Life in 8-bits

[ElPolloDiabl]

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?

[B00tDisk]

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.

[LoadWB]

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.

[remaster01]

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.

[spihunter]

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?

[Ral-Clan]

load "vic-20!"

press play on tape
searching
found "vic-20!"

loading

ready.
run

[JimS]

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. ;-)

[Hattig]

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 :-(

[rvo_nl]

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

[AeroMan]

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
I really loved to play with the TK90X. Gaming, programming, I did everything. Amazing machine, good times...

[Orphan264]

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.

[ToddH]

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.

[Dmaster]

Memories!    I remember getting a Coleco Adam computer, followed by an Atari 65XE, Commodore 64, Amiga, 500, then finally an Amiga 2000.

[takemehomegrandma]

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!)

[Tumbleweed]

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