Oh yes amongst the wall to wall Olympic coverage, here is a little gem of a story! It comes with a video that is well worth a view, particularly if you are a parent with young kids.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19055707
Reading this article and watching the accompanying video took me back a bit (well a lot really) - the Vic 20 and later the C64 were computers introduced during my childhood – the C64 was a pretty good gaming machine too (in its time of course).
In my junior school years though both were predated by the ZX81 – this was the first computer I ever interacted with and I remember using up lunch breaks at Highover Primary School in Hitchin to have a go at programming it. And not a particularly rewarding endeavour if I am honest.
I never owned a C64 but a friend of mine did and he had a great game called Mission Impossible that you couldn’t get for my machine – the legendary BBC Micro Model B. What you could get though was the marvellous, addictive, and challenging ‘Elite’ – the only computer game I have ever completely engaged with. Any of you remember Thargoids?
There were some distinct advances in those early days of computing and because my dad was a systems engineer, it helped the Baldwin family climb the home computing ladder. Loading software was a nightmare with a cassette player, it took ages and often the uploading would fail just to add further insult.
My dad came home from work one night with a 5¼ inch floppy disk drive, it was surplus to requirements and had been robbed of its outer case (so it didn’t look pretty) but for me it was a revelation – the difference that disk drive made was huge. And Elite was now achievable because you could save your progress easily and load it quickly, along with the game for that matter.
Elite remains etched into my memory despite the fact that I achieved Elite status and completed all the missions some 27 years ago now. Interestingly computer gaming lost its interest to me after the joys of Elite, nothing else was rewarding enough anymore.
To be fair, I probably just grew out of computer gaming and so I find it a little amusing that some of my close friends engage with Call of Duty, Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto on their modern gaming machines with the same kind of addiction I had for Elite. My excuse was that I was a young teenager, their excuses – God knows; better than talking to the wife perhaps!
In the office today, it is interesting how much of this early computing technology, including the Commodore 64, is unknown to my younger colleagues. Even when I mentioned floppy disks many thought I meant the 3½ inch variants that came much later (and of course were hard cased and harder to describe as floppy).
Memory sticks these days hold a volume of data that was simply inconceivable on the 1980s and the processing power of my i-phone compared to the BBC Micro or the Commodore 64 is like comparing the Bugatti Veyron with a roller-skate.
Happy 30th C64 – your birthday reminds me again of the inexorable passage of time but nonetheless I am grateful to have known you. I hope that obsolescence and obscurity suit you well.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19055707
Reading this article and watching the accompanying video took me back a bit (well a lot really) - the Vic 20 and later the C64 were computers introduced during my childhood – the C64 was a pretty good gaming machine too (in its time of course).
In my junior school years though both were predated by the ZX81 – this was the first computer I ever interacted with and I remember using up lunch breaks at Highover Primary School in Hitchin to have a go at programming it. And not a particularly rewarding endeavour if I am honest.
I never owned a C64 but a friend of mine did and he had a great game called Mission Impossible that you couldn’t get for my machine – the legendary BBC Micro Model B. What you could get though was the marvellous, addictive, and challenging ‘Elite’ – the only computer game I have ever completely engaged with. Any of you remember Thargoids?
There were some distinct advances in those early days of computing and because my dad was a systems engineer, it helped the Baldwin family climb the home computing ladder. Loading software was a nightmare with a cassette player, it took ages and often the uploading would fail just to add further insult.
My dad came home from work one night with a 5¼ inch floppy disk drive, it was surplus to requirements and had been robbed of its outer case (so it didn’t look pretty) but for me it was a revelation – the difference that disk drive made was huge. And Elite was now achievable because you could save your progress easily and load it quickly, along with the game for that matter.
Elite remains etched into my memory despite the fact that I achieved Elite status and completed all the missions some 27 years ago now. Interestingly computer gaming lost its interest to me after the joys of Elite, nothing else was rewarding enough anymore.
To be fair, I probably just grew out of computer gaming and so I find it a little amusing that some of my close friends engage with Call of Duty, Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto on their modern gaming machines with the same kind of addiction I had for Elite. My excuse was that I was a young teenager, their excuses – God knows; better than talking to the wife perhaps!
In the office today, it is interesting how much of this early computing technology, including the Commodore 64, is unknown to my younger colleagues. Even when I mentioned floppy disks many thought I meant the 3½ inch variants that came much later (and of course were hard cased and harder to describe as floppy).
Memory sticks these days hold a volume of data that was simply inconceivable on the 1980s and the processing power of my i-phone compared to the BBC Micro or the Commodore 64 is like comparing the Bugatti Veyron with a roller-skate.
Happy 30th C64 – your birthday reminds me again of the inexorable passage of time but nonetheless I am grateful to have known you. I hope that obsolescence and obscurity suit you well.
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