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Using a Commodore 64 on The Modern Internet


Tim Smith

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This is for all of the geeks out there.

I remember the commodore 64 but never owned one.

It did occur to me that if I wanted hack free communication this might be the way to go, but maybe not.

Everything is so old, I doubt much is compatible with it.

I remember dial up modems. I was on America Online at the time, but I was using a 286.

 

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Had a C-64 and a C-128.  Really liked both of them - especially the 128. Had a program called GEOS (Graphic Environmental Operating System) that had a WYSIWYG word processor, spreadsheet, desktop publishing and more. Real graphical interface - just in black and white instead of color (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system). Also used to go to a national BBS called Q-Link (Quantum Link). It was sold and became.....  America Online

GeOS_Commodore_64.gif

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I remember trying very hard to come up with the over $800 needed to get a Commodore-64 when they first came out (about the same as $2,500 now adjusted for inflation).  I ended up waiting for the first IBM PC instead since I had access to other computers through the school system.  Besides the (teletype-only, acoustic modem) HP-2000 time-share, there were several "Trash" 80's and, in 1984, Apple computers (Whoa!  These have COLOR! 😆).

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16 hours ago, Mandolin Picker said:

Had a C-64 and a C-128.  Really liked both of them - especially the 128. Had a program called GEOS (Graphic Environmental Operating System) that had a WYSIWYG word processor, spreadsheet, desktop publishing and more. Real graphical interface - just in black and white instead of color (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system). Also used to go to a national BBS called Q-Link (Quantum Link). It was sold and became.....  America Online

GeOS_Commodore_64.gif

Pretty amazing this could all be done with 64kb of memory.  I guess it used old floppies and cassette tapes.

I first remembered hearing about music software on the Amiga, but the person in the video points out there is also something for the C-64.

Interesting about America Online. I wonder what the UK equivalent was? Or did they also use AOL? 

At the time AOL seemed similar to Amazon, a huge entity that would never go away and only grow. About that time I  had Netscape as my browser. Like AOL, I also seen them as a huge entity that would never go away. I don't even know what happened to them or AOL. I went from a phone line connection to a local DSL company that was painfully slow and undependable, but since I lived in a rural area, it was the best I could do. Cable TV was already a thing in cities and when I moved, I could get cable. Performance wasn't  as good as it is now for cable modems. Still far better than DSL or a phone modem. 

Computers still had to catch up no matter how good the cable connection was.  Remote connections to web pages was probably what drew me into having a computer in the first place. Music was an afterthought at that point, and frankly, nothing was very good yet for the basic average musician other than a few midi programs like Cakewalk and Opticode. Back in the day Cakewalk seemed more to me like a place where computer geeks who were also into music hung out. Not the streamlined efficient program it is today. People who liked playing with Linux programming and similar liked Cakewalk lol.

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8 minutes ago, Tim Smith said:

At the time AOL seemed similar to Amazon, a huge entity that would never go away and only grow. About that time I  had Netscape as my browser. Like AOL, I also seen them as a huge entity that would never go away. I don't even know what happened to them or AOL.

Netscape for all intents and purposes is now Firefox .

 

AOL is still around.

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2 hours ago, craigb said:

I remember trying very hard to come up with the over $800 needed to get a Commodore-64 when they first came out (about the same as $2,500 now adjusted for inflation).  I ended up waiting for the first IBM PC instead since I had access to other computers through the school system.  Besides the (teletype-only, acoustic modem) HP-2000 time-share, there were several "Trash" 80's and, in 1984, Apple computers (Whoa!  These have COLOR! 😆).

I heard a guy say something that caused me to pause and think ( yes I do that occasionally). 

This guy said he went to the local electronics drop off place where they recycle old electronics gear. He mentioned he went into this storage trailer to offload an old stereo or something. He looked around at all of this stuff that people once took great pride in. Payed a lot of money for, and there it all sat now as junk waiting to be recycled.  I bought an orbi a few years back and ended up with something else. It still sits in my garage like a bunch of other stuff. If I don't soon sell it I won't be able to give it away. My wife borders on being a hoarder so we have some old stuff. I'm not a hoarder but if you didn't know better you might think I was one because I have intentions to sell stuff and I forget or don't have the time to do it. I have an old computer case downstairs in my basement you could probably drive a small car into. I could go on and on.  We need to streamline, simplify or whatever else they call it. 

I thought it was interesting someone was till playing with a C-64. I'm not sure why anyone would want to mess with one now. " Cool, we can still connect to BBs from 1994."

Ok *scratching my head*. In order to fully understand maybe I need to understand geeks more. Can someone please explain geek fascinations to me?

Edited by Tim Smith
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2 minutes ago, bdickens said:

Netscape for all intents and purposes is now Firefox .

 

AOL is still around.

Really? I had no idea about AOL still being around. I haven't heard of them in forever around here. And Netscape is Firefox? Interesting. 

Ever hear of Duckduckgo?

Edited by Tim Smith
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I used Duckduckgo until they also started censoring (explicitly mentioned by their CEO).  Now I use the Brave search engine on a Brave browser whenever I'm looking for real information (I still use Chrome for other stuff, like roaming here!).

Unfortunately, the Internet is quietly being deleted by those that want to "control the narrative" and, in a real sense, what history was.  There are a few videos about this (including a few that I've saved), but you can easily test it yourself.  Just type in something that should have a LOT of results (and, indeed, used to), like "pizza" or even "love" and, if you get more than 500 actual results, I would be shocked.  I just tried "love" using Chrome on Google and it claims 19.2 BILLION results, but on only page 19 provided this message:

Quote

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 188 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Clicking the link to "repeat the search with the omitted results included" will now give you 41 pages with 406 results.

This behavior is MUCH worse on topics they want to control!  On those results, you'll get repeated results from the "sources" they want you to use over and over...

Unfortunately, even the better search engines (I've tried several) all use the same sources, so are also impacted.  To say this truly sucks is a massive understatement!

Test it for yourself!  I still remember when there were thousands of pages of results for some topics.

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