[NBLUG/talk] Commodore Nostalgia

[Mark Janes]

Hello,

   In 1980 I started out with a Commodore VIC-20 (think slower, less
capable version of the C64) then got a 64 for Christmas, though at the
time I really wanted an Apple ][. The Commodore I had didn't even have a
disk drive- it used a cassette(!) drive to store whatever software I'd
written (in BASIC) for the computer, along with any data generated along
the way. It could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to
store software or data that way, and if the cassette was flawed in any
way you ended up with gibberish. I tinkered with it for a while then
life took me other directions and I didn't have anything more to do with
computers from 1983 to 1995, when I finally got a Window$ PC. I ran M$
until 2000, not knowing until then that there was a viable choice in
OS'es (I'd heard of Linux as early as 1998, but only as an OS for
serious PC users). Even having no real frame of reference I was bothered
by Window$ annoying tendencies- freezes, crashes, and cryptic, demeaning
error messages. I stumbled onto SuSE's version of Linux then, switched
over, it Worked Well Enough, and I never looked back. Linux has
definitely grown and improved since then; today I rarely run across a
website with content I can't access, or a file format I cannot open. My
Linux boxes serve me very well and I am happy with them. I look at the
Commodore 64 the way I'd look at a children's bicycle: a reminder of fun
times in the past, but not something I'd be inclined to use now. It was
fun back then, though, to create layers of sprites and have them
crisscross the screen... ;-) 

Mark Janes



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 257 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://nblug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20090513/5bce3ed8/attachment.pgp