Commodore-64. The good old days?

We really liked the first season.
 
Got tired of this season after 3 episodes.

I was never allowed a knife.

Ahh, the good old days. I spent a fortune getting my first midi studio going on an Atari ST running Master Tracks Pro. You know, it was better at midi than anything I have now.. $500 for the program and it came on the new 3.5" HD floppy. But the 40 meg hard drive was almost $1,000.
 
Happy days. 

In 1983, I had an Atari 800XL, a 5" floppy drive, and a dot matrix printer. I even had the Atariwriter program, the word processing cartridge that Alan Alda did the TV commercial for. Anybody remember that?

Leadfoot
In 1983, I had an Atari 800XL, a 5" floppy drive, and a dot matrix printer. I even had the Atariwriter program, the word processing cartridge that Alan Alda did the TV commercial for. Anybody remember that?

I don't remember that but I had an Atari 800XL at one point, lovely machine. It was a nice change from my C64 because its BASIC had dedicated graphic and sound commands, unlike the Commodore which required you to POKE values into memory to access the hardware. Lots of classic games on the Atari - I spent many long hours with friends playing things like Solo Flight, Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer (I could listen to its fractal theme tune for ages). 

I remember when the first Playstation came out around 1994 or so. A bunch of us were high on mushrooms(!) and went over to the house of a friend who called to say he'd just got one. I'll never forget seeing Wipeout for the first time and thinking how utterly real and solid the graphics looked, it was like you could reach into the screen and grab them. So funny to look back at the first Playstation now and realize how lame the graphics are compared to today's games. The funny thing is though, the more realistic games became, the less interest I took in them. Back in the 8 bit days I used to love getting lost in those freaky video game worlds that were abstract out of necessity. I mean you couldn't have hyper-real environments, so you had two dimensional rooms full of platforms with demented penguins and shoes flying around trying to get you. It was trippy! If I want hyper-real, I go outdoors. 

bapu
We really liked the first season.
 
Got tired of this season after 3 episodes.

You will like the stories around Tangerine Dream, when Edgar Froese's book comes around ... assuming they have not been edited out, as Edgar had 10k jokes about computers knowing music!

craigb
Ah yes...  The Timex Sinclair!  Along with the Pet computer, the two least usable boxes because they only came with 1k(!) of memory!  Say what you want quickly, there's only 1,024 bits available! (maybe enough to print this reply - lol!).

Actually, the Timex/Sinclair 1000 came with 2K of RAM onboard and you could add a 16K memory pack to bring it up to 18K.
 
However, what you're probably thinking about is the original Sinclair ZX80 which came with only 1k of on board RAM. 
 
Timex licensed the North American version of the ZX81 in July of 1981 from the British Sinclair Research Co (which also had 2k on board RAM) and branded it the Timex/Sinclair 1000.
 
In '83 T/S came out with the 1500, but by then the market had already taken off with the Commodore 64 and the TRS-80 (fondly known as the Trash 80!).
 
of course, Apple was climbing the ranks at the same time with sales between the Apple II in '77 and the Apple III in '81.  My friend had an Apple IIE which came out somewhere in between those two.  we would stay up all night playing text based adventure games on it!

Your business card should include the title: Rocket Scientist.
 
It's one of the coolest possible titles next to Secret Agent, Brain Surgeon or Arch Villain.

Beagle

UbiquitousBubba
Your business card should include the title: Rocket Scientist.
 
It's one of the coolest possible titles next to Secret Agent, Brain Surgeon or Arch Villain.

I would add "Time Lord" to that list.

Whoa... You mean "Forum Host" didn't make the list? 

Funny thing, I have a shirt that has "Rocket Scientist" on it.  I bought it on a visit to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center.  "I had to have it".  LOL
 

Leadfoot

sharke

Leadfoot
In 1983, I had an Atari 800XL, a 5" floppy drive, and a dot matrix printer. I even had the Atariwriter program, the word processing cartridge that Alan Alda did the TV commercial for. Anybody remember that?

I don't remember that but I had an Atari 800XL at one point, lovely machine. It was a nice change from my C64 because its BASIC had dedicated graphic and sound commands, unlike the Commodore which required you to POKE values into memory to access the hardware. Lots of classic games on the Atari - I spent many long hours with friends playing things like Solo Flight, Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer (I could listen to its fractal theme tune for ages). 

Man you blew my mind with Rescue On Fractalus! I forgot totally about that game. When I first played it I freaked out when the astronaut that I thought was running to my ship suddenly popped up in front of the window as an alien! I also used to play Joust for hours...flying around on ostriches. Who in the world thought that game up? And yeah, I can remember sitting there with my BASIC manual, and making the Atari do little tricks that seemed so cool at the time.

I believe Rescue on Fractalus was made by Lucasfilm Games and the hype at the time was that it was the first video game to use a fractal based landscape (hence the name). They followed it up with The Eidolon which had similar graphics but was set in some underground caves. I have a vague memory of it but it involved some kind of colored crystals and scary dragons would jump in front of your craft and scare the bejesus out of you. 
 
These games had an atmosphere and a feel to them which is missing from today's multi-million dollar productions. This was largely because the technological limitations of the machines meant you had to use your imagination to fill in the gaps that were left by such low resolution graphics. This took you into a kind of weird, abstract world in your head. Kids aren't getting this any more because every last detail of the world is set in front of them in glorious technicolor which doesn't leave anything to the imagination. 
 
Another reason why these early games were so cool is because they were either written by lone coders or by very small teams. They were full of the personality and quirks of individuals in contrast to today's games which feel like they were designed by a committee. There were some genuinely quirky individuals out there churning out code and they all had their own cool personality. In the UK we had the likes of Jeff Minter, who was obsessed with llamas and Pink Floyd and whose drug-influenced psychedelia made its way into some wonderfully quirky games (Attack of the Mutant Camels etc), and Andrew Braybrook who made some beautifully bizarre and fabulously original games like Gribbly's Day Out and Paradroid. These guys were also very accessible to the video game media and would frequently give cool interviews or write game design diaries for computer magazines. I'm pretty sure I called up Jeff Minter when I was a kid to tell him that Pink Floyd Live In Pompeii was on TV 
 
 

POKE 53280,x to change the border color
POKE 53281,x to change the background color
 
I will never forget these numbers, ever. 
 
SYS7 would crash the machine.