
Grew up in that era, I always wanted a C64 (I had a Spectrum and as much as we'd argue about the relative merits on the playground, deep down us Speccy users knew the C64 was better).
I still occasionally consider buying one but then I remember it'll just sit on a shelf collecting dust, better someone who actually uses it gets one.
I started coding on c64 when I was 10. I'm close to 50 now and still code but it was much more fun 40 years ago.
Got mine in 85. Still have it in it's (now tattered) box in the garage. It's non-functioning, but can't seem to let go.
The C64 was a tremendously hackable machine—you had so much control. And, IIRC, the clock was something like 900Khz but that still allowed (with the help of VIC and SID) all kinds of incredible effects in assembly. I'm grateful my parents bought us one.
I credit the C64 for setting down the computing path - fondly recall hours spent using BASIC and making my own games. Managed to stick with it when my mates were all getting Amigas but then finally convinced my parents to fork out (some serious £ back then) on a PC...but it all started with the humble C64, fantastic machine.
Anybody know what happened to the C64 serial number registry? Last I had checked it, which was a long while ago, I had the second oldest serial numbered machine on it (excluding prototypes). But I just went to look and the registry seems to be gone.
I never had a Commododore , but I had several other computers starting from around 1979. From that era , from arount 1975 forward there where often SEVERAL NEW different computers released each year. That include SBC Single board computer that was sold as the board , often without a power eupply or case and S100 systems and DIY hobbyiest build systems I still have most of books and magazines from that era, most of my computers , got lost, I still have a few.
Ah, that was the first one I owned. The little 1520 4 color pen plotter you could get was incredible. Printed on receipt paper. It was also eventually my bridge to the BBS world via the 300 baud vicmodem.
When it released, it cost $595 (back then, not in today's money), considering the price dropped to just $229 the following year, that was not a good buy when it came out.
I'm loving my C64U.
The original C64 got me into tech. The most accessible way to get into assembly / machine code. Those of the engineers who skipped that (including most in their mid-40s like me) just don't have that level of understanding of computers. It's a shame. I think that everyone should start on machines like this. Or even a level lower.
I was taught on how to use my new C64C since I was 5. My favorite games were Boulder Dash and Gridder (hence my hn handle). Good times
super cool!
I may be alone in this but I really grew to despise the C64. It represented frustration and failure to me. The basic was so limited, it did not provide access to the otherwise excellent video and sound hardware. Information pre internet was hard to come by, and I never discovered the assembler pathway. I wanted to do cool stuff with it but a kid in rural US had zero access to resources.
My biggest success was piecing together how to switch out character ram by comparing games in magazines when I was 13. Really impressed my father.
I have seen the date "September 1" be disputed on forums. Is there a credible source other than the book that the article refers to?
Blog poster's early computing history is remarkably similar to mine in terms of years/ages.
Got a C64 (with a 1541 disk drive) around late 1983 (when I was 10). Hooked up to a 13 inch CRT TV at first.
Got into games, computer magazines, magazine game listings (like the ones from old Compute!'s Gazette), taught myself MS BASIC and 6502/6510 assembly language, got into cracking games, got a 300 baud 1650 modem, got into BBSes (warez, chat sites like old diversi-dial systems, etc), figured out (out of necessity and long before you could 'google it') how to manually realign my 1541 disk drive because of early game protection systems, eventually moved up to an Amiga 500, pirated a copy of SAS/C (then later used Matt Dillon's DICE), got into hacking (the other, less legal kind) at first via wardialing and eventually found my way into X.25 and the early pre-web internet (bitnet relay, early irc, usenet, etc).
Eventually became a legitimate software developer which I've been doing professionally since the mid 1990s (bounced back and forth between various forms of unix and win32 for years mostly using C/C++, then a lot of Go/Java/Kotlin/mobile/embedded) and still do it now as we're all slowly being replaced by large multidimensional arrays of floating point numbers.
Long, strange trip.
Memory.
Then as now it’s memory that matters.
Anyhow if you want a brand new Commodore 64 get it here:
I had a C16 as my first computer followed by a C128. But for the latter the majority of time was spent in C64 mode. So I basically had a C64 in a nicer casing. Lovely times
Feels like yesterday.
changed my life
fantastic machine.
... however (say what you will but chuckie egg wasnt on the commodore)
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I owe my entire identity to this little machine. First laid my eyes on it in 1983, then unexpectedly got it from my uncle in 1984. It immediately opened my eyes to this new world of computer technology and sucked me right in.
Between games and writing first code in Basic, something magical was happening. Over the years it defined how I think, and ultimately who I am. Thank you C64 and thanks to everyone who worked on it