Halt and catch myself browsing eBay for vintage computers
It's me again. Writing. Not really sure where this is going, so hold on tight. This past weekend our family pulled up roots and transplanted ourselves to a quiet suburban town by the water. Moves are always hard, but add two year old, add Covid-19, add new job and all the sudden it seems monumental. But, we lucked out with really excellent movers to do all the hard work, and (in my new business jargon) were able to execute a pretty seamless lift and shift!
Recently, my wife and I have been watching Halt and Catch Fire on Netflix. It's pretty fun. I've enjoyed all the nostalgic computer stuff and of course the drama as each member of the cast repeatedly almost invents something huge like Google or Chat Rooms. It all reminds me of my childhood. I was a bit younger than the characters in the show are. I guess I would have been around the age of Gordon's kids. When I was that age the computer revolution was happening all around me. It was one of those things where you don't really realize what's going on because you are either too young or it's just not that obvious to you.
But, I was really into computers. At home I had an Atari 2600. It played games like Tank, Missile Command, and others via a cartridge system. It was cool, but like the show kind of depicts, you weren't really able to do anything beyond play the games. At school we had an Apple IIE. I found it fascinating because you could write programs and make the computer do stuff. My father also had some CP/M based machines that he used for his business. They could do things like word processing and spreadsheets and could save files to their giant 8" floppy disks. But, they could also be networked, which I remember being really interested in.
In the show, the Commodore 64 is nearly a character in its own right. Cameron's character uses it exclusively, and there's a whole sequence of events where she claims her code is superior because she hasn't jumped onto the object oriented bandwagon of C++ and Unix! She's a believer in efficiency and elegance in what she does and the C64 is a perfect tool. I love how her company was able to stand up a full network out of her house, initially only powered by C64s. Watching her wiggle through the rapid changing landscape of networked gaming, chatting and what she calls "community" is really wonderful.
The end result is I really want my own C64 to tinker with. There are many emulators to try out that you can download for free, but I kind of think the real thing, an old 12" CRT and a floppy drive would be a fun project. Apparently the Commodore 64 still reigns as the highest selling single computer model, ever! So, I'm guessing I can find one in decent shape out there on the interwebs. Wish me luck!
