Remembering the Commodore 64
Cory Bergman December 13th, 2007
Years ago, I got my start on a Vic-20 and later, the venerable Commodore 64. I programmed games for my junior high school friends, both in BASIC and Machine Language. In fact, I was so hard core, I owned two Vic-20s and two Commodore 64s at one point. So who was behind the C64, perhaps the best-selling personal computer of all time? Jack Tramiel, an Auschwitz survivor and former member of the U.S. Army who decided that his future wasn’t in repairing typewriters but in building electronics. And this week, Tramiel was honored during the 25th anniversary celebration for the Commodore 64. Cool.
13 Comments Add your own
1. felix | December 13th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
omega race on the vic-20 ruled!!
2. WiggyWack | December 13th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Atari forever!
3. Todd | December 13th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
I had the portable, C64… built-in keyboard, monitor and floppy drive… I thought I was the bomb!
4. Andrew Tyndall | December 13th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Texas Instruments’ TI-99 produced cross tabulations for the first Tyndall Report in 1987.
5. Kerry | December 13th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
I gotta agree with WiggyWack… the Atari 800XL was a mean games machine. Once you waited for the tape to load, of course.
6. Jason | December 13th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I still have a working Commodore 64 sitting in my closet! I pull it out every so often and fire it up. (Love the old Quest for Tires - Can’t get that on XBox 360)
The only problem I have is my 5 1/4 floppy disks are starting to degrade with age… A bunch of them are corrputed… but the Commodore itself still works …
7. Kid3 | December 13th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
10 PRINT “The last program I wrote was on a VIC-20″
20 GOTO 10
8. Tim | December 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I third the Atari series… and if anyone out there will listen, they ought to port Star Raiders / Star Raiders II to the GBA/DS platforms, it would sell like crazy
9. Troy T. | December 13th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Sinclair Zx-80 was my first
Interact Computer (anyone remember that one?) of Ann Arbor, MI I bought after that with money when I sold my motorcycle (geek alert)
then vic-20, C-64, Atari 400, 800, XL
I’ve still got a couple of these in boxes someplace.
10. Rob | December 13th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I got a Commodore 64 with a tape drive for my 11th birthday! I remember waiting 10 minutes to load Choplifter into that sucker!
I upgraded to a C-128 years later and I still wish I could find an WinXP emulator to play Wasteland, one of the greatest RPGs of all time.
11. Amanda E. | December 14th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
The first computer in my house in the 80’s was a Commodore 64 before we upgraded a few years later to a mil-surplus IBM PS/2.
Rob, if you really want Wasteland on XP - shoot me an email and I’ll tell you how to get it,
12. Wendell Cochran | December 14th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
My first computer was a C-64.
I used it to produce some of the first computer-assisted journalism by using a database program to analyze banking records.
13. c64 Messiah | December 21st, 2007 at 7:18 am
Racing Destruction set, Mail Order Monsters, and the entire Archon series on the commodore 64. Who could ask for anything more?
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