Daring FireballDrew Saur’s Ode to the Commodore 64
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/15/saur-c64
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/15/saur-c64
Martin the paranoid android
leehindeThat’s funny. I did something very similar. Only I typed “shop at Sears” at Kmart and “shop at Kmart” at Sears. I was very clever.
Phil Hirst@daringfireball @gruber we would add the line:
30 ON ERROR GOTO 10
So when the staff came along and pressed escape, the program would not stop running. From memory, the only way to stop it was to unplug the power. Fun times.
(W H Smiths rather than Kmart for those in the UK out of the 80’s)
Michael Gisiger 
@phirst @daringfireball @gruber
Me and my school friends always went to the local store (Radio TV Steiner, Switzerland) to copy the newest game releases, because they had a C64 with two (!) 1541 drives on display. The staff was completely clueless, but we bought a lot of empty 5.25" there 😂
scottm@daringfireball @gruber I find all this comparison with the Apple II very enlightening. Here in the UK, the biggest C64 competitors were the Sinclair ZX Spectrum – a computer that you _could_ program but had a really strong games market – and the BBC Micro, an project that was a joint venture between central govt, the BBC and Acorn (who would go on to become ARM) that meant BBCs were in every school. Apple didn’t have a look in.