This is my Commodore 64 that I received for Xmas 1983. I LOVE it and use it the most out of all my Commodore computers. It sits on the desk I built for it in 1984 in 11th grade woodshop.
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I bought myself a c64 with disk drive, monitor, and printer late in 1983. Had it in the trunk of the car and got rear ended on the way home. Smashed it to bits…. So I never really got a chance to spend much time with one. Ended up getting a Mac in Jan of 84.
OMG I would have screamed, then cried and then freaked out! Did the person who hit you not have car insurance or if they did have it did it only pay to fix the car and not broken contents?
Learned to write machine code on a COSMAC Elf CDP 1802, and a 6502-based KIM-1. Told my youngest who is about to graduate from Engineering School, I learned and forgot more languages than he'll ever be exposed to. Programming in Fortran or C on the Amiga 1000 was a blast. Gave the A1000 away. 😭
Man, I loved my C64. Was actually the seed of my career in IT. When I was at school, 80s (UK) you could only be in 'computer studies' if you were in the top maths set (I was not). I wrote a 10,000 line BASIC adventure game on that C64 (hobbitesque txt) and it blew the computer studies teacher away.
I got mine the same year when I was a junior in high school. Very cool that you kept yours. Spent many long weekends writing programs that seem simple now. In the 80's I always preferred to save to tape instead of diskette because the tape could store more.
I will have to start looking for that one on eBay! I still have my WICO and EPYX 500XJ from the 80s and both still work GREAT. Here are a bunch of other joysticks that came with the MANY Commodore computers I bought for my collection starting in late 2021.
GEOS was very good on the C64! It was even better when I bought the Commodore 1351 mouse that was for the C64 and C128. I was able to stop using a joystick to move the pointer around and use a proper mouse. This video is from April 1, 2022, and show GEOS running.
Amazing! I miss my C64. My ex, threw it away in the 90s. I split up with her a few days later. Just cos I wasn’t using it, didn’t mean I wanted it in the bin. Was like losing my childhood.
Maaaan... That year I was coding on a Timex Sinclair 1000 (ZX-80 outside the US). All you Commodore showoffs... just because you had color screens and games and disk drives you thought you were sooooooo cool. (I totally don't have a chip on my shoulder about this.)
LOL. The C64 is my 2nd computer that I got on Xmas 1983. I bought a Timex Sinclar 1000 in 1982 for $99 then a 64k RAM addon from Memotech for $149 & then a full-size keyboard addon $79. I LOVED my TS1000 and had $327 in it. In sept 1983 Commodore dropped the C64 from $595 to $229 in a one HUGH cut.
WOW!! $20!! I don't remember them dropping that low but just like the C64 started in 1982 at $595, I got it late 1983 after its 1st price cut which was HUGE taking it down to $229. I know it went down a few more time over its years of being sold (1982-1994). Here is the rest of my 8-bit collection.
I had a tape drive. Wrote my masters thesis on one that was older than this. I find it hard to believe anyone would want to use it now. But I guess some people still write on typewriters too.
Those are such great memories! The Commodore 64 is such an iconic piece of technology, it's amazing that you still treasure it. It's like the perfect combination of nostalgia and personal achievement! 😊
I feel that ALL the time!! That is what should be our dining room. I have to walk through it MANY times a day and it literally puts a smile on my face all the time.
LOL RIGHT!!! My wife has been asking for the dining room table back for 3 years. We now eat on TV trays for real. We live in a TINY house. we each had part or our SMALL 2nd bedroom for our hobbies. She crafts & had 2/3 of the room leaving me only 1 short 10ft wall. She now has that room PACKED!
Yes, I Falcon Patrol 1. It is one of my almost 400 game play videos. They are all around 2 minutes long so too long to post here. They are on my X and YT channel.
Such fond memories of our Commodore 64. We were one of the first houses on the block with a computer, and had so much fun playing games on it. Favorites were Summer Games, MULE, and Below the Root.
Yes 8 & 9. 8 is fixed but the 9 has 2 switches added and be set to 8, 9, 10 or 11. Here are my "Backups" from the 80s and in all that time I've only had 2 or 3 stop reading. Second photo are my drives so you can see I have backups if any go down.
That is VERY cool! Has to be really good memories. Do you know what grade you were in? I was 17 when I got mine in 1983. I wrote so programs in BASIC on it and played LOTS of text games one it. I have never tried Logo.
I think I was in 4th grade. We were taught BASIC programming too but barely recall any of it. Logo sticks to my memory because of the amount of left and right instructions you have to put in it, along with the degree of angle it had to turn to create an image 😅
I vividly remember writing a BASIC program on my C64 that drew a map of the orbits of all the planets in the solar system. But it took a mini-eternity to run.
Later I got a cartridge for it that ran a painting program along the same rudimentary lines as MS-Paint. Had lots of fun with that.
No that is a VIC-20, and I was showing my C64 from Xmas 1983 that I still have. But I do have a VIC-20. It's my 1St one and I got it late in 2021. here it is.
I bought many sold as broken or "As is" at a cheaper price and then fixed them after watching 2 years of 8-bit computer repair videos. I had never soldered in my life and taught myself from all those videos.
Back then I spent a long time delivering newspapers so that I could afford my C64.
It was not enough for the monitor or floppy drive though. I had to use my parents' TV and my Datassette 😂
Here is my 1-hole punch from 1984. It still works great after 40 years. I bought it right after I got my 1st 1541 in Feb 1984. Here are my disks from the 80s. In 40 years only 2 or 3 have stopped reading.
Is this the model (or one of the models) where you can programmatically change the memory mapping? I was fortunate enough to borrow one of these from the library for a couple of days, and reading the manual it seemed that this was something one could do, which my Altair definitely could not!
I wish the C64 I was handed in 1993 was still around. It sadly stopped working in 1999. I used it frequently. It's how I learned how to program.
I do, at least, have a 1702 again.
It holds a special place in my heart. It was used as my personal color tv, even when I got a color tv. I hooked everything up to it. I would have the VCR in the front AV port and my NES hooked to the VCR. Even with "better" CRTs out there, this was MY crt.
The 1st computer I bought myself was a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982 for $99 with money from my part time job at McDonalds. Here is my 1st ever VIC-20, I bought it in late 2021.
In 1984 the C64 was like $229. I went to school with a doctor's child and he would brag about how his dads IBM computer with monitor and printer cost 20K. IS that in any way correct. That was so much money in 1984 that I figured it was not true.
I recall my PCjr being around 500, but it’s been 40 years so my memory may not be accurate. As I was in high school, I doubt I paid much more than that!
Seeing this reminded me of the fact that there's people SO passionate about these computers they're making new programs and games for it in the 2020's - 40+ years after you bought that computer! It's my favorite bit of computer trivia to tell people when discussing older media ~
That how you get a follow from me. I was a Tandy Colour Computer kid in the 80’s.
Set up in the old house. Didn’t realise how much fun 8 bit days were.
Um! I think I need to reveal a situation where stepson learnt all his programming “skills” using this wonderful model. To such success for breaking in & copying games for distribution. Now Microsoft technician for private school preventing students getting into mischief on Internet.🫢🤫😎
Here is my "Backup" from the 80s. 40 years and only 2 or 3 disks have stopped reading. Here is the copy software I used many but had at least 10 different one. Here is the rest of my Commodore 8-bit collection.
I still love that game! Made a game play video of it not too long ago. My almost 400 game play videos are around 2 min each so too long to post here. They are on X and my YouTube channel.
Little known fact, for the game show "Bumper Stumpers" eight Commodore 64s were used to control the monitors and display the license plates. I know because I ran them 🙂
I was about 25 when the show started. There was a large custom black metal box about 2'x2'x2' with 7 computers (+1 spare) and one used as s controller. I have the original H/W docs which goes over startup process & how it all works. It's hard to remember after 37 yrs.
Here is my 1st ever VIC-20. I got it in late 2021. I lived in Bamberg West Germany 1986-1988 and did four 30 tours guarding the boarder at boarder Camp Hof. I was a 19D scout.
I had a datasette from Xmas 1983 until I got a 1541 disk drive for my birthday in Feb 1984, so 2 months I used a datasette. Here are 2 that I know have.
I had one of these as an upgrade to my VIC20. Ordering games on cassette tape from the back of a magazine and waiting for them to come in the post was great. Also...Jeff Minter and llama soft, genius.
Mom and Dad gave us a C64 for Christmas 1983. I remember Dad mentioning that the floppy drive alone was $800 (CAD). I think the monitor was similarly expensive.
Question? What is a Commodore 32? A PET with 32k (they came in 8k, 16k and 32k) or do you mean a VIC-20 and a 32k addon RAM cartridge. Here is my PET 2001-N and my VIC-20.
Hmm. I thought I had a computer called a Commodore 32 but it doesn't appear that they ever made a computer called that. It must have been a 64. It's been a long time. My mistake.
I see a Commodore-16 beside it :-) I absolutely loved that machine and wrote some articles for UK mag Your Commodore for it. A 6502 assembler was the one I was really proud of as a 13 year old author. I discovered girls a couple of years later and the articles stopped abruptly :-)
We have had one with that sigh since I was a child (58 now), well they tore it down last month (not the sign) and have already poured a new floor and have the building framed. I can tell this one is going to be only 2/3 the size of the old one. Must be a smaller eating area.
I had one as a kid in the 90s! I struggled remembering the prompts you'd have to type to launch games after putting the huge floppy disk in. Pitfall/Hot Wheels loved it.
I started learning to program in BASIC on a VC20. RAM was something like 4kb; In Germany the VC was the abbreviation for “VolksComputer”, an analogy to VW? Maybe
Here is my VIC-20. Here is the rest of my Commodore 8-bit collection. I lived in Bamberg West Germany 1986-1988 while in the U.S. Army. During my 2 years there I did four 30-day border tours at boarder Camp Hof.
Wow, mine are long gone. I had two C64s, a monitor, tape drive, two floppies and a 300 baud modem. All circa 1983. Now I have four Macbook Pros back to 2012 and about a dozen raspberry pis lol
Memories. First computer was a TI-99/4A. Had the speech synth, but not the tape drive. Wrote a bunch of basic programs that vaporized as soon as we turned it off.
Wow, this takes me back. The C64 was our followup to our Vic 20, and I remember thinking what a leap that was! Many, many hours of Archon and Impossible Mission were played, 8, 1.
I remember being a very young Rebs and playing on a C64.
Little Computer People, Barbie, Mission Impossible, Family Feud.. and a bunch of other games.. and the printing paper >.> I'm sure there were other games too, but each one had very neat handwriting in color coded sticky labels.
Little Computer People is one of the VERY FEW games that I owned a Store-bought boxed copy of. The rest were "Backups". I was not allowed to use my printer after my parents went to bed because my bedroom was right above theirs, I'd have to wait to the next morning to print.
Prior to getting a C64, I had a Vic20. Learning some tricks, and armed with a tape drive, RAM expander, and disassembler, I was able to tweak "Cosmic Cruncher" to give me 255 lives. You could then easily get to the last unique level. (The secret bonus widget there was the Commodore logo 🙂)
Not sure about the Commodore but my Atari had both a "high resolution" black and white monitor or a simple coaxial cable going into the antenna jack of any TV if you wanted color (and had a color TV)
I’d have been one of those people haha. I liked a few games on the C64 but the Amiga was everything to me as a kid. I was incredibly lucky to have one growing up.
This is an instant follow. Got my Vic and then C64 in the same time frame. Learned 6502 assembly and made a life out of it. I built me desk with my father in 82'ish too.
I wish I still had my 86 model from my childhood, but it was handed down to the kids of a family friend along with all the games. I recently bought and framed a motherboard from the same model, to remind me where I came from (I’ve been a professional software engineer for a quarter of a century now)
This is my 2nd computer. My 1st was a Timex Sinclair 1000 that I bought for $99 in 1982. I wish I still had it! I had bought a Memotech 64k RAM addon and a full-size keyboard. In 1984 I traded it all for a used 1541 disk drive so that I would have 2 of them.
Now that's a beauty! Bet it was nice with a full-size keyboard. Totally understand you selling them for a 1541. I sold mine towards a Spectrum (then a C64 later).
It was so nice going to a real keyboard. Also as soon as Commodore dropped the price of the C64 in September 1983 from $595 to $229 in its 1st price cut which was a crazy price drop! I got my mom to put on in law away for my Xmas gift.
I LOVE this game! It's one of my almost 400 game play videos that are on X and my YouTube channel. They are all around 2 minutes long so to long for here with its 1 min max. Here is one of my 2 Datasette.
Here is my VIC-20 with two VIC-1541 disk drives. They are the same drive as the 1541 that are with my C64. All they did was take away VIC and make the case match the C64 Breadbin.
I am so envious!! I so badly wanted one of those, but could not afford one. I ended up starting my programming career on a Texas instrument TI 99/4A that I got at Sears for $50 on closeout. It was a pretty amazing machine, at least from my view! ❤️
OMG I also got a brand new boxed TI99 in 1985 or early 1986 when TI got out of the home computer business. The said it was to concentrate on calculators, but Commodore cut their prices so cheap that they couldn't sell them not at a loss. Mine was at JC Pennies. I end cap with a HUGE stack of them.
Oh gosh! I 💙this! I learned to love gaming playing Kings Quest, Space Quest & Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Yup, I’m old but also taught myself how to find code fails testing for MZ, when they were still Addmired. So much fun.
The one single bit of advice from my parents that I ignored that I shouldn't have was "whatever little bit of money you get from selling your Amiga/NES/Atari/etc won't be worth it, and later on in life you'll regret it"
RIGHT!!!! So MANY game systems traded in for the next one for only pennies on the dollar. I did keep the N64 & Wii. PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox360, GameCube all gone!!! I have an XBox One S (S was a bit later and gave 4K), a Switch, a bunch of handhelds and I just bought a PS5.
I used several of them at work. Which was in the hospital setting. I used the far left for about three years, then it got upgraded. lol you brought back memories. Thank you.
No but looking at this model it is very similar and good old green font lol. I worked in the medical revenue department and we had to look up or query certain data from Medicare. Please believe me Medicare health insurance still use that program. Omg crazy but it works lol
My high school sweetie would sit at the kitchen table in his mom's apartment making/playing? games on a Commodore while I watched in amazement. Those were the days.🥰
You must have had money dude! I would kill to go back then and get a head start on computer science. I would probably be donating millions to causes I care about, like buying politicians and lobbyists!
I got mine as soon as they came out, late 82 or early 83, loved swriting programs on it but very frustrated with the limitations of BASIC after using FORTRAN at school and uni! Also did lots of travel booking using EasySABRE on AOL. Thanks for bringing back the memories! (pic is of my wife using it)
I like how he deep dives into all the hidden stuff on these machines, like 80-column mode, different color pallettes, memory expansion, etc., and uses testers and adapters by small makers to do it.
My first computer was a C64 in 1983 for my birthday. Upgraded from a 1530 to a 1541 by Xmas that year plus got a modem and a real monitor versus using and old color TV we had laying around. Wrote my first BBS two years later. Got my modem taken away in 6th grade for phreaking. Fun times.
SWEET!!! Here 4 of my photo collage/data sheets. I made them for each of my 12 Commodore computer models, drives, monitors and accessories. I LOVED my VICMODEM and when I finally up graded to the Commodore 1200 a few years later it seemed crazy fast being 4X faster.
I bought one of those. Brand new in box in 1985 or maybe early 1986. TI had just got out of the home computer business. They were sold as close out. I got mine for $50 from a HUGE end cap stack at JC Pennies.
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They caught the guy though, his front plate ripped off in the accident and had a piece of our car embedded in it.
Still mad at that guy for hurting my poor C64.
Summer Games 2, World Games, California Games, Skate or Die, in-between bouts of Elite, Paradroid, and more.
#goodtimes #retrogaming
Those are amazing
I still have Amiga.
Had to connect the C64 to my parents' TV and only the tape recorder you mentioned below.
But had the 'turbo loader', so games would load faster 😄! And the best joysticks 🕹️🕹️ in the world: The Arcade
It puts modern computers to shame.
* viewable area is 2 inches.
Got the plain model. No storage. Had to retype programs on every boot.
Dad finally had to get an IBM PC for work. Disk drives!
GFX, tho (CGA) - still had nothing on the competition.
Especially Machine Gun 🤩
Later I got a cartridge for it that ran a painting program along the same rudimentary lines as MS-Paint. Had lots of fun with that.
I've thought about buying marginal- or non-functional units and embedding Raspberry Pi. Not the same I know, but I'd just like to have mine back.
Rich snoot 😜
It was not enough for the monitor or floppy drive though. I had to use my parents' TV and my Datassette 😂
But later I bought my disk drive, a puncher and a pack of 10 1/4" disks. 💪
A game changer!
I meant 5 1/4"
I do, at least, have a 1702 again.
My family's first home computer was a Commodore VIC-20, alas it is long gone.
I still have the first computer I bought myself, an Atari 1040ST with a massive (physically, like the size of a turntable) 20Mb hard drive.
The first computer I learned to program was an Olivetti P101 in HS.
All the other computers I’ve owned were versions of PC DOS/Windows.
Set up in the old house. Didn’t realise how much fun 8 bit days were.
That's awesome and I might be a wee bit jealous.
How times have changed....
The sauces were coveted by all; employees took them to go etc.
I live in Nor Cal and there aren’t many here so when I travel I always grab a sandwich.
Appreciate you sharing!
Little Computer People, Barbie, Mission Impossible, Family Feud.. and a bunch of other games.. and the printing paper >.> I'm sure there were other games too, but each one had very neat handwriting in color coded sticky labels.
I wasn't allowed to use the printer at all... However, I was allowed to tear (very carefully) the strips off once something was printed.
Breathtakingly awesome.
Learned basic on it