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t.ken ross
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2022-08-26
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102 lines
u ME AND MY COMMODORE
by Ken Ross
It was the summer of 1989 & I was
a mature student and had very little
to do with computers so far in my life
-- apart from being exposed to a stock
control/ordering IBM at work back in
1985. I also used an Amstrad WP for a
while at the student union in 1988/9.
By chance, I'd found that the Casio
730 could do calculations with
formulas stored in its data bank &
could pass as a large display
calculator. So I got one. As for that
stuff at the back to the manual, it
looked too complex for me to consider
attempting.
Then one day the math teacher
showed us BASIC & I grasped that was
what that stuff wasd, unleashing the
full power of the Casio 730 with 16K
and 24 characer display. A fellow
mature (but no so much as me) student
had got a summer job with the local
council and I bumped into him by
chance in a tatty shopping mall. He
knew I collected old electrionics and
8 track cartridges, and he said he
could get what he called a really old
computer from work that was being
disposed of.
I jumped at it as it seemed worth
the gamble as I knew BASIC. And [hey
presto] a CBM 8032 system entered our
flat, with a 8050 drive, 4022 printer,
C2N tape, along with asstd books etc.
In short order I joined ICPUG and
carried on collecting all the type-in
programs for civil engineering. I
could find.
A Fellow mature student bought a
new PC but he couldn't get the type-in
programs to work on his machine It was
stolen within a short time of
delivery. The 8 track cartridges are
long gone -- converted to CD via my
Mac. The fate of the fellow student is
unknown but he never got paid by
council and I doubt that he ever did
get onto the council housing list. I
never did get a job in civil
engineering but my interest in
computers has lead my down a few
interesting side roads in life so far
that I never envisioned existed in
those far off days !.
The 8032 was christened Eliza
after I played with that game that
came on a disk with it and she's still
in service today -- albeit with an
expansion board fitted from an 8096SK.
To this day whenever I hear some
Belinda Carlisle songs I can still
feel those keys under my fingers as I
typed in programs dealing with
reactions on beams etc .
My Commodore systems lurks in the
hallway showhorned into a unit:
8096
8250
4040
4022
A500+
A570
monitor
C128D
FD-2000
1581
1701
HP400 printer,
with a few other Commodore items
stowed away.
Over the weekend I've just started
my first steps into Wheels 128. By
chance I 'inherited' a Mac LCII a few
years ago, but thats another story
that leads up to this 7300 but there's
always be a Commodore in my life.
KR