[NBLUG/talk] Commodore nostalgia

gandalf at sonic.net gandalf at sonic.net
Wed May 13 13:04:39 PDT 2009


I was always getting eaten by grues. I guess some of my first computer training were on Unix computers, the Cyber 40 and PDP-11 at Sonoma State. But I first played with an Apple ][ in the 3rd grade. It took quite some time to load Integer Basic from the Cassette Drive and then we were programming "Hello" like crazy. Wizardry, Ulitima, ASCII Star Trek, wheee! Basic then Assembly then Pascal. Now I'm mostly Perl and PHP. 

Anybody remember Lunar Lander (text) and Lib Eliza? Ohhh we loved it when we found Eamon with it's programmable dungeons. When I took my first Linux class at the JC, Dane and Scott were working on Nermal and Odie and Eric was a fun and weird guy who seemed to know everything. My friends and I got into tradewars and I put up a BBS so we could play. Then we made it better. It was called The DarkSide and I used Gandalf Retlaw for my handle "28.8 it's like being at home". Then the internet reared it beautiful ugly head and nothing has ever been the same since  to start from the beginning each time! Yack! Of course, I was 5 years 
> old...). Didn't matter though, killing the troll each time provided much
> excitement. I remember a bug in the version I had, too..from the 
> beginning of the game, if you type 'run', it asked "What do you want
> to run?" Reply 'me', and it jumped you to the cave. Weird!
> 
> This is just too cool: http://thcnet.net/zork/
> ...And, something that even the original Sierra devs probably would have
> never guessed would happen with their creations... multiplayer online 
> versions of a bunch of their original games!
> 
> http://sarien.net/
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Jordan
> 
> 
> Steve Johnson wrote:
> > I started out with a Tandy TRS80 CoCo the old
> silver case one,  my mum > bought it for me for xmas, and paid the
> radioshack guy a little extra > to solder in more memory and took it from 4K to
> 14K  :)  I loved that > machine.. It is the machine that introduced me
> to Zork :)>
> > Eventually I got a C64 and I learned to program
> on that, first basic, > and then assembly.  I wrote a couple programs
> that had been published > in RUN magazine, and worked on several projects
> that eventually got > released into shareware..
> >
> > I was known locally for my not so legal
> activities ;)  but I was not > an uber hacker, I did hang out with a few (RT3!)
> and we did lots of > run and interesting things..  That all ended
> when I got paranoid > because my buddy at the time got busted for
> hacking a bank.. yikes!!  > Find out your friend is being held by the FBI is
> a path straightener > :)  So I stuck to cracking software protect..
> mainly for fun..>
> > Eventually I got into the IBM PC world, and
> pretty much stayed there > until last year.. When I bought my first mac..
> (Hey, its BSD now!!)  > but since about 1994 on I have run linux as my
> primary workstation, > and have worked as a sysadmin in the linux world
> for just as long.>
> > Amazing what a 4K COCO lead to in my life :) 
> Such an influence..  I > wish I still had it, just so I could put it on a
> pedestal and offer it > windows CD's as sacrafice ;)
> >
> > Oh the days of 40 columns, 16 colors.. How I
> miss them.. And raster > chasing to get neat video effects.. oh
> boy...>
> > -Steve
> >
> > (Some of you may know me from the old days...I
> wont reveal my old bbs > handle here. ;) )
> 
> 
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