Hello says newbie

[hydrophilic]

I must say it is nice to find a forum about the C128, the best 8-bit ever!

Let me introduce myself by telling how I got envolved with the Commies.

At a young age (must've been about 11...) I was in a department store marveling at the wonders of the Vic-20 and then recently introduced C=64 (I had also caught a glimpse of these in a tour of a high school).  Anyway, a salesman was demonstrating the Vic-20, showing how you could plug in cartridges and play games on it just like the Atari 2600.

Cool, but so what, I thought.  Next he started talking about typical applications like word processing.  At that age I didn't really understand the concept but it sounded rather dull.  I was about to loose interest when he demonstrated the neat PRINT shortcut.  He typed something like:

?5*7 (and then pressed RETURN)

and of course the immediate response was

35
READY.

I was blown away!  I started thinking how much that would help with school!  Just ask the computer a question and out pops an answer immediately!  If only everything were so simple...

Needless to say I had to have one.  So after a month or two of saving money from cutting grass for neighbors, I returned to the store and bought a Vic-20 (I wanted a C=64 but the summer wasn't that long!)  The Vic came with a nice programming manual and before you knew it, I had some simple BASIC programs running and was even doing 'cool' stuff like making 'music'.  It didn't take long for me to get the OUT OF MEMORY error but by then I had a pretty good idea of the BASIC language except for file I/O since I had no datasette and definately no disk drive.

Before the Commodore 128 came out, I bought a Plus/4 REALLY cheap.  It was still under warranty so I should have returned it to Commodore when I discovered why it was so cheap (I think): it had flakey RAM.  After an hour or so, you would notice characters on the screen randomly 'toggle' and your program would suddenly develop 'errors'.  But the high-res graphics and the ML Monitor were pretty cool.  The ML Monitor fascinated me, with rows and rows of data which meant almost nothing and the assembly langauge which made no sense what so ever!

Then the Commodore 128 came out and this time I talked my parents into buying it for me.  We all know how awesome it is so let me skip to the present day...

My 128 is now dead due to sheer stupidity on my part!  But I have VICE which is almost good enough.  Somebody felt sorry that my Commie died and they gave me a C=64.  What a pain!  It's in my closet right now.  Plus/4 was given away (and later returned and eventually fried in another experiment).  And my Vic-20 also got fried: one of my little sisters pluged a regular AC cord into it... for some reason those 5V chips don't like 120V...

Anyway, I have a lot of assembly experience for 6502 series CPU; 15x1 drive code being some of my favorite; I also learned Z80 assembly langauge and yes BASIC.   I'm glad to help with any software issues and I even have some patches for VICE that may interest some people.  These range from cosmetic (drive sound emulation) to useful (CP/M and DOS disk support).

Enough about me

[Golan Klinger]

Hello and welcome to the best 128 site on the Internet. If you ever get nostalgic of your VIC-20 days, check out Denial which is the center of the VIC-20 universe. There are a couple of decent Plus/4 sites too and 64 sites, I can't count that high.

[Stephane Richard]

welcome aboard hydro,

always good to see a new face.  Hope you like it here, I know I do :-)..

[RobertB]

My 128 is now dead due to sheer stupidity on my part!

Welcome!  From where are you writing?  If you still have your C128, you can send it to Ray Carlsen for repair.  Or if you are near us, you can pick up another C128 from our stockpile.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[nikoniko]

Hydrophilic, welcome home!

stockpile.

A Commodore 128 stockpile? How come no one told me Heaven was in Fresno?

I don't suppose you know of anyone stockpiling 128s on the east coast?

[Blacklord]

My 128 is now dead due to sheer stupidity on my part!

Welcome!  From where are you writing?  If you still have your C128, you can send it to Ray Carlsen for repair.  Or if you are near us, you can pick up another C128 from our stockpile.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug

A stockpile ? !!! Sheesh.........

[hydrophilic]

Thanks for the welcome.  But I do not have stockpile!  In fact, the only real working piece of Commodore equipment I have is a breadbox C64 using my old C128's power supply.

I cannot send my C128 anywhere because I raped the board for parts!  The VIC-20 and Plus/4 got royally fried (in two quite different but equally destructive ways).  Those were both trashed.

I do however, have a stockpile of chips... a small stockpile:  Both CPUs from the C128 (but who knows if they work with my soldering skills!) plus the I/O chips and ROM (should be OK since I didn't put a soldering gun to 'em).  I think I have my 1541 circuit board with all the chips on it but the drive mech is gone.  I think the CPU is dead.  When I tested it, the voltages and clock signals were OK, but no addresses were comming from the CPU...

Since RobertB asked, I'm in the states, but I have my sister in Germany to keep close tabs on the VICE team

[commodor]

I cannot send my C128 anywhere because I raped the board for parts!  The VIC-20 and Plus/4 got royally fried (in two quite different but equally destructive ways).  Those were both trashed.

oooo... sounds like you can't be trusted with a vintage machine - should we be liberating any remaining {working} computers off you

~*commodor*~

[Christian Johansson]

Welcome ! You had really generous neighbors. I cut the grass at home at a few occasions when I was growing up but I didn't get that amount of money. (I should write an introduction message myself here. I will do it when I get the time.)