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Who here has started with a Commodore VIC 20 because i just got one, and it works!


FenderGuy1

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my first computer was a Tandy TRS80

Released: August 1977

Price: US $599.95 (with monitor)

How Many: 200,000 (1977-1981)

CPU: Zilog Z-80A, 1.77 MHz

RAM: 4K, 16K max*

Ports: Cassette I/O, video,

Expansion connector*

Display: 12-inch monochrome monitor

64 X 16 text

Expansion: External Expansion Interface*

Storage: Cassette storage*

OS: BASIC in ROM*

* Additional capabilties with Expansion Interface

 

 

But you could do wonderfull stuff with it, draw expanding ovals etc :)

10 HGR

15 for x = 1 to 50

20 circle(x,15,10)

25 next x

 

I had so much fun playing with that thing...I gave it to my cousin, he threw it away...I regret that.

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Well this VIC 20 is my first Personal Computer vintage one so i will have to learn BASIC

 

Hope you can find that bearded guy on the mountain top that still knows BASIC. As a matter of fact, I may have a book on the subject. :-k

 

Check thrift shops in the book section. Many Tandy instruction manuals can be had there which cover BASIC, or at least some form of it.

 

Also, if you can find a package of floppy disks, buy them. Did it use 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" floppies? or... did it use cassette (also available at a GoodWill or Salvation Army store near you.) Radio shack still sells them new. You will need blank tapes, or in a pinch you can probably buy a dozen pre-recorded tapes for a dime. Use scotch tape to cover the over-write protection holes in the top so you can over-write them.

 

 

 

If you can master a program language, you will be smarter than your contemporaries, and therefore worth more in your working career. It's not the knowing, but the doing that develops a mindset that few kids have these days. Like math, (which it is), computer programming exercises the brain.

 

Study on! my young padawan!

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Guest farnsbarns

my first computer was a Tandy TRS80

Released: August 1977

Price: US $599.95 (with monitor)

How Many: 200,000 (1977-1981)

CPU: Zilog Z-80A, 1.77 MHz

RAM: 4K, 16K max*

Ports: Cassette I/O, video,

Expansion connector*

Display: 12-inch monochrome monitor

64 X 16 text

Expansion: External Expansion Interface*

Storage: Cassette storage*

OS: BASIC in ROM*

* Additional capabilties with Expansion Interface

 

 

 

 

But you could do wonderfull stuff with it, draw expanding ovals etc :)

10 HGR

15 for x = 1 to 50

20 circle(x,15,10)

25 next x

 

I had so much fun playing with that thing...I gave it to my cousin, he threw it away...I regret that.

 

10 print "I know basic"

20 goto 10

Run

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10 print "I know basic"

20 goto 10

Run

lol, I forgot about the "run"...hahaha, good days. I remember me making the map of Belgium on this thing and I had the land drawn and wanted to write all the big cities and as far I get was Antw(from Antwerp...and I had still 9 big cities to go) Then all my space was used. Epic fail but I don't we used the word epic back then.

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Yeah, one of the problems with the Vic is lack of memory, the other was the small screen. There were memory cards sold, but not many before the C-64 came out.

 

There also were some neat music programs available.

 

The dialect of Basic was pretty odd, especially for in and out, whether saving a file or printing. There were significant differences with most of the versions used on the Tandys that used a different CPU, from the 8080 family as I recall. There were some 6502 chip machine language instructions that were helpful, but I can't remember any.

 

m

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Guest farnsbarns

Yeah, one of the problems with the Vic is lack of memory, the other was the small screen. There were memory cards sold, but not many before the C-64 came out.

 

There also were some neat music programs available.

 

The dialect of Basic was pretty odd, especially for in and out, whether saving a file or printing. There were significant differences with most of the versions used on the Tandys that used a different CPU, from the 8080 family as I recall. There were some 6502 chip machine language instructions that were helpful, but I can't remember any.

 

m

 

I knew you'd be in on this thread, Milo! You might be interested to read a bit about PHP, talk about odd dialect. Very elegant once you know it though.

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Never got into PHP. It messes with hypertext? Ah, for the good old days when Jerry Pournelle was pushing it in, I think, Byte magazine...

 

I gave up doing my own programming pretty much around 1991-2. Oops was "in," and I was doing other stuff that killed any fun time for a cupla years.

 

I leave that stuff to my youngest brother who manages somehow to think in 64-bit machine language or whatever. <sigh>

 

m

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Hope you can find that bearded guy on the mountain top that still knows BASIC. As a matter of fact, I may have a book on the subject. :-k

 

Check thrift shops in the book section. Many Tandy instruction manuals can be had there which cover BASIC, or at least some form of it.

 

Also, if you can find a package of floppy disks, buy them. Did it use 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" floppies? or... did it use cassette (also available at a GoodWill or Salvation Army store near you.) Radio shack still sells them new. You will need blank tapes, or in a pinch you can probably buy a dozen pre-recorded tapes for a dime. Use scotch tape to cover the over-write protection holes in the top so you can over-write them.

 

 

 

If you can master a program language, you will be smarter than your contemporaries, and therefore worth more in your working career. It's not the knowing, but the doing that develops a mindset that few kids have these days. Like math, (which it is), computer programming exercises the brain.

 

Study on! my young padawan!

Floppies were a luxury even with the later C 64 (5 1/4 inch, outboard drive available separately). I think these were tape only (again, outboard).

 

And knowing Basic might be fun, but it's not gonna get him much of a leg up on anyone WRT knowing a language (sorta like if he were to learn some ancient dialect of a lost language). He'd be better off going straight to modern programming if that were the goal. But I think he's just looking to have some fun with this one, nothing wrong with that (they play "Pong" quite well anyway [wink] ).

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Floppies were a luxury even with the later C 64 (5 1/4 inch, outboard drive available separately). I think these were tape only (again, outboard).

 

And knowing Basic might be fun, but it's not gonna get him much of a leg up on anyone WRT knowing a language (sorta like if he were to learn some ancient dialect of a lost language). He'd be better off going straight to modern programming if that were the goal. But I think he's just looking to have some fun with this one, nothing wrong with that (they play "Pong" quite well anyway [wink] ).

 

Basic will him give the "basic" skills for SQL scripting to name an example (but also VB.net), oracle databases are very much used, they can be steered/queried with sql for example (think SAP and other erps)...a good SQL scripter can earn a good sandwich. And it is a way of learning to think in a different way.

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Well...

 

We're talking about one of the youngest members on the forum who has a love of old televisions and computers.

 

I think the Vic is neat if he has even the tape drive. I can't recall if the Vic ever had the standalone 5 1/2 floppy drive the C-64 had.

 

Yeah, in ways a more modern language might make sense, but Basic is kinda neat in that you can do really lousy spaghetti programming or learn the concept of modular structured programming.

 

Hey, it was good enough for my brother who was thinking in Basic for the old Atari (also a 6502 with yet another dialect of Basic) even before he could type. Now he's putting the basic skills to work for Uncle Bill at Microsoft using programming concepts way the heck and gone over my head.

 

m

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Guest farnsbarns

Never got into PHP. It messes with hypertext? Ah, for the good old days when Jerry Pournelle was pushing it in, I think, Byte magazine...

 

I gave up doing my own programming pretty much around 1991-2. Oops was "in," and I was doing other stuff that killed any fun time for a cupla years.

 

I leave that stuff to my youngest brother who manages somehow to think in 64-bit machine language or whatever. <sigh>

 

m

 

It CAN mess with hypertext and I suppose that's what is is used for 60-70% of the time but it can perform command line entries so it can do anything you like to any database you want and run tasks based on any variable, be it user input or environmental. When combined with CRON (think scheduled tasks in Windows) it can get very clever. Running a variable command at given intervals based on any variable you like makes it almost limitless.

 

You can also run PHP scripts from the command line and set variables in that command, using it somewhat like a dos *.bat.

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Ahah!

 

I really miss messing with those old DOS batch files. Heck, they let me mess around so WordStar ran faster on the old 4.77 mhz 8086 than Word runs on my office machine. Sheesh.

 

<grin>

 

Gotta admit I've been so busy with just keeping up with the wonderful new work software that speeds up my job by about -33%.

 

m

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I had a C64 back in the day. It was a big deal when my parents bought it for me. I was just a kid. Also got our family's second tv to plug it into (and OMG, it was a color tv with push buttons for the channels, hahaha). We didn't have much but my folks really tried to encourage learning. Somehow one year, they managed to scrape together the money for me to be the first kid on my block with the 5 1/4" floppy drive for it too. My buddy had one too and we used to write choose your own adventure games in basic on the thing, saving first to his tape drive, then to my floppy. We were like 7 yrs old or so. It was pretty rockin at the time.

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10 print "I know basic"

20 goto 10

Run

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that give you a screen full of:

I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic 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?

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My god this VIC works dude, i am loading a program on it now, im 14 and i know how to use older stuff ironically, but i like it DUDE!!!

 

Those suckers were bullet proof. Back then, they were expensive for consumers, so they built them like a tank so that there would be no warranty issues. Kind of like a Norlin era Gibson.

 

Honestly, over the years, I've only known one person who ever wore out a computer. It is my sister. If you know her you'd agree if anyone would wear one out, she would. Nope, not video games, just took every class and mini-course her employer offered. I think she can now adjust insurance claims on seven continents and two extra terrestrial planets. One day it all came to a very loud, screeching halt, literally. She took it in for repair and the techs were amazed. It was beyond repair. Luckily she was from the old school and heeded the mantra, "Save early and save often." She had it all backed up on floppy. I think this was the mid-90's and the 'puter was less than 5 years old.

 

I think her husband buried it in the back yard.

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Funny how computers have changed so much since the '70s whereas electric guitars haven't "advanced" much at all since the '50s because they haven't needed to. We shun the robot guitars and that other firebirdy thing that I can't remember the name of right now. Even the guitar synth never really caught on.

 

Anyway, I've written my own program:

 

10 Les Paul

20 Lead

30 Maybe a few pedals AND another lead

40 Valve amp

50 Run

60 GOTO 10

 

Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven Tone Heaven

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Guest farnsbarns

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that give you a screen full of:

I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic I know basic ....

 

?

 

Yes, although its been a long time so a single instance of syntax error is just as likely. I'm trying to remember, did we have to finish instructions in basic with a ; ?

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