Commodore 64 and old computer using facts:

Technical specifications:

CPU 6510 (8 bit cpu, clone of 6502, running at 1.02 Mhz)

64 Kb memory (32k available for Basic programs)

20 Kb rom

Basic V2.0

SID sound processor (3 channels, mono)

VIC graphic adapter (16 colors, 320*200 pixels high res-text mode, 160*200 pixels low res-graphic mode, 8 sprites 24*21 pixels expandable in both X and Y to double size can use 3 colors where 1 is uniqe for each sprite, PAL output, NTSC output overseas)

RF-modulator with TV output

Video output (RGB)

Serial connector (for diskdrive, printers etc.)

User port

Cartridge port

2 joystick port (9 pin D-SUB)

Cassette connector

Keyboard with 8 function keys

Common pheriperals:

C1541, C1540(5.25" floppy drive)

C1531 (Cassette recorder)

Cartridges for speeding up data transfer etc. (Action Replay, Final Cartridge, Diskmate etc.)

Memory expansions

Monitors

Printers

Mouse (for use with the OS Geos and maybe also with koala painter, does´nt remember exactly)

...and a big amount of other things making life easier :-)

My Commodore equipment

Commodore C128 (A big brother to C64 with integrated C64!)

Commodore C64

Commodore C1541

Commodore C1531

Diskmate II Cartridge

Simple 14" TV

Stereo(!)

Joystick

Cable for connecting to SCART connector of the TV

Printer (a ordinary PC printer using Centronics port, used with homebuild centronicsinterface and my own written "driver")

X1541 cable (for transfer between C1541 and PC paralell port)

Programming:

Back then, when Tronix ruled, the coding was often dun directly in a macinecode monitor. Not many people used Assemblers... The computer was fun and simple to program as you didn´t have to write system friendly. When the program (demo often) where runned to the end, you simply reseted your 64 and all things went back to normal! The code could be kept small as you could directly acess all hardware without any bullshit code to allocate and get adresses from OS and so on. An example follows wich simply turns the screens background color black:

LDA #$00

STA $D020

STA $D021

...only 8 bytes! Try that on an Amiga or PC with a system friendly code! :-)

The VIC adapter was the funniest part of the computer. You could "fool" it to do whatever you wanted. With some tricks you could place sprites outside the screen(in the border), make splitrasters(changing background colors timed exaclty), make multiplex sprites(re-use the 8 sprites again in one frame, resulting in that it´s visible again but now on an other location on screen!), Stretch the sprites in Y axis unlimited and so on... Only your imagination sets the limits! The demo programing was often a competition of doing so many strange things as possible with the VIC!

Nowadays when demos are produced, the result is only a competition in mathematics. Computer life was better back then...

Games and piracy:

I don´t think any other computer or game system have so many games to offer... And therefore the piracy of games also where huge. The programmers that didn´t make demos "cracked" games instead! "Cracking" means that you takes away the copyprotection from the program, crunch it(read: Zip it, for you loosers...) and then spread it. The spreading of both demos and games was a little bit more complicated back then. There was no such channel as Internet to spread on. The swapping(old name of exchaning programs) was mostly dun by the ordinary postmail, sending disks in a letter. There was also a little spreading on the BBS´s(Bulletin Board System, an old version of FTP server) existing also. But have in mind, the speed....150-300 baud! The closest thing to Internet was a net called Fido-Net wich was some BBS´s "connected" to each other. Connected is the wrong word, since the communication was dun by the BBS operator to dial up the other BBS in Fido-Net chain and send the latest files and mails to it. After a couple of days or weeks the file was spread to a big amount of BBS´s! Via Fido-net you could also get a "mail-adress", but as with the other files, it could take time to get the mail delivered to the right person. All things wasn´t better back then :-)

Parties:

The parties was back then called copy-parties, since the most dudes copied games. around 1987 things changed and people was mostly coding demos for the competition held on the party. One big difference between nowadays parties and parties back then is that only invited people showed up. And that brings that the visitors was fever then now. One party that Tronix will never forgett was a party held in Denmark by a group called Ikari. When time came for demo-competition and all groups gave Ikari their demo disks they simply took Tronix disk and throw it away saying that it didn´t work on their computer. Their computer was a bastard wich some jerk have changed a lot in. And when you code not-system-friendly-code you can´t change a thing in the computer. Anyway, the compo ended with Ikari as winners(they where also the jury!) People got very angry since their demo was the lamest of them all. Horizon, Fairlight, Tronix and a couple of groups more should have fighted about the price money! The compo was a set-up! A big federation was born, called F.A.I. (Federation against Ikari) and Ikari was never more respected as a real demo group...

Lamers:

The people wich couldn´t code, stoled code or was stupid in any other way was called a "lamer". You could translate it to "Nerd" maybe. If you got a lamer stample there was a big work to get rid of it since everybody wanted to spread the roumors.

Example of a lamergroup: Ikari... :-)

C64 in buisness:

Unfortunaly the C64 was not a hit as a computer in real life. The only example I can remember seing it in comercial use is at the local video-movie-rental store. It was used as a register for out-rentaled films. Ofcourse there was more use of it but that´s the only thing I have noticed :-(

C64 using nowadays:

The simplest way to run C64 software now is to run it on an emulator. There is a big amount of emulators available for all OS´s. The best for PC(Dos & Windows) is CCS64. Programs and games are easy to download from internet. Otherwise you can connect your old C1540,C1541,C1571 or C1581 diskdrive to the PC via the X1541 cable and using StarCommander(recomended!) to transfer the files to your PC´s harddrive. But the funniest way to run C64 is ofcourse on an real C64! You can sure find some old grey box for a couple of pennies! It´s worth all of your money! Belive me... :-)

One thing I won´t sell as long as I live is my lovely Commodore...