#253467 - 05/04/2005 10:10
Commie 64
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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I saw an older post about Commodore 64's...A lot of us grew up on the Commodore, and many of us owe our humble beginnings to the VIC-20 and Commodore 64...But I may be bias...after all, my name is David Whittaker. And as a side note, Jack Triemle (sp?) the Commodore founder is a Holocaust survivor...I have a small collection of Commodore quipment, so if anyone has any they want ot get rid of, let me know. No, I don't buy them. they are too cheap on ebay, if you want to sell them. And No, do do not collect any VIC-20's...I gave about 15 of them away...
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#253468 - 05/04/2005 12:21
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Wait. That name rings a bell. I could swear I'd seen it plastered all over a lot of the old C-64 games. A quick google reveals a David Whittaker did a lot of music composing for many of those old games. Are you saying you're that David Whittaker, or are you saying you're biased because you share his name? Everything I ever needed to know about computers, I learned on the C-64. 
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#253469 - 05/04/2005 13:19
Re: Commie 64
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Quote:
Everything I ever needed to know about computers, I learned on the C-64.
Maybe that's why you're out of work?
_________________________
Bitt Faulk
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#253470 - 05/04/2005 13:34
Re: Commie 64
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Heh. If only.
Naw, they shut down our whole department because of reasons completely unrelated to the talent and skill of its employees. It's really not a reflection on us at all.
Honestly, I've got no one to directly blame for the thing, other than the pointyheads at corporate who make these kinds of decisions. It'd make it easier if I could yell at someone, I suppose.
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#253471 - 05/04/2005 13:35
Re: Commie 64
[Re: wfaulk]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 06/02/2002
Posts: 1904
Loc: Leeds, UK
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Quote:
Maybe that's why you're out of work?
Ouch! Harsh!
Cheers
Cris.
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#253472 - 05/04/2005 17:16
Re: Commie 64
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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School's Commodore Pet, to my own VIC-20, C64, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000, Pentium/Windows (in summer of 95 when it finally got close to an Amiga), a PPC Mac for about a month mixed in here, a load of Intel and Athlon systems since then and now my primary machine is an Apple PowerBook (I also keep two P4 Shuttle systems at home as desktops). My bet is against this being *THE* David Whittaker mainly because of the way the first message was written referencing the name. But I'd be pleasantly surprised if it were. http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/musician_info.php?id_ele=MTE5Damn, I played a lot of those titles. Bruno
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#253473 - 06/04/2005 01:02
Re: Commie 64
[Re: hybrid8]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Quote:
My bet is against this being *THE* David Whittaker mainly because of the way the first message was written referencing the name. But I'd be pleasantly surprised if it were.
Well I am THE David Whittaker...but not the David Whittaker of Computer Game Music fame...Sorry to dissapoint everyone. I have lead a very dull, uneventfull life. "Yawn!" Pretty boring person...I was not trying to steal anyones glory.
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#253474 - 06/04/2005 04:57
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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enthusiast
Registered: 08/09/1999
Posts: 364
Loc: Brooklyn
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hurray! commodore 64 was the best computer ever made. period.
I love the cart game : To Save New York. (which no-one remembers!)
Poke 1024, 24
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#253475 - 06/04/2005 05:57
Re: Commie 64
[Re: JeepBastard]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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<flame war on> Commodore 64....well it was okay What you really needed was a Dragon 32 (Tandy in the states) with those classic Microsoft games. <flame war off>
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#253477 - 06/04/2005 11:14
Re: Commie 64
[Re: frog51]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Quote:
<flame war on>
Commodore 64....well it was okay
>
Ok?!?!? Ok?!?!? The SID chip alone put it light years ahead of RadioCrap's Tandy (Wasn't it's nick name 'trash-80'?
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#253478 - 06/04/2005 11:24
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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In the collection I had before Intel took over the world (Jupiter Ace, Oric Atmos, ZX80, 81, Spectrum, Spectrum+, Vic20, C64, D32 (twice), Amiga and Osborne) the best two for writing games were the Dragon and the BBC. For playing games, the Amiga and the Spectrum probably edged ahead through number of titles, and the Ace and the Osborne were most challenging for real programming fun. IMHO  (wasn't really wanting a flamewar) p.s.I'm sure my first Dragon was the world's most travelled - over 20,000 miles in its 2nd year...I was travelling to the Falklands and back a fair bit...so when it finally died, Dragon replaced it for free even though it was out of warranty and the shipping to the south Atlantic must have been heinous 
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#253479 - 06/04/2005 11:56
Re: Commie 64
[Re: frog51]
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enthusiast
Registered: 08/09/1999
Posts: 364
Loc: Brooklyn
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The most challenging was a kid trying to program a Sinclair Z with 1k memory (16k was for spoilt rich kids and cheating) and do anything that was remotely fun.
i loved it!
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#253480 - 06/04/2005 13:32
Re: Commie 64
[Re: JeepBastard]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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I learned programing on a TRS-80. It was not really that much fun. I liked Legos much more. I guess that explains why I'm a mechanical engineer instead of a software engineer.
-Zeke
_________________________
WWFSMD?
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#253482 - 07/04/2005 01:46
Re: Commie 64
[Re: ninti]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
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I still have my commodore 128 complete with boxes and boxes of games. I still have the light pen (The only thing I used 128 mode for) and the koala pad. Have the EPYX sport controller, FastLoad cartrige, and dual 1571 high speed floppy drives. The only problem is that some time during my high school years, while all that stuff was safely stored in the attic, lightning struck out house and the resulting EMI was enough to completely wipe all my floppies. So the only thing I can do with it is play Choplifter and Jumpman Jr (they were the only 2 game cartridges) and play around with peek and poke.
Apparently I was a rich kid since I had the Timex Sinclair with 16k of memory, although I never got far past making those silly birds with special characters that appeared to fly.
After the Sinclair, I graduated to the VIC-20 with a -=GASP=- tape recorder to load and save games and stuff.
Jumped straight to the C-128 and spen quite a few years there.
Next was my 486-SX 25 with the kick-ass 80 Meg HDD.
Man, those were the days when computers were fun. Now all I get to see are broken ones, which isn't NEARLY as fun.
Come on, all.
load "*",8,1
run
poke 53281,1
poke 53280,1
Gawd, when I was typing the load command my fingers actually went to the shift-2 before I caught myself.
Memories.
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#253483 - 07/04/2005 01:48
Re: Commie 64
[Re: lectric]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
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Oh, and Paradroid and Iirridium were the coolest games ever.
Oh, and Racing Destruction Set , ooh, and Mail Order Monsters, too.
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#253484 - 07/04/2005 02:01
Re: Commie 64
[Re: lectric]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Quote:
Oh, and Paradroid and Iirridium were the coolest games ever.
Oh, and Racing Destruction Set , ooh, and Mail Order Monsters, too.
Not to mention Impossible Mission, and, still, my personal all time favorites....ZORK !,!! and !!!, and HHGG!!! Long live text adventures!!!
Anyone mess with the Sidplayer music system for the Commie? Awesome...Take a peek at the code sometime...I actually emailed the author of that program (Chamberlin) about a year ago, and commented on the tightness of the code...I guess for all you kids out there, you may not be impressed, but when you are working with very limited memory.....
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#253485 - 07/04/2005 02:05
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
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Impossible Mission WAS very cool, though I guess I was too young to ever actually figure out ANY of the freakin puzzles. Grrr... I need to did that out and play it again.
I really never could get into zork. The responses were WAY too limited. Hitchhikers was cool as long as you had a copy of the book in your hand while you were playing it!
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#253486 - 07/04/2005 06:56
Re: Commie 64
[Re: lectric]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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But the fun of typing in 2 pages of hex codes from a magazine and watching Qix!! That was something. And the original Donkey Kong and Gridrunner were amazing on the D32. Once I built an interface card which allowed me to control relays and made my room much more secure (for a 12 year old - keypad entry was way cool!)
Ooh - and Space War
And Manic Miner
Yay!
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#253487 - 07/04/2005 07:04
Re: Commie 64
[Re: lectric]
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old hand
Registered: 28/12/2001
Posts: 868
Loc: Los Angeles
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Quote:
Gawd, when I was typing the load command my fingers actually went to the shift-2 before I caught myself.
LOL. Oh my god, you are so right. I tried it to and my fingers did the same thing. How scary is that?
Quote:
Impossible Mission
As far as I could tell, that game really was impossible. I should go back and play it again. One of the nice things about the emulators is that you can save the computer state, which basically makes saving and loading your game possible. I have loaded up a couple of games I never won and beat them on the emulator (specifically Zorro and Karateka.) Spelunker, on the other hand, is still completely impossible.
A lot of those games really are fun to this day; the Ultimas, Jumpman, MOM, Defender of the Crown...I had a blast playing them all in the last couple of years. Some on the other hand....Mule and Seven Cities of Gold for instance, didn't seem to hold up, which I find very sad because I loved the hell out of them.
Actually, since all the old computer geeks are readings this thread, I was wondering if anyone remembers the name of this game. It was a game where you hooked up electrical circuits together to solve puzzles. You could see the electrical signals travel around and power the devices to solve the puzzles you wanted to solve. I played it on the Apple II, dunno if it was on other computers or not. It was as much as educational as it was a game, but it was a lot of fun and was a major part in setting me on the path to geekhood that I proudly tread today, and I would love to take a look at it again if I could remember the name of it.
_________________________
Ninti - MK IIa 60GB Smoke, 30GB, 10GB
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#253488 - 07/04/2005 13:27
Re: Commie 64
[Re: ninti]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Quote:
and I would love to take a look at it again if I could remember the name of it.
I check out the old archive boards every now and then, if I see anything that looks close, I'll let you know. I used to play a mindless thing where you flew a simple joystick controlled stealth fighter typt thing to a tower and tried to blow it up...surprising how much 'non thinking' stress relief it provide...as well as saving my job!
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#253489 - 07/04/2005 14:32
Re: Commie 64
[Re: ninti]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote:
Quote:
Impossible Mission
As far as I could tell, that game really was impossible.
Not at all. It was very easy once you understood it. My favorite part was solving the card puzzles. Once you got the idea in your head of how they worked and what the basic "cut" shapes were, it was pretty straightforward.
The trick was that it didn't do you any good to start solving the puzzles until you'd collected all the puzzle pieces. So essentially, it was a question of cleaning out every room first, THEN solving the puzzles.
That was one of my favorite games of all time. I bought it retail, but still wanted to crack the disk copy protection so I could make backups of it. Cracking that game was the first time I'd seen self-modifying code in 6502 assembler. There was a bunch of perfectly good-looking code that suddenly, mid-routine, turned to random garbage. When I looked at what the code was doing and saw that it was XORing itself into normal code, I was blown away.
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#253490 - 07/04/2005 15:29
Re: Commie 64
[Re: tfabris]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Which platform did you play IM on ?
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#253491 - 07/04/2005 17:38
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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#253492 - 08/04/2005 00:17
Re: Commie 64
[Re: tfabris]
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enthusiast
Registered: 08/09/1999
Posts: 364
Loc: Brooklyn
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what about omega race and the cart where you ran thru a maze as a mouse for cheese, or the game where you are the clown with the baloon (also on cart)
Boy, those tapes took a long time to load.
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#253493 - 08/04/2005 02:44
Re: Commie 64
[Re: JeepBastard]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
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Yes indeed. I'd start loading and go to dinner. Come back and play the game. Still hella faster than typing it in every time though! Lessee. I also think I have my 300 Baud modem lying around.
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#253494 - 08/04/2005 07:07
Re: Commie 64
[Re: JeepBastard]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Quote:
The most challenging was a kid trying to program a Sinclair Z with 1k memory (16k was for spoilt rich kids and cheating) and do anything that was remotely fun.
1K is still double what I had on my first (self-assembled, of course) machine. Anything that came ready-assembled and actually had games available that you didn't have to write yourself was clearly a game console and toy (but even those came later)
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#253495 - 08/04/2005 07:34
Re: Commie 64
[Re: julf]
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old hand
Registered: 20/07/1999
Posts: 1102
Loc: UK
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Sinclair MK-14 by any chance? My first personal choice of the very early days, although not the first computer I ever used. That would be some sort of mainframe where you used punched cards over a phone link, when I was about 8. Can't remember much about it now.
pca
_________________________
Experience is what you get just after it would have helped...
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#253496 - 08/04/2005 09:31
Re: Commie 64
[Re: pca]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Quote:
Sinclair MK-14 by any chance? My first personal choice of the very early days, although not the first computer I ever used.
My first one was a Motorola 6800 evaluation card with a lot of stuff wired on. My first video display was two sets of resistors soldered as a R/2R ladders on the 2 8-bit parallel ports, driving the X and Y axis of an oscilloscope...
Quote:
That would be some sort of mainframe where you used punched cards over a phone link, when I was about 8.
Ahh, yes, my first programming language was Fortran (on punched cards), hence the brain damage...
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#253497 - 08/04/2005 17:21
Re: Commie 64
[Re: julf]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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Ahh - programming the 6800 set me up for the 68000 at University - my lecturer never believed I could write 68000 machine code in my head...always thought I was cheating, until I calculated a JSR offset incorrectly by one byte twice in a row...
_________________________
Rory
MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#253499 - 04/05/2005 01:56
Re: Commie 64
[Re: Ladmo]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Well, If anyone needs a good 'rest home' for their Commie stuff to spend their twilight years...PM me!
_________________________
The only easy day...was yesterday!
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#253500 - 04/05/2005 12:23
Re: Commie 64
[Re: lectric]
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enthusiast
Registered: 06/08/2002
Posts: 333
Loc: The Pilbara, Western Australia
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My fave game was Aztec Challenge, I can still hear that music 
_________________________
Peter.
"I spent 90% of my money on women, drink and fast cars. The rest I wasted." - George Best
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#253501 - 07/05/2005 11:05
Re: Commie 64
[Re: pedrohoon]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Or how about the sid player? Awesome!!!
_________________________
The only easy day...was yesterday!
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#253502 - 26/05/2005 01:57
Re: Commie 64
[Re: tfabris]
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addict
Registered: 04/09/2004
Posts: 525
Loc: Oklahoma
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Quote:
When I looked at what the code was doing and saw that it was XORing itself into normal code, I was blown away.
If you ever get a chance, disassemble the code for the SidPlayer by Craig Chamberlain...it will blow you away...twice! The tightness of the code is awesome! I am still impressed...And I may be one of the seniors as far as age goes on this board...I am...well...over 50
_________________________
The only easy day...was yesterday!
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