h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The above phrase refers to digging up ancient computer-related stuff! My family and I got involved in computing in 1983 with a Commodore 64 which was a fantastic and exciting machine in those days. I regret today not having been even more 'into' it back then.

We still have our old Commodore; I am seriously considering digging it up, dusting it off and hooking it up again. I still have most of the software as well.

I think about this regularly when my little nephew Christiaan is visiting. My dad uses a small wooden box to prop up his feet while he's watching television. When Christiaan is here, he often opens up the box and plays around with what's inside. Well, what's inside happens to be some ancient Commodore 64 game- and program tapes and a few computer accessories. Christiaan has no idea what those things are, he just likes taking them out and playing with them. Well I started thinking maybe I should explain to Christiaan what they are, and tell him about the old, old days of computers. After all the machines we have today are the descendants of those old models! And for me at least there was a certain kind of excitement of once having been part of the 'pioneer' phase of home and personal computers. For me, it's a lot of nostalgia; but I think it could also be of historical interest for many present-day computer buffs! I always believe it's important to know where one comes from.

My interest in computing sort of goes back to my very early childhood days. My grandfather brought back reams and reams of computer printouts (I believe from a bank that had a large computer) on the back side of which I drew and painted. I wondered what the numbers were, but not very much. Later when we came to Pietersburg my parents worked at the University of the North, which also had its own large mainframe computer, and there were other computers on the premises and some of the other lecturers had home computers. Predating the C64 were models like the Pet and the Vic 20. Some folks were into the early Apple home computers. It all seemed like a lot of fun so in 1983 my father decided we should get a home computer. We looked around at the models other folks had.

We decided on the Commodore 64 which was a very fine machine for its time! Almost at the same time we got ours, the neighbours across the street got theirs. Their boys were a bit older than me and more 'into' it. I often went to their house to play games and they came to ours also. One of the greatest games back then was 'Fort Apocalypse' where you had to fly a helicopter above and below ground through a cave system.

Soon many people in town had Commodores and we started up a local society for enthusiasts. My dad and I learnt some programming as well, and we wrote a few simple programs. VERY simple. But there was something exhilirating about getting a machine to perform a complicated and creative task!

But of course there were excellent programs written by *other* people. I am sad to say eventually I was less interested in writing my own stuff, than just in buying programs and using them. It seems that's the way things went: today, the vast majority of people who own computers, are not into programming, just *using* programs written by others. And of course today the computers are so big and fast and complex, and the programs are so large, also, that it's pretty much impossible for a lonesome amateur programmer to do anything meaningful. You need a team of people, employed by a company, to write software.

Well there's nothing really wrong with that! But ... I contend that there is still value in being able to write simple computer programs. It teaches one a certain kind of mental discipline: rigorous logic and thoroughness, and the ability to be creative within certain constraints. Those early computers were all constrained, relative to the ones we have today, in terms of speed and memory. To keep the programs small, and to make them fast, you had to be quite inventive and imaginative. There was something to be gained from that ...

But also in the way of commercially available software, those were pioneer days. Much more experimental, with some very weird results. There was a certain quirkiness and charm in many of the games and other programs you got back then.

So at any rate. My computer nostalgia made me think of somehow bringing those days to life again. I will probaby dig my old machine out ... there's a major task that will need to be done first, namely, make some room in my room, for it. At the moment there are boxes of lego bricks Christiaan and I play around with, all over the table. When I clear them off I can put the computer there and maybe Christiaan and I can play with *that* instead!

In the meantime I managed to get a Commodore 64 emulator running on this computer and have already managed to enter a few working programs on it! I'm going to see how far I can get, programming that. There are Commodore 64 games on the 'net as well, but I'm having trouble getting them to work on the emulator. So for now I'll enter and run my own programs but I hope before too long I'm gonna figure out how to do the download-thing ...

... and also perhaps get emulators for some of the other ancient models like the ZX Spectrum, the Vic 20, the early Apple's, or the BBC micros.

Do any of you folks here still have your old computers? 'Old' in this case referring to more or less before the late eighties ...

The Commodore 64 was my third microcomputer after a ZX81 and a Oric 48K.

You may find the Commodore Knowledge Base of use if you decide to revive your c64 http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/

But there is much more to "Computer Archaeology" than just old microcomputers...

I am quite involved in keeping gopher alive, if you install the OverbiteFF add-on for FireFox you will see my name in the credits http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7685
If you want to play with gopher without installing anything, a www to gopher proxy is available at http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/ (...and I should add that gopher servers are quite easy to setup).

I also like playing with the Tops-20 operating system that was used on DEC mini-computers (e.g. PDP-11) in the 1970's - there is a server running Tops-20 with public login available over at http://www.twenex.org/

There is also a bunch of guys that keep some old Crays up and running in Germany and again allow public logins http://www.cray-cyber.org/general/start.php

And then there is keeping old PC's going (I'm posting this from 1GHz machine with 512MB Ram running Debian Lenny Linux with a very lightweight setup - similar to the one I posted about over at http://happyfrood.livejournal.com/33146.html the oldest machine I have in regular use is a Commodore C286-LT (16MHz 286 processor 1MB ram 40 MB hard-drive) runing Freedos and DOS2SHH http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/2222/Commodore-C286-LT-Portable/
There is a really fascinating blog which focuses on keeping old PC's alive over at http://kmandla.wordpress.com/

Oh, Willem and Happy Dude, you have brought back some memories. Our first encounter with computers were with a ZX81 and a Oric 48K. How lovely to hear the latter mentioned again, It disappeared to France and then off the face of the earth (I think)

I can remember having the tiniest programme to enter on the ZX81 which I think was clipped out of a newspaper. It was supposed to produce a man walking on gravel, sound as well!! Try as I might the man's body came in two halves, and the gravel crunch wasn't in sync.

I remember spending hours trying to fix it before the kids came home from school, just to show how clever I was Eventually I found that a full stop was in the wrong place in the programme Did anyone else get that one

Hilarious now, but a minor triumph then

I am of an age when I still see them as miracles, not taking them for granted like those who have grown up with them.

I must come back and read more when I have a little time.

In the meantime, Willem, good luck with your old machine. It will be interesting to see if it works ok.

Websailor

Well hello Happydude!!! I might have thought you'd turn up as soon as I mentioned computers! Thanks very much for all those links ... I'll investigate them as I have time!

Hello Websailor as well! Great to hear you had the old ZX81! I often wondered what that one would have been like to use ... was slightly before the C64 came out. I remember the Oric as well!! My cousins Schalk and Liaan had one way back. Seemed a nice machine!

On our Commodore, we started entering programs from the user manuals and then started buying magazines with printed programs. We had huge heaps of magazines ... we've thrown most away but we still have a bunch of old Compute's and also Compute's Gazette (which concentrated on the Commodore machines). Was great fun, entering those programs ... the whole family participated!

I still remember the joy when we got a little balloon to move over the screen. Just this morning I entered that very same program again, and it worked ... this time, on my Commodore 64 emulator on this computer!

I also finally got some games to work ... 'Impossible Mission', and 'The Great Gianna Sisters'. In fact I've also spent about half an hour, playing the latter! Still a very pretty and very playable game! I think Christiaan would enjoy it (and many other old games) very much.

Well it all works like a charm on my C64 emulator ... it really 'feels' like being back at the helm of my old machine! But I'm going to see about getting the 'real thing' out of the mothballs and getting it to work again ...

Happydude, I think it's great work with immense historical value to keep old machines alive and to keep the old software working! I don't know how deeply I want to get involved though ... I'll see, it all depends on how much time I have left after all the other stuff.

Anyways yes, all of this is still very miraculous to me! That the laws of nature would allow us to make machines that can do these things!

Somewhere in Ask (sometime late in 2007 I think) there was a conversation based around how many Sinclair ZX81 CPU's you would have to run in parallel to get the same processing power as the type of CPU found in a modern desktop PC - I believe we came up with the answer that you would need 125 million NEC Zilog Z80-compatible processor running at a clock rate of 3.25 MHz to match a modern CPU - all I need now is another 124,999,999 Sinclair ZX81's, a networking expert and a lot of cable

I had a Sinclair Spectrum when I was small, it used to take about 20 minutes to load a tape game on . How technology has come on!

I used to watch the film 'Wargames' where the computer genius managed to break into a military computer and cause chaos. It always facinated me to the extent that I would play around with my Spectrum poking screwdrivers in here and there to see if I could tap into something . The only thing I managed to tap into was an electric shock!

I sold the Spectrum, and then brought a Sega Master System which was amazing at how graphics and games had changed. I am not into games much now, but at the time there wasn't much else available on the computer side.

I have the DVD of 'Wargames' but have learnt my lesson regarding the screwdriver test . I also don't have the knowledge or brains to be a hacker!

Nigel

Heh heh Happydude it's almost ridiculous how much more powerful today's computers are. I'm very happy with my current machine. In fact I find it amazing that this computer is powerful enough to simulate a C64 so faithfully! Fooling around with the emulator it has very much the 'feel' and the 'looks' of my old computer.

Nigel, I can also remember how long games and programs loaded on tape! We got a disk drive quite soon, but still bought a lot of games on tape as well. Then at some point there came a kind of rapid game-loading technology and suddenly the tape loaded in less than a minute! The screen would rapidly flash different colours while in 'fast-loading' mode! Seemed 'magical' in a way.

The Spectrum was a cool little computer with its rubber keys and all. I remember playing some games on my cousins' computer ... the graphics had a sort of 'chunky' look but the animation seemed very smooth.

Heh heh that's an interesting story about poking screwdrivers into your Spectrum to try to 'hack' into something Nigel! Definitely not recommended!

I've never had a 'game console' sort of thing; always just computers, and games were secondary most of the time - but fun every once in a while! I was always mostly into word processing, and graphics. These days I mainly use my computer for accessing the internet, for writing, and for art, still ... but now working with scanned-in photos, paintings and drawings, and touching them up with my graphics programs if necessary, and printing them out. Currently I'm quite busy with old photos from my dad and aunts ... very ancient and faded, tiny black and white photos of my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles when they were small, and lots of obscure relatives I've never even seen. At any rate it's quite amazing what a good scanner and a good photo-editing program can do with stuff like that! Like I said I don't mind this machine being several million times more powerful than my old Commodore!

Happydude, Websailor - if you're still reading - I'd like to know more about the ancient ZX81. What sort of programs could one run on it? What sort of display did it have? How much memory did it have? I've never even seen this computer ... I only know about it from some ancient magazines and there was not much about it in them.

These might help Willem. Prepare to . My, how things have changed - thank goodness!!!


A821648

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx81.htm

Websailor

Our first computer, the ZX81 was borrowed

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=180

It had keys different from other computers, thin and long.

Websailor

Thanks so very much for that info Websailor! I did not laugh ... I think those first PCs were amazing! They paved the way for everything we have today! I learnt something VERY important from the h2g2 article you linked to - namely, that the ZX81 was called the 'Timex-Sinclair 1000' in America. Now for the first time I realise I have actually seen ZX81 programs and screen shots!

You see the thing is here in South Africa we get stuff from Britain and also America. Our Commodore being basically an American computer, most of the magazines we got were American as well. In those magazines the Timex-Sinclair was mentioned but I never realised it was the good old ZX81 actually.

At first we got British magazines as well and they might have come from a totally different world. The British computer scene was as different from the American as the British music scene of the time was. I always thought that the British scene had more 'character'. At any rate the time when we started buying the British mags the ZX81 was old news, the Spectrum was in, and later, lines like the BBC micro and the Spectrum QL. In the end we bought mostly American magazines as they came to dominate the computing scene.

Somehow we threw away all our British computer mags but we kept the American ones . I would have loved to go back to some of those old Brit mags ... they had some very nice and interesting and weird things in them.

Anyways what I think was amazing about the ZX81 - from what I'd only recently learnt about it - is that it was the first 'popular' home computer, and that you bought it as a whole and could link it to your TV for its display. And that you could enter and run and save your own programs or it, or buy programs. I mean, that was the start of everything!

In the 'Commodore' line of machines there were older ones like the Pet, and the Vic 20 was the first successful 'popular' home computer of theirs. The Vic 20 had very big and chunky 'pixels' and screen characters and only I think eight colours. It had 5 K of memory. But I still remember playing games on it (on a friend's machine) which were fun, and there were lots of programs for it in the magazines of the early 80's.

I was lucky to see the Oric in action as well. My cousins Schalk and Liaan van der Merwe had one years ago.

Really, to me what we have today in terms of computers, is merely a 'refinement' of what we already had back then. Even Windows for instance ... this sort of operating system first was available to the public in the Apple Macintosh; soon we had a similar thing for the Commodore 64 as well. (But I'm sure the history of this sort of operating systems with arrows and onscreen windows and menus goes back much further, to larger minicomputers and work stations of the early eighties or perhaps even earlier ... anyone know more about this?) And now pretty much everyone's using it! Back then we had word processors ... music composing software ... graphics software ... I still remember with fondness how much I liked the Koala graphics pad when I got it for my computer. I still think such a pad potentially works even better than a mouse ... I did see recently people using a light pen and drawing with it right on the screen! That is of course also a great graphics tool, but, again ... we had a light pen for the Commodore in 1983! It never caught on, though ... it wasn't very 'accurate'. The Apple Mac popularised the use of a mouse on a home computer.

Sorry I meant 'Sinclair QL' ... it was quite a different machine from the Spectrum.

The ZX81 was the successor to the ZX80 and predecessor to the ZX Spectrum. It came with 1k of memory (with the option oa adding a 16k "Rampack" expansion (although I seem to remember that third party companies offered rampacks up to 64k in size). It had no sound and only a black and white display with normal resolution of 32 x 24 and high resolution graphics mode of 64 x 48.

You can find an on-line ZX81 emulator over at http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/ts1000/

I bought a little Zanussi in 1984. They make washing machines now.!! !! but I reckon I could do as much, and much more easily as I can do now with all these complicatd programmmes
!List all "....."
Print all "....."

And bob was your Uncle. !!

This is the end of my ridiculous minute contribution to your highly intelledtual postings. !!

AlsoRan80

Hello AlsoRan 80! No I appreciate your contribution! I think it was nice that those old computers were in fact simple to understand. Of course you had to read up a bit on how to program them. But the old Commodore, you could just switch on and it was ready to use ... you could type in or load a program immediately.

I'm going to try to learn C 64 programming again, using my emulator! When I find the time!

http://www.archive.org/details/CC517_commodore_64

Hey Happy thanks for that ... I'm not managing to get the movie to play but reading the comments was very interesting heh heh!

Anyways I've been playing on my C64 emulator ... so far not got my computer out of the closet yet ... quite amazing what fun it still is to play those 'old' games! Also entered a few simple programs ... will hopefully do more ... got out of storage all the old 'Compute' and 'Compute's Gazette' magazines that have listings of programs in them that one can type in ... will love to do a bit of that again! In the 'old days' typing in programs from magazines was a family activity. My mom helped most of the time. My dad and I would read the lines from the magazines and my mom (being a good typist) would type them in. And oh what joy if the program is finished and actually works! Heh heh but on many games we spent much more time typing it in than actually playing it!

if you are having trouble watching it in page there are some download links on the page.

C-64's are popping up everywhere, I read the blog by K.Mandla quite regularly and in all the time I've been reading it I cannot remember any C-64 stuff but today we get C-64 stuff...

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/sub-hunter-because-the-c64-wont-die/

Hey Happydude, how you doing these days? Thanks for that link to K. Mandla's blog! I might check it out from time to time myself. Found a very nice game demo there ... 'Fizzball'! I'd like to buy the full version in fact ... I think my nephew Christiaan would love it! He can't really play very well right now but that particular game is very easy ... and he's growing up quite fast!

As for the C-64 movie ... I did see the download links but they say something like '120 MB' ... my computer is gonna take *hours* to download that ... and, I only have a 500 MB 'allowance' per *month*! But the movie sounds very interesting.