Life in 8-bits

[lassie]

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

[amiga-penn-wchester]

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.

[hbarcellos]

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.

[bloodline]

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!!

[paolone]

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.

[spaceman88]

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.

[Darrin]

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.

[Iggy]

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.

[desiv]

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

[lassie]

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

[som99]

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.

[efrenmgp]

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.)

[amiga-penn-wchester]

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.

[Drummerboy]

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!

[lassie]

Sometimes i even think the Commodore 64 makes better music than the Amiga in some games.

[Mrs Beanbag]

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...