Introducing The Friendly Computer!

When Commodore introduced the VIC-20 they called it The Friendly Computer.  This is probably more because of the manual they included with it than because of anything else.  The book was really easy to understand.

Here is my own VIC-20.  This is an early one, with the squared off keys and the two-prong power plug.  I've got it plugged into a Sylvania TV using an RF modulator.

If you look closely at the screen it reports CBM BASIC V2, and 3583 BYTES FREE.  The computer comes with 5K RAM, but it uses some of that to map the screen, and some more for managing the BASIC interpreter.  If they had thought to provide 8K RAM this would have doubled the amount the programmer has access to.  This would have made the VIC-20 a lot more powerful.

Nowadays people wonder how anything could every be written with only 3.5K RAM, but we were so used to this back then.  You might be surprised how much can be done with a little ingenuity.  As a comparison, the original Atari 2600 VCS game console had only 128 bytes of RAM.  The VIC-20 has 28 times more RAM!  In addition, you could plug a RAM expansion cartridge into the VIC-20 to add more RAM.  Commodore made several sizes up to 16K RAM, and other companies made bigger ones.

I also have a Commodore C2N cassette drive.  I also had one of these in the 80's.  I have been using the tape drive to save some small programs.  This is nothing like a floppy drive, but you can save programs by name, and it sure beats retyping in programs every time you want to use them.

I also have a Commodore 1571 floppy drive.  These are great, but they don't make it possible to send and received programs to and from other people on the Internet because the disks have a format that can't be read on Macs or PCs.  I want to share what I'm doing, so I have purchased a kit to build my own SD flash memory adapter that will behave like a floppy drive and also let me use the SD card to copy files to other computers so I can share with others.  I'm very excited about that and I'll blog about it also.

Back to BASICs

Some time ago I began to assemble a small collection of vintage home computers in order to begin blogging about what makes these machines so appealing.  In particular, programming these computers in BASIC in my early years made a huge impression on me and my creation of Liberty BASIC was inspired by my love for BASIC.

I have obtained the following machines in working condition.

Apple //c
Commodore 128 (a Commodore 64 compatible machine which also has a Z80 processor)
Commodore VIC-20
Atari 800XL
TRS-80 Color Computer 2 (not sure I will actually use this one)
And a few less popular computers that might make guest appearances.

To begin with, I am focusing on the Commodore VIC-20.  I have some ideas about very simple and fun projects in BASIC, and some Forth.  Since most of these machine also have a 6502 processor, perhaps there will also be some posts about that.

The Coleco Telstar

When I was a kid the only video game console I can remember having in the house was mine. It was a Coleco Telstar Arcade console. I bought it used from a listing in the Want Advertiser classifieds magazine (a publication native to New England).

http://www.pong-story.com/coleco_arcade.htm

This was a rather strange console, with very limited game options. Unfortunately I got bored of playing with it rather quickly.

Nowadays we have three consoles in my house.

• An Atari 7800 console
• A Nintendo 64
• A Nintendo Gamecube

The Atari console is the one we play most. I bought it used years ago with about 30 cartridges. I think I paid about $50 for the lot. Most of the games are Atari 2600 (they work on the 7800) but we have some 7800 cartridges too. We play Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr, and Space Invaders most.

NEECO, a computer store

In the late seventees a computer store named NEECO moved from Springfield, MA to Needham, MA where I lived. I'm sure it was my brother Ernie who first brought me to the store. It was at least a two mile walk from our house, but we were in the habit of walking farther than that just to go to You-Do-It Electronics on the edge of town, so this was really nothing to us.

NEECO was to become a central influence in my life for a couple of years. What a store it was. I have many memories of the place.

When I first started visiting the store there were the following models I can remember:

• Apple II
• Commodore PET and CBM 8032
• Intertec Superbrain
• Hewlett Packard HP-85
• Atari 800 and 400

There was usually something fun running on each machine, especially the Apple and Atari computers. They also had a magazine rack and lots of software for sale.

I spent a lot of time there. Sometimes I was helpful to the people running the store, but I think they sometimes wish I was somewhere else. I owe them a debt of gratitude at least. ;-)