First week of January 1982 Commodore presented their then flagship computer, Commodore 64. General release date was about seven months later, August 1982.
With its 1 MHz processor (no typo there, it was 1 Megahertz, not Gigahertz!) and amazing 64 kB (yes, kilobytes!) of RAM, it was a gamer's dream machine. And it could have been yours with only $600, about $1,400 converted to today's money (source: http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm).
Something to read for old nostalgic geeks like me and you youngsters who do not even know what a sprite was:
Computer Type: Laptop System Manufacturer/Model Number: HP ENVY 17-1150eg OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 EN-GB CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel Core i7-720QM Processor Memory: 6 GB Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 Graphics Sound Card: Beats sound system with integrated subwoofer Monitor(s) Displays: 17" laptop display, 22" LED and 32" Full HD TV through HDMI Screen Resolution: 1600*900 (1), 1920*1080 (2&3) Keyboard: Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser (bluetooth) Mouse: Logitech Performance Mouse MX Cooling: As Envy runs a bit warm, I have it on a Cooler Master pad Hard Drives: Internal: 2 x 500 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm
External: 2TB for backups, 3TB USB3 network drive for media Internet Speed: 50/10 Mbps VDSL Browser: Maxthon 3.5.2., IE11 Antivirus: Windows Defender 4.3.9431.0
I also owned a C64 back in the 80s. I used to enjoy playing on it, and I also wrote a number of programs. One of them was a simple implementation of the old sliding piece puzzle, with letters. It was a 4 x 4 grid, with a random selection of 15 out of 26 letters, and I programmed it so that it would save the moves it made to jumble the letters up, thereby enabling it to show the solution if you ran out of time or moves. 9 levels, a simple tune that played if you won, another tune if you lost, and the sound of a ticking clock, together with a constantly updating display completed the game. And it was all in BASIC. No machine code or assembly language was used. I wish I had published that game, as I used to get magazines where you could send in user-submissions.
Any of you geeks used C128? When C64 teached me programming principles with Basic, C128 was then where my interest for coding started, learning assembler for Zilog Z80 processor. Nice times, good memories.
Computer Type: Laptop System Manufacturer/Model Number: HP ENVY 17-1150eg OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 EN-GB CPU: 1.6 GHz Intel Core i7-720QM Processor Memory: 6 GB Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 Graphics Sound Card: Beats sound system with integrated subwoofer Monitor(s) Displays: 17" laptop display, 22" LED and 32" Full HD TV through HDMI Screen Resolution: 1600*900 (1), 1920*1080 (2&3) Keyboard: Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser (bluetooth) Mouse: Logitech Performance Mouse MX Cooling: As Envy runs a bit warm, I have it on a Cooler Master pad Hard Drives: Internal: 2 x 500 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 7200 rpm
External: 2TB for backups, 3TB USB3 network drive for media Internet Speed: 50/10 Mbps VDSL Browser: Maxthon 3.5.2., IE11 Antivirus: Windows Defender 4.3.9431.0
Yeah I replaced my C64 with a C128, that really screwed up my colour scheme as my floppy drive, tape deck and dot matrix printer matched the biege C64 and not the whitish C128.