In the early 80s I saw my first C-64 at my cousins place. We gamed a lot and I so wanted one of those. I begged my parents like every month, while some of my friends were given C-64s in the meantime, telling me they will share with me all of their (not so rightfully copied) games. They finally gave in and gifted me smth at my next birthday. I unpacked it and … shit, this wasn’t a beloved C-64, it was a C-16. WTF parents? (I was a young brat and didn’t really grasped the concept of being grateful at all.) They thought a Commodore is a Commodore, right?
So, with no games (I bought some good titles later on) I thought about what to do with this computer.
Hello
Syntax Error
hmmm
What’s my name?
Syntax Error
Stupid computer… there has to be a way the computer learns my name…
Started to take baby steps in Basic.
10 Print “your name is Downcount”
run
This really made me some kind of happy.
Second “program” asked me “What’s your name” just to print the result in an endless loop.
I began to be obsessed with this “great” Basic and started to write little and bigger programs as a hobby which many many years later led to being actually being paid for writing lines.
So: Thank you parents, sorry, I was such a brat and thank you C-16 for being such nice low entry device for learning about soft- and hardware.
Be grateful you weren’t learning BASIC on the C64 🙂
I pretty know what you mean. My next computer was a C-128. I was shocked, that so many commands were missing (in C64 mode / C128 basic was rich though) . But that just motivated me to start learning assembler XD
Yeah, I think the failings of C64 BASIC actually helped the take-up of 6502 code!
The C16 had a built-in monitor, I think I got as far as writing the code to display one character on screen and then gave up.