Moscow - ask Boroda.

My C64 was similar to yours Slamfire, I had the C128 which had the same shaped case, not the short/fat case of most C64s. I got a free Commodore monitor from my mother's school and 2 disk drives, so I could run Fast Hack/em and other copying programs without switching the disk all the time. I was the envy of all the C64 kids at school for that, and had a long list of favors for copying shit in high school. Great computer, it was my third, I had a PET then a Vic20 before it, but used the C128 100x more than the previous two. No, 10,000x more I'm sure.

386 was my first PC, I was going to buy a 286 but the 386 came out right away, the SX, not the better DX IRRC. It's been an upgrading/arms race ever since. I bailed twice, right around the year 2003 when I got into contracting/instructing, and then got back in around 2010 or so when I got put on disability.

Hey Boroda - when this current war is over, I want to visit Russia again. Be cool to meet up as I'd really like to see Moscow, war museums, etc. We can insult each other's country's in person then, haha.

Quote from slamfire

My C64 build - I talked about it when Covid started and it took a long time to complete it. Found an old german made case and a keyboard from a breadbin style C64 in eastern europe - put them together and used an FPGA based modern board, needed some 3d printed mounts. Loaded the original firmware directly into it, and it's an exact replica only it uses a modern built motherboard with custom chips on the inside.

Internally I have a USB stick with just about every piece of c64 software ever written, and it shows up like a local floppy or tape drive. It outputs video on HDMI and looks and sounds fantastic. Unlike emulators, I've never had a compatibility issue with anything so far. The cloth cover I had made by an old broad in England.

I never had a C64 back in that era, but I spent countless hours playing games on them at friend's places. I was a TRS-80 man.

Choplifter, Impossible Mission (1 and 2), Summer Games and Space Taxi are some of my favorites. There are 1000s of games I need to mess with.

My first PC was a 486-DX 66 - my favorite game on it was AIrwarrior for DOS.

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Wow, that's really cool!

Quote from definitely-not-indy

Nightmare IT closets are a global phenomenon.

You should see inside of the control rooms of some of the target stores that I worked on.

One of the reasons I stopped taking gubmint work was seeing maddening stuff like that

Quote from slamfire

Boroda, back in the 90s, one of the funniest workplace "hacks" I did was as follows:

I was forced to use an off-brand manufacturer of computer racks - fully enclosed rack, with locking doors etc etc. I was instructed to mount a large robotic tape library system in said rack.

The problem was the library unit simply could not fit inside the rack - there wasn't enough clearance for it to get inside the door frames (all sides basically).

After some careful measuring however, I found that it could actually fit inside the rack once it cleared the four support columns.

So after being told again that "it must fit no matter what", I went to home depot, got some lumber and built a temporary structure to hold the tape library at the correct height. I then fully disassembled the rack, (part of which required cutting metal with a grinder) and rebuilt it around the wood structure, then carefully took apart the wood structure. A buddy of mine from facilities welded what I had cut with the grinder. The clip on plastic panels hid the weld job perfectly.

In the end, it fit inside the rack, and it looked great, but there was no way to get it out without reversing the procedure.

Well, not my problem - they wanted it to fit, it fucken fit.

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that's a brilliant solution.

Quote from Gina

that's a brilliant solution.

-"It won't fit, we need to buy the proprietary rack that is made for it, or I can put it on the floor."

-"Well it HAS to fit! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT ! MAKE IT FIT! I GOT A VOLUME DISCOUNT FROM MY GUY AND WE'RE STUCK WITH WHAT WE'RE STUCK WITH AND BLA BLA BLA..."

-"FINE! I'LL MAKE IT FUCKEN FIT!"

etc.

It Fit.

Quote from Gina

that's a brilliant solution.

I can't take full credit for it - the guy I was working with was an actually PhD in (I shit you not) Nuclear Physics - he quit that career because there was much more money to be made in IT during the dot-com era. We came up with the scheme over lunch at this place that lined the tables with brown construction paper, and you had kids crayons. We sketched out the rig to hold the library in place over a pitcher of beer and wings. I Actually rolled up the table cover and walked out with it (wing sauce, split beer and all).

I might actually have pictures of it post build - if I ever find them, I'll post.

Quote from Gman

My C64 was similar to yours Slamfire, I had the C128 which had the same shaped case, not the short/fat case of most C64s. I got a free Commodore monitor from my mother's school and 2 disk drives, so I could run Fast Hack/em and other copying programs without switching the disk all the time. I was the envy of all the C64 kids at school for that, and had a long list of favors for copying shit in high school. Great computer, it was my third, I had a PET then a Vic20 before it, but used the C128 100x more than the previous two. No, 10,000x more I'm sure.

386 was my first PC, I was going to buy a 286 but the 386 came out right away, the SX, not the better DX IRRC. It's been an upgrading/arms race ever since. I bailed twice, right around the year 2003 when I got into contracting/instructing, and then got back in around 2010 or so when I got put on disability.

Hey Boroda - when this current war is over, I want to visit Russia again. Be cool to meet up as I'd really like to see Moscow, war museums, etc. We can insult each other's country's in person then, haha.

It's kind of funny - the version 2 of the C64 was the case I have (circa 1984), but those had a white keyboard that wasn't as good as the older breadbin style case (brown keyboard). The good thing is the keyboard from a breadbin 64 will actually fit perfectly, but you need custom mounts (hence the 3d printed ones I had made). You get the best of both worlds - the best keyboard, with the more modern case. I prefer that newer style case as it looks like other computers of that era (Atari ST, Apple II, Texas Instruments and others etc.). I never liked the breadbin style original c64 case - it looked like a TV console toy, not a computer. The C64 was a kick ass computer especially for the cost.

No, I never owned one back in the day, but I played the C64 for 100s of hours at friend's homes... I knew at least 5-6 people who had them and I'd go over as much as I could. In that era, I had a 1980 Radio Shack Model III - it was a good system for what it was, but it was something else to be able to play more bleeding edge games in full color. I have a lot of good memories playing Choplifter and Impossible Mission 1 and 2 for hours and hours on end. Summer Games as well. There was enough nostalgia there to motivate me to build that C64, and two years in, I still play with it regularly.

Sometimes I just run "demos" on the big screen in the office for background ambiance.

BTW one of the main C64 dorks I hung out with, he was so fucking smart that he built a little hand held device (battery powered, transistors etc all home soldered all crappy), that when you'd press the button, it would cycle through every possible garage door combination over RF. We'd ride bikes down the street pressing the button as we went, and every single garage door on the street would open. Tee Hee Tee Hee etc. He's a very senior distinguished engineer at IBM today and moved to the USA like I did.

But yeah, I next got a Trs80 Model 4p, and somehow stayed on that until 1993 when I got my first PC (486). I even got the Model 4p on the Internet with a USR modem - just enough that I could call up the local university and get a terminal prompt on the Internet- where i discovered email and usenet etc.

Man - I get all nostalgic talking about that era... I loved it.

I remember being in school, like doing homework after dinner... all you had was TV, and really the good stuff was on Saturday Morning... wasn't a whole lot to see the rest of the week. I had a Toshiba shortwave radio - I'd listen to the top 10 while doing homework (back when the top 10 was actually good). I mean, that's what you had for "electronics". Cable News ? A decade away... so you had the BBC World Service on Short Wave.

Then all of a sudden, 1980 came along and we had the first gen computers - 8 bit.

So that bored kid (aged 10-13 or whatever) now all of a sudden can play all these great games right in his bedroom (vs biking to the arcade), and better still, you could get to BBS's using your modem - just a whole world absolutely opened up. Underground networks of pirate game traders got established... If that wasn't good enough, then the IBM PCs came - and DOS games got better and better... then the NES (1st Nintendo system) came out, then WOW, the SNES, and Sega Genesis ! and Right around then, BOOM - out came the Internet.

I mean, it was a short jump - listening to fucking J Geils Band or Loverboy on AM one minute, the next minute you're playing Summer Games and trolling people online right from your bedroom!

Quote from slamfire

Man - I get all nostalgic talking about that era... I loved it.

I remember being in school, like doing homework after dinner... all you had was TV, and really the good stuff was on Saturday Morning... wasn't a whole lot to see the rest of the week. I had a Toshiba shortwave radio - I'd listen to the top 10 while doing homework (back when the top 10 was actually good). I mean, that's what you had for "electronics". Cable News ? A decade away... so you had the BBC World Service on Short Wave.

Then all of a sudden, 1980 came along and we had the first gen computers - 8 bit.

So that bored kid (aged 10-13 or whatever) now all of a sudden can play all these great games right in his bedroom (vs biking to the arcade), and better still, you could get to BBS's using your modem - just a whole world absolutely opened up. Underground networks of pirate game traders got established... If that wasn't good enough, then the IBM PCs came - and DOS games got better and better... then the NES (1st Nintendo system) came out, then WOW, the SNES, and Sega Genesis ! and Right around then, BOOM - out came the Internet.

I mean, it was a short jump - listening to fucking J Geils Band or Loverboy on AM one minute, the next minute you're playing Summer Games and trolling people online right from your bedroom!

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yeah. Really a special time! All of that.

Even the arcades - they were fucking great.

I think what delayed me jumping on the PC bandwagon (286/386) was that the original NES (nintendo) was so damn good, it scratched that gaming itch - a PC was just so expensive in comparison. The 486 is what blew me away - that I had to have. I had a Pentium and Pentium II soon after LOL.

Doom actually came out the day I bought my 486 - I was in heaven.

Arcades were the best. I was always a boxing guy, but in 1982, for about 3 months, i tried Tae Kwon Do (after binge watching Bruce Lee movies). Wasn't for me, it just wasn't realistic (compared to the boxing I had done so far). Still, I did it for 3 months and got a yellow belt. Whatever, it was at a community center, we wore street clothes and I think it was actually free.

So I was at a bowling lane in Ottawa (Kent Bowling Lanes aka "Cunt Bowling Lanes")- where they had arcade games. I was playing this terrible arcade game called Targ. Awful game... a little yellow car in a maze, very boring and frustrating to play... you felt ripped off, so I was in a foul mood playing it. I mean, that 25 cents could have went to Defender or Joust.

Well this drunk smart ass came around (bowling alleys are always full of drunk smart asses) and he decided he'd fuck with me. Targ had two fire buttons, one left, one right. He snuck over to the button I was not using, and he'd swipe at it - shooting a round when you could only have 1 round on the screen at a time. Well, first time he did that, I did the standard "FUCKOFF!!!!" warning. He did it again, and caused me to die.

While holding both controls in hand, I leaned to the right sharply, and side kicked him right in the jaw, KOing him. Only time I ever knocked someone out with a kick to the head LOL. Me being a teenager, him a grown ass man.

Anyways, well you know me and drama... I don't like it - I slipped out casually before anyone really noticed what happened. I didn't go back there for a very long time. Like 4-5 years long time.

The first computer I actually bought for myself was a 386DX.

Dad bought us kids an osborne executive around 1982 and that was the first computer I had access to.

I worked for my dad when for 8 years starting when I was about 19, and we had a couple of 286's in the shop. I'd go after work at night to play with those. Had a lot of the games of that era. MS Flight simulator was SO crude - with sound only through the computer's little "buzzer" speaker. But it was great!

I loved those times. That was all well before the internet, but you could use a modem to get onto bulletin boards - or what my brother would do was just cold-call random numbers with the modem until he found a computer that answered, then he'd get into those. lol.

I love the old 8 bit sounds!

There was this guy I knew in one of my college classes. He was this tiny latin american dude, and he looked EXACTLY, I mean EXACTLY like Prince. He just went with it, and dressed and acted like Prince as well - so funny (you know, the Purple Rain era). Anyways, he had one of the first actual BBS's in town, and on that BBS is where I downloaded my first online "porn". Someone had shopped a Star Trek TNG scene of Riker pounding Lt Troy with a shit eating grin. It was a GIF, and it took forever to download. I also had a hard time finding DOS software that would display it. That was a real great moment of my life - a first LOL.

An old Computer I always liked was the Kaypro II. Ran the old school CP/M Operating system. Friend of mine had one, and we used to play Zork on it. I really liked that OS, it was well designed.

At my work in the mid 80s, I used to do the night shift usually alone, and they had a few original IBM PCs (8086 CPU). I used to bring my US Robotics modem to work, and I'd get online to goof off when times were slow. I figured out Word Perfect back when it was a little bit hard to figure out, and soon I was printing reams of things on the daisy wheel printer, like it was some kind of big deal to print something LOL.

When I first got on the Internet (Cyberspace!), I'd dial into an account I had at a University (Unix shell terminal), and it was a captive menu system. To get to the full unfettered internet, I'd use Gopher from the menu, and if you dug deep enough, there was a link to "Illuminati Online", an Austin Texas based ISP (an early one!). They had a cheap rate, and I could Gopher over there and get a full terminal (not a menu) and I was online baby!. I used to mail them a check from Canada every month. I got the IHHD software working on Illuminati, and that allowed me to play Airwarrior for DOS on the internet, to play others that I met on usenet or IRC, free of charge for 1v1 duels. That was so fucking kick ass!

Couple years later when the SLIP connectors came out and local ISP's opened up for business, I got on Concentric Network and played Airwarrior in the pricey arenas. That led to Warbirds 1.0, then Aces High after that. All that chain of events led me here actually, still talking to you guys all these years later like old friends.

Quote from slamfire

An old Computer I always liked was the Kaypro II. Ran the old school CP/M Operating system. Friend of mine had one, and we used to play Zork on it. I really liked that OS, it was well designed.

They built that to compete with the Osborne1