Computin' in the 80's

ozpass

Anyone who didn't own or use an 8-bit computer in the 1980's would do well to visit Mad Hippy's informative site detailing the pioneering computers from this madcap era:

Check out Madhippy's guide to 8-bit computers here

sceptre

Excellent link oz, thanks (I've only seen a C64 twice - once working in the mid eighties and once under an ex-GF's bed in the mid 90s)

I used to be able to program a VIC-20, though again I've never actually seen one (parents managed to get me a big programming book for a computer I'd never seen - I suppose they thought it was more educational than playing games on the thing)

ozpass

I'm toying with the idea of expanding my 'vintage crap' collection substantially (girlfriend permitting) and the C64 is next on my list. They're going for a song on ebay at the moment, and the way I see it the prices can only go up.

I'd probably have to get rid of some BBC stuff first, though- Acorn stuff is just so BIG compared to Sinclair and Commodore equivalents.

telecinesk

Yeah me too. I wanted an Apple2 computer but the girlfriend put the foot down."More Cra_" etc.
\i remember programming a zx81 in the bedroom with the result was chasing a block graphic around the screen and a "Z" also.
Anyone else have retro programming experience?
Incidentally I used to leave Sunshine 101 on the radio while I was doing it. I won a howard jones single one morning while proigramming... aaaaaaah better stop now. dangerous deviation.

Ste-

took me hours to program a little crappy thing on an old atari 800xl
it was an * moved by the joystick
i thought i was great for about a week

orangerooster

I myself had an amstrad which regularly didnt load or broke midway through the crappy picture screen.Got a big programming book that tought you how to make it sound like an ambulance but not much else without some kind of computers degree :rolleyes:

Cake Fiend

I still have my BBC Micro somewhere around...

PoolBall

I learned to program on an Atari 800xl,

It was a great piece of kit for its day, and if you used the turbo basic app you could get for it you had a great structured programing language, thats not far away from modern visual basic.

hamster

Yeah the C64 was a cool machine. I got that in 1985 after having a vic-20 for a couple of years. The vic-20 was ok for programming and making some sounds but nothing serious. Hobbist computer as they liked to call 'em. I remember typing in some little programs from the mags.

But you could do so much with the C64 and it was really pushed to the limit. By 1990, there was a huge collection of decent games made for it... some of them were unbelievable, SEUCK comes to mind.

Does anyone remember using those action reply carts that enabled you to put the games on disks (using a 5 second turbo loader - I kid you not!) rather than sit around waiting for the tape to load? And saving regularly was not an option... but then again it didn't crash regularly either.

Favourite mag at the time was Zzap 64! Still have a pile of them here going from 1987 to 1990. Favourite game looking back at it would be the Sentinel.

Lafortezza

Waiting in huge anticipation for 10-15 minutes for 3D Stock Cars and Manic Minor to load from tape on my mates ZX Spectrum, onyl for it to crash right at the end, and have to go through it all over again

And then fiddling about with the autoexec.bat and config.sys files on my 386DX, trying to get enough base memory freed up from the 640k to play the latest games, like Loom (early Lucasarts effort) and the shareware version of Doom

hamster

Yeah, many of those dos games were a pain to meet the 640K limit. I had the dos game "strike commander" which wanted 610K out of the 640K. This was a pain since, I had the 8-bit sound galaxy pro at the time (sound blaster clone) and the drivers ate took 30K/40K or so... smartdrv.exe for caching took another 15K and then I had disable the Cdrom drivers (with mscdex) otherwise I went below 600K. Gawd!

Ultima VII was worse.. you needed a boot disk so Origin could use their beloved "Voodoo Memory" manager. Y'Right! Always that game was class. Never played Serpent Isle. Can download it now but what's the point. But imagine in years to come... these dos games will be a nightmare to emulate. A nightmare! Each one had it's exceptions. No... I don't like Expanded memory but I rather the extended stuff. Let's not go there.

Dingatron

Still have the ZX81 at home. My brother used to spend hours typing the basic code in and hours debuging it. AFAIR we didn't have the tape to save it so when it went off that was that.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

spooky donkey

I used to have a Sharp MZ700 and do all my 8bit programming on that old heap of just. I had to load basic onto it from a casstte. But fond memories of the crapy games i made. I was discusted when my mother through it out in the bin. It would have been an antique by now.

GoneShootin

PaperBoy on the BBC Master....the fun !!

Lawnkiller

Originally posted by daveirl
arrrgggghhh Conventional Memory. I really hated that curse!

I was at the forefront of technology in the early 80's. I had an Amstrad 286 with 1mb of ram. not only that but i also had 40 mb of Hard disk space - you could never use all that up.......




and boot disks were a pain - but it taught us many things which these N00bs have no idea about - it taught us to RTFM!

Now they don't even produce the FMs as nobody bothers to read them so its a good cost cutting excercise.....

oh well....

hamster

Sure they do! They provide the manual in hard-to-read format in a .pdf file and stick on the CD. Makes me feel like forking out for a lightweight laptop from which I can read the manual without hogging up the screen on the main pc for work/game you have. Saves yet another tree though.

Quigs Snr

Hamster, you are referring to the Datel Action Replay cartridge for the C64, I have one right next to me as I type hooked up to an old 64 with a tape drive and disk drive. Fantastic piece of kit that was.

hamster

Quigs Snr,

Yeah they were the ones. the one I had was a red cartridge with a black reset button in the right corner. The version I had was the MK VI I think. Sold it along with my C64/128 back in 1990 in the mad rush to buy an Amiga... sigh! Thank god for Emulation! The cart. was great for putting the tapes onto floppy disk and the load time was pretty impressive... only 25 secs (or was that 5?) to load a single load game, ie Fort Apocalypse or Cauldron using it's Turbo Loader independent of the cart.

Quigs Snr

I think I have a mark 7. 2 buttons in the corner, one that you press to freeze then either enter pokes and peeks to cheat with or copy the game with.

Think the average load time for a game that you'd copied to disk was about 6-7 seconds. Used to copy all the levelsof turrican individually to disk (loved that game, but twas a multiloader), so I could play any of them at any time.

Those were the days. You could put about 30 games on a 90 minute cassette. My popularity in the playground increased tenfold when people found out that I could do that !

Wave of nostalgia coming on here. Think I'll pull out the 3000 games I have for the C64 emulator and mess about. (I still have the original machine tho')

hamster

While you're at... look for "Storm across Europe". It was made by SSI and one of the 1st War games I had played. Not exactly informative but it looked cool on a Television back in '89 with the ability to march over all of Europe un-opposed. One mistake I remember I made was that I attacked a tiny country south of Bulgaria.... "oops!" I said... "I didn't realise Turkey had territory in Europe"... Spent the rest of the game fighting Turkish Partisans while the Russian Juggernaut rolled across the Reich...

... Sorry got rambling there again...

... now that you mentioned it... yes the cart I had did...<drum roll> ... have 2 buttons on it... 1 to reset and other to the menu system... kinda hazy what it brought up now though.

omahaid

Anyone know if I can get Saboteur 2 for the amstrad cpc 464, classic green screen game if I ever saw one. Still miss it I do "sniff" "sniff".

hamster

Go to Classic gaming's vault at:

[EDIT by ozpass]

Do a google for "classicgaming" and maybe visit their "vault"

(direct link to site containing ROMS removed - you'll have to use my oh-so-cryptic clues above instead!)

[/EDIT by ozpass]

Should be there under Amstrad CPC Games

TenLeftFingers

There are emulators for allmost everything mentioned so far (I know it's not the same, but all that crap takes up serious space). I have C64/128 , Amiga, Spectrum ZX emulators. Hours of fun!

ozpass

Emulators of 8-bit computers achieve 100% accurate replication of the original machine's functions these days.

The one thing they can't emulate is the aesthetic of the original computer. Sure the keys were clunky, sure it smelled of hot polish, sure the joystick was prehistoric, but I can picture exactly where it was located on my bedroom floor when I was eight years old.

I'm not saying you can't achieve such misty eyed indulgence with an emulator running Chuckie Egg, I just get my kicks a more old-skool route.

TenLeftFingers

Yeah, I definatly agree with you on that one.