# Commodore 64 Rebooted



## HanaBi (Oct 3, 2017)

For those of us old enough to remember cutting our teeth on 2nd and 3rd generation home computers back in the 1980s (Sinclair Spectrum, Dragon 32, Texas TI99/4a, Oric, BBC Micro A/B, Vic-20), you will be pleased to learn that the much-popular Commodore C64 is going to be rebooted early next year!

However, it should be noted that the new C64 will be half the size of the original, which explains its new name - "The C64 Mini"

Moreover, the actual keyboard doesn't offer full functionality, so those peeps wanted to learn/relearn BASIC, will have to plug in a standard keyboard into one of its USB slots. 

The Mini, also ships with one of those 1980s styled joysticks, but a more modern HDMI slot in order to handshake with the latest monitors and smart TVs 

As befits its name, it comes complete with a built-in rom containing 64 legacy games; and there is a save-program option, which suggest you'll be able to code and save your own games.

No information on the hardware side of things (memory, storage, processor); but the price has been set to £69.99, $69.99,€79.99

One would ask what is the point of doing this when it would be just as easy to use an emulator, or buy a genuine C64 off eBay! 

To me it's probably nothing more than a Raspberry Pi running as a C64 emulator in a keyboard case.

More details here....

The Official C64 website – The World’s Best-selling Home Computer – Reborn!


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## Vertigo (Oct 3, 2017)

I suspect it's targeted as a nostalgic Christmas present for those who have fond memories of those early heady days of home computing, especially with that obviously retro styling.


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## HanaBi (Oct 3, 2017)

I still have my old Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum, BBC Micro B and Atari 2600 Games Console, up in the loft someplace. Haven't played on any of them for years. But then that was back in the day when you had to load games from tape cassettes via a tape recorder. And in the case of the two Sinclair machines you had to get the volume just right otherwise the game would fail to load.

Such happy days back then, especially learning to program in BASIC; so much more interesting than the languages  I use these days like Python and Scratch.

Moreover the machines back then had their own characteristics, faults and charms; compare that with today's utterly bland PCs and laptops.


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## Parson (Oct 3, 2017)

Ah! but bland is good.


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## Biskit (Oct 3, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> I still have my old Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum, BBC Micro B and Atari 2600 Games Console, up in the loft someplace.


I still have my BBC B somewhere in the loft.  I bought it as a student - a serious working computer, and I had a good old 5 1/4 inch floppy with _hundreds_ of  kilobytes of storage.  As a postgrad, I had my own machine in my digs, and a departmental one in my lab complete with terminal emulator to let me talk to the university mainframe.
I wrote my PhD thesis on that BBC B, using a word-processor I wrote myself in 6502 assembler code, and did chunks of my data analysis before punting the numbers onto the mainframe.
Happy days.


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## HanaBi (Oct 3, 2017)

Biskit said:


> I still have my BBC B somewhere in the loft.  I bought it as a student - a serious working computer, and I had a good old 5 1/4 inch floppy with _hundreds_ of  kilobytes of storage.  As a postgrad, I had my own machine in my digs, and a departmental one in my lab complete with terminal emulator to let me talk to the university mainframe.
> I wrote my PhD thesis on that BBC B, using a word-processor I wrote myself in 6502 assembler code, and did chunks of my data analysis before punting the numbers onto the mainframe.
> Happy days.



Yes, I cut my teeth on not only BASIC, but also Assembler and Machine Code on the ZX81 and Spectrum. I was quite fascinated how quickly a program like a game for example, would execute when written in Assembler compared to BASIC. And because of the severe limitations on memory and storage you had to be extremely economical/efficient when it came to writing a program.

Many late late nights of compiling and debugging and lots and lots of swearing when I couldn't find a syntax error. lol


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## Biskit (Oct 3, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> And because of the severe limitations on memory and storage you had to be extremely economical/efficient when it came to writing a program.


I can't remember what it was called, but there was an advanced user guide for the BBC B.  (It's buried in a box somewhere.)  The important thing was it told you what every bit of memory was used for, and explained all the chunks of reserved space intended for the (staggeringly expensive) add-ons that I never knew anyone to buy.  So, if you had a chunk of 6502 code that fitted into say 32bytes, there was bound to be a 32byte reserved space somewhere.  The big challenge was keeping track - I discovered the necessity of documentation.


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## tinkerdan (Oct 3, 2017)

I still have my 128 packup up somewhere. Maybe it's time to put it on ebay.


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## Dave (Oct 3, 2017)

I still have a C64 in my loft. How much is it worth on eBay exactly? 



HanaBi said:


> To me it's probably nothing more than a Raspberry Pi running as a C64 emulator in a keyboard case.


Sounds about right, but without all the pleasures of saving onto audio cassette tapes?


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## BAYLOR (Oct 3, 2017)

Dave said:


> I still have a C64 in my loft. How much is it worth on eBay exactly?
> 
> Sounds about right, but without all the pleasures of saving onto audio cassette tapes?



I loved the Commodore 64 version  of the game Ghosts and Ghouls.


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## Biskit (Oct 3, 2017)

BAYLOR said:


> I loved the Commodore 64 version of the game Ghosts and Ghouls.


But would you shell out the money to relive the experience?

(I ask as a non-gamer.  My BBC micro was a bit of a work-horse.  I even had a summer job programming someone else's to act as a data-logger for an x-ray rig.  Then I discovered HP, IEEE488 interfaces, experimental automation yada, yada, yada...  I can feel the nostalgia oozing from my pores, but I wouldn't want to take the tech backward step and work with those old machines again... ignoring the small detail that I don't do that sort of stuff any more.)


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## BAYLOR (Oct 3, 2017)

Biskit said:


> But would you shell out the money to relive the experience?
> 
> (I ask as a non-gamer.  My BBC micro was a bit of a work-horse.  I even had a summer job programming someone else's to act as a data-logger for an x-ray rig.  Then I discovered HP, IEEE488 interfaces, experimental automation yada, yada, yada...  I can feel the nostalgia oozing from my pores, but I wouldn't want to take the tech backward step and work with those old machines again... ignoring the small detail that I don't do that sort of stuff any more.)



No , I wouldn't . Its old technology.


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## Dave (Oct 4, 2017)

BAYLOR said:


> No , I wouldn't . Its old technology.


It may be old technology, but surely the skills learnt are still useful. We still need people that know how an electric light actually works, even though most people will flick a switch and never need to even think about it.


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## HanaBi (Oct 4, 2017)

Out of pure interest I retrieved my boxed ZX81 and ZX Spectrum from my dusty loft last night. I was also lucky enough to find an old tape player too, all boxed in a big packing box.

I used one of my very old monitors which had a TV aerial port and managed to connect the Spectrum to the monitor, and then plugged in the huge/heavy power pack that went with it. And to my utter surprise it came to life - albeit a blank white screen with a flashing cursor bottom left. Wrote a bit of code to prompt me for my name and age; and to print it 50 times. All worked!

I then hooked up the tape deck and popped in "Chucky Egg" (one of my favourite Spectrum games back in the 80s); adjusted the volume and loaded the game. Took about 5 attempts before it finally loaded and I was back to my misspent youth playing this great arcade game (using the rubber keys on the keypad). 

I then tried getting my ZX81 (plus 16K RAMpack add-on) to fire up, but I think the power modulator inside the box is dead. Great shame because I wanted to play "3D Monster Maze" in its full black & white glory!

It was nice playing the Spectrum again, but the novelty didn't last long and I quickly packed it up (along with the 81) and put it back in the loft for another 20 years!


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## Brian G Turner (Oct 4, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> It was nice playing the Spectrum again, but the novelty didn't last long



I downloaded a Spectrum 48k emulator (with games!) for the iPad a few years back. While it was nice revisiting old games, the playability really was terrible - those were the days where you had to be pixel perfect with your jumps. 

I also bought Rare Replay for the Xbox, which includes original titles by Ultimate (Play the Game) - Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, etc. However, as above, while nice to revisit, the old Spectrum games just held novelty value.


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 4, 2017)

A friend is well into his retro computing, and often surfs the net on an Amiga 500! I don't think he uses original machines - I think he owns a proper Amiga 500 and a Commodore but keeps them safely stored away, and has built his own PC style, as there are companies who manufacture all the components you need to build a replica Amiga.

Case modding is of course very popular, but the best one I have ever seen belonged to a chap who built himself a Commodore 64 Laptop!! It even looks like a genuine C64 laptop from the 80's, if Commodore had done one.


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## HanaBi (Oct 4, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> I downloaded a Spectrum 48k emulator (with games!) for the iPad a few years back. While it was nice revisiting old games, *the playability really was terrible - those were the days where you had to be pixel perfect with your jumps.*
> 
> I also bought Rare Replay for the Xbox, which includes original titles by Ultimate (Play the Game) - Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, etc. However, as above, while nice to revisit, the old Spectrum games just held novelty value.



Oh golly gosh yes! That used to infuriate me immensely, especially with platform games where you had to jump over gaps, holes, or traps etc. Didn't matter how close to the edge prior to jumping i would always end up being killed!

The <extremely> bad language that used to fill the air in my bedroom back then would make a a navvy blush! 

Obviously, being of a more mature age these days my cursing is far more civilised i.e. "Oh dear, I appear to have been killed. Oh well never mind, it is obviously a failing of mine and not the game!"


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 4, 2017)

Sadly back in the days of my 80's childhood, I didn't have a hip & groovy system like a Speccy or C64 
Instead the Father, I think because he wanted to have a go at playing games and had a vague interest in this new computing thing bought me an Acorn Electron when I was between 5 & 6 in very late 1983/early 1984. Looking at the details now online, I strongly suspect my Father was conned by a smooth talking Salesman in either Currys, Dixons or Tandy's which I believe where the only places selling such stuff here in this small town in the early 80's. Looking at the release prices, the Speccy was £130, but the Acorn Electron was £175.

I used to spend hours inputting programmes.  I would have preferred a Spectrum as games for the Acorn were harder to get hold of.

I have dyspraxia, which can cause literacy problems, however unlike many with it I can read, and read fast  and in school was in reading, far more advanced than my classmates, the only literacy problems I have is Punctuation and even i cannot read my handwriting, let alone anyone else  and I find having to write by hand a very stressful and physically painful experience, holding a pen hurts.

The reason I am not illiterate is because my Mamgu (grandmother) taught me to read at an early age, and hugely encouraged me to read and to enjoy reading, buying me 5 or 6 novels and a couple of comics every Saturday, and once the Acorn Electron arrived, she would buy me magazines, and books that featured BASIC programmes to input, so thanks to my Mamgu and the Acorn Electron I am literate!  in a similar fashion, I have, thanks to the Dyspaxia, horrendous Hand/Eye Coordination, and any sort of Coordination in general - I can quite easily trip on a level, empty floor! I wouldn't be safe even to try taking 1 driving lesson, a mate did try and give me a lesson once, refusing to accept my protests that my coordination problems left me too dangerous to go behind a steering wheel.
Had he, not managed to to get his seatbelt off, and basically dive between my legs to slam down the brake with his hands, we would have died! the Car stopped half a foot from the edge of the Harbour wall.
But thanks to the Acorn Electron, I am able to type, and type fast and accurately, without even looking at the keyboard normally, i think my speed is around 100 words per minute.

So, i owe a huge debt of gratitude to Acorn!!!


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## HanaBi (Oct 4, 2017)

I vaguely remember the Acorn. I think it was positioned somewhere between the low-end Spectrum/Dragon 32/Vic-20 and the mid-to-high end BBC Micro, Tandy's and Sharp's of this world.

It was pretty decent spec-wise with a good keyboard and plenty of expansion sockets and a ULA logic chip I think. Which made it quicker than the Spectrum. But I think its biggest problem was support. Gamers never thought of it as a good gaming machine because there wasn't the hardware peripheral market out there compared to the lower end machines; and as such software houses didn't churn out many games for it. But I think it did well with the schools as an alternative to the more expensive BBC Models A&B. 

Trouble is there was console saturation in the early 80s - too many machines spread thinly over a relatively small but growing market. I think the Acorn vanished by the end of 1984 whilst the Spectrum's and Commodore 64s became firmly established.


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 4, 2017)

IIRC the Acorn Electron was effectively a stripped down, smaller version of the BBC Micro. I have a vague memory that the software tape cassettes were marked "Acorn/BBC" so worked on both systems. And yes, games were hard to get, WH Smiths would have a few, but nowhere near the amount of what was available for other systems.

I eventually had an Amiga 500, but that was 2nd hand, back in the early 90's, which I think was past its heyday, and PC Games were starting to become a thing. I had Dalek Attack for it which was really cool, then my brother broke the Amiga's Graphic Unit.  

Nothing will ever beat the sheer excitement & awesomeness of when I was just 18, working as a graphics designer and on a ridiculously good wage for anyone at the time, 1996, I think I was earning a fair bit more than the average wage for this area at the time - I was on around £200 - I just found an inflation calculator, and were I 18 now and being paid the same equivalent wage, then I would be earning around £270 for a 36 hour week!!
So it was easy to save up £1000 then full of excitement I walked into Dixons with the whole grand in cash in my wallet, and bought my first ever Desktop PC and Monitor, and because I was paying cash, the Manager fell over himself to do me a good deal, and I got various extras including a couple of games thrown in, and with the monitor it would have been over £1000, but I got the lot for bang on a grand


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## Biskit (Oct 4, 2017)

Caledfwlch said:


> bought my first ever Desktop PC and Monitor


Stop it, all of you.  This reminiscence stuff could soak up my whole damned day.

I'm now having flashbacks to my first contact with a PC.  There I was, cocky PhD student, doing amazing thinks with BBC micros, HPs and a mainframe... and doing a couple of hours a week as a teaching assistant in the first year physics lab where all these kids (wow, at least three years younger than me) were learning basic BASIC coding on these new-fangled PCs.


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## Cathbad (Oct 4, 2017)

Way back when, I worked for a well-known company in Florida (they advertised heavily, mostly on the back of comic books).  Being the fastest/most accurate typist there (My actual job was type-setting), the Boss came to me and asked me to type up the corporate business manual for them.  "No problem!" says I.  He then points me to a Commodore 64.

Problem.

Why did he want me to type such an extensive manuscript on the cruddy 64!? 

Couldn't do it.  You know what happens when a 100CWPM typist tries to type on a 64?  Not much.  It's a lot of stopping and waiting for the damn thing to stop beeping so you can start typing again!  It was just too slow.  So damn slow.

My first experience with desktops was the Wang, in the US Army.  By the time I'd loaded the two LP-size discs, I could have finished most projects on my Selectric 3!

Happily, they got better.


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## HanaBi (Oct 4, 2017)

Ah well, when I was a lad......

Actually I used to buy some computer mags back in the 80s - "Computer and Video Games" and "ZX Sinclair" or something like that. I only bought them for the computer programs that were printed inside.

I would spend hours typing about 300 lines of code (assuming I could make out some of the poor print quality characters and syntax), thinking that this is going to be a truly awesome game due to the length of the code and that it was using lots of PEEKs and POKEs in the program.

However, once fully debugged I would start playing and quickly realise what a complete waste of time it all was.


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## Parson (Oct 4, 2017)

We are a bunch of Geeks. Are we not? ..... I dabbled with a Commodore 64, and an Apple 2e (? ) two disk drives and no hard drive. Maybe it was some other re-iteration of the Apple. But my first real work with a computer came with a true Blue IBM 8088. A blazer at the the time, it is now so laughably slow that one wonders how any work at all was accomplished with it. ---- Ah, but I loved the days when the world used WordPerfect. I memorized a lot of the keyboard macros, wrote my own, set up my own keyboard shortcuts, and generally was about a mid-level user. Now the world is whitewashed with the ubiquitous Word, and everyone pretty much has to do things the Microsoft way. 

(It still irks me that most of my correspondents send attachments in Word --- I have a copy in self defense, and for those attachments --- when they could send pdf's and everyone could open them.)


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## HanaBi (Oct 4, 2017)

I had the good/bad fortune to have a play on the Apple Lisa, way back in 1983.

From a hardware pov, it was technically superior to the PC of the time. But its biggest drawback was price (just shy of $10,000 back then, or $24,000 in today's money); and as such the home and SME markets of the time stuck with their cheaper/inferior PCs.

But it was a great machine to use and code on (more info on Wiki); shame the price killed it stone dead.


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## Cathbad (Oct 4, 2017)

Parson said:


> loved the days when the world used WordPerfect



I loved that program!!


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## Cathbad (Oct 4, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> I had the good/bad fortune to have a play on the Apple Lisa, way back in 1983.
> 
> From a hardware pov, it was technically superior to the PC of the time. But its biggest drawback was price (just shy of $10,000 back then, or $24,000 in today's money); and as such the home and SME markets of the time stuck with their cheaper/inferior PCs.
> 
> But it was a great machine to use and code on (more info on Wiki); shame the price killed it stone dead.



I've no idea what the Wang was selling for, but I know it couldn't have been worth it.  And since the Army bought a slew of them (back in '81 or early '82), I'm sure they charged the gov't a slew of cash!


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## Parson (Oct 5, 2017)

Cathbad said:


> I loved that program!!



I still use it (WP 8) because I can in a one person office. However in recent years the program hasn't been improved much and I will not upgrade. Sigh, joining the sheep.


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## HanaBi (Oct 5, 2017)

I remember using WordStar back in the early 80s - a DOS based word processor program in the days when CP/M was the stardard OS prior to MS-DOS. But then of course WordPerfect blew WS away due to its superior portability. 

Still a great program though


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## DrMclony (Oct 5, 2017)

Wordstar was fantastic in its time. Wordperfect was great as well, but was never as user friendly.


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 5, 2017)

Cathbad said:


> Way back when, I worked for a well-known company in Florida (they advertised heavily, mostly on the back of comic books).  Being the fastest/most accurate typist there (My actual job was type-setting), the Boss came to me and asked me to type up the corporate business manual for them.  "No problem!" says I.  He then points me to a Commodore 64.
> 
> Problem.
> 
> ...




I too am a 100 WPM Typist!
At 16 I left school, and began work in a local Printers, training as a Graphic Designer.
We used Windows PC's, when I started it was "486" machines. By the time I was 18, the two other Designers who trained me had one by one, left for pastures new, and a few months before my 18th birthday as the 2nd guy left, the guy who was the Printers assistant was moved to the "Design Department" as we called the little area at the back of the retail shop/customer service area, with a 5 foot bit of board giving us "privacy" from said shop. I hate "bigging myself up" but I was frankly a much better and faster designer/typesetter etc than him but he was put in charge as he had been with the firm the longest. He soon left before getting dismissed for various things, including the printing of 5000 20 page booklets which he refused to let me check over, and which was full of typos.
And I was put in charge mwahahahahaha!!! 
Hence why, at just 18 in 1996, I was earning a wage the same as, many middle class professionals, & graduates starting their way up the ladder. 
Got the Boss to agree to upgrading the PC's to 586's I think it was, the software running our invoicing/payment system was in DOS ffs!!
This guy, Bryn who had worked for national newspapers doing layout design & stuff had "come back" to Wales, setup his own design company, and would bring the jobs he took in and designed to us to print, we got on, & he would pop in and sit with me, and give me some adhoc training & advice with whatever I was working on - he was an awesome designer, and the Boss hired him to give me some training sessions at my request. These days im not a designer, but when I am working on my CV, or doing a poster for a friend, I still can practically see Bryn, sat next to me, big huge guy with a beard, smoking a Gallois with a cup of coffee in one hand, swearing like a soldier 

He persuaded the boss to buy an Apple Mac, against my wishes  I hated having to use a mouse with only 1 button. I can't recall why, but I preffered Quark Xpress on PC to Apple, never managed to get the sodding thing to connect to the Internet either, plus I had a nice 21" monitor, which couldnt connect to the Mac, it was total nightmare!
It broke down, HDD failure I suspect, didn't care, was just happy it wasnt working! Boss asks me, as I was also the "IT guy" fixing/building our PC's to fix it. "Can't says I - its a sealed case, it's impossible to fix yourself, can't even upgrade components, it will have to go back to Apple, dunno if it's still in Warranty.."
"I can open it, we can buy a new HDD from X shop in town" says he
"I know nothing about Mac's internals, and the shop wont stock Mac HDD's"
"don't worry I will sort it " says he
And to my horror, he comes  back with a frelling Crowbar, and hammer, and proceeds to rip the sealed case to pieces. Goodbye guarantee!!
"right, fix it"
this is like 20 years ago, so I can't remember all the details, but I think, even then, Mac Products, even the tiny desktop cases used non standard screws etc so you couldn't even unscrew things without an expensive set of Apple tools, from a knock off company.


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## Parson (Oct 5, 2017)

DrMclony said:


> Wordstar was fantastic in its time. Wordperfect was great as well, but was never as user friendly.



True to a degree. If you took the time you could make WP do all kinds of cool things. It was designed for people who were in charge of their own computers and input. WP took it on the nose for that, because the large corporate users wanted standardization, so that if you did something one way on one computer it would be done the same way on another. ie I set up my WP to bold with alt O, I was using alt B to delete to the end of the line, both of which made sense to me, but someone who tried to use my WP was flummoxed almost immediately. But the killing blow for WP came when Windows was designed and WP was not ready for the enormity and speed of the switch and then for some reason WP never would work just right on it. In the days of Widows 95 it would crash about 2 or 3 times a week for me. (I've always suspected the Micro$oft did not share the complete code with WP, or alternatively the WP system of opening different documents inside the same program rather than the more clunky Word way of opening separate programs for each document wouldn't play well together.)


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## Dave (Oct 5, 2017)

Getting more than a little off topic, but a major problem for archivists that want to keep old records is that all the old working machines capable of reading these formats are getting rarer. They have to go on eBay and buy them, if necessary, digitise the records, and then store them in a more modern format. There are archives stored on old media - magnetic tape, cartridges, documents on discontinued WP, music on minidisk, records and reels, film on Betamax - that could be lost forever. And electronic records can get corrupted (I know this from my own photos.) You need to keep copies in different places and periodically compare them, preferably using checksum. You never had to do that with real photographs stored in the attic.

There were some Commodore 64 kids teaching counting programs that my children used to love that I haven't seen anywhere else. Also, someone mentioned those "Egg" games earlier. I spent hours playing the "Dizzy" versions.


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## Biskit (Oct 5, 2017)

Parson said:


> In the days of Widows 95 it would crash about 2 or 3 times a week for me.


Word wasn't exactly stable either.  I used it for report-writing at work - not always the happiest of experiences.  Regular saves were essential.
Now I'm 'retired', my machines run linux and I use OpenOffice.


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## Edward M. Grant (Oct 5, 2017)

Dave said:


> Getting more than a little off topic, but a major problem for archivists that want to keep old records is that all the old working machines capable of reading these formats are getting rarer.



Yeah, I recently had to buy a Mini-DV VCR off ebay to digitize the last of my old camcorder tapes. Some of which are copies of old Hi8 camcorder tapes that I made so I could digitize them over Firewire. And some of those Hi8 tapes are copies of VHS camcorder tapes from the space shuttle launches I used to go to.

At least now they should be readable for as long as there's a Mini-DV codec. And they could always be copied to an uncompressed video format if need be, without losing any more quality.


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## HanaBi (Oct 5, 2017)

By coincidence I've just ordered from Amazon a "InVaFoCo Cassette to to MP3 Converter player". Only about 20 quid, but should help me digitise to mp3 all my old, old, old music cassettes that I was considering chucking up until a few days ago.


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## Vertigo (Oct 6, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> By coincidence I've just ordered from Amazon a "InVaFoCo Cassette to to MP3 Converter player". Only about 20 quid, but should help me digitise to mp3 all my old, old, old music cassettes that I was considering chucking up until a few days ago.


I went through that process a few years ago but sadly by today's standards the quality was pretty dreadful and there were several that I couldn't persuade to run at full speed, despite repeated full rewinds and winds (presumably too gunked up with age) and they tended to surge between several different speeds, none of which appeared to match to proper one. You'd probably have to pay good money for the electronics to duplicate that sound effect today!


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 6, 2017)

Dave said:


> Getting more than a little off topic, but a major problem for archivists that want to keep old records is that all the old working machines capable of reading these formats are getting rarer. They have to go on eBay and buy them, if necessary, digitise the records, and then store them in a more modern format. There are archives stored on old media - magnetic tape, cartridges, documents on discontinued WP, music on minidisk, records and reels, film on Betamax - that could be lost forever. And electronic records can get corrupted (I know this from my own photos.) You need to keep copies in different places and periodically compare them, preferably using checksum. You never had to do that with real photographs stored in the attic.
> 
> There were some Commodore 64 kids teaching counting programs that my children used to love that I haven't seen anywhere else. Also, someone mentioned those "Egg" games earlier. I spent hours playing the "Dizzy" versions.



This has been a massive problem for some major UK Banks/Financial Institutions, costing them many millions.

Back in the late 90's they started digitising, in very poor quality loan/credit card contracts, and shredding the paper copy - despite experts in Archiving & UK Law warning them that this was a very bad mistake.

Get to the early naughties, and the rise of the Internet, and Consumer Help forums, and the banks were stuffed. Ordinary people, especially those in debt began learning that to "prove" a debt, ie go to Civil Court and get a judgement forcing the debtor to Pay, and if not, the Creditor has options such as using Bailiffs etc the bank must provide a copy of the original signed agreement, the poor digitised copies did not in any way meet the appropriate Legislations requirements, so, the banks were taking people to Court, and they were getting the Court Cases cancelled, because the Finance Company was in breach and couldn't legally speaking, prove a debt was even taken out, never mind, owed! As that raised publicity, a whole lot more people, often crippled with huge credit repayments, but currently making their payments, sent off for a copy of the "original agreement", and on receipt seeing it was also a non legal copy  realised they could stop paying, and there was nothing the companies could do - thus even more money lost to the banks.
All to save the banks a few pounds in storage, and not paying experts to set up their digitisation systems and hardware.

It is why, there have over the years been major attempts by finance institutions and the Legal profession to shut down the major user run Consumer Rights & Help websites in the UK, sometimes trying through legal means, or attempting to force the ruling govenment to "do something" with legislation against these sites, but most often through highly questionable means.

I don't know all the details, but the largest site "Consumer Action Group" is the biggest thorn, and always has been, and at one point, a Company, or consortium of company bought out 2 of the sites senior Admins, then had them make all sorts of claims of dodgy dealings and behaviours against the Sites owner, I don't know if it ever went as far as a Court, but the claims didn't stand up to much scrutiny.

The reason the Legal Profession is also against these sites is they are costing it an absolute fortune - once, people would have to engage a Solicitor for even fairly basic Court Cases, both defending against, or suing someone, but with the info available on these sites, ordinary people are able to represent themselves in Court on issues that are not complex, thus, Solicitors are losing their bread and butter.These Sites have also spearheaded campaigns and raised awareness of improprieties and unlawful behaviour carried out by Debt Collection Companies, and their pet Solicitors, seeing some major figures in that world be closed down by the Regulators, and several Solicitors being dragged before the Legal Board, and having their Licence to Practice in the UK Revoked.

The most famous was ACS: Law - who were working on behalf of a couple of media companies doing the sort of thing the RIAA gets up to in the States, sending threatening "invoices" accusing the victim of illegally downloading pirate media. A Campaigning legal firm took on a couple hundred people in receipt of ACS Law letters, and working with the consumer rights sites built a class action defence. The result was ACS's attempt to get a Court Judgement against the victims failing, swiftly followed by the owner of the firm being made bankrupt, and his license to practice as a solicitor/lawyer revoked.


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## Ursa major (Oct 6, 2017)

HanaBi said:


> I still have my old Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair Spectrum, BBC Micro B and Atari 2600 Games Console, up in the loft someplace.


Setting aside the Commodore PET on which I learned to program in BASIC (but didn't own or even take home), and various remote machines (ICLs) accessed from work, and on which I learned to program real-time applications, my first computer was a Tandy** TRS-80 II (with a whole 32k of RAM and an 12K ROM containing the O/S and BASIC).

After that, I had a BBC B (later upgraded to use floppies), followed eventually by an Archimedes and then a RISC PC. I also had a laser printer (cheap at a mere £999...) -- one that used the computer's 32-bit processor to construct the images, transfering them as bit patterns down a ribbon cable -- which I used to produce diagrams that I then took to work and pasted (with real paste) into documents, hiding the edges with Tippex and photocopying the relevant sheets to produce the "original". At that time, I was still writing documents using vi, formatting them with nroff. (Very few people*** had access to a PC back then.)

I still have, somewhere, all of these machines, plus a dead Dell Laptop with Windows XP (from 2002), an HP desktop running Windows XP (which may still work), and a "back-up" Dell laptop (running Vista), used only a few weeks ago (once I'd loaded 400+ days of virus checker updates...). Both my current machines -- an HP Windows 7 All-in-1 and an HP Windows 8.1 laptop -- seem to be on their last legs, so they may soon be joining the others (including the PCW 9512; see below), waiting for someone to discover them when the house is cleared. (Or I could load up the car and take them all down to the local tip....)


** -  Radio Shack in the US

*** - In a separate division of the company, my mother had, before she retired, been using a Mac (probably a 512K, but she may have started on a 128K), with its enormous 9" screen, to create large drawings; as a Drawing Office Assistant -- half-way between a Tracer and a Draughts(wo)man -- she'd previously used a large drawing board, pencils/pens and various tools. Only later did she get a home machine, an Amstrad PCW 9512 (with a daisy-wheel printer), on which she wrote a novel. (Yes, I'm not the first in the family to do so...  and not the first not to be published.... )


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 7, 2017)

At the printers, the Boss decided to clean out one of our store rooms upstairs - this was about 99, I had disc backups of work going back to 1994, which was enough we thought to cover returning customers - it was unlikely someone was going to turn up saying hello, "I last came in 1995", let alone the same for 1994, "can you do an identical print run of x job" so the Shop Minions, ie the useless students/ex students serving customers, doing boring stuff like stapling raffle ticket books etc where going to go up, bring down all the boxes marked as "jobs" but check each one, and any box not marked jobs, or marked jobs but with IT/office equipment, or manuals, books, discs etc was to be brought down to me in the mighty "Graphics Department" for inspection. I had it cosy by then, the walls were covered in posters of Cybermen, Borg, Daleks, the Tardis etc 

I found in one box a price guide and some invoices - something like 8 megabyte of RAM for A 486 pc was £500+ couldnt believe the cost difference, even then


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## Caledfwlch (Oct 7, 2017)

I have never had a very good experience training Students/Graduates in IT/Admin/Data Entry, who aren't CompSci - and I would be really, really worried if a CompSci Graduate couldnt do basic IT & Admin stuff on a PC 

How does someone graduate from a Legal Degree in a modern institution like Leeds University in 2008 and not even know how to turn a PC on? (it wasn't quite as bad as asking why their foot pedal was on the desk, not the floor, but not far off either) I had 2 of them to train & supervise.
I came very close to emailing the Head of Law at Leeds Uni, and having a right go at him and his department, and the substandard quality of their graduates! I was supervising a data entry team for Leeds City Council, and these 2 law degree muppets get sent by a recruitment agency, who must have had a new member of staff in - were it the agency who got me started with LCC, they wouldn't even have signed these 2 guys onto the books, let alone offered them a temp contract - they weren't stupid! 
I was concerned enough that on my request, my Manager asked HR to contact Leeds Uni to check whether these guys had A: Attended full term, B: Were who they said they were and C: actually did have a Law Degree of some sort. The fact they claimed to be legal graduates, yet their spelling was dreadful (mine can be awful, as is my punctuation due to Dyspraxia, but as I know that I tend to be extra vigilant with spell checker on work stuff) this was also a City Council - if they had reasons for it beyond laziness, and an allergy to spell checker, there was plenty of extra support. Also in my little fiefdom, that was the Data Entry Team for LCC's Building Services Dept, I oversaw a Russian Lass, who wasn't on the DET, she had a different responsibility, but was put under my supervision - Her English wasn't yet fluent, she was still struggling with colloquialisms esp Yorkshire ones (& the accent!) not to mention having to type in an entirely different alphabet to what she grew up with, yet her work was better spelled, produced etc than the 2 "graduates" (I never found out if they were genuine as left for Doncaster couple months later and the Uni had not yet fulfilled the request) but they also knew nowt about Law, I a mere random member of the public with a vague interest in certain legal issues knew more than them....

They actually turned to me in 2nd week, after I gave them back the last 3 days of work, full of mistakes, not just spelling, but missing out important data, though their 3 days of work was equivalent to 1 days work by Samuel, one of my guys. First they whined "what does it even matter its only some report" these were Asbestos surveys, and so were vital, since if a report was entered wrong, at some point, a Builder doing repairs, could start laying into a wall, or floor with a Sledgehammer, and fill the property and their own and co-workers lungs with lethal Asbestos dust!!
It was swiftly followed  by "this job is beneath us, we have degrees"
I felt more shocked than anything for a moment, given their "quality" but then I saw Alina's (the Russian lass) face and she looked murderously angry, totally outraged at the very concept of a job being beneath anyone, if it pays the bills, plus like she said, the City was full of Russian and Polish girls, who would do the job much faster, more accurately, and with less complaint, these guys were insane, I did get worried that she actually might deck them, so with the Russian I had learned from her, whilst teaching her some English I said "come, Comrade Alina, coffee time!" and took her to staff room. 
when we came back I said "Better than this job? if that is the case, how come you are even here? why have you not been taken on by a law firm to do your apprenticeship, or is it that your degrees are worthless, that you only just scraped in, so nobody will hire you?"
their reaction said it all 

I have had it in other jobs, trying to train students/graduates.


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## MemoryTale (Nov 12, 2017)

It's not really ticking my nostalgia boxes. No Dizzy games, no Space Trader, no text adventures I can see, nothing else I remember either apart from the two Cybernoid games.

Mind you, the Cybernoid games for me exemplified C64 gaming. You'd hone your reflexes, learn enemy patterns, get really good and the game would screw you over by not giving you enough treasure to get to the next stage and you couldn't grind because it was timed so you died anyway.


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## Biskit (Nov 12, 2017)

Caledfwlch said:


> I have had it in other jobs, trying to train students/graduates.



I think part of the problem is coming out with a degree, and thinking you know everything, and probably a limited skill-set in terms of everyday jobs, along with a total lack of experience in the reality that most jobs are filled with repetitive tasks, no matter how 'hi-tech' they are, and no matter how highly qualified you have to be to do them.  

I went straight from BSc into postgraduate studies, so one of the first things I learned was that I knew just enough to understand how much I needed to learn.  It also has to be said that I had a number of summer jobs doing what was essentially laboratory scut-work, valuable training for being a first year postgrad, which needs a negative scale to describe the glamour level.  By the end of that first year I was skilled and experienced enough to spend entire days in a darkened room, running the same experiment, over and over, with minor variations.

After three years of postgrad, I went and got a real job, and the whole learning experience started again...


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## Caledfwlch (Nov 12, 2017)

Yeah, I think it was a combination of arrogance born of (I did a law degree, how amazing am I) and thinking they did know everything, and getting a nasty shock, that in fact, they weren't even competent to do a basic data entry job unless they accepted it was something outwith their experience, and they needed to learn, to take advice from people actually doing the job.
Interestingly, the Student's I had trouble with tended to be from a law or English Lit/Politics type background - I have worked with students temping after graduation, or whilst studying from for example more science based disciplines, and they have been ok, and totally trainable.

So if my post gives the impression I think all graduates are untrainable wastes,  that is not true, and I do apologise. It's just the people who's degree would suggest a familiarity with the sort of tasks a busy office, or data entry position requires have been disappointing. 

Mind you, the 2 law graduates were well spoken, Home Counties types, RP accent etc, so it probably didnt help being told what to do by a guy with an accent that was a weird mix of a Welsh Accent they will have never heard, in the media and if I am brutally honest, thanks to my ex fiance, a sort of inner city Leeds working class "Chav" lol


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## Biskit (Nov 12, 2017)

Caledfwlch said:


> Interestingly, the Student's I had trouble with tended to be from a law or English Lit/Politics type background



I did have the dubious pleasure of occasional contact  with a guy with some sort of materials science degree who was very firm that a PhD was not a real degree because it wasn't a taught course, so how could you possibly know you got it right? He really couldn't cope with the idea that someone, somewhere has to figure things out for the first time to be able to teach it as part of a course.  We could never get through to him the idea that the whole point of a PhD, or research in general, was to find out something not previously known and provide adequate evidence that you _did_ get it right.  I suppose it would have confused him even further to try to explain that someone could subsequently come along and show you got it wrong... or at least not completely right.

It seemed a very peculiar thing for someone working in a research lab.  I imagine he would have driven me nuts if he had actually worked for me.


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