I little history

Someone lent me a great book recently, it's called "Commodork". I suppose "Great" is a relative term. If you don't now about Commodore, or were not part of the culture, you wouldn't really consider it great. You probably wouldn't even consider it mediocre, but I did indeed find it great.

Commodore was, in the 80's, "The little company that could". They actually made their first computer in the 70's I'm, pretty sure, the PET computer (and no, I don't have any pet's name Commodore - that would be dorky).

Now, when *I* was a lad, it was the most exciting period in technology in my opinion. Say what you want about the Internet, but I would take 1977 - 1990 any time.

I had just recently graduated high school with no prospects for anything, much less employment. For Christmas, 1982, my parents decided to buy the "family" a home computer. Not any home computer mind you, no, this was the flashy new 2 kilobyte Timex Sinclair with the Z80 chip. This computer didn't have a monitor, no, it plugged into the TV. No storage either. It was a clean "membrane" keyboard on top of a completely self contained computer.


Now I knew nothing about computers, much less this one. Seriously, N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I was lucky however, that my older brother was home for the holidays. He, while at Brown, had done a little programming for college and was at least familiar with programming. So, we broke out the manual, and poured over how the thing operated. He explained to me what computers do, and what they are for, and so on. We got the think hooked up to the small black and white TV we had, (8 inch screen or something), and we "wrote" a program.

What we decided to "write" was a dice rolling program. I don't know why, probably because that's what *he* had to write in college, I have no idea. I do know he's an engineer and a statistician, so my guess would be yes. Anyways, he made me go through the though process of what happens when you roll dice, about randomness, et. and we keyed away. The result was a nifty little program that displayed a line of text "One Die or two?", and depending on your choice, you would get a single digit, or two digits - completely random. WOW!!

OK, so, not so WOW, but for me it was amazing. Simply AMAZING. Here was a little black box. All I had to do was to figure out what I wanted the result to be, and by writing a bunch of stuff, I could make it happen!. Well, I totally took to it.

It was wierd in the sense that, at the time, I was pretty much a looooser. Seriously. I had graduated just barely. I had a 2.nothing GPA or something, I failed math so bad, that I had to take a summer school class with my gym teacher that passed me either to A) get me out of his school, or B) He liked me. I failed so many classes, that I was summer school fixture. I couldn't even get *in* to community college without passing the entrance exam - on which I cheated mightily. I didn't intend to, but the math section literally had the answers attached to it. I changed some and got a few wrong on purpose though. I still had to pass basic math first. We're not talking Algebra here, we're talking basic math. THEN I had to take Algebra I, which I failed at the community college level.

NOTE: Teachers who teach a subject because they have to, have no business teaching it.

This guy was WAY over my head, and he kept getting frustrated that I didn't "get it". He wasn't able to go back in time in his head when "he" didn't get it, he just blew right by me. It came so natural for him that it totally escaped him that it *didn't* come natural for others.

Sooooo.. I had failed this class too, and had to take "applied mathematics" to get my math credit. Let's rewind; I failed general High school math, I was put into Algebra I as a Junior, even though I wasn't qualified to be there, because I was so far behind. I failed that, took it over Senior year, and failed it, took business math in summer school, passed by a nose, failed college math, failed college Algebra and guess what? I PASSED Applied Math.

The Applied Math teacher was an old guy who taught part time. He would explain math in terms that made sense. He would take the time time to explain *why* math did what it did. He showed me where it was used, how it was used. He introduced me to ratio's, and the value in business and life they had.

OK, so WHY on earth did I bore anyone with this? Because NOW I had a BOX that could to the MATH for me!!! All I needed to now was how the math worked!

Well one thing led to another. It wasn't long before I outgrew the 2k, and had to add the 16k memory add-on. I also had to get a cassette recorder for storage. Yes, a cassette recorder. All the home computers of the day used cassettes. Data is nothing more than "blips" Those blips can be recorder as sound, and then played back into the computer. In other words, you would "modulate" the data out to the cassette player that was recording it, and "de-modulate" the data as it was being played back into the computer. Get it?, Modulate?, De-Modulate?, MoDeM?

Well, I outgrew that one too. I saved some cash, because I washed cars at the time, and bought the fancy Texas Instruments TI-99 4/a. The TI had a built in programming language; TI BASIC, it had COLOR, and a real keyboard. I wrote tons of stuff on that box. The magazine of the day, COMPUTE supported only a few computers; Commodore, TI, APPLE and the TRS-80. You could buy the magazine, read about a program, and all of the source code was right in the magazine. All you had to do was type it in.

By this time, I was a math-a-holic. I had gotten a book called "Practical Mathematics", it was a HUGE green book from the 60's. It had everything there was to know in it. I really wanted to know how to do 3-D. Not like "Doom" 3-D, that was light years away. I wanted to be able to write a program like "Tank Command", which required an X, Y and Z axis.

I remember vividly writing a program that would plot functions on an axis. I worked for days on it. I never turned off the computer, because my tape recorder took a dump, so there was no way to save what I was doing. I didn't plan on saving it anyways, I just wanted to know IF I could do it. So, after days of toiling, I got it right. I would type in a formula, and poof, a grid would appear, with the X and Y locations plotted right there. Kinda childish by todays standards, but there was a lot of gymnastics to do something like that. Remember, this "computer" only had 256k, and a 16k video chip. I was SO excited, I tore away from my desk to get my mom and show her, and my foot got stuck on the cord - POOF, all was gone in an instant.

Next, I bought a used Commodore VIC-20. This computer had a 20 column capability, and still used a TV. It was actually a downgrade from the TI, it only had 5k of RAM, with about 3.5 usable. The guy I got it from had all the expansion stuff, including the extra memory cartridge, and, the VICMODEM.

WOW.. A REAL modem. I can't remember how fast it was, by I imagine something along the lines of 150 baud or slower. I say that because I had a 300 for my C-64, then dropped a TON of money on an Anchor Automation 1,200 baud.

When I got C-64, that was nirvana. It was actually, a crappy computer. But, it did have an audience, a HUGE audience. What that meant was Lots of programs, Lot's of support, Lot's of articles on how to use it, Lot's of books on programming it, and LOT's of BBS's (Bulletin Board System) supporting it.

Herin lies the key young computer guys.... It doesn't have to be great, to be great.

The 64 was cool on so many levels. It had great color, it had a great, somewhat "open" BASIC language. You could "peek" and "poke" around the memory, keyboard mapping, video and sound chips; you could pretty much do anything you wanted. Seriously now, anything. I had a program that would actually "bang" the floppy drive head out of alignment. You could do that if you wanted to. You didn't have to write to the OS, you could write to the device. You could easily re-map unused keyboard keys with "sprites" to be able to write games. It was sooo cool.

For business however, it sucked. There was "Bank Street Writer", and some cheesy spreadsheet, but that was about it. I then got the Commodore 128, with the dual drive. The works baby!!!! This unit ran CP/M, a common business OS for the times. It was the default OS for the Kaypro products, the leader in small business computing for a time.

Between the 64, and the 128, I spent HOURS online. Uploading to BBS's, downloading from BBS's, figuring out that if you uploaded with "Ymodem" protocol, and turned on check digits, you you would earn TWICE as many download credits using "XModem". So, I always had a 2-for 1 ratio going for me. BBS's were great, there was always someone to leave a message with. They weren't real-time until later, when they had "doors". You would just post a message, get off, and get back on later to see if anyone answered you. You would NEVER just stay on line, that was sacrilegious. BBS's only had a few inbound phone lines, so to tie one up with something as trivial as "chatting" was a sin. If you were a member, and had special privileges, you could go into a "door", and actually have somewhat of a relay-chat (like the IRC - which by the way, is an upcoming topic) though.

This brings me back to "Commodork"... If you lived through the C-Age, then it is a must read. You'll laugh at every page turn re living your past, you'll be reminded of games, programs peripherals and things that you've long forgotten. You'll re-live those long nights trying to download "F15-Strike Eagle" with having the phone hang up, or someone pick up another line 2 hours into it..

Go to Amazon or Borders and pick it up.. it's fun...