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

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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.

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.

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...

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.

DOOM on C64 with variable height floor/ceilings

https://kweepa.itch.io/doom64

And my favorite, Quake on C64

https://kweepa.itch.io/quake64

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.

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!

Commodore expected both the VIC-20 and C-64 to have a shelf life of around 3 years. They were about right in the case of the VIC-20, but the C-64 kept selling about 700,000 units a year through the end of the decade and was still hanging on in 1993. It wasn’t selling well in 1993, mind you, and Commodore didn’t want to be making them by then. But there was still demand for them, and Commodore in 1993 wasn’t in a position to say no to a sale.

This reminds me of the Apple II family. It is well-known that even in 1984, Steve Jobs considered it irrelevant - despite the fact that it alone was providing the revenue that kept Apple solvent. The Lisa and the Mac had both landed with a thud in terms of adoption and sales, mainly due to being very, very expensive (and I'm sure in part because they only supported monochrome displays, until Mac II in 1987, which only got less affordable -- $10,000 in today's money). The Apple II series on the other hand, kept being sold -- schools and consumers couldn't get enough of them - demand that lasted until the last Platinum IIe (1993) and IIgs (1994) rolled off the assembly lines.

The Amiga seems to have been a similar story - Commodore trying to get people to adopt an unquestionably better PC well before the point in the cycle where it was as affordable as the previous PC they were selling.

It seems like there's a lesson here. Trying to drag the public to your "better" new product only works when (A) it solves a real problem for them, and (B) they can clearly see that it's worth the price you're asking.

In the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of people didn't see anything relevant to them that the Mac or Amiga (or the IBM PC) could do that a C64, Apple II, or Atari 8-bit computer couldn't do. Or at least, not nearly enough to spend 10 grand (in today's money). Eventually, relevant capabilities (I'd argue that multimedia CD-ROM software and then, the 'modern-day Internet' were those catalysts) and price both got things back into that sweet spot that "flagship" PCs had been divorced from since 1987.

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 still have an original C64 on my shelf beside me. Think I'm going to hook it up and play some games in honor of its 44th birthday.

Then as now it’s memory that matters.

Anyhow if you want a brand new Commodore 64 get it here:

https://commodore.net/

He asked me to help, so I dove into the owner's manual and jumped to the games you could type in - and subsequently lose when powered off - the cassette recorder came later.

I've been doing the same thing for 46 years now. Creating, marveling, and sometimes wanting to defenestrate the machines. :)

I used it up into the 90's. There was enough to do and learn with this machine to satisfy a young mind forever, but there was still that nagging inferiority complex that came from not having the latest and greatest.

Despite the fact that genuine hardware improvements have slowed down and software is stuck in the mud, it's easier than ever to get infected by the FOMO that drives the endless churn. But now, a little older and hopefully wiser, I perceive how pointless all that is. When it comes to how I use technology on my own time, I try to mindfully use only what sparks my own joy of learning and creating, and disregard everything else.

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

(Let me tell you, we were NOT going for the "heavenly points"...)

Years later, my first actual home PC was a "hand-me-down" VIC-20 with a giant box of unlabeled tapes which someone had painstakingly hand-typed from the back of magazines... (BYTE !)... my favorite game of all of those was AMOK.

Went missing during a move, then nothing until a 386... (my computing needs until then had to be met in school labs - Tandy's PETs and ICONs)

My school had a VIC-20, later an Apple II, and an enterprising teacher brought in a Commodore PET.

Later on, my friends had ZX Spectrums, Amstrad CPCs (not sure of the model), and lots and lots of C64s. A few Tandy 1000s and Cocos. I was always envious of the great games that they had.

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.

My friend had the breadbox one and i had the slimmer profile model. We spent countless weekends coming back from computer store with boxes of blank floppy disks and using a box cutter to put a notch to make them double sided.

Three pieces of software that are mind-boggling on that hardware:

1. GEOS and the whole suite (GeoWrite, etc)

2. The Last Ninja video game

3. Echelon video game

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.

... however (say what you will but chuckie egg wasnt on the commodore)