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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on May 07, 2010, 03:18:50 AM
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What was your computing like before Amiga. Did you think the mouse was for lazy people? Did you program your own Basic games? Memorize about 100 different keyboard shortcuts?
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I've been chasing the ace since day one. As soon as I could afford expansions and "better stuff" for my Vic-20, I bought it. I remember having the RAM to type in, save and use VIC-40 in an issue of Compute (messed with the video display to get - you guessed it - a 40 col. display).
Other than Run/Stop and CTRL, I didn't know any keyboard shortcuts.
Same with my C64. When GEOS rolled around, I got a 1531 mouse and used it in joystick mode to get an honest-to-goodness GUI on the system. Loved it, wrote many papers with it in highschool.
Oddly enough I sort of went retro when I got a PC and really started using the web. VI, rTIN, Lynx and other shell apps on the dialup ISP I worked for...well it was a given you'd have to memorize keyboard shortcuts there.
Once I got Netscape, WinSock and Windows 3.11 to play nicely together...heh, that was all she wrote.
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Programmed BASIC games on my TI-99/4A. Moved to programming on the C64 in BASIC and 6502. Went back and learned some TMS-9900 on the TI. Then went on to program in just about any high-level language I could get my damned hands on. Never programmed on the Amiga, though I really want to -- just need time.
I loved my 1351 mouse. Had one before I got GEOS, and even wrote some programs to use it. Tried to make it work with my TI with limited success in joystick mode. Although today I find I can get a lot more done and more quickly in a CLI or shell, provided the right commands exist.
Keyboard shortcuts? Just about every punctuation on the TI was a FCTN key. Not sure if that counts. Then there are all the C= key shortcuts in GEOS, Amiga key shortcuts, and so on.
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Here in Mexico 1985, our family got a bare C64. My older brother, wasted half of his saturdays typing programs that where printed in Ahoy and Compute! (a Mexican magazine for 8 bits computers). Me and my little brother, waited until he finished and played together at 1 am on sundays. At last, all the happiness went away when the 64 was turned off.
This happened for half year until my father bought the Datassette and we could store these programs.
A year later, we got the 1541 (second hand) and a new world began.
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Yes, yes, and yes! ;)
What was your computing like before Amiga. Did you think the mouse was for lazy people? Did you program your own Basic games? Memorize about 100 different keyboard shortcuts?
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load "vic-20!"
press play on tape
searching
found "vic-20!"
loading
ready.
run
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Before Amiga I was an Atari 800 guy... I can remember being exstatic about finally getting that 88k floppy drive! and the 16k upgrade... with the 800XL, the big deal was doing the 265k RAM upgrade and getting HD like performance from the ramdisk. I did some programming in Atari Basic, and Action!, a language that existed nowhere else. I used it to write this WYSIWYG lable printing thing which was so huge, it couldn't run on the machine with the Action! cartridge plugged in. (Compiler in a cart, wow!) So I dragged out my old non-XL 800 and hooked it up to the Atairi's serial peripheral bus in a crude networking setup. Compile the program to a real floppy, than boot the other computer from it to test the latest changes...
fun times. ;-)
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I had an Amstrad CPC 464 and then 6128.
Had a Genius Mouse for Advanced OCP Art Studio.
Programmed in BASIC, and Z80. Good times. I wrote some fun things back then. Don't get the time these days :-(
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This happened for half year until my father bought the Datassette and we could store these programs.
:eek:
Im glad I was able to buy a second-hand c64 that came with a datasette :) at first I only played games, later on I started programming some basic. it wasnt much good though, but then I was only 8 years old! I still have some of the programs and games I wrote back then :) had some fun with koalapaint too, but never owned a mouse.
I bought my a500 a few years later, which totally changed my life. (that sounds more geeky than I wanted)
btw, you keep coming up with questions like this. they are quite fun, I'd say, but is there a special reason behind it? or did I miss something :)
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I've started with a TK85 (ZX81 clone wiht 16Kb of RAM), moved to TK90X (Spectrum clone) where I learned assembly and then I´ve played a little bit with friend´s MSXs.
My uncle gave me a 486, and then I sold it to buy my A1200 :D
I really loved to play with the TK90X. Gaming, programming, I did everything. Amazing machine, good times...
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First machine was a Commodore Plus/4 with Basic 3.5!! Although the machine did not have the gaming capabilities of a C=64, there was lots of free memory and extra basic commands, also machine language monitor built in! Programmed on my own, typed in stuff from Compute's Gazette. Software was hard to find. Lived with a tape drive longer than I wanted to. 300 Baud Modem and Higgyterm got me on all the C=64 BBS's! Saw an Amiga 1000 demo'd in my computer science class by two fellow student and knew that my world had changed.
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Started with an Atari 600XL. Then bought a C64 and 1541 disk drive. Still remember LOAD "*",8,1. Loved the C64 and used it for a good number of years until I finally bought an Amiga 500. After that there was no turning back.
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Memories! :) I remember getting a Coleco Adam computer, followed by an Atari 65XE, Commodore 64, Amiga, 500, then finally an Amiga 2000.
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What was your computing like before Amiga.
Before Amiga I started off with a Vic20, then migrated to the C64.
Did you think the mouse was for lazy people?
No, I actually was amazed by the mouse, and quite a bit jealous. I wrote my own "mouse driver" on the C64 long before I migrated to Amiga myself. That also got me to think a lot about GUI's (a concept completely unknown to me back then)...
But what *really* amazed me as a kid (for a child I was) back then, was the "light pen". Do you remember that concept? ;) And later came those pistols for games, based on the same concept...
Did you program your own Basic games?
You bet! :)
And later machine code directly (not asm) through some cartridge I think (was it Final Cartridge III?)! I almost completed a real demo (with ripped music) of my own! (or rather several, I started up a lot of projects that I never finished off. The story of my life!)
:)
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Started on ZX81 then a C16 then an A500, then an A1500 and finally an A4000D. Moved to the PC to get on the Net as it seemed so much easier than on the Amiga.
Weed
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I was slow to jump on the Amiga bandwagon. My first 8-bit was a C64 in December of 1982. I used it until it died and then bought a C128. I programmed in BASIC and Assembly most of the time in those days. My most notable program was a 300 byte raster interrupt that interlaced the screen sideways to get 320x200 multicolor graphics. It doubled the memory consumption of the graphics also though so I never published it.
I was starting to get really frustrated with the way that software was dwindling for the Commodore 8-bits when I was in high school. I made a list of all the features I wanted supported in a new version of GEOS for the C128. The list included an API for raster interrupts, character-graphics support on the OS level and sprite multiplexing.
I finally got an A1200 in 1993 when I started college and was very happy with it despite Commodore going under in '94. It had everything on my list or better. (The raster interrupts were not nearly as good as the Copper coprocessor.)
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Before Amiga I was an Atari 800 guy... I can remember being exstatic about finally getting that 88k floppy drive! and the 16k upgrade...
I was also a Jay Miner 400/800 guy. I tried to design and build a 64K memory upgrade; it did work, but the machine would 'only' see 32K, which still was twice what most others in my user group had! Then I used $600 of my college student loan money to buy an ASTRA 1620 double disk drive - one of the best investments I ever made :)
I still have it all somewhere, including the Action! cartridge, the dot matrix daisey-chain printer, and a direct plug in modem. And Star Raiders projected onto a wall at night still rocks!
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So no-one started out on a PC or Apple II? I suppose the monochrome graphics and speaker that goes "beep" was not something to impress your friends/family with.
I started out on the Vic-20 and I liked typing in and tinkering with the Basic games. I got my first go at text adventure, there was a haunted house you had to go into in the game.
My aunty&uncle, had an old PC with trackball you could play stick figure games on and various brainteaser games.
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I was also a Jay Miner 400/800 guy. I tried to design and build a 64K memory upgrade; it did work, but the machine would 'only' see 32K, which still was twice what most others in my user group had! Then I used $600 of my college student loan money to buy an ASTRA 1620 double disk drive - one of the best investments I ever made :)
I still have it all somewhere, including the Action! cartridge, the dot matrix daisey-chain printer, and a direct plug in modem. And Star Raiders projected onto a wall at night still rocks!
Cool... I still have most of my Atari stuff in the storage bay. A couple weeks ago I came across the label printing program I wrote in an online archive... so I had to try it out in the emulator. It was a hoot to see it again after all this time. I only wrote it as a hack to make some nice labels for the user group xmas disks.... but everybody kept asking for the program so I polished it up a bit for general use.
Never did much in the way of hardware design for the Atari though. Got my fill of that with the homebrew Z80 system that came before the Atari. That was one ugly POS. ;-)
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Here in Mexico 1985, our family got a bare C64. My older brother, wasted half of his saturdays typing programs that where printed in Ahoy and Compute! (a Mexican magazine for 8 bits computers). Me and my little brother, waited until he finished and played together at 1 am on sundays. At last, all the happiness went away when the 64 was turned off.
This happened for half year until my father bought the Datassette and we could store these programs.
A year later, we got the 1541 (second hand) and a new world began.
Hi is it very hard to get Amiga parts in Mexico?
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Started with a Timex/Sinclair in year one. Went to TI99/4A system, and learned some BASIC. Then on to the C-64, C-128, then Amigas.
Through a fluke, I don't have any C-128 at present. Anyone want to trade a working C-128 system for a working 2000HD?
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My first computer was a ZX81 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81) in 1981, what a horrible little computer ;)
Keyboard like a lump of plastic (which is was), black and white and no sound. As I could never get the cassette games to load I had to type in the code for each game I wanted to play from the games magazines which had the code for each game listed. Can you imagine anyone doing that to play a game these days!
:)
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My first computer was a ZX81 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81) in 1981, what a horrible little computer ;)
Keyboard like a lump of plastic (which is was), black and white and no sound. As I could never get the cassette games to load I had to type in the code for each game I wanted to play from the games magazines which had the code for each game listed. Can you imagine anyone doing that to play a game these days!
:)
Have you ever played 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81? i heard that was a cool game on it :)
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Before Amiga...
Texas Instrument TI99, Atari 8Bit (Atari 600XL), C64, 128.. and offcourse Amiga 1000.
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Have you ever played 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81? i heard that was a cool game on it :)
Yep that was meant to be one it's best games but I never played it because I couldn't find a cassette player that would actually work with the computer (a common problem), unlike Commodore products it didn't come with its own official cassette player.
The longest game I ever typed in was called 'Swag', it took me about 4 hours to type that sucker in (16k) and only got to play it for about 10 mins because I was told to go to bed :)
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My first actual computer experience was in school.
There was a guy who would come by once a week after school and setup his all-in-one (Kaypro???) and we could use it.
We'd get to write small BASIC programs during the week and try them out when he showed up.
They had to be small, we had to type fast, and we made sure it worked. No time for debugging.. ;-)
I finally got a Vic-20 a bit later (The C64 had been out long enough for the Vic-20 to really drop in price) and a tape deck.
Only 3 and a half K, but it was AWESOME... Writing my own programs.
I eventually bought a 300 baud modem..
22 column modem fun.. ;-)
Eventually went to a C64 (it was a refurb from DAK, and had a slightly cracked case, but worked and we could afford it).
The first computer I bought (although I was the primary user of the family's Vic-20 and C64) was an SX-64.
Loved that thing. Even used it for word processing (Fleet System 2) in college and Pascal.
(I remember I had missed the part in the Pascal manual that mentioned that variable names could be X (8??) characters long, BUT it only recognized the first 2 characters. Dang, that messed me up till I figured that out.. Remember kids, read the manuals!!)
After a bit tho, I sold my SX-64 for my first Amiga 500.
(Actually I used my first credit card for my Amiga 500, I sold my SX-64 for the monitor and 512k RAM expansion. With the interest rate on that card and how long it took me to pay it off, no telling what I actually paid for that thing.. But it was still worth it.. )
desiv
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I remember wanting an Atari 400/800 back then (probably for Pac-Man) but my family got a C64 instead. At school they had Apple II's and some TI99-4a's, both of which I did some BASIC programming on. I got a lot of use out of the Commodore. Besides games I did word processing, graphics with OCP art studio (and the Bill Budge pinball construction set oddly enough), animation with Movie Maker, and some game programming in BASIC and Gary Kitchen's Gamemaker. Tried out GEOS for a brief period too. When I got my first Amiga 500 around the end of 1988, the C64 stopped working soon afterward, which I attributed to jealousy.
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We didn't actually get a computer until 1993, when I was seven or eight. It was a Mac IIcx that I think my dad must've got through a discount at the Hennepin Tech, where he worked, because that was the only computer we actually bought until 2000 - in between, we got another 68k Mac as a hand-me-down, and a Pentium II machine as a gift from relatives. (My dad, as you may guess, is a bit of a cheapskate.) I tried to get into programming on both platforms, but was continually stymied by the lack of good development tools (not like today where you can just download Dev-C++ or FreeBasic and get going!) I developed an interest in the C64 after reading about it - it had Basic built-in, it must be a perfect machine to program on, right?
Yeah, I didn't actually do any reading about Commodore BASIC before getting one :laugh1:
Anyway, even though the BASIC sucked, the machine itself was intriguing, and it got me reading up on Commodore, where I heard about the Amiga, which sounded basically like what my beloved old Macs would've been if you were allowed to get your hands dirty. I didn't actually get ahold of an A500 until 2001 (talk about late to the party!)
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What was your computing like before Amiga. Did you think the mouse was for lazy people? Did you program your own Basic games? Memorize about 100 different keyboard shortcuts?
Nope, the mouse was always a great thing when coupled with software that used it. I had a mouse on my Amstrad CPC which I used with OCP Advanced Art Studio - a major improvement over using a joystick or keyboard to draw with!
However the computers were far more simple - but at least they were instant-on. I typed in many a type-in from magazines (I got a full back collection when I got my second hand Amstrad CPC 464) and then wrote my own BASIC games. I eventually progressed onto Z80 assembler, but not to a deep level unfortunately.
The Amiga arrived (second hand 1.2 A500) and DPaint and AMOS (and then Blitz Basic 2) were too good to ignore.
edit: wow, thread necro, didn't realise i had answered this two years ago :p
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Yep that was meant to be one it's best games but I never played it because I couldn't find a cassette player that would actually work with the computer (a common problem), unlike Commodore products it didn't come with its own official cassette player.
The longest game I ever typed in was called 'Swag', it took me about 4 hours to type that sucker in (16k) and only got to play it for about 10 mins because I was told to go to bed :)
Yes that sure was a long time typing to get to play for 10 mins :)
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I had a hand-me-down vic-20 until about 1984 and then we bought the full blown C64 w/ floppy and monitor. That was a great setup in 1984-85. Purchased various add-ons like light pen, did a lot of painting & sprite graphics. At the end of the run I was using a combination of MLX program and learning some assembly on it. I was still using it until about 1989 - for term papers and the like. I had seen an A500 over at a friend's house and decided that perhaps save the Sega Genesis, that there was no machine with a keyboard that came close to the Amiga. Unfortunately I did not have the cash to get an Amiga until about 1990. So in essence the Amiga already had its launch and was doing moderately well while I still had my c64. In 1991 I had a PC/386 along with the A500 so I had good games and decent compatibility through that period.
The rest is history because I had an A2000 and purchased an A1200 shortly after.
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Weird. Just one guy "played with a friend's MSX".
MSX was really popular in Brazil when it was forbidden to bring technology from outside of the country. Maybe it was easier to clone than an Vic-20 or a Commodore 64.
AFAIK it was also very popular in the Netherlands.
My first one was a MSX1 Brazilian clone.
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Sinclair ZX81 - my 8bit days were spent typing in BASIC, hoping each time the power plug wouldn't wobble and lose it all... While dreaming about thinks like Colour Graphics and Sounds!!
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First machine was a Commodore Plus/4 with Basic 3.5!! Although the machine did not have the gaming capabilities of a C=64, there was lots of free memory and extra basic commands, also machine language monitor built in! Programmed on my own, typed in stuff from Compute's Gazette. Software was hard to find. Lived with a tape drive longer than I wanted to. 300 Baud Modem and Higgyterm got me on all the C=64 BBS's! Saw an Amiga 1000 demo'd in my computer science class by two fellow student and knew that my world had changed.
I had its 'little bro' Commodore 16. There was a serious lack of software and this forced me to learn programming - at least - BASIC, and performing middle-difficulty tasks like redefining character set to code very simple games. Amusing.
Then I moved to the C/128. I felt the need to play C/64 games, but I didn't also like the idea to loose all my BASIC skills, so I started programming in 128-mode some GUI-driven utilities, the most difficult of them being a 80-column word processor using the 40-column mode of the VIC-II chip. I couldn't afford a 80 column display at the time. I stopped using my own editor when I could buy a Philips CM8833 monitor, though.
Then I bought an A500 and replaced it with an A1200. They were my last Amigas until I "amigized" my AspireOne A150 netbook with Icaros Desktop.
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Started with a TI-99/4A then a C64 in 1986. The music video station "MuchMusic" was running a contest called "Win a music video station", first prize was an A500 & 1084s plus a video camera, VCR, and some kind of electric keyboard. 2'nd to tenth prizes were A500 & 1084s. Before the draw Canadian Tire (yes they sold tires AND computers) had a big sale on the A500 so I bought one. A few weeks later my name was drawn and I had two A500's and a 1084. I kept the one with the 1 meg Agnus and sold the other.
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The headmaster at my old school allowed us to use his new PET4016 which the schoolboard supplied to him without any instructions. He had no use for it so he let a few of us mess around with it during the lunch break. A couple of the guys had VIC-20s and one had a ZX-81. After checking out both models I asked for a VIC-20 for Xmas along with the C2N cassette unit. I still have memories of the ZX-81 owner desperately fiddling with the volume control on his tape deck to load programs. That horrible keyboard was also enough to put me off. I managed to pick up a second hand "Super Expander" which gave me "Hi-Res graphics", some extra basic commands and 3KB more RAM.
A few years later I was faced with either upgrading to a C64 or a Spectrum. I stuck with Commodore (along with the other VIC users) while our ZX-81 using friend went with the Spectrum. I managed to expand it with Simons Basic, a floppy drive and a MPS801 dot matrix printer (my Spectrum using friend got a thermal printer which used sheets about as wide as toilet paper and was almost unreadable).
I finally snagged a display model C128 from a highstreet store just before I switched to the Amiga. The Amiga killed my interest in 8bit for a long time, but now I've recently bought a PET8032 (with some floppy drives), a C128D and I have the Chameleon64 plugged into a C64C.
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Are you guys kidding?
I'm still using one 8 bit computer.
I've got an Atari 130XE with a Hitachi 63B09E processor,
installed via this adapter:
http://www.cloud9tech.com/
Antic is a little cruder then a Color Computer VDG as it steals CPU cycles, but it also supports sprites and other graphic functions not available on a Coco.
Its been kind of fun playing around with this and a Sega Genesis gamepad.
Eventually, I may create a few games or a simple GUI.
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Are you guys kidding?
I'm still using one 8 bit computer.
Just one?
Still have a Vic-20 and C64 (OK, the C64 is broken at the moment, but it did work when I got it.).
Also have an Apple //e and //c.
And I have a Tandy Model 100 (8K only).
I use all (except the C64 obviously) to varying degrees.
Mostly the Vic-20 and //c.
I enjoy my Amigas the most, but the 8-bitters are still great!
desiv
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Just one?
Still have a Vic-20 and C64 (OK, the C64 is broken at the moment, but it did work when I got it.).
Also have an Apple //e and //c.
And I have a Tandy Model 100 (8K only).
I use all (except the C64 obviously) to varying degrees.
Mostly the Vic-20 and //c.
I enjoy my Amigas the most, but the 8-bitters are still great!
desiv
Yes they sure are :) i still play on my Commodore 64 a lot, but also Nintendo Nes and Sega Master system. Cool 8 bit Consoles
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10 TI$="000000"
20 IF TI$ < "000010"USED TO TYPE A LOT";
30 IF TI$ = "000010" THEN PRINT "THEN GOT A MOUSE BUT STILL TYPE";
40 WAIT 525,1 : POKE 525,0
50 END
Ill try to make it short, fast forward.
It all started with a VIC-20 then C64 used the C64 for a long time then I started getting all kind of brands besides Apple (apple never got my interest) and never stuck to anything until Amiga 1000, used the Amiga as main system for many years, then I wanted a A500 for my TV so got one followed by 600 and 1200 I bought a Commodore PC-20 III that I still got but still stuck to the Amigas until forced to use PC as main system.
Edit: Well got most game consoles also, the funny thing is that I never bought any Atari ST only the early 2600 and 5200.
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Hi is it very hard to get Amiga parts in Mexico?
Well there is basically no local market at all for amiga stuff here... every once in a while you find some ad... but people here have a tendency to ask for some really ridiculous prices...
The best way to get stuff is to buy directly from the web (amiga forums, amibay, eBay, etc.)
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I remember them days.
They were days in solitude, but cool nonetheless.
I remember when a kid on my school bus gave me the first cracked c64 disk of 5 or 6 games, I know donkey kong was one of them. looking at the dir of the disk, it looked like they just somehow copied the hunk of data from the cartridges... anyway, it was fun figuring out how it all worked. I went from saving out sprite data to disk - and writing BASIC routines to grab certain sprites from disk. Then I wrote my own routine for rewriting characters.
Compute!'s Gazette published MLX, which allowed you to enter machine language programs and save them. I learned some assembly after that... Now that I think of it, those were my most developmental days as far as computers were concerned...
When I finally had an A500, I started to get familiar with C.
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Just one?
Still have a Vic-20 and C64 (OK, the C64 is broken at the moment, but it did work when I got it.).
Also have an Apple //e and //c.
And I have a Tandy Model 100 (8K only).
I use all (except the C64 obviously) to varying degrees.
Mostly the Vic-20 and //c.
I enjoy my Amigas the most, but the 8-bitters are still great!
desiv
Just Five?. :p
I still have, 5 C=64, 5 C=128, 1 C=SX64, 3 C=Vic20, 1 Atari 600XL, 1 Atari 800XL, and many Disk Drives, and many stuff for them. Long Life to 8bit!
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Sometimes i even think the Commodore 64 makes better music than the Amiga in some games.
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The curse of sample-based trackers - you assume that samples must sound better, because they are actual recordings of real instruments, but you can still get bad samples. The worst thing is when they're out of tune! You could only get an out of tune synth by doing it on purpose. And then having to squeeze those samples down so your mod will fit in 512k of Chip Ram alongside all of the rest of the game, so you reduce the sample rate and get horrible aliasing, and/or you shorten them too much and loop them badly so they go "dingdingdingding" or "pop pop pop".
The irony that so many good mods made liberal use of 64-byte waveforms, vibrato effects and arpeggios...
However, now there's dubstep...
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I had an Atari 800XL and used to program it in BASIC. I taught myself by experimenting with the code of those type-in games that used to come printed in magazines. My friends all had Spectrums and C64's.
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I had an Enterprise 128, which nobody else had ever heard of. Games were hard to come by, but I played a lot of text adventures, a shame really because it was technically much better than the Spectrum. It became mine eventually after my dad got his Amiga 500.
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Never owned an 8 bit, but a friend of mine had a C64, which we got a lot of fun out of.
It seemed like a massive step up from his Atari 2600.
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Oh we also had a Mattel Intellivision. Maybe it is off topic because technically it was 16 bit! Well the CPU was anyway. It was a General Instrument CP1610. But the graphics and sound had 8-bit souls.
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Oh we also had a Mattel Intellivision. Maybe it is off topic because technically it was 16 bit! Well the CPU was anyway. It was a General Instrument CP1610. But the graphics and sound had 8-bit souls.
The TI-99/4 and 4A are also driven by a 16-bit CPU (TMS-9900,) but Texas Instruments crippled the system. Only the 256 bytes of "scratch pad" CPU RAM is 16-bit, the rest of the system is 8-bit with a decoding which inserts wait-states and has a deleterious effect on the performance of a machine with a 3.3MHz CPU. Coulda been a contender... thought it's pretty amazing what's been and is being done with this old cripple.
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Sinclair ZX81 - my 8bit days were spent typing in BASIC, hoping each time the power plug wouldn't wobble and lose it all... While dreaming about thinks like Colour Graphics and Sounds!!
My first intro was actually a ZX80, but the first machine we owned was also ZX81, rehoused in some sort of breadbox style keyboard into which the 16K RAM pack also fit.
After that it was the ZX Spectrum, 48K rubber keyed glory!
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I was in the first programming class my high school offered. Basic on a mainframe connected via a teletype and acoustic modem. Stone knives and bearskins. ;-) Although technically, that was a 48 bit system.
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I loved my c64. I knew about cobol and fortran because my father worked with IBM workstations. I'd heard something about that 10101010 strange language called machine language but i never went deep with it. I had my commodore basic books and i learnt from there about sprites, system calls and so on. I used a lot basic to write math quiz games with sprites resembling geometrical shapes (data, data, data, data, data :D ). I remember i even bought a fake cover keyboard that covered c64 keys resembling a piano keyboard to play with. Today I love heavy metal but i didn't know that those sid music i used to listen (i was about 10 years old) over and over were deep purple tunes!
The first time i saw an amiga, it was about 86/87. It was a strange machine with strange disks and strange colours (i called them "dead colours" because i didn't know how to define colour shades, opposed with simple brilliant colours c64 games had.) I saw it in a Commodore Computer Club i belonged to and it was an a1000 running a game. I was very disappointed by that strange machine, but in meantime i was totally fashinated by it.
I remember I was with a friend of mine saying something about the fact that the colours were ugly...
In a couple of weeks since that day I bought a 1.2 kstart a500 with logistix, superbase and so on...
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The TI-99/4 and 4A are also driven by a 16-bit CPU (TMS-9900,) but Texas Instruments crippled the system. Only the 256 bytes of "scratch pad" CPU RAM is 16-bit, the rest of the system is 8-bit with a decoding which inserts wait-states and has a deleterious effect on the performance of a machine with a 3.3MHz CPU. Coulda been a contender... thought it's pretty amazing what's been and is being done with this old cripple.
Indeed. It's sad, really - the TMS-9900 would've put it so far ahead of any of its contemporaries that it should've done so much better than it did...only the C64 would've stood a chance against a properly-designed TI-99, and that mostly because of the SID and VIC-II...
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Never owned an 8 bit, but a friend of mine had a C64, which we got a lot of fun out of.
It seemed like a massive step up from his Atari 2600.
Yes there was quite a leap from Atari 2600 to Commodore 64. Maybe it is time you got one now with Datasette :) i still play on mine i got from my dad in 1992 and i have all the Tapes and most of them still work after 20 years
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My first computer was an Apple IIc. It came with dual floppies and monochrome black/green monitor. I got a hold of the Basic manual and dinked around with making programs but the best I did was crash the school's Apple network. Kicked out for a month... :roflmao:
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My first intro was actually a ZX80, but the first machine we owned was also ZX81, rehoused in some sort of breadbox style keyboard into which the 16K RAM pack also fit.
After that it was the ZX Spectrum, 48K rubber keyed glory!
So you got a ZX81 with a proper keyboard? That still seem like some kind of upper class luxury from where I'm sitting... Oh?!? What and 16k?!? Posh bastered ;) x
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So you got a ZX81 with a proper keyboard? That still seem like some kind of upper class luxury from where I'm sitting... Oh?!? What and 16k?!? Posh bastered ;) x
Didn't the 16KB RAM pack cost twice as much as the actual computer?
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Didn't the 16KB RAM pack cost twice as much as the actual computer?
No idea, I was MUCH too poor to afford one then! Though I do have two ZX81s now both with 16k ram packs :)
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Just one?
Still have a Vic-20 and C64 (OK, the C64 is broken at the moment, but it did work when I got it.).
Also have an Apple //e and //c.
And I have a Tandy Model 100 (8K only).
I use all (except the C64 obviously) to varying degrees.
Mostly the Vic-20 and //c.
I enjoy my Amigas the most, but the 8-bitters are still great!
desiv
No, I've got several (and i've disposed of many more - including an MPM system I should have kept), but I only use the modified 130XE and a seriously modified Coco3.
I've also got some HD63C09EP and some WDC65C816 processors sitting around waiting to be used in retro projects.
8 bit is still fun to code on.
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Indeed. It's sad, really - the TMS-9900 would've put it so far ahead of any of its contemporaries that it should've done so much better than it did...only the C64 would've stood a chance against a properly-designed TI-99, and that mostly because of the SID and VIC-II...
Yep, I was really fond of the VDP in that unit.
Its a shame that TI didn't take advantage of the fact that it could do video overlay.
Many sprite boards for the Apple II were based on that component.
I even had one (and a sales offer from TI), while I was investigating building a similar overlay board for Tandy computers.
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It was good in the MSX1, as well, and had a great upgrade path with the 9938 in the MSX2. I never did like the PSG much, but that's mostly because it absolutely pales in comparison to the SID, whereas the VDP is more of a fair contender against the VIC-II that just has its strengths and weaknesses in different areas...
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My first machine was the rather obsure piece of technology from Australia, called "Microbee". It was a 3.37Mhz Z80 based computer, with 16Kbytes of RAM, and a
rather unique feature with allowed the computer to retain all data in RAM, even after being shut down. The computer used static RAMs, and has a rechargable battery pack (three AA cells) which kept the RAM alive when the machine was turned off. It was also able to generate a rather high resolution of 512x256 (monochrom) for a machine in its class.
Other then that, it wasn't a very interesting system, it has a two-tone beeper for sound, but a rather expanded & easy to use BASIC. As the pack-rat that I am, I still have all my Microbee stuff, I keep thinking about taking it out & copying the various basic program I wrote to a PC for safe keeping (currently sitting on tapes).......but who know when that's going to happen!
Back in the early 1980's, after seeing War Games for the first time :), I asked by parents to buy me a computer. They agreed ,and bought one from the local (and only) computer shop at the time, however, they didn't know anything about these new fangled "computers", and went with the one recommended by the store owner. I remember the store also had a TI-99/4A, a few Apple II clones - yes, clones, would you buy something called "General 64"? :), a Microprofessor, Dragon 32, and a few others. Well, the Apple II clones where around $2000 (without a screen or disk drive), and I guess my parents went with the more "affordable" system. They've could have done worse, but the Microbee basically had no support anywhere - you couldn't walk into any computer store and find Microbee related HW/SW. I couldn't even find any books for it, and everything I taught myself was from the original owners manual that came with it.
I took a BASIC course, offered at the same store BTW, and tought myself to program. I also dissected the programs that came with the machine (on cassette tape), and figured out how to do certain things. Eventually, I found a source for more Microbee related items, but had to travel about two hours to the actual importer, which was a tiny home converted into an office. There I had another 16Kbytes soldered it (while I waited), and added a 9-pin brother dot matrix printer - all for the tiny sum of $400. I also bought another book, which gave me more insight into BASIC, and especially, the graphics capabilities. I also learned that they were in the process of "converting" apple disk drives to work with the Microbee, but that never happend before the machine disappeared from the scene (if there ever was one).
I played with the Microbee for a couple of years, until the C64 came out. At that point my parents couldn't afford to buy another computer, so I just bummed off my friends who did have the new/amazing computer. Afew years later, I was able to get a C128 system, which I used for a few years, then sold got an Amiga 500.
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Ah, I've read a little bit about the MicroBee. Have you seen the upgraded revival kit version? (http://www.microbeetechnology.com.au/index.htm)
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Before Amiga, it was a Commodore Pet in the high school computer class. It was all basic programming. At least, half-way through the semester, the school added 5.25 floppy disc drives. The Amiga 2000 was my first home computer.
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So you got a ZX81 with a proper keyboard? That still seem like some kind of upper class luxury from where I'm sitting... Oh?!? What and 16k?!? Posh bastered ;) x
Nah, it was some sort of after market keyboard case you rehoused it in. It was big, fat and unashamedly ugly. However, it was rather easier to type on.
We inherited the lot from my uncle, who previously owned the zx80.
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For those of you who lament the mis-use of the TMS 9918A and compatriot VDPs used in the TI-99/4A, you should check out the F18A, which is an FPGA replacement of the 9918A with new capabilities and even its own GPU. (Yes, the TI is now capable of multi-processing.) Check out the TI-99/4A Programming forum at Atari Age.
@Zordar: I've been doing some reading on the Microbee as an emulator for it has popped up on AmiNet. Interesting piece of kit.
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Before Amiga I used my money on archery and partying, never had an 8bit computer back then :)
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What was your computing like before Amiga. Did you think the mouse was for lazy people? Did you program your own Basic games? Memorize about 100 different keyboard shortcuts?
Before my Amiga I of course had a C64. That was in about 1982 or thereabouts. I had just lost my job, but was still living with my family, so it was cool.
My money was limited, so all I could afford was the C64, and a datasette, which I immediately broke! (Dropped it.)
Because of that, I learned how to program 'by accident'. The only way I could play my favorite type-in games from Compute!'s GAZETTE was to type them in. Every. single. Time.
By doing that repeatedly, I actually eventually memorized entire program listings. (My friends found it amazing, and used to quiz me with random lines from the magazine.)
One thing led to another, and I became a programmer (BASIC and ML) and enjoyed a brief career as an 8-bit hacker and fonefreek known as 'Prince BAM!' (Bonus points to anyone who remembers what BAM stood for!).
I mostly hacked cartridge and floppy-based games so I could get them on to a tape machine I borrowed from a friend.
After that word of the 'Lorraine' started to circulate, but it would be almost 5 or 6 years before I finally got one, an A500.
And that's my story! :biglaugh: