Random Chit Chat

[Wallaby Dan]

We are giving our ages up here....

 

[Celery]

That XT was an old 8086 with 512K memory. Then an AT comes along with a 286 and 640K memory.

Remember when Bill Gates said that we'll never need more than 640K?

How wrong he was.

I remember how expensive they were. I remember buying 256K sticks of memory for $20 each at the Base Surplus store. VGA video card for $25 (had CGA yuk!).

Made me wonder what's the big hoopula about the IBM PCs. My Commodore 64 had colors and sounds built in that I can create graphics and music with it.

When my friend bought me that 286 I looked at the green monitor and at him, WTF you expect me to do with it ??

 

[ChirunoScarlet]

Ahhhh, the Commodore 64. My dad used to play games on one of those owned by his friend, although strangely for someone in the UK at the time, he preferred consoles such as the NES and Master System for gaming, even though the PAL conversions were either crappy or the games never got a console release. :3

I'm mostly into 16-bit consoles myself, particularly SNES and Mega Drive, although I also appreciate the 8-bit era too.

 

[Celery]

The 8 bit had come a long way. I used to buy my C64 floppies from a software house by mail. A lot of them were cracked games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr4lxRO6kVI

The SID chip were one fantastic musical chip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Racui9jJI

 

[strollin]

I've never been that interested in gaming so something like the C64 never appealed to me. I was more of a Lotus 1-2-3, text editor and C compiler kind of guy. I did play games but they weren't high on my priority list.

If I wanted to play a "game", I'd run MS Fight Simulator.

 

[Smart_Guy]

First 8-bit computer for me was the MSX which I believe was never popular in North America. It was revolutionary and had crazy games and educational software. Was popular in Europe and Asia and it had some really creative games like Kings Valley 2 and The Castle.

The Atari 2600 was the first home console, but I didn't like it. The 16-bit era was the first huge jump in gaming when it comes to home consoles, IMO.

 

[Celery]

The Atari 2600 was a blast. That was our first game console in the household. We bought a lot of cartridges. One we bought was a BASIC programming cartridge and it came with two keypad controllers. They attach to each other and plug in both ports.

I got my first taste of BASIC programming and I was hooked. That's when I got my first computer, the TI 99/4A.

Then I got the Commodore 64.

 

[strollin]

My first gaming "console" only had a "pong" game on it. That was in 1977 or so.

The first programming language I learned and used was C but I was also a big fan of Borland products such as Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Turbo BASIC and Turbo Assembler. I didn't care for interpreted BASIC as I preferred compiled code.

 

[~mr mixx~]

I remember the C-64. I loved playing games on the C-64 and I'm really glad I spent the money on the fast loader cartridge. Without that thing the games loaded up so slow.

Also I learned a trick from a friend that notching out the opposite side of the disc made it possible to load games onto both sides of the disc.

My favorite game on the C-64 was "Wizz Ball" , and I had so much fun playing music on the sid music player.

 

[Celery]

Heh, I remember that notching for double sided floppies. I used a paper punch.