Commander X16

Hello fellow 8-bit junkies. Quite excited about the design goals of this project and the possibility that it could turn into a big deal, considering the community of well-know, well-respected, authoritative, and authentic geeks bringing it about. I'd love to see a massive worldwide community spring up around a love of (addictive) BASIC programming and off-the-wall game design concepts, similar to what the C64 engendered in its heyday. To paraphrase Han Solo, I got a good feeling about this.

After scraping together every penny I had plus raiding the couch cushions I bought my first computer, the Interact Model 1: http://oldcomputers.net/interact.html but the less said about that the better. Just kidding. It was mind-blowing to own my own computer, even if the hardware was slow and the hard-plastic-buttons-on-top-of-a-membrane "keyboard" was atrocious. The BASIC language (loaded from tape) was actually pretty good and I was able to get very comfortable with programming in BASIC.

My second computer was a VIC-20 with 3K memory cart, purchased by money order and snail mail from Protecto Enterprises in the Spring of 1981. I still recall with great clarity the sense of wonder I felt on unboxing the VIC and seeing for the first time those petscii characters stamped on the front of the keys of the REAL keyboard. I was immediately enamored. Soon after I was unpleasantly shocked by BASIC v2.0, after having used the Interact's BASIC with its full set of drawing commands. Where the heck were the all the commands I would need for drawing on the screen? Bogus! Thankfully the VIC came with an amazing user manual that quickly got me past that initial shock at the spartan nature of BASIC 2.0. Also the wonderful full-screen editing with the cursor keys was a big step up. And being able to redefine the character set into castles, aliens, and rockets was the best thing ever.

I skipped over the C64 (though a housemate at University had one that he let the rest of us use when he wasn't working on his degree) and bought a C128. Again, mail order. I remember sending off payment as soon as they started taking orders and then waiting like 6 months for it to arrive. BASIC 7.0 was incredible. Loved the built-in sprite editor and the wealth of IF-THEN and LOOP statements, not to mention finally having a good range of drawing statements once again. I programmed a number of titles for the 128 and actually got a few of them published by Compute!'s Gazette back in the day.

Years later I picked up a Plus4 at a thrift store and fell in love all over again with the full-featured BASIC 3.5 on that system. My favorite case in both the form-factor and the color scheme of all the 8-bit CBMs. The Plus4 feels like a deluxe VIC-20 successor.

Anywho, that's my 8-bit saga in somewhat condensed form. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the Commander X16 and sharing BASIC tips and tricks and creations.

A round of applause for David Murray and friends, everybody.

The Atari Portfolio had chiclet keys which I think were on top of a membrane keyboard, but evidently they had learned some lessons from early chiclet keyboards since they had a substantial slant to they, and if you were typing near the top of the key it worked reasonably well.

But that Protecto Catalog is a trip through memory lane ... that's the people I bought my C64, 1541 and monochrome monitor from in the year the C64 launched. Looking at the copy in their catalog, in 1985 they were still calling it "the powerful 84K Commodore 64 Computer" (64K RAM + 8K Basic ROM + 8K KERNAL ROM + 4K Character ROM).

Welcome, VIC-2020!

Yes, BASIC 2.0 is ... well it's very basic.  I remember the frustration as much as the joy of programming.  It takes more discipline than I want to exert to write a large BASIC program.  

But you're soooooo right that the screen "editor" is amazingly clever, and the manuals -- especially that of the VIC-20 -- were simply fantastic.

I think we have a good idea of the BASIC that comes "stock" with the X16 -- I do know it has graphics commands similar to the later Commodore machines, but I'm not sure if it has better flow control commands.