PC Alpha 20

seagas said:
Pffft, you guys with your high powered computers, mine was a Time-Sinclair 1000 with cassette tape drive to store programs.
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Had the CoCo. I remember using a cassette player to load programs. Always having to use that little screwdriver to adjust the head to get the best sound so it would load. I also remember typing programs in before I had a cassette hooked up and losing everything when I turned the computer off. Ahhh, the good ole days.

( I still have a CoCo around the house somewhere, most likely up in attack with a bunch of tapes)

 
Maharin said:
My first "online" experience was with a C64 or VIC20 (can't remember which) using a 300 baud modem over a rotary dialed land line connecting to a BBS (also can't remember which one).  It was, however, a mostly failed experience.  We (my brothers and I) connected but did little else of note that I can remember.
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Mine was the exquisite stereotype, "Dragon's Lair" BBS. It had a built-in RPG, real-time chat, forums, the usual. IIRC I had a 300/1200 switchable acoustic coupler like the one above and a paper copy of some sort of national BBS directory.

The first program I loaded into a computer looked like this (x200)1:

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1I was a kid maybe 8 or 9 and I helped my dad load a deck into the reader at his work. I have never actually punched a card deck myself.


I wrote my first programs on these (TRIGGER WARNING)2:

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2After writing our programs on the sheets, we typed them into a 16-color terminal like normal prehistoric neanderthals. This was for academic purposes only.


My own first PC was a laptop:

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(Not HP or Compaq; this is the much-less-popular IBM version)


But my friends had a TRS-80 and Amiga (which, in hindsight, was the coolest of the three PCs) before I got that thing, and my first online multiplayer game was some type of aerial dogfight game on the TRS-80. Super simple graphics - like Asteroids quality - but man was that fun. Connecting to another computer! ACROSS TOWN!!!

 
Maharin said:
It was closer to 38k available to BASIC, at least.  Plus there was about 4k in upper memory you could use for something under many situations.  Been so long since I programmed on a C64.
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Me too!  That was the space I had to write a program after the editor was loaded.

Not amazing programs, but it did get me on the road to where I actually made a small difference in the world writing code.

 
Aldranon said:
Me too!  That was the space I had to write a program after the editor was loaded.

Not amazing programs, but it did get me on the road to where I actually made a small difference in the world writing code.
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One of the oddest memories I have is that the CPU didn't have multiplication or division by default so many programmers (even assembly programmers) would use the BASIC routines for those things since they were well optimized.  A different world than now, for sure. :)

 
You guys are hilarious. From a release date topic to C64 nostalgia thread, of which I happened to own one myself in the latter part of the 80s, to play RPGs and keep me entertained until I bought my Amiga 500.

 
Maharin said:
Retrograde amnestic disorder.

The OP topic was going nowhere fast.  :p
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Well these threads of release dates are not going to gain anything worthwhile but its been so long since I have played A19 that I figured I might get an idea, of which seems to be early winter, so I definitely know more than I knew before. luckily I have other games to fool around on until release of A20 or maybe a stable release of it in spring.

 
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