Commodore Free 39/Commodore_Free_Issue_39_2010_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/nigel 2

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 17KB | 540 lines

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         COMMODORE NOSTALGIA
          By Commodore Free
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I can't remember the exact year I
became interested in Computers, but
remember it was  via the local
newsagent and of course sci-fi on TV
I would often browse the shelves of
the local news establishment and
pick out magazine that looked
interesting, mainly based on the
pictures and strange incantations
otherwise known as "listings".

Meanwhile a school friend was given
a zx81 for his birthday along with a
thermal printer and later upgraded
to a 16k ram pack. (I am sure he
didn't really want this as he seems
to have little interest in the
machine or playing with it when I
called) I remember I wasn't very
impressed with the system especially
the Ram pack that kept falling off
and crashing the machine, also the
keyboard and entry system did
nothing for me. I managed to get the
hang of some rudimentary Basic
Commands and managed some sort of
text adventure game and of course to
print my name all over the screen
"HELLO WORLD". I cant tell you any
games we played but I do remember
one trying to get a budgie into a
cage and a maze game looked very
interesting but I don't think it was
Monster maze.

Meanwhile back in school

The School had purchased 2
computers, some form of Commodore
PETS, they locked them up in "the
computer room" and I remember you
could only use the machines if you
were in set 1 for maths. I presume
everyone else was deemed too thick
to operate them. My zx81 owning
fried was by some strange
coincidence in "set one" for maths
and so had access to the machines,
however I was in set 3 (for thick
people) so couldn't use the
machines. My friend showed me
homework about computers and
although I found the questions and
indeed the answers easy he
struggled. So we traded, I did his
assignments and homework he did my
Technical drawing homework. (oh
don't tell anyone about that) for
some reason as soon as I was given a
piece of paper for Technical drawing
it would become horribly marked
without me even putting pen to paper
anyway?..

My friend was very reluctant to play
on his zx81 I presume he felt I was
more clever, didn't like being shown
up. I looked through various
magazines and found an article about
the "Vic20" produced by the
typewriter firm Commodore, this was
a Colour machine with sound! The
pictures in the magazine looked
amazing. So; I asked my Father and
mother for a machine to improve my
maths and English (cough
splutter?.). I presume everyone used
this ploy to con parents into
thinking there children would loose
out of they didn't have a computer,
however due to the cost my plan
failed.

Typewriter

I had a type writer and I typed in
one or more of the basic listings
each and every day, I did this for
months, my father watched this and
soon we were going to a friends who
owned a mythical "VIC20". When we
arrived the machine was playing
Blitz Bomber, we played this for
some time, everyone was excited
especially when the little man cam
out the plane to wave! when you
landed the plane. my dads friend
said he had the game for a week and
couldn't land so I must be good at
it. Then we looked at music and a
text writer program. Loading games
from tape was slow but do you know I
didn't really notice, what with the
excitement about the VIC and the
BUZZING in my head. Sound Colour
graphics heck this is far superior
to the ZX81.

I know my Father tried to palm me
off with some form of games console,
and I remember about this time
looking at the amazing Atari 200 at
another friend's houses, but it
didn't have a keyboard and you
couldn't connect a printer so
although the games were good it was
dismissed by me. I also remember my
Father was ready to part with money
for an intelivison console, but I
finally talked him out of this in
the shop (much to the disgust of the
salesman).

Christmas

Christmas came to our house and I
had just one present that year a VIC
20 and a cassette player. I remember
loading "Blue meaniez from outer
space" as if it was yesterday, it
confused me why the meaniez stopped
when the lasers zapped. I tried my
hand at some of the Basic listings
in the book on Christmas day and
managed to get HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a
rudimentary tune (something like
jingle bells) playing (this took me
all day. I know my Mother and Father
were impressed and seemed glad the
system was purchased.

The Vic stayed with me for a few
years until the pull of the
Commodore 64 was too much. One of my
friends had a BBC micro and we
played Elite and defender both
looked amazing; but something still
pulled me towards the Commodore 64.
The BBC micro was used in an
introductory look at computing by
the BBC, so my parents were sort of
pushing this unit. I refused and
wanted a C64, again at Christmas
some years later I received a C64
and another dataset drive. A moth
later for my birthday I received a
Floppy disk drive and I saved up my
pennies for a 1084 colour monitor.
Although the Vic was amazing the
Sound from the Commodore 64 just
blew me away. I remember visiting
many shops and watching demos on the
Commodore 64, something about the
sound from this machine was special.

Potential

My Father started to see potential
in the Commodore 64 especially with
the various word processors and
spreadsheet packages I was using. He
bought me a dot matrix printer and
we went to a Computer show in London
to see what was new. It took a good
5 hours drive from our house to get
to the exhibition centre. The
exhibition was amazing, mainly
because it was the first I had
attended and we became fixed on the
GEOS stand a full GUI system for the
Commodore 64! you could change fonts
and font size make corrections
absolutely amazing, my father bought
the package after a 10 minute demo.
it was Geos version 1, and we used
this for some months then went to
version 2. Geos did irk me somewhat
that the main boot disk couldn't be
copied. The system as a whole was
amazing though (but slow with just
one drive) it didn't seem to matter
how long documents took to create I
was in a world of my own, although
spellchecking things wasn't such a
thrill (still isn't really).

Amiga

I remember seeing an advert for the
amazing Amiga so it was a natural
progression to this machine. I had
the Commodore 64 hooked up to a
couple of MIDI sound devices and
could create music using various
music packages of the time. I also
had a sound sampler and a drum
machine for the Commodore 64 hence
the immediate acceptance into a
local band to do electronic drum and
synthesiser programming; the group
also had a Rolland Juno keyboard,
and I fell in love with this. As you
can imagine we were quite poor,
although the experience was fun, we
did a few gigs then split up after
arguments about money and the usual
(I do more work than you).

Jobsworth

I decided I wanted to work with
computers somehow but didn't know
what, the school I attended
suggested I think of another job as
I was too poor at maths. Because I
had no formal computer training no
one would take me on as a programmer
(probably a wise decision) or
computer sales person. I was always
good at joinery/carpentry so
reluctantly I went into this line of
work doing a 4 year apprenticeship
and then working for a local company.

Now back to the Amiga

this was a 21st birthday present and
my introduction to sound trackers,
you could recreate a full record
with just sampling a few drum breaks
and hooks and vocals. Also with me
working I purchased yet another
floppy drive and a commodore 64
emulator for the Amiga! Yes I was
still using the Commodore 64 with
the Amiga. I could trigger samples
from the C64 using software on the
Amiga, this I figured was pretty
cool. And so did some members of a
local band.

Fast forward and the Amiga 4000
appeared I had done some music work
on a tape for friends  mainly
experimental music, I thought it was
a fair attempt but they insisted me
to commercially produce the tapes
and to sell them. I had 500 copies
manufactured by a professionally
duplication agency. The tapes
appeared on local radio and within a
month had sold out! I produced
another 500 and most of these sold
within the next month. This gave me
enough funds with some savings to
purchase an Amiga 4000 outright. I
contacted a local PC specialist; as
no one else could help me, he said
he had tracked down a machine and or
company, and could deliver it (at
the time I didn't realise it was SDL
or Silica who distributed Commodore
in the UK.) he wanted to see why it
was so expensive and so special, so
he delivered the machine by hand.

I set the machine up and we played
some games, he seemed to be suitably
impressed; I suggested he invest in
an Amiga 1200 if it was just for
games. That year I was made
redundant from the factory I worked
at having served over 7 years as a
joiner for a fabricated building
manufacturer. I saw an advert for
Silica shops so applied along with
pushing into various other pc
related shops in the hope I could
get a job by blagging as I realised
this could be my last chance into
the pc and games industry.

To my credit I had successfully set
up a 286 for my father with a laser
printer and upgraded it to a 386
then later a 486 and finally self
built a Pentium. I did have some
skills and it seemed this was enough
for most shops! I was given a job as
a PC technician at a local shop. I
also went for an assessment in
Manchester for Silica Shops they
seemed impressed I knew so much
about the Amiga machines and
Commodore in general, I sat for an
hour talking about Zorro slots, poor
guy I didn't give him a chance. I
was told I would get the job! but
formality meant a second interview
and again bored the HR director with
my verbal Commodore evangelisms. I
was thinking about the pc
technicians' job should I accept
this as a stopgap; but just as I was
thinking it all over: the phone rang
it was Silica's HR "you have the job
and start on xyz day at 9am." Cool
no brainer then

After working at silica for a few
months I was promoted to assistant
manager, later as the manager left I
was employed as a stand in manager.
My Midi equipment grew as I worked
on PC machines fixing windows
problems and freeing enough base
memory to play games for friends! I
later produced a boot disk we gave
away in the Shop for pc user to help
them play games, with options for No
ems Ems memory etc. Windows 95
arrived and that meant more friends
needed help upgrading etc, aren't
PCs great as a source of income.
Some news arrived about Commodore
being in trouble and they then
produced the Amiga 600 but we
couldn't work out why the machine
was released.

Christmas

During Christmas periods the amount
of Amiga 1200 we sold was unreal, I
remember some guy coming in and
asking for 6 machines. Silica were
as I said THE importer of Commodore
for the UK, they would re-bundling
machines and create the various
packs in house to ship out to other
shops. Then the cd32 arrived, an
interesting concept and I remember
that Commodore; who were again ahead
of time had released the CDTV that
no one under-stood. I think changing
the name of the CDTV to MEDIA Centre
would have been a better move (with
hindsight) My problem with the Amiga
4000 was it was a bodge, all the
promises of better chipset then the
1200 and a DSP for sound were of
course cut. As it turned out these
were down to lack of funds from a
now failing Commodore. I ended up
with a 1200 in a big box with zorro
cards and a faster processor that
caused many games problems, ah well
that's progress.

SOUND ON SOUND QUOTE October 1991
DR. T'S KCS AMIGA
Dr. T's KCS Amiga: Level II V3.5
Quality music software for the
Commodore Amiga has been thin on the
ground, but now there's at least one
sequencer that can stand comparison
to leading ST software. Paul Overaa
checks out version 3.5 of Dr. T's
KCS level II.
http://www.soundonsound.com/Contents.
php?Month=10&Year=1991

I used Drt{SHIFT-*}s KCS level 3.5 to
compose music, and still think this
is the best piece of software I have
ever seen (although it did have some
bugs and the screen size was fixed
arghhhhhh) I went on a one day
course to learn how to use Drt{SHIFT-*}s and
was disappointed the programming
language part of the software was
only described briefly. The gent
taking the course said it was
covered in another course costing
over 1 thousand pounds! I declined
attending this due to money problems
(like finding or justifying the
price) this was the most powerful
part of the program. I never got on
with Music X as many others seemed
to, If it was me or if it was just
not intuitive I am unsure so it got
dumped maybe it was too intuitive!
Around this time I took part in a
COBOL programming course, this
taught me one important thing, that
is "I am not a natural programmer"
The cd32 was interesting especially
if sold with the FMV module allowing
Full screen feature films to be
viewed, again this could be done on
the pc with a realmagic add-on card
but the results were blurry and VERY
expensive.

I talked in the Silica shop to a
cable TV guy he looked at the pc and
said we cant use that! then I showed
him the cd32 and he was hooked; we
can use this to play a looping
adverts when we are off air its
cheep and the quality is excellent.
I sold 32 units in one sale!
Although finding the FMV carts
proved impossible, I managed to sell
only 3 and had to have him look
elsewhere for people with stock!
Later as the machines sales dwindled
Silica created the Critical Zone
pack for the CD32, Silica had an
in-house competition to think of the
packs name. Meanwhile in the shops
we had to assemble the poly boxes
and games before selling them to
customers, it was a great deal for
the customer though.

Silica lasted for some years until
Commodore went bust to everyone's
shock! we had a crisis meeting and
were told of a manager buy out from
David Trammel it didn't happen! and
Escom purchased the rights to the
Amiga, didn't know what it was or
how to market it then went bust.
Later Gateway bought the rights and
didn't know what they had so the
machine slowly disappeared, and as
this was our main selling item
contact so Silica was in trouble,
they dabbled with PCs and own brand
systems but Commodore was THE main
seller for Silica.

I left and went to work as a manager
at various shops, later moving back
to construction for my current
employer www.ultraframe.co.uk I was
employed as a pc technician and
after some traumatic exams passed as
an MCSE (Microsoft certified Systems
Engineer) in windows 2000 having
missed NT4 because the exams retired
before I passed them all DOH! I
passed an upgrade exam to Windows
2003 and am still studying windows
2008.

My Commodore Amiga is now sadly sat
on a desk never powered up, the
Commodore 64 still is used but I
lost the way with the Amiga, after
it fragmented into various operating
systems and hardware it became for
me too complex to follow. I always
thought I was on my own with the
Commodore 64! but sat on a works
training course during lunch and I
used a web browser and in some
inspired twitching of hands typed
"commodore 64" I don't know why but
I did! Of course he number of hits
received was unbelievable this was
around 1999, people are still using
the machines! I found
www.commodorescene.uk.org and met
Allan Bairstow and Andrew Fisher
then Shaun Bebbington, and the
brilliant Jason Kelk (TMR) amongst
others like Robert Bernardo and I
joined the Fresno users group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug/
amazingly the machine was still
alive, as Commodore scene magazine
faded I carried on with Commodore
Free and helped setup the
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk with
the first meeting at my house.

Commodore for me has many memories,
its not just nostalgia, these
machines hadn't been available
before so our generation were sort
of pioneers. We were doing things no
one else had done before. I know
everyone loves there childhood but
this is different somehow. Now I
have 2 Pristine Commodore 64 units
boxed with games 1 has NEVER opened!
sat in the attic waiting for my son
to ask about Commodore and
computers, I would love him to
become a Commodore user but who
knows, he owns a DTV unit and plays
pole position so there is a chance.

I remember Chris Snowden of
www.commodore16.com demoing the
plus4 at a recent
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk
meeting, I had dismissed the c=16
and plus4 units but to be honest now
I have to have a plus4 the machine
can do some amazing things, pity it
was overpriced and incorrectly
advertised by Commodore.

Commodore Dead? What do you mean!

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