[00:39.640 --> 00:40.160]  Sure.
[00:40.780 --> 00:42.100]  So should I start now?
[00:42.360 --> 00:42.500]  Okay.
[00:43.040 --> 00:47.580]  Hi, this is the retrocomputing panel and we will be talking about retrocomputing.
[00:48.960 --> 00:51.660]  We have a few panelists.
[00:51.900 --> 00:57.560]  I'm going to give a very brief presentation on the TRS-80 color computer.
[00:57.860 --> 01:00.740]  Two minutes maybe so I can have more time for other people.
[01:02.540 --> 01:10.800]  Sam Nitzberg has a bachelor's and master's degrees in computer sciences and is presently pursuing his PhD in computer science.
[01:11.000 --> 01:20.600]  He has worked for 10 years in the software engineering and security fields with multiple national and international publications and presentation matters related to computing security and ethics.
[01:20.840 --> 01:27.840]  He may be contacted at sam at imsam.com and his website is www.imsam.com.
[01:27.840 --> 01:33.360]  He will be speaking about the Apple II and the interesting things you can do with an ovation apple cat.
[01:35.920 --> 01:41.880]  The Nightstalker was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1951 and currently lives in Boston.
[01:42.160 --> 01:46.920]  He's been part of CDC for over 10 years and a Commodore user since 1985.
[01:47.340 --> 01:51.060]  He'll be talking about the C64 and why it's God's gift to humanity.
[01:58.090 --> 02:07.970]  Graphics is some kid I met in an IRC room and said he'd bring some stuff so I guess I just allowed him to speak.
[02:08.470 --> 02:11.430]  And he's going to be talking about the legacy that these systems have today.
[02:12.270 --> 02:16.910]  I am Mr. Ohm, known to most people as Mr. and that's it.
[02:17.230 --> 02:20.130]  So, Nightstalker.
[02:20.130 --> 02:21.510]  Oh, thank you, thank you.
[02:23.970 --> 02:25.550]  Ah, well, where to begin?
[02:25.670 --> 02:26.110]  Where to begin?
[02:27.550 --> 02:28.030]  Um...
[02:29.130 --> 02:33.770]  I decided to start with the Commodore 64 because it was damn cheap.
[02:34.590 --> 02:39.470]  Uh, the Apple at the time was retailing for, if I recall correctly, in excess of $1,000.
[02:40.550 --> 02:45.530]  Whereas the Commodore was in the $400 range.
[02:45.530 --> 02:50.910]  Uh, if you bought it brand new, I bought my system used for about $300.
[02:51.170 --> 02:54.050]  It had a Commodore 64, a monitor, and a disk drive.
[02:54.950 --> 02:58.950]  Uh, also came with a printer interface and the data cassette drive.
[03:00.010 --> 03:01.870]  Today, I still use a Commodore system.
[03:01.890 --> 03:05.970]  I have Commodore 128, which has been heavily tricked out and hardware hacked to hell and gone.
[03:07.830 --> 03:08.310]  Uh...
[03:08.310 --> 03:12.710]  And the only bits that remain of my original system are the data cassette drive and the printer interface.
[03:14.170 --> 03:15.490]  Everything else has changed.
[03:16.810 --> 03:17.170]  Uh...
[03:17.170 --> 03:19.370]  The 64...
[03:20.570 --> 03:22.710]  Was, in many respects, a, uh...
[03:23.330 --> 03:25.090]  An entry computer for a lot of people.
[03:25.350 --> 03:26.370]  In that, again, it was inexpensive.
[03:27.130 --> 03:29.990]  And surprisingly powerful for what it could do.
[03:30.470 --> 03:36.130]  Uh, you would think that, you know, in this day and age, a machine that runs at one megahertz and has a whopping 64 kilobytes of memory.
[03:36.490 --> 03:38.390]  You know, that's... that's a keyboard buffer.
[03:41.530 --> 03:42.030]  But...
[03:42.930 --> 03:53.590]  Through clever programming and, uh, you know, literally getting down there and hammering on the bare silicon with assembly language, 64 and later the 128 could do things that astonish people even today.
[03:54.450 --> 03:54.950]  Uh...
[03:54.950 --> 03:54.970]  Uh...
[03:54.970 --> 03:56.070]  For example...
[03:57.050 --> 03:58.230]  You know, there's text editors.
[03:59.410 --> 03:59.850]  Uh...
[03:59.850 --> 03:59.970]  Uh...
[03:59.970 --> 04:08.970]  You know, a little text editor, if it's well-written and well-crafted and good tight code, can do virtually anything that, uh, you know, earlier versions of WordPerfect could do.
[04:09.350 --> 04:12.590]  But you don't need a whacking big MS-DOS machine or Macintosh to do it in.
[04:24.490 --> 04:24.930]  Um...
[04:24.930 --> 04:25.730]  That's not how you do it.
[04:25.850 --> 04:26.630]  I mean, the...
[04:26.630 --> 04:27.350]  The...
[04:27.350 --> 04:30.970]  In the good old days, we had a, you know, good natured snobbery amongst us computer users.
[04:31.070 --> 04:33.270]  You know, the Commodore 64 people would bash the Apple people.
[04:33.610 --> 04:37.190]  The Apple people would bash the Atari people and everyone would dump on IBM.
[04:40.090 --> 04:40.490]  Uh...
[04:40.490 --> 04:43.610]  So today, uh, people ask, okay, well, what the hell can you do with these things?
[04:43.710 --> 04:44.250]  They're door stops.
[04:44.370 --> 04:44.970]  They're boat anchors.
[04:46.390 --> 04:52.910]  Again, with clever programming and a little... a few little hardware additions, getting on the internet is not a problem.
[04:53.570 --> 04:54.170]  Uh...
[04:54.170 --> 04:56.470]  Even at high speeds, even the 56k modem.
[04:56.830 --> 05:00.450]  There is a marvelous company in Massachusetts called CMD Devices.
[05:01.510 --> 05:01.970]  Uh...
[05:01.970 --> 05:06.150]  Website is www.cmdweb.com, I believe.
[05:06.410 --> 05:07.630]  But a web search will find it for you.
[05:07.970 --> 05:13.030]  And they produce a variety of hardware and firmware accessories for the Commodore.
[05:14.750 --> 05:15.350]  Uh...
[05:15.350 --> 05:16.370]  They have a gadget.
[05:16.870 --> 05:19.730]  It's called the Turbo 232 Interface.
[05:19.930 --> 05:20.990]  It's a little cartridge.
[05:21.650 --> 05:22.330]  Let's see.
[05:22.330 --> 05:23.410]  Let me get this here.
[05:24.470 --> 05:24.870]  Uh...
[05:24.870 --> 05:27.090]  Not much bigger than this 1200 baud modem.
[05:28.590 --> 05:32.990]  And it plugs into the expansion port on the back of the computer here.
[05:34.390 --> 05:34.790]  Uh...
[05:35.270 --> 05:35.670]  Uh...
[05:35.670 --> 05:38.510]  One unfortunate thing about the Commodore was there are wires everywhere.
[05:39.330 --> 05:41.030]  So you have to... you have to bear with me.
[05:41.650 --> 05:44.150]  So this thing is a cartridge port, or an expansion port.
[05:44.730 --> 05:45.130]  Uh...
[05:45.130 --> 05:46.830]  Most people use it for game cartridges and whatnot.
[05:46.830 --> 05:48.110]  But this is a bus.
[05:48.330 --> 05:50.030]  This goes directly into the system bus.
[05:51.230 --> 05:53.270]  And with the RS 232...
[05:53.270 --> 05:53.590]  Uh...
[05:53.590 --> 05:54.650]  Turbo 232 cartridge, rather.
[05:55.030 --> 05:58.610]  Which is, I believe, an ACIA adapter.
[06:13.950 --> 06:14.510]  Uh...
[06:14.510 --> 06:16.650]  Which means, you know, a 56K modem is trivial.
[06:18.630 --> 06:19.150]  Uh...
[06:19.150 --> 06:20.910]  Other things that CMD produces...
[06:22.650 --> 06:23.170]  Well...
[06:23.170 --> 06:24.610]  Hard drive for the Commodore 64.
[06:26.970 --> 06:27.490]  Yeah.
[06:27.870 --> 06:28.130]  Yeah.
[06:29.710 --> 06:31.450]  What they do is they have an interface.
[06:31.450 --> 06:33.070]  It fits in a box.
[06:34.550 --> 06:35.110]  Um...
[06:35.110 --> 06:35.610]  Which turns...
[06:36.330 --> 06:36.750]  Well...
[06:36.750 --> 06:37.170]  It's basically...
[06:37.170 --> 06:37.930]  It's a translation...
[06:37.930 --> 06:38.650]  Translating interface.
[06:39.290 --> 06:40.010]  The, uh...
[06:40.010 --> 06:42.330]  Serial data that comes out of the Commodore serial port.
[06:42.490 --> 06:44.150]  To this big old clunky disk drive.
[06:44.590 --> 06:45.970]  Goes in this little converter.
[06:46.410 --> 06:47.890]  And comes out as parallel SCSI.
[06:48.710 --> 06:51.450]  Parallel SCSI comes in as, um...
[06:52.270 --> 06:53.210]  Serial for the Commodore.
[06:53.830 --> 06:55.790]  And the Commodore doesn't notice a damn thing.
[06:55.910 --> 06:56.570]  It just thinks...
[06:56.570 --> 06:58.790]  It's a really big floppy drive.
[07:00.570 --> 07:01.450]  So, uh...
[07:01.450 --> 07:03.510]  They started out with 20 megabyte hard drives.
[07:03.730 --> 07:04.550]  And now, um...
[07:04.550 --> 07:04.890]  I imagine...
[07:05.490 --> 07:06.590]  You can put his...
[07:06.590 --> 07:07.070]  You know...
[07:07.070 --> 07:09.090]  Whatever the largest SCSI drive is today.
[07:09.090 --> 07:10.390]  You could put into this thing.
[07:10.770 --> 07:12.830]  And the Commodore would just sit there and happily use it.
[07:14.870 --> 07:15.310]  Uh...
[07:15.310 --> 07:15.690]  Another...
[07:15.690 --> 07:16.430]  One other thing...
[07:17.190 --> 07:17.630]  Um...
[07:17.630 --> 07:18.110]  There...
[07:18.110 --> 07:18.610]  There's some...
[07:18.610 --> 07:20.030]  Some disadvantages to the Commodore.
[07:20.490 --> 07:20.750]  Uh...
[07:20.750 --> 07:23.130]  One was atrociously slow disk access.
[07:23.210 --> 07:23.590]  I...
[07:23.590 --> 07:24.670]  I mean, this thing...
[07:24.670 --> 07:26.630]  This thing doesn't read or write.
[07:26.750 --> 07:28.350]  It uploads and downloads to the disk drive.
[07:28.350 --> 07:29.230]  At 300 baud.
[07:30.690 --> 07:31.210]  Yeah.
[07:32.270 --> 07:33.030]  So, um...
[07:33.030 --> 07:33.550]  After the...
[07:33.990 --> 07:35.330]  The very first thing.
[07:35.490 --> 07:37.590]  That 90% of the Commodore users bought.
[07:37.790 --> 07:38.810]  After they got their Commodore 64.
[07:39.090 --> 07:40.550]  Was the Epyx fast load cartridge.
[07:41.650 --> 07:42.490]  This, uh...
[07:42.490 --> 07:44.070]  Did some little software jiggery-pokery.
[07:44.130 --> 07:45.450]  And speeded up disk IO pretty...
[07:45.450 --> 07:45.790]  Pretty good.
[07:47.990 --> 07:48.510]  Um...
[07:48.510 --> 07:50.430]  It also had a built-in machine language monitor.
[07:51.950 --> 07:52.750]  And, uh...
[07:52.750 --> 07:56.830]  Giving a monitor to some people is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
[07:59.970 --> 08:00.770]  And, uh...
[08:00.770 --> 08:03.550]  From there, we came into what was called the demo scene.
[08:03.770 --> 08:04.390]  With the Commodore.
[08:06.070 --> 08:07.370]  I have something in here called the VIC chip.
[08:07.450 --> 08:08.330]  The video interface chip.
[08:10.250 --> 08:13.230]  A programmable device of amazing depth and breadth.
[08:13.890 --> 08:16.890]  That if you know how to do it, you can do things that will astonish people.
[08:16.890 --> 08:17.810]  Uh...
[08:17.810 --> 08:22.890]  The Commodore has a screen resolution of 320 by 200 pixels in high res mode.
[08:23.110 --> 08:26.030]  Which means you can have a background color and a foreground color.
[08:26.250 --> 08:26.770]  That's it.
[08:27.610 --> 08:29.030]  Usually black on white.
[08:29.730 --> 08:30.650]  In, uh...
[08:30.650 --> 08:33.130]  Medium res mode, it is 160 by 200.
[08:33.510 --> 08:37.430]  What that means is the horizontal resolution of each pixel is doubled.
[08:38.530 --> 08:39.130]  Um...
[08:39.130 --> 08:41.690]  Because you had to get around certain limitations.
[08:41.990 --> 08:44.510]  Remember, back in the good old days, RAM was expensive.
[08:45.110 --> 08:46.550]  I'm gonna divert for a moment.
[08:47.370 --> 08:47.890]  Uh...
[08:47.890 --> 08:55.210]  Back in the mid-70s, 8K of RAM, if I recall correctly, would cost you approximately $2,000.
[08:57.530 --> 08:59.710]  And would come on a card.
[09:01.030 --> 09:01.550]  Uh...
[09:01.550 --> 09:02.410]  It was about...
[09:02.410 --> 09:02.550]  Yay.
[09:02.910 --> 09:03.230]  Big.
[09:03.630 --> 09:05.110]  It would plug into a, uh...
[09:05.110 --> 09:05.550]  A big, uh...
[09:05.550 --> 09:06.770]  Big old expansion cage.
[09:07.850 --> 09:10.270]  Now, try and find an eight kilobyte chip.
[09:11.190 --> 09:12.750]  You know, so RAM was expensive.
[09:12.750 --> 09:14.770]  So you had to do all sorts of clever tricks to get around it.
[09:15.910 --> 09:16.710]  And, uh...
[09:16.710 --> 09:18.290]  The VIC chip was a pretty clever device.
[09:18.490 --> 09:19.570]  You know, it did what it was supposed to do.
[09:20.290 --> 09:30.050]  But, once you got people who were interested in programming, and interested in finding out as much as you could do with this thing, they were getting this thing to jump through hoops that were never intended to be jumped through.
[09:30.690 --> 09:30.970]  Uh...
[09:31.590 --> 09:31.990]  I'm...
[09:31.990 --> 09:32.750]  Know of a story.
[09:33.690 --> 09:33.950]  Uh...
[09:33.950 --> 09:38.750]  Commodore used to, uh, have what they called the World of Commodore Expos in Westchester, Pennsylvania, where they're headquartered.
[09:39.210 --> 09:41.010]  And people would come from all over the world.
[09:41.210 --> 09:44.190]  And set up their computers, you know, to sell things, to demonstrate, whatever.
[09:44.930 --> 09:45.810]  So, uh...
[09:45.810 --> 09:48.050]  There was a demo writing crew from Europe there.
[09:48.270 --> 09:49.810]  And they had a demo going on.
[09:50.290 --> 09:53.030]  And the screen was doing stuff like you wouldn't believe.
[09:53.330 --> 09:53.930]  You know, you see the...
[09:53.930 --> 09:54.910]  You see the blue borders.
[09:55.750 --> 09:56.050]  Uh...
[09:56.050 --> 09:57.750]  Theoretically, nothing can go there.
[09:58.050 --> 10:00.790]  Well, you know, a good demoer can put anything there.
[10:00.870 --> 10:05.190]  They can make the screen expand and just, you know, text scrolling on all four sides.
[10:05.350 --> 10:05.990]  Just amazing things.
[10:06.630 --> 10:08.570]  So, an older gentleman is looking at this.
[10:09.510 --> 10:10.330]  And he's looking in.
[10:10.430 --> 10:11.230]  He's peering at it.
[10:11.730 --> 10:12.050]  Okay.
[10:12.230 --> 10:13.210]  And he's looking at the computer.
[10:13.830 --> 10:15.550]  And he finally asks, uh, okay, okay.
[10:15.670 --> 10:15.870]  How did...
[10:15.870 --> 10:17.890]  How did you modify the Commodore to do that?
[10:18.730 --> 10:19.690]  And the guy said, no, no.
[10:19.810 --> 10:20.170]  We didn't...
[10:20.170 --> 10:20.870]  Didn't do it all.
[10:20.910 --> 10:21.650]  It's all software.
[10:21.870 --> 10:22.110]  No, no.
[10:22.150 --> 10:23.030]  You can tell me.
[10:23.150 --> 10:23.250]  No.
[10:23.430 --> 10:24.190]  Just between us guys.
[10:24.550 --> 10:25.290]  How did you...
[10:25.290 --> 10:26.210]  How did you hack the Commodore?
[10:26.650 --> 10:27.090]  No, no.
[10:27.130 --> 10:27.670]  It's all software.
[10:27.870 --> 10:28.210]  It's all...
[10:28.210 --> 10:29.430]  We're all just screwing with the VIC chip.
[10:30.290 --> 10:34.610]  And he says, well, you know, I designed the VIC chip.
[10:34.610 --> 10:35.590]  It can't do that.
[10:40.860 --> 10:43.580]  So they apparently said, oh, oh, wow, great, great.
[10:43.720 --> 10:46.520]  You know, it's like meeting, you know, Steve Wozniak somewhere.
[10:47.040 --> 10:49.380]  You know, one of the heroes of the computer revolution.
[10:50.120 --> 10:52.420]  And, you know, they showed him the code and everything.
[10:52.520 --> 10:53.060]  And they're pointing out...
[10:53.060 --> 10:56.280]  They're pointing out to the guy that designed the VIC chip how they made his baby do things.
[10:57.180 --> 10:57.780]  It's amazing.
[10:59.720 --> 11:00.440]  So, uh...
[11:00.440 --> 11:05.700]  Yeah, today, I mean, there are people that get on the internet with a Commodore 64 or 128 and think nothing of it.
[11:05.700 --> 11:09.200]  It's not that difficult from a hardware or software standpoint.
[11:09.480 --> 11:13.700]  The hard part is just finding an ISP that will give you a dial-up shell account.
[11:14.760 --> 11:17.140]  Everyone wants to go, you know, TCP IP.
[11:17.680 --> 11:18.740]  What are you going to do?
[11:19.120 --> 11:23.820]  Well, right now there are experimental TCP IP stacks that work on the Commodore 64.
[11:25.540 --> 11:26.820]  They do take a lot of room.
[11:26.980 --> 11:28.400]  There's not a whole lot of space left over.
[11:29.620 --> 11:31.380]  But, it is being worked on.
[11:31.580 --> 11:45.780]  And I will prophesize that within two or three years, there will be a TCP/IP application for the 64 and the 128 that will let you do virtually everything that, you know, a mainstream computer can do today.
[11:47.100 --> 11:49.040]  With, perhaps, the exception of graphics.
[11:49.280 --> 11:55.360]  You've got 16 colors on this thing, which was considered pretty good back in the day.
[11:56.700 --> 12:04.080]  And, but, you know, you know, with the VIC chip, again, you get into that and you can do things.
[12:04.420 --> 12:05.720]  You can do page flipping.
[12:06.380 --> 12:09.640]  You can do, you know, raster interrupts.
[12:09.960 --> 12:13.440]  You can get 32,000 colors on a Commodore 64 screen.
[12:16.240 --> 12:23.540]  If you don't mind scrolling it back and forth, you can get, you know, large images on a Commodore screen.
[12:23.840 --> 12:26.080]  In that little 320 by 200 space.
[12:29.080 --> 12:37.960]  If you don't mind hardware hacking your Commodore 128 and putting in a second SID chip for sound interface device, with a little software, you can play MP3s.
[12:40.480 --> 12:42.860]  Of course, you need to have the hard drive to do that.
[12:44.320 --> 12:48.320]  It's damn hard to put, you know, an MP3 on a little floppy disk that has, you know.
[12:49.840 --> 12:53.100]  God, you forget how much, forget how much is on these now.
[12:53.220 --> 12:53.940]  It's been so long.
[12:54.380 --> 12:55.460]  It's not a whole lot.
[12:55.660 --> 12:56.520]  It's not a whole lot.
[12:57.340 --> 12:57.720]  Yeah.
[12:59.940 --> 13:05.320]  And other things that were done with the Commodore were clever, you know, stupid disk tricks.
[13:05.600 --> 13:06.500]  You could do things with that.
[13:06.620 --> 13:08.040]  There was one marvelous little gimmick.
[13:08.660 --> 13:18.240]  Because the Commodore disk drive, this big clunky beige box, the built-in power supply, is an intelligent peripheral.
[13:18.760 --> 13:20.760]  It has a 6510 processor in it.
[13:21.480 --> 13:23.540]  In other words, it's at least as smart as an Apple.
[13:25.300 --> 13:26.440]  No offense intended.
[13:27.720 --> 13:29.840]  And it has 2K of RAM in it.
[13:30.620 --> 13:32.980]  So you can program the Commodore 64.
[13:34.540 --> 13:37.160]  Rather, the Commodore 1541 disk drive.
[13:38.160 --> 13:47.160]  I was going to bring a program with me, but I had such a weird day Thursday getting down here, I left my disks at home and I really regret it.
[13:48.600 --> 13:53.920]  There's a program, if anyone has a Commodore 64 and can find it, it's called 1541 Music Machine.
[13:55.220 --> 13:58.980]  And what this... I'd love to meet the guy that programmed this.
[13:59.000 --> 14:00.480]  He must have been on crack or something.
[14:02.800 --> 14:08.980]  What it does, it turns the Commodore 1541 disk drive into a sound synthesizing device.
[14:10.200 --> 14:19.620]  By doing what I would assume to be terrible things to the motor that moves the read-write head back and forth, the thing plays Bicycle Built for Two.
[14:20.660 --> 14:21.740]  And it sounds...
[14:27.760 --> 14:31.120]  I swear, I swear, I'm not making this up, I'm not on drugs, this is true.
[14:33.380 --> 14:37.260]  There's another stupid disk drive trick, again, programming it.
[14:37.560 --> 14:43.920]  We have a little red light on the front here, which is your power indicates, you know, things turn on and off.
[14:44.660 --> 14:51.460]  What you can do is you can have the power on light slowly fade off and on, off and on.
[14:52.660 --> 14:58.920]  And you'd run this on someone as a prank and say, oh my, I think your drive's broken, man.
[14:59.800 --> 15:00.940]  And they'd freak out.
[15:01.260 --> 15:02.680]  So, no, no, it's just a trick, just a trick.
[15:05.800 --> 15:06.920]  Yeah, the disk drive.
[15:07.980 --> 15:10.740]  Uploading and downloading a 300 baud, what the heck is that about?
[15:11.320 --> 15:19.280]  Well, because it had to be compatible with the VIC-20, which was designed around a tape drive.
[15:19.760 --> 15:22.980]  Now, the IR routines in the computer are not that bright.
[15:23.340 --> 15:26.020]  And it was intended to be used for a cassette deck.
[15:26.280 --> 15:29.440]  Because disk drives, good God, these things cost over $600 when they were new.
[15:30.300 --> 15:33.200]  You know, who pays $600 for a floppy drive these days?
[15:35.340 --> 15:41.120]  So, there were clever software tricks for this to increase I.O.
[15:41.180 --> 15:41.420]  speed.
[15:42.000 --> 15:46.060]  And these good folks at CMD decided, well, that's kind of stupid.
[15:46.240 --> 15:46.700]  We'll do better.
[15:46.840 --> 15:54.020]  And they have something called Jiffy DOS, which is a ROM replacement set, which speeds up disk I.O.
[15:54.280 --> 15:58.580]  by, I think, 15 times, which is pretty darn good.
[15:59.020 --> 16:00.340]  And it also gives you other things.
[16:00.500 --> 16:03.700]  You can, you know, simple two keyboard command.
[16:03.960 --> 16:09.100]  You can print a file to the screen, much like the type command in MS-DOS.
[16:09.760 --> 16:11.320]  You can direct it to the printer.
[16:12.700 --> 16:14.180]  You have what's called a wedge.
[16:15.960 --> 16:22.220]  That is simply a little bit of software that wedges itself into the OS that allows you to do really simplified keyboard commands.
[16:22.420 --> 16:32.360]  You know, for example, if I wanted to do something with the drive, be open 15 comma 15, no, open 15 comma 815 colon.
[16:33.760 --> 16:37.520]  Command to initialize the disk I, close 15, return.
[16:38.500 --> 16:40.620]  You know, that's like MS-DOS, for God's sakes.
[16:42.520 --> 16:49.320]  Whereas with a wedge, it's like at I, return, and your disk is, disk drive is initialized, which made life a lot easier for people.
[16:52.500 --> 16:54.800]  Let's see, what else about the Commodore, which is of interest?
[16:55.180 --> 16:57.520]  As I said, it can be used on the internet.
[16:57.620 --> 16:58.600]  I mean, the people doing it today.
[17:01.540 --> 17:05.300]  Which has kind of sparked a resurgence in Unix, learning Unix amongst people.
[17:05.680 --> 17:15.380]  You know, people buy their Commodores, and, you know, learn all the ins and outs of the Commodore, and then want to get online, and then discover, oh, God, I have to learn this UNIX thing.
[17:16.560 --> 17:18.700]  And then discover, well, Unix isn't that difficult.
[17:18.920 --> 17:19.880]  It's kind of fun, actually.
[17:20.460 --> 17:22.220]  God, I can do all this stuff on a host computer.
[17:23.920 --> 17:25.420]  What else can I do with Unix?
[17:26.080 --> 17:28.780]  Gee, what's this Linux I hear about?
[17:29.880 --> 17:33.520]  And they wind up getting a 486 box, and they wind up learning Linux.
[17:34.100 --> 17:38.200]  And, you know, another customer lost for Microsoft.
[17:39.720 --> 17:40.760]  Yeah, yeah.
[17:43.300 --> 17:53.740]  And, I mean, I know people that started out with 64, went online, learned Unix, learned Linux, and discovered that, hey, I can make money with this.
[17:54.220 --> 18:01.100]  And they're now administrating UNIX machines in Linux networks for huge amounts of money, but they still go home to their Commodores.
[18:01.740 --> 18:04.300]  Because that's the machine they learn, that's the machine they know.
[18:05.240 --> 18:06.660]  I use a Commodore 128.
[18:06.880 --> 18:08.060]  That's my main computer.
[18:08.380 --> 18:11.760]  I have a Mac 2 SI, which is solely for internet access.
[18:14.320 --> 18:16.760]  I have, you know, all my games are on the Commodore.
[18:17.660 --> 18:24.360]  And I think that they're a lot better than what we have today on, you know, the Pentium 3s and the Big Macs.
[18:24.560 --> 18:27.440]  You know, Doom and Quake, that's all very nice.
[18:27.440 --> 18:28.720]  You know, really cool graphics.
[18:29.240 --> 18:31.000]  But it's basically, you know, point and kill.
[18:33.020 --> 18:37.700]  You know, when is the last time, you know, some company released, you know, Adventure or Zork?
[18:40.240 --> 18:40.720]  You know.
[18:42.480 --> 18:46.860]  You know, if you want fast twitch, you know, fast muscle twitch games, they're all out there.
[18:47.020 --> 18:52.120]  But a game where you have to sit there and, you know, you stare at the screen and think, okay, now what does this mean?
[18:53.300 --> 18:57.900]  And you try something, you try something, and eventually you get it.
[18:57.960 --> 19:01.380]  And that's a lot more satisfying than, you know, killing the monsters.
[19:01.760 --> 19:02.780]  You know, taking their guns.
[19:03.620 --> 19:06.740]  Because it makes you think.
[19:06.860 --> 19:07.800]  And that's a good thing.
[19:08.680 --> 19:12.700]  You know, not that blowing away a shitload of monsters in Quake isn't fun.
[19:13.320 --> 19:16.220]  You know, there are times when you just got to kill stuff.
[19:18.180 --> 19:19.320]  And that's good.
[19:21.140 --> 19:22.460]  So I said, there are a lot of games around that.
[19:22.520 --> 19:24.880]  I have a lot of adventure games, a lot of thinking games.
[19:24.980 --> 19:26.360]  I do have a couple of shoot-em-ups.
[19:26.940 --> 19:29.040]  And there is a Doom clone for the Commodore.
[19:29.180 --> 19:29.960]  It's called Mood.
[19:31.960 --> 19:32.320]  Yeah.
[19:33.400 --> 19:36.640]  The graphics are really primitive, given the limitations.
[19:37.380 --> 19:38.580]  But I've seen it.
[19:38.660 --> 19:39.800]  I fooled around with it.
[19:39.920 --> 19:46.100]  And as a, you know, as a Doom clone running on a one megahertz machine with 64K of memory, it ain't bad.
[19:47.680 --> 19:50.400]  My text editor is something called BB Writer.
[19:51.580 --> 19:54.280]  This is written by one guy that lives in Arizona.
[19:56.440 --> 19:59.820]  And coupled with a good printer, I use a Panasonic 24 print printer.
[20:00.800 --> 20:03.700]  My output is just as good as anything that comes off a laser printer.
[20:04.140 --> 20:05.360]  And that's all that matters.
[20:05.900 --> 20:08.180]  You know, it doesn't matter what kind of printer it is.
[20:08.180 --> 20:12.080]  As long as it looks good, that's what gets the point across.
[20:12.380 --> 20:22.340]  So you don't need a Pentium 3 or a G4 or a laser printer to have your station, or rather your correspondence come across looking well.
[20:23.400 --> 20:25.360]  Which leads me to another thing.
[20:25.940 --> 20:29.140]  These things, a used Commodore system is incredibly cheap.
[20:30.420 --> 20:33.000]  You can pick them up at the MIT flea market in Massachusetts.
[20:34.080 --> 20:36.800]  You know, what I've got sitting in front of me, $25.
[20:38.220 --> 20:40.320]  You know, a computer, a monitor, and a disk drive.
[20:41.440 --> 20:47.520]  And what I do occasionally when I have the money and can do it, or if someone needs the help.
[20:49.340 --> 20:53.940]  I help people and organizations set up things using a Commodore.
[20:54.140 --> 20:54.820]  You know, they can't afford it.
[20:54.900 --> 20:56.980]  You know, we have in Boston, we have a lot...
[20:56.980 --> 20:58.960]  For some reason, we have a lot of Haitians in Boston.
[20:59.800 --> 21:00.660]  Now, you think they...
[21:00.660 --> 21:03.600]  You think Haitians want to live someplace warm most of the year.
[21:04.220 --> 21:06.460]  In Boston, we get snow up to our armpits sometimes.
[21:06.900 --> 21:08.040]  But that's the way it is.
[21:08.780 --> 21:11.100]  So, a lot of these folks are just dirt poor.
[21:11.460 --> 21:14.000]  And the organizations that try to help them are dirt poor.
[21:14.820 --> 21:17.340]  And they think, you know, well, we can't afford a computer.
[21:17.340 --> 21:19.820]  We'd rather spend the money to help our people.
[21:20.600 --> 21:26.400]  So, you show up in one of these places with a monitor, computer, drive, and a printer.
[21:26.900 --> 21:28.480]  And a couple of disks of software.
[21:28.820 --> 21:32.700]  And you've got a freeware text editor, a freeware mailing list program.
[21:34.140 --> 21:35.960]  Freeware, you know, print shop.
[21:37.160 --> 21:41.380]  And suddenly, here's this poor group that can send out letters.
[21:41.640 --> 21:43.040]  They have a mailing list.
[21:43.520 --> 21:45.000]  They can print up flyers.
[21:45.140 --> 21:46.720]  They can do newsletters.
[21:46.720 --> 21:51.180]  And they can do them in Haitian, which has a lot of diacritical marks.
[21:51.420 --> 21:51.980]  It's based on French.
[21:52.280 --> 21:55.940]  Because the Commodore 64, you can load in new character sets.
[21:56.140 --> 21:58.920]  You're not limited to what's built into the ROM.
[21:59.440 --> 22:08.020]  So, yes, you can have custom character sets with all those little French diacritical marks that people that speak Haitian Creole can read.
[22:08.780 --> 22:12.380]  And suddenly, it's no longer a person to person.
[22:12.640 --> 22:15.180]  You know, one person has to tell one person to tell one person.
[22:15.640 --> 22:19.120]  They can mail out stuff to their fellow Haitians.
[22:19.260 --> 22:20.520]  Or their fellow Jamaicans.
[22:20.740 --> 22:21.940]  Or their fellow Ukrainians.
[22:22.060 --> 22:22.820]  Or their fellow Russians.
[22:23.180 --> 22:23.340]  Whatever.
[22:24.240 --> 22:27.840]  And this puts them on an equal footing with any of the larger organizations.
[22:29.120 --> 22:32.480]  Because, you know, the data doesn't care what it's on.
[22:33.620 --> 22:39.260]  The only thing that's important is how you get it on paper and how you get it on the net and how you get it to people.
[22:39.640 --> 22:41.760]  And you can do all of that with a Commodore 64.
[22:43.180 --> 22:49.040]  I mean, these things will be running until there are no more parts available.
[22:49.620 --> 22:59.500]  You know, when the last Commodore has been cannibalized to fix the last working Commodore, that'll be sometime well into the next century.
[23:01.460 --> 23:03.980]  And I'm sure the same thing could be said of the Apple or the Atari.
[23:04.580 --> 23:06.620]  And we have an Apple person right here.
[23:08.440 --> 23:11.480]  Who I would like to take over because I've got nothing more to say.
[23:12.040 --> 23:12.980]  Thank you.
[23:12.980 --> 23:13.540]  On the subject.
[23:14.280 --> 23:14.760]  Thank you.
[23:19.700 --> 23:20.980]  I'm going to go to 10 and 15.
[23:22.060 --> 23:22.540]  Sure.
[23:26.610 --> 23:27.090]  Okay.
[23:27.250 --> 23:27.710]  You can hear me good?
[23:28.170 --> 23:28.490]  Yeah.
[23:28.870 --> 23:29.350]  Okay.
[23:29.870 --> 23:35.030]  I'm going to talk a little bit about the Apple in general, and most particularly my experiences with the Apple II model.
[23:35.390 --> 23:43.030]  In 1976, the first Apple I kits were made available, basically hand-built machines by, of course, Wozniak and Jobs.
[23:44.450 --> 23:49.470]  The first batch, only 50 were produced, and I understand their total numbers only in the few hundreds.
[23:52.110 --> 23:57.850]  The Apple II and II Plus were mass-produced, and are technically a little more interesting.
[23:58.770 --> 24:02.770]  The wide sales of the Apple II really took their stride in 1978.
[24:03.710 --> 24:07.490]  In the same year, I believe, as the TRS-80 peaked in its sales.
[24:08.330 --> 24:14.310]  That's also when the Visicalc spreadsheet program came out of 130,000 Apple II sold.
[24:14.910 --> 24:19.830]  By September of 1980, 25,000 specifically were running Visicalc.
[24:20.370 --> 24:22.950]  So sales were actually helped by business apps.
[24:23.450 --> 24:26.670]  After the Apple II, the Apple III emerged.
[24:27.310 --> 24:29.050]  Let's just say that didn't fulfill its promise.
[24:30.970 --> 24:37.550]  Yes, back then you heard the same laughter when people saw it and saw the price relative to what you got you from the Apple II, as you just heard a moment ago.
[24:38.870 --> 24:39.950]  It had weak sales.
[24:40.430 --> 24:41.850]  The Apple II C came out later.
[24:42.570 --> 24:43.890]  What is the Lisa machine?
[24:45.270 --> 24:46.390]  I don't know.
[24:46.570 --> 24:53.130]  Offhand, I was thinking of making notes on the Lisa, but I didn't consider it very noteworthy.
[24:53.190 --> 24:54.990]  To me, it was an uninteresting machine, personally.
[24:55.770 --> 24:57.150]  It was a horrible failure.
[24:57.570 --> 24:58.130]  Yeah.
[24:58.970 --> 24:59.890]  Yeah, yeah.
[25:00.350 --> 25:01.070]  You just...
[25:02.530 --> 25:05.070]  It was named after his illegitimate child.
[25:05.650 --> 25:05.890]  Yeah.
[25:08.030 --> 25:09.150]  It really...
[25:11.010 --> 25:16.570]  The Lisa really died a bad death, and I'm not sure it had a very enlightened birth either.
[25:18.190 --> 25:18.550]  Okay.
[25:18.730 --> 25:20.550]  Anyway, I'm gonna move right along now.
[25:21.450 --> 25:22.830]  The Apple II C was portable.
[25:22.990 --> 25:24.390]  Had more memory, more capabilities.
[25:24.650 --> 25:28.690]  Came out briefly after the Apple IIe, where they hyped up the 2+, kind of like a 2 on steroids.
[25:29.010 --> 25:32.450]  Gave you certain things you needed, like 80 columns so you could do slightly nicer with processing.
[25:32.750 --> 25:33.850]  A little more memory.
[25:34.050 --> 25:36.730]  So 64k max with a card, you got up to 128k.
[25:36.730 --> 25:39.130]  So you could work with, quote-unquote, more data.
[25:41.030 --> 25:41.430]  Um...
[25:41.430 --> 25:53.430]  Now, one thing I see very interesting in the Apple II series was that you had a very interesting foreshadowing of the IBM PC hardware interrupt request problem that's only been kind of recently solved with the whole USB port situation.
[25:53.850 --> 25:55.970]  And that you had seven slots in your Apple II card.
[25:56.130 --> 25:59.050]  You had 48k of your base RAM, generally speaking.
[25:59.410 --> 26:01.470]  Well, you put in a memory card in slot zero.
[26:01.690 --> 26:03.090]  You put in your printer controller card.
[26:03.210 --> 26:04.630]  You added your disk drive card.
[26:04.630 --> 26:06.430]  Or if you copied disks a whole lot.
[26:08.310 --> 26:09.770]  Multiple drive controller cards.
[26:09.910 --> 26:11.750]  Because you only got two drives on a controller.
[26:12.310 --> 26:14.830]  You had a serial card and a modem card.
[26:15.230 --> 26:16.590]  And you had your 80 column card.
[26:16.730 --> 26:21.650]  Well, you're down now to about two slots remaining and you haven't done anything except give yourself some nice normal capabilities.
[26:23.530 --> 26:25.810]  Now, let's say you want slightly faster processing.
[26:26.370 --> 26:31.170]  Well, the 6502 processor was the basis for everything for the Apple.
[26:31.170 --> 26:32.030]  That was the heart of it.
[26:32.190 --> 26:34.370]  And we had really was a whole lot of logic chips around it.
[26:34.450 --> 26:35.710]  Low-power Schottky devices.
[26:36.550 --> 26:39.070]  74LS series chips or 74L00 chips.
[26:40.030 --> 26:41.310]  Very simple, very easy to work with.
[26:41.470 --> 26:41.870]  You know what?
[26:42.030 --> 26:42.790]  Chip goes bad.
[26:42.930 --> 26:43.430]  You pop it.
[26:43.510 --> 26:44.330]  You put in another chip.
[26:44.770 --> 26:46.910]  Well, if you're not sure which chip it is, well, you replace a couple of chips.
[26:46.950 --> 26:47.470]  It's no big deal.
[26:47.530 --> 26:48.790]  They cost about 50 cents at the time.
[26:48.910 --> 26:49.470]  Maybe two dollars.
[26:49.690 --> 26:50.290]  Most chips.
[26:50.470 --> 26:51.050]  It was nice.
[26:52.690 --> 26:53.330]  I'll mention.
[26:53.510 --> 26:54.530]  I don't recommend anyone do this.
[26:54.530 --> 26:55.510]  It was a cute little gimmick.
[26:55.810 --> 26:57.230]  Apple drives had great warranties.
[26:57.370 --> 26:57.990]  One or two years.
[26:58.590 --> 27:01.990]  Well, what happened is, what if you had five drives and one broke?
[27:02.170 --> 27:04.970]  Well, the warranty information was stuck on a sticker on the back.
[27:05.050 --> 27:06.110]  Everyone swapped out the case.
[27:06.350 --> 27:07.550]  You have eternal warranties.
[27:07.670 --> 27:08.270]  It was kind of nice.
[27:10.290 --> 27:11.870]  I wouldn't recommend doing such a thing.
[27:11.870 --> 27:13.290]  And they probably won't under the warranty now.
[27:13.390 --> 27:14.970]  But it was done quite a bit.
[27:16.490 --> 27:17.670]  Beautiful service policy.
[27:18.410 --> 27:21.250]  Now, you do a call negative 151.
[27:21.590 --> 27:24.470]  It drops you right into a little assembly where you can put in machine code instructions.
[27:24.470 --> 27:33.890]  You want to put in a machine program at memory address 0300 and hex, you type in 0300 colon, and you give it a stream of hexadecimal numbers, and it goes in as machine language code.
[27:36.650 --> 27:40.430]  The Apple to itself, not the Plus, actually had a built-in mini assembler as well.
[27:40.630 --> 27:46.670]  You went, call negative 151, gave the address of the mini assembler F666G, and it did the G.
[27:46.790 --> 27:47.210]  It goes.
[27:47.390 --> 27:48.650]  It invokes the mini assembler.
[27:50.610 --> 27:54.070]  And it really encouraged you to play with the system in that regard.
[27:54.230 --> 27:58.150]  You've got an assembler, mini assembler, machine code access, all built in.
[27:58.930 --> 28:00.170]  You don't like the way it does something?
[28:00.770 --> 28:07.950]  Again, a lot of the environment was in ROMs, but you don't have to go out and get fancy assemblers, assembler toolkits, things that take multiple disks to load.
[28:08.670 --> 28:11.450]  You could also, if you were in basic and took too long, get compiled basics.
[28:11.670 --> 28:14.470]  Instead of running interpreted, it will compile for you and put out executable code.
[28:16.170 --> 28:21.850]  You also had some fun languages like Forth and others where you have turtle graphics, which I never really used and get into too much.
[28:22.070 --> 28:22.650]  Experimented briefly.
[28:22.770 --> 28:25.410]  It was good because you thought of other paradigms for computing even then.
[28:25.670 --> 28:31.150]  It encouraged you to think about how you can represent things, not that you have to view it in one method.
[28:31.230 --> 28:33.550]  I believe they also had similar languages and environments for Commodore.
[28:33.710 --> 28:34.210]  Oh, yes, yes.
[28:35.070 --> 28:36.010]  Alternative operating systems.
[28:36.210 --> 28:37.090]  You want to do Pascal?
[28:37.350 --> 28:39.510]  You got University of California, San Diego, Pascal.
[28:39.950 --> 28:41.270]  It came with its OS environment.
[28:41.630 --> 28:43.350]  Fortran was based on the same environment too.
[28:46.730 --> 28:49.110]  For business purposes, people would get a CPM 80 card.
[28:49.230 --> 28:52.910]  You could run a CPM 80 beautifully on your Apple.
[28:54.970 --> 28:57.430]  Now, that took, of course, another expansion slot.
[28:58.250 --> 28:59.710]  The same problem you have with the IBMs.
[29:00.750 --> 29:03.210]  Now, there was really open computing, I think.
[29:03.470 --> 29:07.190]  The foreshadowing of modern open computing thought may have derived around this time period.
[29:08.250 --> 29:09.710]  But the scene's changed.
[29:09.810 --> 29:14.790]  You see, I've got a card here, dated copyright 1981, that has a Z88 chip.
[29:14.870 --> 29:16.010]  I think that's a good one mega chip.
[29:16.130 --> 29:17.650]  Significantly faster than 6502.
[29:18.550 --> 29:22.170]  And it has a whole lot of little LS series logic chips in here.
[29:22.250 --> 29:23.190]  Very simple logic chips.
[29:23.270 --> 29:23.890]  Just gates.
[29:24.370 --> 29:25.590]  And it has a nice little pin-out.
[29:25.850 --> 29:28.670]  What's interesting is who wants you to run CPM 80 on your Apple?
[29:28.670 --> 29:30.210]  Who is this leader?
[29:31.270 --> 29:35.110]  This monolith who thought it would be great to run multiple environments on a computer.
[29:35.390 --> 29:38.690]  Well, this product is the Microsoft Consumer Products soft card.
[29:40.970 --> 29:41.990]  Things have changed.
[29:43.670 --> 29:45.610]  Yeah, show them, show them, so they can see the logo.
[29:45.870 --> 29:46.670]  Can you just hold them?
[29:47.970 --> 29:49.090]  Can you see...
[29:49.090 --> 29:49.570]  Yeah?
[29:50.270 --> 29:51.630]  That's the old Microsoft logo.
[29:52.010 --> 29:54.610]  If anyone can do it later, we can see them close up.
[29:54.750 --> 29:54.870]  Yeah.
[29:59.530 --> 30:00.350]  Absolutely, yes.
[30:01.430 --> 30:03.250]  Yeah, yeah, there's EDA chips, B-chips.
[30:03.730 --> 30:03.930]  Mm-hmm.
[30:04.190 --> 30:05.510]  Mm-hmm.
[30:06.030 --> 30:10.010]  Now, to me, the most interesting thing that went on was what were the security issues with the Apple?
[30:10.070 --> 30:11.810]  Because you could do a lot of neat little security things.
[30:12.610 --> 30:17.150]  Now, like other machines at the time, you had no password protection in BIOS, but that's not a big deal.
[30:17.590 --> 30:17.790]  Mm-hmm.
[30:17.870 --> 30:20.090]  You can lock your door, it gets you the same effect.
[30:20.710 --> 30:21.030]  Exactly.
[30:21.350 --> 30:21.950]  No big deal.
[30:22.250 --> 30:24.670]  Now, again, it was a great machine to play with.
[30:24.670 --> 30:26.770]  For example, there was a game called Castle Wolfenstein.
[30:26.850 --> 30:28.610]  You went around shooting the bad guys, basically.
[30:33.210 --> 30:34.230]  Yeah, that was fun.
[30:34.570 --> 30:34.970]  Yeah.
[30:35.130 --> 30:36.690]  Now, you can hack that.
[30:38.010 --> 30:42.370]  Now, I'm not even going to mention Castle Smurfenstein, where all the bad guys were replaced with Smurfs.
[30:46.330 --> 30:48.050]  And it started, too, with that damned music.
[30:50.530 --> 30:52.830]  Now, there were drives at the time...
[30:52.830 --> 30:59.210]  Now, you can put in a little read-write-toggle switch on your drive, and you could toggle the write-enable-write-protect sensor.
[30:59.210 --> 30:59.710]  Mm-hmm.
[30:59.830 --> 31:05.350]  Some drives, I believe one was by random systems, you push the button, and write-enable and protect was invoked and overridden.
[31:05.770 --> 31:11.090]  Well, what I found is, if you go into a room in Castle Wolfenstein, you pop the disc open, it never writes that you died.
[31:14.210 --> 31:17.530]  So, you get killed, you don't go all the way back to the beginning of the whole game.
[31:17.630 --> 31:18.530]  You don't reboot your assist.
[31:18.730 --> 31:21.810]  Well, you might reboot the thing, but you come back and you're right where you entered that room.
[31:22.210 --> 31:24.290]  So, we have a two-player version of Castle Wolfenstein.
[31:24.510 --> 31:28.890]  One guy mans the disc drive door hinge, and the other guy plays.
[31:31.770 --> 31:33.870]  Because you can't just overwrite it the whole time.
[31:33.990 --> 31:37.410]  You can't keep the disc closed the whole time, because it won't do certain things it has to do and mess up your whole game.
[31:37.410 --> 31:41.590]  Now, we had soft-sector discs, which made for other games.
[31:42.470 --> 31:51.830]  See, old discs, a lot of the CPM systems, a lot of the 8-inch disc systems, you had a little hole in the disc, and we still have holes in the discs, but a little LED showing a light through.
[31:53.170 --> 32:05.570]  And they're not necessarily always used presently, but an LED would shine through, and a sensor would let it know that's when the moment the hole was passing through, it could tell what track and sector, or rather which, I believe, track you were looking at,
[32:05.670 --> 32:06.250]  which track.
[32:06.250 --> 32:10.190]  It identified, you're going past, I believe, track zero every time it got that little ping.
[32:11.550 --> 32:13.870]  Well, hard-sector discs, it knows where it is.
[32:13.990 --> 32:15.370]  And it can use timing and other tricks.
[32:15.950 --> 32:17.130]  Soft-sector discs, you don't do that.
[32:17.210 --> 32:20.830]  You put in address headers and other pieces of information to let you know what you're looking at.
[32:23.670 --> 32:26.210]  Well, what this led to was copy protection schemes.
[32:26.710 --> 32:30.150]  CFM AD didn't really have them, except the ones using dongles, and they're not interesting.
[32:30.770 --> 32:36.890]  Now, what we could do, is a company like Atari, with their Atari software product, I believe, could change the address headers.
[32:37.390 --> 32:42.970]  If your copy software is looking for D5AA, I'm going to say 96, but it's D5AAB.
[32:43.690 --> 32:46.330]  Your copy protection, your copy software won't know what's copying.
[32:46.710 --> 32:52.230]  So we have track editors, and you could open up the file, look at the tracks and see, well, what are they using as headers?
[32:52.230 --> 32:55.950]  Who are they using as other important parametric information?
[32:56.570 --> 33:02.450]  And this encouraged you, well, I'm using the word encouraged, to think about the environment and what it takes to copy things.
[33:04.110 --> 33:08.550]  You could use track editors, look at the information, tell it what you wanted and how to change parameters to copy.
[33:08.770 --> 33:12.610]  You could single step the drive motor, or half-step it.
[33:12.730 --> 33:16.890]  So you could write in uneven patterns through the disc and set up the tracks wherever you wanted.
[33:17.010 --> 33:21.410]  You could write off beyond what should have been the logical end of the disc, based on how it was defined.
[33:21.410 --> 33:23.530]  And this led to a lot of opportunities to really play.
[33:24.230 --> 33:29.810]  At some point, though, all this got made into parameters for copy software and you just put it in and told it what program you had.
[33:30.150 --> 33:34.930]  But for a while, you could really learn a lot by figuring out how to copy discs.
[33:35.410 --> 33:39.190]  It could be an introduction to code breaking, to protocols analysis.
[33:39.970 --> 33:41.810]  It would give you great opportunities to think.
[33:42.470 --> 33:44.070]  I'm going to go about another five minutes.
[33:45.370 --> 33:45.610]  Five?
[33:46.390 --> 33:46.750]  Three.
[33:47.290 --> 33:48.050]  I'll do what I can.
[33:49.290 --> 33:49.650]  Okay.
[33:49.650 --> 33:53.750]  Now, the AppleCat modem was produced by Novation.
[33:53.810 --> 33:55.690]  I think it was one of the most interesting products ever produced.
[33:56.490 --> 34:02.930]  It allowed you at the time to hook up your AppleCat modem to your machine with a little ROM chip.
[34:02.930 --> 34:04.670]  It could understand touch tone codes.
[34:05.790 --> 34:11.330]  It produced... there was software commonly available that would produce very many interesting tones.
[34:11.330 --> 34:12.830]  I believe it would produce telephone codes.
[34:13.050 --> 34:14.030]  You have your one through nine.
[34:14.250 --> 34:15.750]  You have your pound, your zero, your star.
[34:15.990 --> 34:16.230]  Mm-hmm.
[34:16.350 --> 34:17.970]  I believe it also produced tones A through E.
[34:18.250 --> 34:18.750]  Mm-hmm.
[34:20.270 --> 34:22.250]  You want to start routing things?
[34:22.830 --> 34:23.390]  They're there.
[34:23.550 --> 34:24.310]  There's other codes, too.
[34:24.490 --> 34:28.530]  Now, you could also produce different tones with a built-in programmable D to A converter.
[34:28.530 --> 34:30.330]  You could make almost any tone you wanted.
[34:30.510 --> 34:31.950]  You could produce 2600 hertz tones.
[34:32.890 --> 34:33.250]  Pardon?
[34:35.770 --> 34:36.130]  MF.
[34:36.130 --> 34:36.270]  MF.
[34:36.630 --> 34:36.990]  DTMF.
[34:37.150 --> 34:37.830]  Yes, it did those.
[34:38.030 --> 34:39.270]  You could produce all kinds of tones.
[34:40.850 --> 34:44.130]  You could also produce quarter tones, nickel tones, dime tones.
[34:44.130 --> 34:49.510]  And I saw very recently in 2600 magazine an article on how to turn your home phone into a pay phone.
[34:49.730 --> 34:49.990]  Mm-hmm.
[34:49.990 --> 34:55.290]  If you want to confuse your friends at your local telephone company, turn your home phone into a pay phone and then give a feed at quarter tones.
[34:55.690 --> 34:55.990]  Mm-hmm.
[34:56.990 --> 34:59.050]  It also could produce, as I said, a 2600 tone.
[35:00.030 --> 35:03.310]  I took the liberty of bringing in a Cap'n Crunch whistle if anyone here wants to hear what it sounds like.
[35:07.460 --> 35:08.620]  Okay, I'm going to block a hole.
[35:08.700 --> 35:10.800]  I'm going to presume it's the right one, but I'll do both just to make sure I hit.
[35:11.660 --> 35:15.100]  And it's got the doggie on one side and a little Cap'n Crunch on the other.
[35:26.110 --> 35:29.010]  And you're now under arrest for possessing a mischievous device.
[35:30.070 --> 35:30.550]  Okay.
[35:30.870 --> 35:32.650]  Anyway, I'll conclude rapidly.
[35:32.890 --> 35:36.430]  I saw the Apple II as being a very interesting machine to learn from.
[35:36.690 --> 35:44.870]  And it had to provide a wonderful basis to have a respect and understanding for fundamental security issues.
[35:45.030 --> 35:52.090]  But it was also just a great machine for playing with the available and contemporary technologies at the time and see what you could really do with logic chips and a simple processor.
[35:52.590 --> 35:53.090]  Thank you.
[35:56.570 --> 35:57.050]  All right.
[35:57.050 --> 36:02.190]  Yeah, just real quick, I'd like to say that virtually everything he said about the Apple II also applied to the Commodore.
[36:03.010 --> 36:04.330]  They're essentially cousins.
[36:05.730 --> 36:11.410]  So there wasn't so much, you know, an angry rivalry is more like a family feud between Apples and Commodore users.
[36:11.410 --> 36:11.730]  Yeah.
[36:12.230 --> 36:13.150]  I'll just mention that.
[36:13.230 --> 36:17.430]  All the people I knew who had Apples and Commodore always disparaged each other's choice in computers.
[36:17.670 --> 36:21.370]  But at the end of the day, they sat down, had sodas, talked about computers, and were good friends.
[36:21.370 --> 36:21.910]  Yeah, really.
[36:25.010 --> 36:25.910]  Barb, do you want to take a shot?
[36:28.930 --> 36:29.460]  All right.
[36:30.350 --> 36:30.950]  Snap the picture.
[36:31.140 --> 36:37.180]  Kind of running out of time here, so I'm going to make my COCO speech even shorter than it was.
[36:37.500 --> 36:40.200]  And we're going to go on to Graphics' speech.
[36:40.200 --> 36:42.540]  And then we're going to have a very brief question and answer.
[36:42.700 --> 36:48.850]  And then we're going to, if we have time, we're going to auction off an IBM workstation and a COCO 2.
[36:49.180 --> 36:49.500]  Whoa!
[36:49.500 --> 36:52.600]  So, hopefully we'll have enough time for that.
[36:52.780 --> 36:56.640]  Okay, so, I'm going to be talking very briefly about the TRS-80 COCO.
[36:56.950 --> 36:57.760]  Take your time.
[37:00.620 --> 37:14.060]  If you're wondering why this kid is up here talking about computers that were made ten, five years before he was born, the question, the answer is, I was always interested in computers when I was very small.
[37:14.060 --> 37:19.980]  And the type of computers that I'm talking about here were the computers that were around then.
[37:20.280 --> 37:28.810]  So, I just became very interested in finding out what was around before me and around when I was born.
[37:28.810 --> 37:34.100]  So, in the process of kind of having that history lesson, I became very interested in these computers.
[37:36.240 --> 37:43.890]  Because, um, there's a lot of things that are missing from newer computer systems that they have.
[37:44.060 --> 37:47.000]  So, I'm going to shut up now and start talking about this.
[37:47.700 --> 37:51.780]  Um, I found my COCO at a store for $20.
[37:52.200 --> 37:54.200]  And I had no idea what the hell it was.
[37:54.930 --> 37:57.620]  And I had $20 and I wanted to buy an old computer.
[37:57.890 --> 38:01.280]  And it was a lot cheaper than the Atari 800 they were selling, so I bought it.
[38:01.830 --> 38:05.520]  Um, I didn't really know what I was buying, but I'm glad I bought it.
[38:05.780 --> 38:08.740]  Because I got a much more unique system.
[38:09.520 --> 38:13.200]  I'm going to go down a little to the history of the COCO.
[38:13.930 --> 38:23.350]  Uh, as many of you know, in 1977, Tandy Corporation released the TRS-80, which was their bid in the micro-computer market.
[38:23.560 --> 38:25.280]  And there's the one fan way over there.
[38:26.810 --> 38:30.620]  This was lovingly called Trash 80 for many reasons.
[38:30.930 --> 38:36.310]  And, um, it was the third of the first three consumer-ready home computers.
[38:36.310 --> 38:43.280]  Um, unfortunately, or fortunately, the Apple II defeated it in the market in 1978.
[38:44.140 --> 38:46.480]  Actually, pretty much in late 1977.
[38:47.370 --> 38:57.280]  Um, that same year, Tandy began talks with Motorola to create a very inexpensive home computer.
[38:58.310 --> 39:08.780]  And, um, nothing really came of that at first, but Tandy was invited to make the computers for an agricultural project, which was codenamed Project Green Thumb.
[39:09.120 --> 39:15.890]  It was meant to give data to farmers through terminals.
[39:16.240 --> 39:25.910]  Um, at the end of Project Green Thumb, Motorola was ready to make a processor that could be used in an inexpensive home computer that could be plugged into one's television.
[39:28.110 --> 39:33.120]  So, three years after the TRS-80, the first COCO was released.
[39:33.120 --> 39:35.960]  It was... this is actually COCO 2.
[39:35.980 --> 39:39.240]  It came in this silver box with this Chiclet-like keyboard.
[39:39.560 --> 39:40.780]  It was very awkward looking.
[39:41.280 --> 39:46.540]  And, um, it originally came with 4K RAM and 8K ROM with BASIC.
[39:46.850 --> 39:49.640]  And it was... you know, it was like that big.
[39:50.330 --> 39:53.740]  And, uh, people... I mean, it had medium success.
[39:53.960 --> 40:02.930]  It couldn't... the COCO 1 couldn't do very much, but even with those humble beginnings of that COCO, a lot of amazing things were created.
[40:03.620 --> 40:13.780]  Um, the... the heart of the little COCO was a Motorola chip, the 6809E.
[40:14.100 --> 40:26.680]  And this... it was quite remarkable at the time because when most chips could only do 8-bit processes, it could do several 16-bit processes, which was unheard of for small computers of the time.
[40:28.080 --> 40:32.910]  Um, another thing, it was quite small for microprocessors that time.
[40:33.000 --> 40:35.100]  If I had a screwdriver, I could open it up and show you.
[40:35.240 --> 40:35.870]  I got one.
[40:36.830 --> 40:37.350]  Um...
[40:37.350 --> 40:37.600]  Yeah.
[40:38.120 --> 40:40.980]  And, um, it's a really fascinating CPU.
[40:41.870 --> 40:42.960]  Um, let's see what...
[40:42.960 --> 40:46.720]  It was... it was light years ahead of Motorola's 6502.
[40:47.700 --> 40:48.060]  Yeah.
[40:48.390 --> 40:49.310]  Yeah, he stabbed me there.
[40:49.850 --> 40:50.560]  Um, got...
[40:50.560 --> 40:52.240]  That got in the...
[40:52.240 --> 40:53.060]  First shoe Apple man.
[40:53.790 --> 40:55.040]  That came in the Apple.
[40:55.310 --> 40:58.540]  It... but it never became quite as popular as the Apple II.
[41:02.160 --> 41:11.140]  Um, a few years later, the Coco 2 was released, which is this, which was slightly smaller, came with a better keyboard, but it was basically the same.
[41:11.660 --> 41:15.460]  The real revolution didn't come until 1986.
[41:15.880 --> 41:17.160]  Here, I'm gonna open this up later.
[41:17.840 --> 41:21.040]  Um, that's when the Coco 3 was released.
[41:21.280 --> 41:26.680]  That was a really remarkable machine because it had a processor...
[41:26.680 --> 41:32.240]  Well, another chip that took strain off the processor by rendering the graphics.
[41:33.180 --> 41:37.840]  So, basically, you had a processor free to do many things, and it didn't have...
[41:37.840 --> 41:39.420]  It wasn't held down by the graphics.
[41:40.820 --> 41:49.340]  I think the thing that makes the Coco 3 very, very remarkable is the fact that it was one of the first multitasking home computers.
[41:49.340 --> 41:56.200]  It had... it came... or you could buy, I should say, an operating system called OS 9.
[41:57.160 --> 42:08.820]  Um, it came with a... a GUI that was kind of like Windows, I suppose, more like Amiga DOS, but it... and it was... you could run multiple Windows at a time.
[42:09.980 --> 42:25.580]  And, um, this was... I'd like you to note that early incarnations of OS 9 came out at least two or three years before Windows and Mac OS, because they were being used in small quantities on Coco 1 and 2s.
[42:26.180 --> 42:32.160]  So, basically, this kind of technology... they weren't the first to use this kind of technology.
[42:32.500 --> 42:35.820]  I think, uh, Coco must have stole it from Xerox as well.
[42:37.260 --> 42:44.440]  So, um, the Coco 3 could... instead of being plugged into a TV, it can be plugged into an RGB monitor.
[42:46.520 --> 42:51.120]  Um, although it could still be plugged into a TV, so it was slightly more popular.
[42:51.980 --> 42:57.680]  Um, it came with 512K, but it could be... oh no, excuse me, it came with 128K.
[42:57.820 --> 42:59.120]  It could be upgraded to 512K.
[42:59.300 --> 43:02.820]  And some companies even offered upgrades up to 2 megabytes.
[43:06.460 --> 43:07.480]  Um... let's see.
[43:07.480 --> 43:12.800]  Um, it also offered graphics resolution of 640 by 255.
[43:13.580 --> 43:18.540]  Um, and it was actually... could do that, you know, that bouncing ball demo?
[43:18.900 --> 43:19.480]  Oh yes.
[43:20.200 --> 43:21.660]  Superior to that of the Amiga.
[43:21.940 --> 43:23.840]  It could do it at much higher resolutions.
[43:24.380 --> 43:33.800]  In fact, it outperforms the Amiga in a lot of things, even though the Amiga is considered the first multimedia platform.
[43:34.520 --> 43:35.400]  I don't agree.
[43:35.600 --> 43:36.700]  I think the Coco 3 was.
[43:37.200 --> 43:41.680]  Um, another fascinating thing about it, it was a great BBS machine.
[43:41.920 --> 43:47.860]  You could run... with a Coco 3 on an OS 9... with OS 9, you could run a BBS.
[43:48.040 --> 43:49.600]  With two lines, you could have three callers.
[43:49.920 --> 43:52.200]  Two through the phone lines, one... one local.
[43:52.840 --> 43:57.420]  And a, uh, the Sysop could still run tasks at the same time.
[43:58.020 --> 44:01.700]  Even if they... the people on the BBS were accessing files and things like that.
[44:01.700 --> 44:03.580]  So you could run a lot on that little machine.
[44:07.200 --> 44:07.800]  Um...
[44:07.800 --> 44:08.220]  Yeah.
[44:09.580 --> 44:10.180]  So...
[44:10.700 --> 44:11.300]  I...
[44:11.300 --> 44:13.720]  Personally, I have a 486 at home.
[44:14.060 --> 44:14.740]  And I...
[44:14.740 --> 44:23.020]  I find that my Motorola, which is something at 1.987 megahertz or something like that, is smoother and faster.
[44:23.960 --> 44:27.540]  Taking the same workload proportionally.
[44:27.540 --> 44:29.260]  Because my...
[44:29.260 --> 44:30.320]  When you...
[44:31.320 --> 44:32.540]  Type on this...
[44:33.240 --> 44:34.720]  You can type...
[44:34.720 --> 44:35.780]  Get no delay.
[44:36.220 --> 44:41.200]  But when you type on a 486 or a 386 or something like that, there's... there's something sticky about it.
[44:41.460 --> 44:42.680]  And that's why I...
[44:42.680 --> 44:43.780]  I really hate those chips.
[44:44.620 --> 44:45.380]  And, um...
[44:46.120 --> 44:47.240]  I think...
[44:47.240 --> 44:49.980]  Unfortunately, the Motorola chip was more expensive.
[44:50.320 --> 44:52.320]  The Coco did not get very popular.
[44:52.320 --> 44:54.520]  It's kind of a forgotten revolution.
[44:55.180 --> 44:55.580]  That...
[44:55.580 --> 44:56.020]  I think...
[44:56.020 --> 44:56.640]  If...
[44:56.640 --> 44:58.780]  The Coco had been used...
[44:58.780 --> 44:59.900]  It had become more popular.
[45:00.260 --> 45:02.260]  I think we'd have a much different computing world.
[45:02.380 --> 45:04.220]  I think there'd be more understanding of technology.
[45:05.500 --> 45:05.900]  Because...
[45:05.900 --> 45:06.880]  I mean, think of it.
[45:06.960 --> 45:08.480]  A home computer you can have...
[45:08.480 --> 45:09.480]  And hook up to your TV.
[45:09.760 --> 45:11.500]  It has a Unix-based operating system.
[45:13.080 --> 45:14.120]  And, um...
[45:14.120 --> 45:17.120]  Imagine what that would be like today if everything was running like that.
[45:17.240 --> 45:17.660]  I think...
[45:18.320 --> 45:21.000]  The environment of technology would be slightly different.
[45:21.280 --> 45:23.240]  More open and things like that.
[45:24.920 --> 45:25.440]  Um...
[45:25.440 --> 45:25.700]  Yes.
[45:26.380 --> 45:28.420]  So, I'm gonna cut that very short.
[45:28.680 --> 45:30.000]  And go on to graphics.
[45:39.050 --> 45:39.910]  Okay, uh...
[45:39.910 --> 45:43.150]  Since we are short on time, I'm also just gonna pretty much summarize mine.
[45:44.130 --> 45:44.390]  Um...
[45:44.390 --> 45:46.030]  Acquiring the machines, uh...
[45:46.030 --> 45:49.810]  Most time, as we've already said, You can find them fairly cheap.
[45:50.390 --> 45:50.690]  Uh...
[45:50.690 --> 45:52.850]  Most of my machines, I usually acquire for free.
[45:53.510 --> 45:53.890]  Uh...
[45:53.890 --> 45:57.130]  My Apple II and my Apple IIGSs, I got them from my school.
[45:57.230 --> 45:57.990]  They were gonna throw them away.
[45:58.370 --> 46:00.290]  So, just ask around.
[46:00.970 --> 46:01.090]  Uh...
[46:01.090 --> 46:04.330]  Usually family members, or friends, or school, or even workplace.
[46:04.830 --> 46:08.190]  They tend to have machines that they have in a closet that they're just gonna throw away.
[46:09.350 --> 46:09.750]  Um...
[46:09.750 --> 46:13.030]  You can also just check at local flea markets, or ham fests.
[46:13.950 --> 46:17.570]  And, if you go to the ham fest, sometimes you find the machines that have already been modified.
[46:19.870 --> 46:20.230]  Uh...
[46:21.050 --> 46:24.570]  You can check goodwill, but usually they tend to be a little bit more pricey.
[46:25.070 --> 46:27.550]  In restoring the machines, that's fairly simple.
[46:27.690 --> 46:31.730]  Because, since you're getting it for free, you probably don't have to restore it, just get another one.
[46:32.830 --> 46:33.190]  But...
[46:33.190 --> 46:34.910]  I mean, that's the easiest way to go about.
[46:35.050 --> 46:39.010]  But, I mean, if you like messing with the hardware, you can probably find one...
[46:39.470 --> 46:43.470]  One board that has something wrong with another, and you might be able to swap something up.
[46:46.230 --> 46:46.630]  Um...
[46:46.630 --> 46:50.190]  The versatility of the machines, you can still do a lot of stuff today with them.
[46:50.790 --> 46:51.810]  Uh... bulletin board systems.
[46:51.810 --> 46:53.230]  You can do dial-up.
[46:53.530 --> 46:53.930]  And...
[46:53.930 --> 46:54.590]  There's even...
[46:54.590 --> 46:57.810]  There's even a project with the Commodore 64, where...
[46:58.630 --> 47:06.130]  When it collaborated with a Linux box, then you could have it actually telnet.
[47:06.390 --> 47:10.290]  A user could telnet into the Commodore 64 running the BBS software.
[47:12.050 --> 47:12.430]  Um...
[47:12.430 --> 47:16.810]  You can still use the Commodore 64, or the Amiga, or whatever, to get on the internet.
[47:17.050 --> 47:31.090]  If there's not a TCP IP already for it, you can just basically find an ISP, if you're lucky, in your area, that allows shell, dial-up, and then you can just use the Unix, or the Linux, or the FreeBSD, or whatever they're using.
[47:31.230 --> 47:32.710]  You can use that shell from there.
[47:35.390 --> 47:35.770]  Um...
[47:36.270 --> 47:36.670]  And...
[47:37.430 --> 47:37.830]  Sometimes...
[47:37.830 --> 47:41.950]  You can find things to do with the machines that you didn't really think...
[47:41.950 --> 47:43.630]  Didn't come right off the top of your head.
[47:44.170 --> 47:44.570]  Uh...
[47:44.570 --> 47:50.090]  At the last Game of Fest, I picked up a whole bunch of 8088s with, you know, 24-bar modems.
[47:50.950 --> 47:51.350]  And...
[47:51.350 --> 47:53.110]  We use them around the house for various things.
[47:54.310 --> 47:54.590]  Uh...
[47:54.590 --> 47:55.190]  Dumb terminals.
[47:55.630 --> 47:57.550]  My mom uses hers to keep recipes on.
[47:58.710 --> 47:59.510]  I mean...
[48:00.230 --> 48:03.890]  Basically, when you get bored enough, you find interesting things you can do with older machines.
[48:09.820 --> 48:10.260]  Um...
[48:10.260 --> 48:10.700]  Yeah.
[48:10.980 --> 48:14.420]  So basically, I mean, while you think most machines...
[48:14.420 --> 48:20.860]  You figure, oh, I have this, you know, 686, you know, 600 megahertz, 256 megs of RAM.
[48:21.320 --> 48:24.680]  You know, what do I want to do with an old Commodore 64, or Amigo, or Coco?
[48:25.700 --> 48:26.140]  Um...
[48:26.140 --> 48:28.200]  There's a lot of enjoyment in the older machines.
[48:28.440 --> 48:29.900]  I mean, there's just something about them.
[48:30.740 --> 48:31.180]  Because...
[48:31.180 --> 48:35.900]  We have so much technology behind us today, that certain things just aren't as impressive.
[48:35.900 --> 48:36.700]  You have to...
[48:36.700 --> 48:37.920]  I mean, when you think about...
[48:37.920 --> 48:42.860]  When they started out, computers, they were for the companies, the big guys.
[48:43.720 --> 48:44.200]  And...
[48:44.200 --> 48:51.500]  To be able to have a computer in your home that could do almost everything that the big machines could do, that was pretty impressive.
[48:53.480 --> 48:53.860]  And...
[48:55.180 --> 49:00.840]  If you are a Linux or a Unix fan, I'm not sure about the other machines, but I know for the Commodore 64, there's something called Linux.
[49:01.860 --> 49:02.240]  Um...
[49:02.240 --> 49:06.180]  It's basically a Unix variant for the Commodore 64.
[49:06.680 --> 49:08.000]  So you can have up to two terminals.
[49:08.280 --> 49:09.600]  And basically, it's split-screen.
[49:10.020 --> 49:10.940]  One on top, one on bottom.
[49:13.020 --> 49:13.400]  Um...
[49:14.360 --> 49:14.740]  Yeah.
[49:15.440 --> 49:17.740]  I mean, with that, we have other stuff to do, so...
[49:18.980 --> 49:19.000]  Okay.
[49:19.300 --> 49:21.900]  I guess we're gonna start the Q&A now.
[49:30.930 --> 49:31.330]  Alright.
[49:31.730 --> 49:34.650]  So, if anyone has any questions, they can line up or...
[49:34.650 --> 49:35.330]  Oh, you over there?
[49:35.890 --> 49:36.290]  Uh...
[49:36.290 --> 49:38.170]  How many of you use the Maxwell computer?
[49:38.510 --> 49:38.650]  Uh...
[49:38.650 --> 49:39.930]  How would that compare to the computer?
[49:40.590 --> 49:41.410]  Repeat that, please.
[49:41.930 --> 49:42.290]  Uh...
[49:42.290 --> 49:43.990]  How many of you use the Maxwell computer?
[49:44.490 --> 49:44.890]  Maxwell.
[49:45.270 --> 49:46.390]  I don't know what that is.
[49:46.490 --> 49:47.450]  I don't believe I have.
[49:48.350 --> 49:48.730]  English.
[49:49.270 --> 49:49.850]  Oh, English.
[49:51.010 --> 49:51.410]  Um...
[49:51.410 --> 49:52.330]  Use an A for an N.
[49:54.070 --> 49:55.050]  I have no idea.
[49:56.370 --> 49:56.770]  Uh...
[49:56.770 --> 49:59.030]  Was it like 6510 based, or... or what?
[50:01.010 --> 50:01.610]  Pardon me, sir?
[50:02.370 --> 50:02.770]  Uh...
[50:03.390 --> 50:03.790]  Really?
[50:07.840 --> 50:09.580]  I don't believe I've ever heard of it.
[50:09.780 --> 50:18.000]  That's one of the sad things about our little community, is that we tend to be kind of, you know, centered on our own little continent, and are terribly unaware of what's going on overseas.
[50:19.120 --> 50:23.580]  Briefly, the Commodore 64 is considered a business class machine in Germany.
[50:24.240 --> 50:27.820]  IBM's were hideously expensive, so were Apple II's, but Commodore's were cheap.
[50:28.040 --> 50:31.740]  So, it was not uncommon to see a Commodore 64 sitting on an executive's desk.
[50:32.480 --> 50:35.100]  And the hackers in Europe decided they wanted to do things.
[50:35.100 --> 50:38.740]  And one of the really cool hacks was, there's a graphic scanner for the Commodore.
[50:40.060 --> 50:41.060]  You know, it works.
[50:41.240 --> 50:42.480]  It will scan graphics.
[50:42.740 --> 50:45.520]  You know, it's one bit black and white, but it does it.
[50:46.620 --> 50:46.980]  Uh...
[50:46.980 --> 50:49.280]  And then, similar for the Apple II, they had the same thing.
[50:49.480 --> 50:52.140]  And they even had OCR for the Apple II using the hand scanner.
[50:56.100 --> 50:56.580]  So...
[50:56.580 --> 50:57.300]  Uh...
[50:57.300 --> 50:57.580]  You there.
[50:58.480 --> 50:58.960]  Uh...
[50:58.960 --> 51:02.520]  None of y'all have much mentioned Atari's, which are the computers that I would...
[51:02.520 --> 51:02.900]  Uh-huh.
[51:04.440 --> 51:05.280]  Great machines!
[51:05.600 --> 51:06.160]  Great machines!
[51:06.620 --> 51:09.420]  I have a little information on Atari's in here, I believe.
[51:23.940 --> 51:24.420]  Um...
[51:25.500 --> 51:26.140]  Uh...
[51:26.140 --> 51:26.460]  In...
[51:26.980 --> 51:27.280]  In...
[51:27.280 --> 51:27.920]  Yeah...
[51:27.920 --> 51:29.860]  I think Atari had multiple...
[51:29.860 --> 51:33.800]  I think in the gaming sense, the Atari was superior in many ways.
[51:34.800 --> 51:35.440]  But...
[51:35.440 --> 51:35.760]  True.
[51:36.200 --> 51:41.180]  But I don't think, in some of the more business applications, it was as good as the C64.
[51:41.180 --> 51:41.600]  Mm-hmm.
[51:42.120 --> 51:45.500]  I think one thing interesting with the Atari is, I remember there's a 400 model, an 800 model.
[51:46.020 --> 51:48.860]  I think later they actually came out with a 12 or 1600 model.
[51:48.980 --> 51:49.840]  It was getting more sophisticated.
[51:50.300 --> 51:50.400]  Mm-hmm.
[51:50.640 --> 51:50.880]  Uh...
[51:50.880 --> 51:52.980]  I think their big problem was marketing and timelines.
[51:53.220 --> 51:53.320]  Yeah, yeah.
[51:53.320 --> 51:54.820]  My impression that...
[51:54.820 --> 51:59.900]  They came out with, I think, nice products, but they were always maybe six months to 15 months later...
[51:59.900 --> 51:59.960]  Right, right.
[52:00.120 --> 52:07.520]  ...than what would have been desirable to get early enough market entry to get enough of a base where the games fed... the business apps fed into it.
[52:07.580 --> 52:07.760]  Right.
[52:08.280 --> 52:08.680]  Uh...
[52:08.680 --> 52:11.120]  One of the problems with the 64 was it was sold in Toys R Us.
[52:11.680 --> 52:13.380]  You know, it was considered a toy computer.
[52:16.780 --> 52:17.180]  Um...
[52:17.180 --> 52:17.580]  You there.
[52:17.740 --> 52:18.080]  Uh...
[52:18.080 --> 52:22.490]  There's been talk on K.A.U.
[52:22.790 --> 52:24.150]  and, uh, the latest...
[52:24.150 --> 52:30.790]  I've heard rumors about that, and I'm not even sure.
[52:30.910 --> 52:33.190]  I think I know just about as much as you, but...
[52:33.650 --> 52:44.290]  I know that there were some rumors of reviving the Amiga, but I think what they're gonna do is put smack Amiga on it and have a PC that runs some sort of Windows-like operating system.
[52:44.350 --> 52:46.110]  I don't think it's gonna be truly an Amiga.
[52:47.110 --> 52:54.890]  One thing I'd like to mention very briefly is they do have emulators now, for example, for IBM PC platforms and for other platforms to simulate almost any of these old machines.
[52:55.070 --> 52:55.350]  Oh, yes.
[52:55.350 --> 53:00.910]  If you want to simulate Apple II or II Plus IIe, you've got module loads, loads into all of what were the ROMs.
[53:01.030 --> 53:01.230]  Mm-hmm.
[53:01.350 --> 53:05.950]  And you can do Apple II Plus work, run your old Apple II applets, uh, just...
[53:05.950 --> 53:10.150]  Uh, not applets, but you run your old apps just fine on a PC-class machine.
[53:10.310 --> 53:10.450]  All right.
[53:10.590 --> 53:11.330]  Same thing with 64.
[53:11.450 --> 53:14.710]  And I think this is actually gonna help lead towards a revival of using retro gear.
[53:15.430 --> 53:17.510]  Um, that gentleman with the hat was waiting for a while.
[53:17.690 --> 53:18.050]  Okay.
[53:18.450 --> 53:22.110]  Um, I have sitting in my basement three Commodore 64s.
[53:22.330 --> 53:25.290]  One which I've been playing with since kindergarten and first grade.
[53:25.510 --> 53:27.010]  And the other two which I'm taking apart.
[53:27.910 --> 53:30.150]  The only problem is I don't know much about the hardware.
[53:30.630 --> 53:31.930]  And I don't know how the chip works.
[53:32.030 --> 53:34.510]  I don't have construction steps registered on that stuff.
[53:34.990 --> 53:39.950]  Um, where can you get information on the Commodore hardware so that I can actually maybe possibly do some hardware at?
[53:40.030 --> 53:40.690]  Uh, okay.
[53:40.690 --> 53:45.450]  The, the starting point for any of this is on Usenet CompSys CBM.
[53:46.170 --> 53:49.230]  Uh, that is the font of all Commodore knowledge.
[53:49.390 --> 53:53.490]  There are people on there that know more about the Commodore than God himself.
[53:53.890 --> 53:55.870]  Because they built the damn things.
[53:56.170 --> 54:00.910]  Uh, Fred Bowen, an engineer, is frequently seen on CompSys CBM.
[54:01.490 --> 54:04.110]  Uh, as well as a few other people from the good old days of Commodore.
[54:04.730 --> 54:08.790]  Uh, from there you can get, you know, you can buy manuals.
[54:08.790 --> 54:13.930]  Uh, there's a place over in Finland that has just tons of stuff available for download.
[54:14.910 --> 54:18.330]  Uh, so if you, if you want to start, CompSys CBM.
[54:18.490 --> 54:19.170]  That's the place to begin.
[54:19.510 --> 54:20.770]  I think we're gonna take...
[54:20.770 --> 54:21.210]  Uh, well, real quick.
[54:21.310 --> 54:24.210]  Uh, actually, I have multiple copies of the books.
[54:24.370 --> 54:28.470]  I have a book of theirs that has schematics and also tells you all the groundings and all the data.
[54:28.590 --> 54:29.430]  You can just come up and get them.
[54:29.730 --> 54:30.230]  And you can have them.
[54:30.510 --> 54:30.790]  Thank you.
[54:30.790 --> 54:32.330]  So, just come to the table and get them.
[54:32.670 --> 54:34.210]  We're gonna take one more question.
[54:34.290 --> 54:34.470]  Bravo!
[54:35.070 --> 54:36.210]  We're gonna take one more question.
[54:36.310 --> 54:36.770]  I think we're gonna...
[54:36.770 --> 54:37.670]  That's the hacker ethic, man.
[54:38.330 --> 54:38.570]  IBM.
[54:39.050 --> 54:40.470]  Uh, auction off the IBM.
[54:41.890 --> 54:42.150]  Okay.
[54:42.790 --> 54:43.790]  Can you give a list of...
[54:56.610 --> 54:57.410]  Oh, um...
[54:57.410 --> 54:59.470]  I think Yahoo search will come up pretty fast.
[54:59.550 --> 54:59.870]  Plenty.
[55:00.210 --> 55:00.430]  Yeah, there's...
[55:00.430 --> 55:02.110]  There's actually a large Coco emulation.
[55:02.110 --> 55:03.290]  Uh, any, any search engine.
[55:03.450 --> 55:05.130]  Yahoo, again, CompSys CBM.
[55:05.990 --> 55:08.030]  Um, they're all downloadable.
[55:08.430 --> 55:11.330]  I think, like, campmu.org.com.
[55:11.390 --> 55:11.470]  Yeah.
[55:11.470 --> 55:12.030]  I think that was one.
[55:12.170 --> 55:14.270]  They have pretty much any emulator you would need for any machine.
[55:14.890 --> 55:15.130]  You...
[55:15.130 --> 55:17.150]  Coco emulators, they come...
[55:17.150 --> 55:18.650]  Usually Coco 2 emulators.
[55:18.910 --> 55:22.610]  I have yet to find a freeware Coco 3 emulator, unfortunately.
[55:23.310 --> 55:26.450]  And, um, the software, you can download and...
[55:27.410 --> 55:28.290]  Plenty of places.
[55:28.590 --> 55:30.270]  Kind of neat demos and software like that.
[55:30.570 --> 55:33.250]  A lot of games designers have put their websites up.
[55:33.750 --> 55:36.010]  And are circulating their games again.
[55:36.290 --> 55:39.050]  Because it's kind of a retro-computing revival going on.
[55:39.250 --> 55:39.290]  Right.
[55:39.550 --> 55:42.810]  So I think we're gonna auction off the IBM workstation.
[55:43.090 --> 55:43.870]  Yeah, just, just, just briefly.
[55:44.070 --> 55:44.450]  I mean, okay.
[55:44.570 --> 55:45.410]  CompSys CBM.
[55:45.590 --> 55:46.210]  CompSys Atari.
[55:46.430 --> 55:47.310]  CompSys Apple II.
[55:47.510 --> 55:48.250]  CompSys whatever.
[55:48.950 --> 55:50.010]  You know, try that first.
[55:50.190 --> 55:51.470]  I mean, it's, it's bound to be out there.
[55:52.170 --> 55:53.810]  You know, the, the Usenet is huge.
[55:53.950 --> 55:55.230]  There's something for everyone out there.
[55:55.390 --> 55:56.410]  Just look for it and you'll find it.
[55:59.430 --> 55:59.790]  Okay.
[55:59.790 --> 55:59.870]  Okay.
[56:00.030 --> 56:00.650]  Go, go right ahead, Matt.
[56:00.950 --> 56:01.290]  All right.
[56:01.330 --> 56:03.410]  We're gonna start at $10.
[56:03.610 --> 56:06.830]  And this is an IBM workstation with a beautiful amber monitor.
[56:07.330 --> 56:11.530]  And two, count them two, five and a quarter drives.
[56:12.250 --> 56:12.970]  But does it work?
[56:13.290 --> 56:14.330]  It works perfectly.
[56:14.490 --> 56:16.610]  It has basic and it has some software bundle.
[56:16.930 --> 56:17.710]  We're gonna bundle with it.
[56:17.810 --> 56:18.770]  Does that, do we have...
[56:18.770 --> 56:19.830]  One dollar.
[56:19.830 --> 56:22.030]  No, we're starting the bidding at $10.
[56:23.210 --> 56:24.350]  We have $10.
[56:26.890 --> 56:27.570]  Any...
[56:27.570 --> 56:28.050]  $12.
[56:28.970 --> 56:29.650]  $12.
[56:30.230 --> 56:31.370]  Does anybody have $15?
[56:31.630 --> 56:31.990]  $15.
[56:33.730 --> 56:34.410]  $14.
[56:35.070 --> 56:35.750]  $15.
[56:36.270 --> 56:37.570]  Do we have $20?
[56:38.270 --> 56:38.950]  $20.
[56:39.690 --> 56:39.970]  $20.
[56:48.850 --> 56:49.530]  $20.
[56:49.530 --> 56:49.570]  Anyone?
[56:49.730 --> 56:50.190]  Any more?
[56:50.370 --> 56:51.450]  Can we get to $25?
[56:52.830 --> 56:53.110]  $25.
[56:54.770 --> 56:55.050]  $30.
[56:56.430 --> 56:56.710]  $27.
[56:57.290 --> 56:57.570]  $27.
[56:58.050 --> 56:58.730]  Do we have $30?
[56:59.030 --> 57:00.510]  I don't think this is how you're supposed to do an option.
[57:01.830 --> 57:02.690]  $30.
[57:03.790 --> 57:04.650]  $30.
[57:05.390 --> 57:05.590]  $30.
[57:05.970 --> 57:06.610]  $30.
[57:06.690 --> 57:07.190]  $28.
[57:07.350 --> 57:07.650]  $28.
[57:08.090 --> 57:09.770]  Okay, going $28 once.
[57:10.250 --> 57:10.610]  $30.
[57:11.110 --> 57:11.230]  $30.
[57:11.230 --> 57:11.710]  $5.
[57:12.250 --> 57:14.550]  Okay, we're gonna make this in increments of $5.
[57:17.470 --> 57:19.190]  There's no...
[57:19.190 --> 57:21.610]  All math is now modulo 5.
[57:22.550 --> 57:23.850]  Going once.
[57:24.270 --> 57:24.700]  $35.
[57:25.150 --> 57:25.890]  $35.
[57:27.210 --> 57:29.290]  Any takers for $40.
[57:29.490 --> 57:29.790]  $40.
[57:30.510 --> 57:32.090]  It's a beautiful thing.
[57:33.070 --> 57:35.410]  Come on, two $5.25 drives.
[57:35.790 --> 57:37.870]  Come on, you'll sell it on eBay in 10 years for $100.
[57:38.430 --> 57:39.250]  Come on.
[57:39.930 --> 57:41.750]  Okay, going once for $35.
[57:42.310 --> 57:43.930]  Twice, it's sold to that guy.
[57:48.320 --> 57:48.960]  Alright.
[57:50.400 --> 57:52.780]  Now we're auctioning off a Coco 2.
[57:53.160 --> 57:54.040]  Come on.
[57:55.120 --> 57:55.440]  $50.
[57:58.260 --> 58:00.840]  What difference does $5 make?
[58:00.900 --> 58:01.320]  Come on.
[58:03.400 --> 58:05.160]  Okay, going once for $45.
[58:05.740 --> 58:06.320]  Okay, going once for $45.
[58:06.320 --> 58:06.400]  Twice.
[58:06.860 --> 58:08.000]  Sold for $45.
[58:09.220 --> 58:09.780]  Alright.
[58:13.580 --> 58:18.000]  I think I have another TRS-80 Model 100 I'm gonna auction off.
[58:18.000 --> 58:19.260]  We're gonna start...
[58:19.260 --> 58:19.360]  We're gonna start...
[58:19.360 --> 58:19.760]  It works.
[58:20.180 --> 58:22.260]  A few of the keys are missing, but it works fine.
[58:22.420 --> 58:22.780]  We're gonna...
[58:24.980 --> 58:26.820]  No, you can still press the keys.
[58:26.940 --> 58:28.760]  Just the things on the thing are missing.
[58:28.760 --> 58:29.340]  The key cap.
[58:29.460 --> 58:30.560]  I swear to God, it works.
[58:32.420 --> 58:32.820]  Yeah.
[58:33.640 --> 58:34.500]  Not mine though.
[58:34.660 --> 58:36.060]  And it works perfectly.
[58:36.200 --> 58:36.500]  We...
[58:36.500 --> 58:37.920]  You just need to buy batteries for it.
[58:38.160 --> 58:40.140]  And the batteries are just AA batteries.
[58:40.480 --> 58:41.720]  Yeah, four AA batteries will run for a month.
[58:41.720 --> 58:41.980]  So...
[58:42.700 --> 58:44.620]  Do we have $10 for...
[58:44.620 --> 58:44.860]  $10.
[58:44.860 --> 58:46.360]  $10 for the TRS-80?
[58:47.100 --> 58:47.840]  $15.
[58:48.740 --> 58:49.580]  $15.
[58:49.820 --> 58:50.540]  $15.
[58:50.960 --> 58:51.380]  $15.
[58:51.380 --> 58:51.520]  $20.
[58:51.600 --> 58:52.020]  $20.
[58:52.500 --> 58:53.200]  $25.
[58:54.280 --> 58:54.620]  $25.
[58:56.160 --> 58:57.000]  $25.
[58:57.040 --> 58:57.880]  Who's going so well?
[58:58.620 --> 58:59.040]  $25.
[59:00.160 --> 59:00.340]  $30.
[59:02.760 --> 59:03.600]  $30.
[59:03.980 --> 59:04.220]  $30.
[59:04.700 --> 59:05.120]  $30.
[59:05.120 --> 59:05.740]  Who said that?
[59:05.880 --> 59:05.920]  You?
[59:06.000 --> 59:06.320]  Over there.
[59:06.500 --> 59:06.720]  Over there.
[59:07.040 --> 59:07.360]  $35?
[59:10.300 --> 59:11.900]  You can network them.
[59:12.260 --> 59:12.480]  Yeah.
[59:13.080 --> 59:14.560]  I swear we did it.
[59:14.660 --> 59:15.440]  Cheshire Catalyst.
[59:15.520 --> 59:16.100]  I saw it.
[59:16.140 --> 59:16.480]  I saw it.
[59:16.580 --> 59:16.880]  It's true.
[59:18.540 --> 59:19.200]  Trust me.
[59:19.400 --> 59:20.120]  It's got RS-23...
[59:20.920 --> 59:22.300]  So, do we have $30?
[59:24.160 --> 59:24.640]  $30.
[59:25.760 --> 59:26.240]  $35.
[59:27.660 --> 59:28.140]  $35.
[59:29.240 --> 59:29.720]  $40.
[59:30.280 --> 59:30.760]  $40.
[59:31.120 --> 59:31.860]  We have $40.
[59:31.860 --> 59:37.220]  Can we get $45 for a wonderful TRS-80 Model 100?
[59:47.610 --> 59:49.710]  And listen to what noise you can make on this.
[59:49.870 --> 59:51.150]  It's not perfect, but it works.
[01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:02.340]  So, do we have $50?
[01:00:03.100 --> 01:00:03.960]  Did we already go to $50?
[01:00:04.260 --> 01:00:05.320]  No, we didn't get...
[01:00:06.040 --> 01:00:06.480]  $50.
[01:00:06.480 --> 01:00:07.480]  It's good.
[01:00:08.200 --> 01:00:08.400]  $50.
[01:00:09.220 --> 01:00:11.380]  Wait, doesn't that thing have Excel built in?
[01:00:11.480 --> 01:00:12.240]  Like, spreadsheet built in?
[01:00:12.940 --> 01:00:13.380]  Yes.
[01:00:17.060 --> 01:00:19.120]  Yeah, it's got a telecom application.
[01:00:19.200 --> 01:00:20.540]  It's got a text editor.
[01:00:20.800 --> 01:00:22.860]  It's got a scheduling book and address book.
[01:00:22.860 --> 01:00:24.780]  And you can take notes with it, as I do.
[01:00:25.160 --> 01:00:26.520]  And it's a wonderful machine.
[01:00:26.520 --> 01:00:28.300]  And it should go for at least $50.
[01:00:29.300 --> 01:00:30.340]  Do we have $50?
[01:00:31.080 --> 01:00:32.860]  Welcome to Social Engineering 101.
[01:00:34.180 --> 01:00:35.000]  Come on, $50.
[01:00:35.760 --> 01:00:36.360]  Come on, it's worth it.
[01:00:36.360 --> 01:00:36.800]  Trust me.
[01:00:37.540 --> 01:00:37.800]  What?
[01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:42.540]  Do we have any questions about it, so we can possibly get it up to $50 here?
[01:00:46.280 --> 01:00:48.520]  No, it sold for about $699.
[01:00:49.180 --> 01:00:50.600]  How long is your battery last?
[01:00:50.740 --> 01:00:51.800]  The battery last...
[01:00:51.800 --> 01:00:58.220]  Actually, this battery has been running for four or five days now or something like that.
[01:00:58.940 --> 01:01:01.220]  No, it's not losing power either.
[01:01:01.400 --> 01:01:02.680]  It'll last a long time.
[01:01:02.680 --> 01:01:03.560]  I know that much.
[01:01:03.560 --> 01:01:04.380]  Okay, okay.
[01:01:04.460 --> 01:01:09.040]  As an incentive, if someone buys this laptop, I will autograph it.
[01:01:09.700 --> 01:01:10.360]  For $50.
[01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:11.540]  Nice job, we'll autograph it.
[01:01:11.960 --> 01:01:13.520]  You just lost all our sales.
[01:01:14.340 --> 01:01:15.420]  Do we have $50?
[01:01:15.880 --> 01:01:17.980]  Because, I mean, people are getting restless out there.
[01:01:18.080 --> 01:01:18.980]  There's something going on.
[01:01:19.080 --> 01:01:19.460]  In the back.
[01:01:19.900 --> 01:01:20.380]  In the back.
[01:01:20.840 --> 01:01:21.680]  Okay, okay.
[01:01:21.820 --> 01:01:24.400]  Not only will I autograph it, but count zero I'll autograph it.
[01:01:24.420 --> 01:01:25.000]  We have $50.
[01:01:25.520 --> 01:01:26.300]  Do we have $55?
[01:01:26.420 --> 01:01:27.660]  Maybe I'm stretching it a little.
[01:01:31.840 --> 01:01:32.280]  Okay.
[01:01:32.280 --> 01:01:34.440]  We have once for $50.
[01:01:34.700 --> 01:01:35.360]  Twice $50.
[01:01:35.560 --> 01:01:36.500]  Yeah, it's sold it.
[01:01:36.860 --> 01:01:37.140]  Okay.
[01:01:44.750 --> 01:01:49.030]  Okay, that concludes this portion of your broadcasting day.
[01:01:49.750 --> 01:01:50.310]  Thank you.
[01:01:50.490 --> 01:01:50.930]  Thank you.
[01:01:52.050 --> 01:01:52.750]  Thank you.
[01:01:54.730 --> 01:01:55.270]  Pardon me?
[01:01:56.250 --> 01:01:56.850]  Sure, sure.
[01:01:57.590 --> 01:02:01.150]  Okay, if y'all could, you know, if you want to leave, please leave out the back door, please.
[01:02:01.410 --> 01:02:03.030]  Okay, we have a Timex Sinclair.
[01:02:03.030 --> 01:02:03.230]  I mean, it's a lot of cashed out.