Run/Stop-Restore: 10th Anniversary Edition

MY PERSONAL HISTORY WITH THE COMMODORE

I met my first Commodore Business Machine in 1982. My best friend Carl got a Commodore 64 and 1541 disk drive for his seventeenth birthday at the cost to his parents of $850. It was cool - all the colors, the games, and you could use your television with it, just like the Atari 2600 game system, but like an ass head I looked down on it. It wasn't "for me" - I was raised under the old school of the "if it works, don't fix it" philosophies. My pen and stacks of blank writing paper has worked in the past and it'll still work today; so I walked away from what would soon become my future.

When my buddy graduated in 1983, he quickly applied at Wichita State University, was accepted, and for the next nine years he and his Commodore 64 (which expanded to a Commodore 128 while there) and 1541 disk drive (which transformed into a 1571) got an education. In Wichita, he joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity, where he became quickly known as the only man with an on-site computer at any frat house on campus. Anything a fraternity brother needed to know, Carl was the man who got on-line and checked the local boards and GEnie, and found the tidbit of information the brother needed.

I came to Wichita one day on business in 1986, and detoured myself to the WSU campus to check on him and his welfare. I saw the Commodore 128, I saw what he was doing with it, and I was hooked. I wanted in on this computer business stuff - real bad. What finally sold me on getting a Commodore computer was the game entitled "The Incredible Hulk." I stayed in his room playing that game all night while he slept, but I never solved it.

For the next twelve months I looked for a Commodore 64 and disk drive but everything was too pricy for a man who made $13,000 a year. I was hurt, but I carried on in my quest.

Then on Christmas of 1987, I got a present from my wife's best friend that was in the shape of a Commodore 64 and tape drive. I went nuts!! I immediately went to Wichita before the year's end and Carl got on-line for me and downloaded a copy of Speedscript 3.0. That's all I needed - I spent two years writing on Speedscript all my material. I got a modem from my son for my birthday the following year and began entering the world of cyberspace at the breakneck speed of 300 bps.

As time continued to march forward I increased in Commodore knowledge and equipment. I wore out my Commodore 64 and upgraded to a Commodore 128. My wife, for another Christmas, got me a 1541 II disk drive, which I still have and use today. It's about seven years old and I know that the Commodore Man has rebuilt it at least three times.

During the early '90s, I made two crowning achievements in the Commodore computing universe -- I submitted and published my first real programming attempt called "Check It Out," which appeared in the November/December 1992 issue of RUN magazine. I was now a professional computer programmer and writer. Also, I stepped out on my own and opened my first and only BBS, "The Pulpit." I had a Commodore 128, Ivory BBS v3.3 and four 1541s for start up. During its one year run my wife went to Sgt. Butch of the KBPD BBS in Belton, Missouri, and made a bid on dismantling and buying all his Commodore software and hardware. For the total cost of an Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, two 1541s, three 1571s, a 1581, a HD-100 hard drive, three monitors (two 40/80s and a 40 column), three Commodore 128 (two with JiffyDOS) and two Commodore 64s, along with C*Base 3.0 and C*Base 2.0, and acres and acres of software, my wife paid $500. It took two maxi-van loads to haul all that stuff from Belton, Missouri, to Kansas City, Kansas. I eventually sold half the software to the Commodore Man, sold a Commodore 64 to a friend's mother for a word processor, and gave two complete Commodore 128 systems away as Christmas gifts. I sold the Amiga 500 to a user of the Pulpit. I merged the rest of the KBPD's inventory with the Pulpit and for the remaining six months of my BBS' life I ran a large BBS setup. But the cost of running a bulletin board system caught up with me so I dropped the project and shelved the files where they now sit to this day. It also contributed to the demise when the local electric company sent a man with a law enforcement official out to my home to investigate as to why I had such a binge of electrical consumption. They were kind enough to explain that sometimes unscrupulous people grew illegal substance in their homes and the surge of power was their attempt to create an artificial climate to make the necessary vegetation grow properly. I let them examine my home and showed them that I was running a bulletin board system from here and this was where the extra power was going. Needless to say they apologized and left my home dignified, but embarrassed.

In October of 1994, I was introduced to the Commodore User’s Group. A bunch of whacked out computer users who were avid about the Commodore computer. These folk were the exact group I was looking for, so in January of 1995, I signed on. It was the best move I ever made for my Commodore and me. From this club I've learned that even though support from public sources was failing there was still help out there for the Commodore. To this day I always turn to the users group for help, repair/replacement of equipment, and advice.

As I sit here today and I look back on the past, I have come to the conclusion that Commodores are best described by me as the "poor man's computer." And if any of you are like me, you're so poor you can't afford a free lunch. I like to stress to computer shoppers that if you need a computer but can't afford the latest IBM or Macintosh, consider a Commodore. My best calculations say that a full Commodore set up costs about 1/10th the price of an IBM or Mac and still accomplish the same tasks to an acceptable degree. I also would like to point out that since Commodore can only extract text from the Internet and the World Wide Web, no nasty pictures can enter into the hands of young children or curious teenagers. Repairs and replacement parts for the Commodore are relatively inexpensive and mostly easy to come by. I try to encourage people who are about to trash their Commodores to make room for an upgrade, to bring the unit to our users group meeting for our team to look at and possibly purchase. Commodore, in my opinion, is the best computer ever made by men. It's a shame that at Commodore's prime, the executives of the time didn't take the lead and make it the mainstream of computers like IBM is today.