Commodore 64 - Tag - In a past life… https://archive.jtimothyking.com/tags/commodore-64/ Commodore 64 - Tag - In a past life… Hugo -- gohugo.ioen-usThu, 30 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000 Bits & Pieces 2012-08-30 https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2012/08/30/bits-and-pieces-2012-08-30/ Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000 J. Timothy King https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2012/08/30/bits-and-pieces-2012-08-30/ Links and things that I’ve run across recently.

Hey, Can I Get Facebook on This Thing?

Old Commodore 128 (versus the flat-screen TV)

August 1 was the 30’th anniversary of the release of the Commodore 64 home computer. To commemorate the event, Pingdom posted a series of C-64 photos on his blog, and I guess, yeah, we all looked pretty dorky back in the 80’s. (You’re welcome to guess which one is me. And you’d probably be right, since my name is cited right there under my photo.)

Meanwhile, my brother and father and I commemorated the event by digging out my old C-64… which we couldn’t find. Apparently, we had already gotten rid of it. (Unless it’s buried somewhere in my basement, which I guess it may be.) The C-64 was named after its 64KB of RAM (not MB or GB), which was quite a feat for the day. We did, however, find the old Commodore 128, the next-generation system with 128KB RAM, which only half worked. That is, it still works in high-resolution mode (Ha! Good one.), just barely, but the low-resolution video generator seems not to be working anymore.

Regardless, unfortunately, we couldn’t find any floppy disks that still had usable data on them.

Don't Know What It's About

]]> How Many of These Games Can You Identify? https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2009/09/14/how-many-of-these-games-can-you-identify/ Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:47:28 +0000 J. Timothy King https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2009/09/14/how-many-of-these-games-can-you-identify/ I was reminiscing on YouTube on my Commodore 64, the third computer I ever had. The first was a Sinclaire ZX81, with 1KB RAM, no sound, and black-and-white video. Then we upgraded that with a 16KB RAM pack.

Then my parents upgraded me the following Christmas to a Commodore VIC-20, which had a whole 4KB RAM, sound, and color graphics. At some point, we also got an 8KB RAM expansion cartridge, and I remember programming it in assembly code, using the Machine Code Monitor cartridge to debug my programs.

The following year, we got a Commodore 64, which had a whole 64KB RAM—more than any other computer at the time—and new sound and graphics chips that were trés kewl. The Commodore 64 is unique in my memory, because I not only remember programming it, I also remember playing games on it, including a number of the games featured in this video:

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