# Who Cut Their teeth on A Commodore 64? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 6, 2004, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834 "2004-03-06T09:14:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![dman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@dman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dman)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/101 "2004-03-28T11:55:53Z")
> [@cityboy916](#): > > I cannot for the life of me remember what that 8’s bit was for, but there was some reason why it was always set. I believe that was the one that set all the text characters to block-inverse, so the text was background colour showing through on a coloured bar. Not much practical use. With almost no understanding of maths & binary, I thought it was an incredible waste of 128 extra colour possibilities when I could really have done with like, more than 8 colours sometimes. Then there was the extended high-res mode where you could code your own characters to use 2 bits per pixel, resulting in blocky characters using up to 4 colours in one character block. Unfortunately, most of the games that used that trick were truly bad. One day, when coding an art program, I gave up and switched the TV to greyscale, using the colours for their shade, not their hue. It was great. Until I turned the colour on again! Imagine! Fave games - Ice (addictive music) and Skramble .dan. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Doubt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Peter\_Doubt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Doubt)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/102 "2004-03-28T16:29:49Z")
We had a Vic-20 with tape drive for several years before getting a 128. Used the 128 in 64 mode most of the time, but I’m remembering a program called Jane for the 128. It was an early office suite type program with database, wp, and other functions. What stands out is how it used the joystick as a sort of proto-mouse. Lots of text based adventure games, Pirates cove and HGTTG. Dragons Lair, Chop Lifter, Winter Olympics, B.C. Quest for something. Used my uncle’s C64 to write a program for science fair. Gas Law calculations or some such. My typing skills were non existant at that point, so I gave up on most of the type in programming from magazines. \*the Atari 2600 console did have a Basic cartridge. It used the keypads with a template for characters/functions. “Look! It’s a blob of pixels floating around the screen!” Q-Link - What year(s) was that? 85? ---
**Author:** ![TheMadHun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@TheMadHun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMadHun)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/103 "2004-03-28T16:33:52Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > Inspired by another thread, who actually learnt their computer skills on a Commodore 64? I had one that didn’t have a disc drive- it had to be loaded via a tape. Even the simplest programme took twenty minutes. > > 😕 The one I had was programmed manually byte by byte at the screen. I can’t recall what exactly it did, but I was so impressed with myself for conquering it! Previously I had only programmed mainframes in Assembler, and they could never do anything graphical. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/104 "2004-03-28T19:18:34Z")
> [@Sender](#): > > Q-Link - What year(s) was that? 85? 5 November 85 - 1 November 94. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/105 "2004-03-28T20:17:12Z")
> [@Sender](#): > > B.C. Quest for something. B.C.'s Quest For Tires? It was one of the few games I actually played between hours of programming. The part where the other guy is daring him to jump over the alligators isn’t randomized, so I could always get past that point by counting the swings of his club. Even got all the way to the end once or twice. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/107 "2021-09-26T09:40:14Z")
For the record, programming a Commodore 64 was not as bad as some of the old posts make it out to be. You could get an assembler that ran directly on the C64. I suspect most people just bought games, though (and have the same suspicion today) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/108 "2021-09-26T12:11:27Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > For the record, programming a Commodore 64 was not as bad as some of the old posts make it out to be. “Not as bad” perhaps, but there were simpler alternatives. My first computer was one of the many z80 machines that became obsolete around that time. It came with XBASIC pre-loaded and it was child’s play to make simple programs. Indeed, _literally_ child’s play, as I was a child. A little later I made a slot machine game on my programmable calculator. But the C64 remained inscrutable. Granted, part of this was simply that the C64 was more advanced; it was never going to be as easy to define a multi-color sprite as a single-color one. But that’s just the thing – it wasn’t a good place to start, just like making a 3D demo in unreal isn’t a good place to start now. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/109 "2021-09-26T13:22:09Z")
I guess I must agree, in the sense that to do much with a C64 you had to get one or two reference books which documented exactly how every piece of hardware worked (video chip, sound chip, interrupts, memory map, etc.) and hack it on a low level. Indeed this was not like running a Pascal or Fortran compiler on your PC/AT. However, the C64 ROM _did_ include a pre-loaded BASIC interpreter and simple BIOS. So it’s not like a child couldn’t write simple programs that way. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/110 "2021-09-26T13:28:53Z")
I actually had written a dungeon adventure game (text based) on the C-64 in Basic, in fact I started it on a Super-Pet 32kb. Also a horse racing game. Its BASIC was pretty useful. There was a Peek or Poke command that worked well for an explosion, but as this was nearly 40 years ago I don’t remember the specifics. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/111 "2021-09-26T13:32:22Z")
Yes, it was not the most advanced (or fastest…) BASIC ever, but it was not a total loss. For explosions (or any other sound) you still had to peek and poke the sound chip registers directly, IIRC. I also recall that the sound chip was (relatively) awesome to the extent that people still rip them out and build them into other hardware: [![](https://www.vintagesynth.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/sidstation.jpg) ](https://www.vintagesynth.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/sidstation.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/112 "2021-09-26T13:43:00Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Granted, part of this was simply that the C64 was more advanced; it was never going to be as easy to define a multi-color sprite as a single-color one. The C64 also had 64k of RAM, plus the VIC and SID chips (Video Interface Chip and Sound Interface Device) which took up memory space, all with a processor that could only address 64k of total memory space. The way that it handled this was that it used bank switching, so if you needed that full 64k or RAM you needed to switch banks to access certain parts of it. Any machine with a flat memory space is going to be much easier to program. > [@DPRK](#): > > However, the C64 ROM _did_ include a pre-loaded BASIC interpreter and simple BIOS. Yep, and I did write quite a few programs in BASIC back in the day. Commodore Basic was very limited, and since it was interpreted it could be rather slow. When you needed better performance or you needed to do something fancier, you really needed to do it in machine language. That was true of all 8 bit computers at the time though. The 6510 was a pretty good processor back in the day. It was basically the 6502 that the Apple II used with the addition of some I/O lines. Sure, it was rather brain dead compared to a modern CPU, but you could say that about all of the 8 bit processors (6502, z80, 8085, etc). One thing I really liked about the Commodore architecture was that they intentionally put some smarts into their peripheral devices. The 1541 disk drive had its own variant on the 6510 processor in it, so it could handle a lot of stuff on its own. Compare this to other computers at the time that did not have smart peripherals and the computer’s processor had to do more work to control them. The VIC and SID chips were pretty fancy for their time too. One place that Commodore really failed at was their cassette interface. Their error checking method was to simply store each program twice, and then compare both versions when loading. If either copy had an error then the load failed. This made it twice as slow and half as reliable. Sure, this was the old days of computers, but there were much better methods of error detection and even error correction available back then. I was really glad when I finally got a 1541 disk drive and didn’t have to use that piece of crap cassette interface any more. By comparison, the TRS-80 cassette interface used el-cheapo cassette recorders and worked really well with cheap cassettes. In fact, the cheap cassettes tended to work better than the more expensive “computer grade” cassettes that were available at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/113 "2021-09-26T14:45:42Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Yes, it was not the most advanced (or fastest…) BASIC ever, but it was not a total loss. For explosions (or any other sound) you still had to peek and poke the sound chip registers directly, IIRC Yeah it’s coming back to me now. After learning commands like SOUND and BEEP in XBASIC it was painful to have to take a step to direct memory POKEs in C64 BASIC. But I guess if you started on the C64 you’d just be cool with having a reference table to hand and of course it’s no more effort to type. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/114 "2021-09-26T15:48:00Z")
I started with a VIC 20 with the tape drive when i was about 11 or so (1983-ish)… I remember typing in innumerable lines of BASIC out of the back of magazines and trying to figure out where I’d made a mistake. I had a few games too, but they were on tape, and took forever. Anyway, about 4-5 years later, I saved up for a C64 of my own. My best buddy already had one, and we had played a lot of games on it- the ones I recall playing are Hardball! (baseball), Wasteland, Project Stealth Fighter, Street Sports Football, Pool Of Radiance, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Archon II, Space Taxi , Defender of the Crown, and Ultima IV, V and VI. (played Ultima III on a friend’s Apple II). I remember there being a pretty slick GUI/productivity suite that came with mine called “GEOS” that allowed the C64 mouse to be used in proportional mode (i.e. not on-off like a joystick). It had a surprisingly modern word processing program and a spreadsheet. Useful enough to do high school papers on, rather than an actual typewriter in 1989 anyway. By the second half of 1990 I had gone in halves with my parents on a 286/12 with a 40 megabyte hard drive and 640k of RAM. It wasn’t long before I bought a modem (2400 baud!) and never looked back. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/115 "2021-09-26T16:02:22Z")
Thinking about my C64 days and reading this thread I’m reminded of a few things I haven’t thought in ages… 1. I spent a lot of time trying to find every BBS that was a local call and then circulating through them. 2. I was obsessed with my collection of cracking tools and had a huge collection of games for trading. 3. I remember programming in basic being significantly more powerful than what people are saying here, but I realize now that I had Simons’ Basic, a cartridge that was released that added a huge amount of functionality not present by default. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/116 "2021-09-26T16:32:32Z")
Oh yes, another C-64 veteran here. I never used the tape drive but I did start out with the 5¼" floppies, moved up to the 3½" drive when it came out. Did my first assembly language programming on the C-64. I was so proud when I cracked the very simple copy protection on a disk of Bank Street Writer (code would look for a deliberate flaw on the floppy, abort if not found). Playing with the sound synthesizer was fun. Impossible Mission and Pirates! consumed hours. And of course BBSing; I met my future wife because she was the sysop of a board I frequented! ASCII art. Getting a “pseudo-80 col” font display for boards that had moved to more advanced software. ---
**Author:** ![Retzbu\_Tox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/retzbu_tox/32/11829_2.png) [@Retzbu\_Tox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Retzbu_Tox)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/117 "2021-09-26T17:02:44Z")
I also started in 1982 with a C64 with a tape drive, and later got a 1541 “flippy” drive, and eventually a 1571 floppy drive. (The 1541 could only use a single side of the disk, so you had to flip them over to use the other side.) Appropriately for this zombie thread, my C64 still works! 😁 ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/118 "2021-09-26T18:00:05Z")
1982 I got a TI-99/4A for my Birthday & Christmas. 1983 I took a class in BASIC taught on Pets, Super-Pets. But I had already taught myself BASIC on the TI99/4A. My C128 & Amiga are long gone but I still have the TI99/4A boxed up in a closet. It worked 12 years ago, no idea if it still does. I had the Rainbow Star Color printer in 1989. Man was it slow, but the color was so cool back then. Dot matrix tractor feed. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/119 "2021-09-26T18:30:04Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > The VIC and SID chips were pretty fancy for their time too. Yeah, the SID was definitely considered the king of 8-bit era sound. Those sounds are still used today. Pain in the ass to make it do what you want with the C64. The C128 was a little bit better with BASIC 7.0 and various commands to more intuitively communicate with the chip but if you really wanted to sculpt your sound, you have to get down to the nitty-gritty and directly program that chip using machine language. Some of the stuff that chip could put out was insane for the time – programmers took advantage of a glitch in the SID 6510 that basically could make it function with 4-bit IIRC sampled playback. The Ron Hubbard title screen tune for Skate or Die is one of its crowning achievements: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ruPXfmX8rYw/hqdefault.jpg "Skate or Die music (at original speed)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruPXfmX8rYw) All that with only 3 sound registers, and four waveforms (sawtooth, triangle, pulse [variable] and noise) plus the sample playback trick (which worked on the 6581 SID but not as well or at all on the revised, 8510 [which some prefer for its more predicatble and cleaner sounds, but most old schoolers seem to like the imperfections in the 6581. And, given Commodoree’s quality control, those chips could vary a bit in sound from one revision to the next). It took some wizardry to get that chip to do that. Hubbard, Chris Huelsbeck, Ben Daglish, and others were masters at it. A few years ago I took a deep dive into the chip and connected it with my Arduino and created a MIDI controller so I could play it through my keyboard. It was pretty fun, but after a month or two I lost track of it. Fun project to really get intimate with its inner workings. Getting a hold of geniune SID chips is rather tough these days. Back about ten years ago, they were going for something like fifty bucks a piece. (Looks like they’re 75-85 now). I know an FPGA version of one came out recently. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/120 "2021-09-26T18:30:42Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Impossible Mission [“Stay a while! Stay forever!”](https://youtu.be/i1_fDwX1VVY) ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2021, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834/121 "2021-09-26T19:30:50Z")
> [@Seven](#): > > I always wanted a C64 or Vic 20, but back then I had the TI-99 complete with tape cassette back up. > > The one computer I ALWAYS wanted was a Timex Sinclair. Three years ago I managed to get a 1500 in perfect shape with a Timex Sinclair 2020 Computer Program Recorder (IE tape deck). > > Nothing like feeling the pure power of a 3.58Mhz 8-bit Zilog Microprocessor under your fingers!! I have an old Timex Sinclair somewhere. A few years ago I decided to check the value and I found it was worth……$5.95, I think. If it had been new in the box it would’ve been worth $79.95, which I think was about what I paid for it……in 1982 dollars, though. I just checked eBay again and I can’t find one for anywhere near as cheap as $5.95, but you can buy them in their original packaging for around $75. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-cut-their-teeth-on-a-commodore-64/232834.md?page=7)