Commodore 64: the first computer I ever used

I'm starting a self-indulgent series about my own personal history with computers, back when computers were whimsical, exciting, and empowering.

To begin, this is the story of me and the first computer I ever used.

Commodore 64

At some point in the early 1990s, my family acquired a Commodore 64 from one of our neighbors.

The C64 launched in 1982, sporting 64 kilobytes of RAM and a 1 MHz processor. In modern units, that means 0.00006 GB of RAM and a 0.001 GHz processor (and, by the way, that processor didn't implement floating point, or even integer multiply/divide). Multimedia was enabled by specialized chips: the VIC-II for graphics (with a fixed 16-color palette) and the famous SID chip for 3-channel sound and music. All of this was housed in an uncomfortably tall beige keyboard. Video and audio signals could be sent to a TV or a composite video-capable monitor. Power came from a notoriously temperamental power supply brick. To complete the picture, the computer was ideally paired with a (much bulkier than I remember) floppy disk drive.

I don't have any photos from that time, so here's a recent picture instead:

Other than its feeble (by modern standards) tech specs, the most unbelievable aspect of the C64 to present day computer users is that it boots instantly. By the time you've moved your hand back from the power switch onto the keyboard, it is ready for input. On my current desktop computer setup, the monitor doesn't even turn on that quickly.

Now, back to my anecdote.

In the basement

In front of the bare drywall of the basement in our split-level ranch house, while sitting in demoted kitchen chairs, we had a small wood veneer desk which housed the C64, a Commodore monitor, a 1541 disk drive, two black, single-button joysticks, and several bins filled with 5 1/4" floppy disks that contained, I would later come to realize, dozens of cracked C64 games. We would occasionally flip through the disks, reading titles off the printed disk labels until one caught our attention. We would pop the disk into the drive, turn the lock, and power on the computer. This would, after entering some magical spell using the keyboard, allow us to select the desired game and start it. Our favorite games included Archon, Bruce Lee, Cliff Hanger, Lazy Jones, and Summer Games.

Cliff Hanger (1984)

Epiphany

One day, I wanted to play Potty Pigeon. Yes, that is a real game, and it's exactly what it sounds like (screenshot below). I could turn on the C64 and load the disk into the drive, but I didn't know how to "make it go". I had to wait until someone was available to provide the incantation, which I recited as "load, skittles, star, skittles, comma, eight, comma, one, return, run, return". In hindsight, "skittles" was probably conveyed to me as "squiggles", meaning quotation marks. I probably also needed to be shown how to hold Shift and hit the number 2 to insert a quotation mark. With that arbitrary sequence committed to memory, I was then self-sufficient, as far as loading and playing (and getting frustrated and rage-quitting) games on the C64.

Potty Pigeon (1984), shortly after releasing ordnance

Looking back on this memory, I feel like this event set off a slow chain-reaction that eventually resulted in my love of computing, because it led me my impressionable mind to two conclusions:

1. Learning about computers was an investment that could pay back immediate dividends (in this case, it allowed me to experience some of the most infuriatingly difficult and incomprehensible games ever created)
2. Rather than being taught how to use a computer, I wanted to be the (ahem) expert who helped others

Yes, at a very young age, I learned the value of technology and I had a desire to leverage that technology to uplift the people around me. Or, more likely, I craved instant gratification (via games) and attention/admiration (by showing off knowledge of something esoteric).

BASIC

As much as I'd like to say that my journey into programming began at the C64 BASIC prompt, that's not what happened. I only have vague memories of typing in a few line numbers and BASIC commands. It never really occurred to me back then that I could write my own programs (or games).

Other than LOADing and RUNning games, my only other memory of the C64's 40-column prompt is that I once tried to a type a story into it. I wasn't expecting anything to happen other than for the letters to appear on the screen. I gave up after a few sentences when I realized that I didn't know how to spell many common words.

Later on down the line, I'd learn a different Microsoft variant of BASIC (on a newer computer) as my first foray into programming, but that is the topic of a future post.

GEOS

Other than games, I remember using an operating system on the C64 called GEOS. It had mouse support, a word processor, and could even print out documents. I certainly didn't appreciate at the time how impressive that was for a computer with only 64 kilobytes of RAM. With decades of hindsight (and experience with bloated software), I'm amazed that GEOS was possible.

GEOS, with geoWrite (1986)

For comparison, just today I saw a Linux distribution described as "ultra-lightweight" because, after booting into a graphical interface, it "only" used 770 MB of RAM. That's roughly 30,000 times as much RAM as the C64's interface consumed. I mostly prefer to use modern computers (because they're faster), but they're certainly not 30,000 times better. Of course, I've spilled more than enough virtual ink on that topic, so I will curb my griping here.

Nostalgia

I still look back fondly upon my time with the Commodore 64 and its charmingly janky games. Thanks to some good fortune, I was recently able to reacquire an original C64 "breadbin", for a bit of nostalgia and also a bit of tinkering with Forth. In fact, the photo near the beginning of this post is my current setup (admission: the disk drive is purely decorative--it doesn't work).

On to the next one

Of course, the C64 was already dated by the time I encountered it, so it was quickly outclassed in our basement by a Packard Bell computer with a 386SX processor, running MS-DOS. On that computer (or maybe the one after), my programming misadventures actually began.