Remember the Commodore 64?
July 28th, 2009 by tom
Anybody remember what goofiness was required to display what was on a given floppy disk on a Commodore 64? I spent many hours playing/copying games back in the early 1980s on one of these machines, and I remember how you used to have to load directories from disk and then use a LIST command to see them.
LOAD “$”,8
I also remember that when you got a fresh game from the store, you’d pop the disk in the drive and type
LOAD “*”,8,1
which loaded the game program into the appropriate memory. Problem is, sometimes you’d absentmindedly add the “,1″ to the request for the disk directory when you wanted to see what was on the disk and end up accidentally causing a cavalcade of junk characters to end up all over the screen. This article does an awesome job of explaining why that happened, as well as some other interesting things about how the C-64 worked.
Brings back memories of spending long hours locked in my basement with my Commodore, and of using a hole puncher to turn single-sided disks into double-sided ones. 
it is nice to see how you are narrowing your target audience down to just me. old vic-20/C64 posts and bobcat videos? BRING IT ON!!!
While Dave and I always wanted a C64 because of the available games, we had Apple IIEs and IICs (and even a IIGS for about a week). We did have a C64 for a few days but for some reason my dad returned it. I’m not sure exactly why.
I’ve been thinking about getting a C64 emulator just to play some of those old games. A few years ago I set up an old Apple IIE to play some of the games I loved and many of them held up. Back then I guess story had to count for something because the graphics sure weren’t too good…
I wrote about my “home computer” memories in my post, Computer Nostalgia, from 2004. I must say that I don’t remember the “load” instructions…
I had a hobby business during the late 80′s – beginning of the 90′s, importing 3.5″ floppy diskettes from Hong Kong.