11-02-2005 10:10									#31
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Never saw it in that colour, I had the beige one.

	11-02-2005 10:10									#32
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by pchang I reinvented the wheel for my science project.

That's pretty funny.

It makes me wonder if my hypothesis that "something happens" when rubbing two sticks together would win over your experiment in the science fair.

	11-02-2005 10:17									#33
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Remember that thingy on the left?
IIRC that one set me back back 400$.

For the younger among us: it's a floppy drive, not an entire case.

Capacity: 170 Kbyte...

Attachment: c64.jpg
This has been downloaded 70 time(s).

	11-02-2005 10:20									#34
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I've still got my VIC-20 and its cassette drive.

	11-02-2005 10:32									#35
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by reds4ever I can't believe Asher or UR can't give us an insight into this new fangled contraption

I'm no dinosaur.

	11-02-2005 11:09									#36
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Don't be too harsh on the kid.. I remeber my 11th grade Chemistry project. My great experiment: test what commercial products made ice melt the quickest. Yeah.

Needless to say, I wasn't the top science student. I could understand concepts, but I was never creative enough to think of good projects. I salute anee for being creative enough to come up with this scheme.

	11-02-2005 11:42									#37
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Ted Striker

Started out with that (and in that color), got the much cooler floppy drive later.

I don't remember the floppy drive being $400 at that point, though.

	11-02-2005 11:50									#38
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Would 200$ make more sense?
I'm pretty sure it was as expensive as the C64 itself though.

	11-02-2005 12:36									#39
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

For some reason, $150 keeps going through my mind...and I believe the C64 was cheaper than the floppy drive.

	11-02-2005 12:41									#40
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

The C64 was $600 when it came out in 1982, but we didn't get one until 1987. I bought a Tandy 1000SX that same year for $800 including monitor, so it had to be considerably cheaper than that.

	11-02-2005 12:52									#41
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

It appears that the C64 was down to $150 by 1987.

	11-02-2005 12:54									#42
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Geronimo how about storing data on a VHS tape? Audio has been done but I don't recall that VHS ever was.

A couple of years ago there was someone pushing VHS as a backup medium. I would assume they got some decent density on it.

Too bad for them that the price per gig of drives plummeted and people started using RAID, or just copied drive to drive as back up.

Oh, and then there were burners.

	11-02-2005 13:06									#43
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

oh that picture brings back memories. ohh, the many hours of waiting for Bruce Lee to load.

	11-02-2005 14:21									#44
	Increase Your PM Length

Thanks for the advice . And reinventing the wheel ( metaphorically ) is part of the learning process , you know . . . . . . . . .

	11-02-2005 21:40									#45
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: Originally posted by alva Would 200$ make more sense? I'm pretty sure it was as expensive as the C64 itself though.

it's was £250 the the UK, and a real peice of sh!t performance wise.

	11-02-2005 21:43									#46
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by reds4ever MikeH: IIRC the C64 tape deck used to operate at 600 baud and then veify the data, making it effectively 300 baud.

If that's a criticism of my loading impression then I don't know enough geeky technical sh1t to know what it means.

	11-02-2005 21:48									#47
	Get a bigger avatar today!

It would have been clearer if I'd have spelt 'verify' correctly, any better now??

	11-02-2005 21:50									#48
	Put an end to popups!

Nope. Definitely not.

	11-02-2005 22:24									#49
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I remember that my dad and mom spent a fortune on the C-64, 1541 disk drive, Epson printer, monitor, and word processing software. $1,500 in 1983.

This was big bucks at the time ($3,000 in today's money) and my dad had a heart attack a year later. Coincidence? Maybe not.

	12-02-2005 02:49									#50
	Get a bigger avatar today!

I paid 2500 East German Marks for an Atari 800 XL basic device in 1986. It was somewhat risky, because as professional soldier I was not allowed to make such transactions. No printer, no disk drive, not even a datassette, which led to our "turbo" development described above, together with an electronics specialist, who made the hardware and (very important) fitting plugs. I think if I dig deep enough in my papers, I'd even find the driver code, written in 6502 assembler.

But the software was dirt cheap. There were enough cracked modules out, we made tape files from them and copied freely each from other, completely safe from persecution behind the iron curtain. I had more than 100 games and scores of useful programs like compilers (even Fortran), assemblers (several), word processing software (pretty useless without printer) and even a star catalogue.

	12-02-2005 03:18									#51
	Tired of ads?

quote: I paid 2500 East German Marks for an Atari 800 XL basic device in 1986.

You rich communist ******...I only had the 600XL.

Of course I had it several years earlier at the age of 12-13 and was able to buy it from my allowance.

Learned my first lines of code on that one.

	12-02-2005 03:24									#52
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by alva quote: I paid 2500 East German Marks for an Atari 800 XL basic device in 1986. You rich communist ******...I only had the 600XL. Of course I had it several years earlier at the age of 12-13 and was able to buy it from my allowance. Learned my first lines of code on that one.

600XL, did nt that pooter have the best keyboard ever?

	12-02-2005 03:27									#53
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

It's the same as the 800XL, the only difference that I can remember was the memory.

	12-02-2005 03:32									#54
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by alva It's the same as the 800XL, the only difference that I can remember was the memory.

yep 16 against 48, i used to own one, the thing I remember is the keyboard, it was spot on.

I wrote a version of the Vic 20 game Blitz on it, ah, those were the days....

	12-02-2005 03:45									#55
	Put an end to popups!

Actually, the 800 XL had full 64 KB, not only 48. Of these 64 KB, 16 were hidden, because the OS ROM was set on the same addresses. 8 more were hidden, when the BASIC interpreter ROM was active. But this RAM existed and could be accessed by disabling all interrupts (obviously) and then temporarily turning off the OS ROM, which was possible. the 16 KB we used for several purposes. So we had for instance a RAM disk solution. Even alternative OSes with more features existed, which could be loaded from tape, moved into the RAM "below" the original OS, which then was disabled so that the alternative OS could work.

	12-02-2005 03:51									#56
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

OK, all I did with it was:

input a
input b
print a+b

	12-02-2005 03:55									#57
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

You're quite right Sir Ralph, it was 64K, IIRC the idea behind the BASIC was that you could disable it and use another language instead (it was on a cartridge on the 400 and 800), the concept never really took off.

What was it called when you could use the time when the raster(?) on the TV went from bottom right to top left to put extra sprites on the screen?

	12-02-2005 04:16									#58
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: I think if I dig deep enough in my papers, I'd even find the driver code, written in 6502 assembler.

Props.

Why on Earth they ever forbade such things is beyond me.

	12-02-2005 04:22									#59
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by DanS Props. Why on Earth they ever forbade such things is beyond me.

'Cos only the guy who wrote the code knew what the hell was supposed to be going on.

Anywho the 6502 was sh!it the Z80(a) was the mutts nutts

	12-02-2005 05:30									#60
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by reds4ever You're quite right Sir Ralph, it was 64K, IIRC the idea behind the BASIC was that you could disable it and use another language instead (it was on a cartridge on the 400 and 800), the concept never really took off. What was it called when you could use the time when the raster(?) on the TV went from bottom right to top left to put extra sprites on the screen?

Vertical blank interrupt, once every 20 milliseconds. There was also a horizontal blank interrupt at the end of every screen line, which could be used to switch graphics modi and screen colors, quite effectful.