Commander X16

Hi everyone, 

Well here is my introduction and why I am joining the forum.

 

I had my taste of 8bit computing when in grade school.  I still remember the first time I saw Pong at the local Sears being played on a television with a small crowd gathered around to watch.  It had me hooked from there.

 

One year for Christmas my mom and dad got me a Vic-20.  I could not even save anything since we did not even know how you needed a tape player or disc player to save or load programs but it was pretty magical to me. From there I had a Commodore 128 then Amiga 500.

I currently do not have any 8bit computers as I don't have the room but I promised myself that I would get one if I could write my own computer program again on Commodore Basic.

My journey to this forum started during the Covid-19 scare and having to work from home.  I would put YouTube videos to watch to on my phone. Videos of refurbishing old computers drew my interest and thought of seeing if I could buy a used computer online. The prices seemed outrageous and after a bit of searching I came across a video from the 8-bit Guy and the Commander X-16. I liked the idea of a new computer with modern hardware.

My first Commodore game to watch and play was Miner for the Commodore Pet.  I thought it was amazing and I was hooked...it gave me an idea for my first project

My plan forward is to do alot of reading in the references to the C64 and relearn Commodore BASIC and assembly.  I want to see if I can recreate Miner! for the X16 in BASIC and see how I can enhance it as a learning experience.  I also want to see if I can recreate the same game again in assembly using the same game as a starting point and see what I can learn along the way.

Luckily over the last 10 years I have been tinkering with VisualBasic and upgrading many Word, Excel and PowerPoint templates for my company using VBA so I hope that the same thought processes will help.

Thanks and God Bless.