Charlie Balogh

Some 264 series fun - I got this C16 from a local Commodore 64 user who had it laying around for a long time, but never did anything with it, and he wanted it to go to a better home.

It was known to be "gets to the BASIC screen" working, but it also passes Diag264 with flying colors. Nice.

I will remove the peeling "helper" labels put on it by the original owner, but I will put them in a plastic bag, them and keep them with the machine. They belong to its history.

#c16 #retrocomputing #8bit

Mar 14 at 6:18pmWeb
Show threadCharlie BaloghMar 14

Lately it seems to be "the law", that all C264 series must come with a free black Datasette. 😅 This one is no exception. But it also came with three original games on cassette tapes! I don't know when I last loaded software from a tape, but it wasn't in this decade. Or the previous. And likely wasn't in this century.

It needed a bit of "encouragement" and a few tries, but it worked in the end. It's the worst crackout game I've seen - a reminder why these were a flop.

#c16 #retrocomputing #8bit

Show threadNohaironheedMar 14
@chainq Datasettes were the standard in the UK. I didn't know anyone back in the day with a floppy drive until the early 90s when some friends started getting Amigas, and they were considered rich and lucky! I must say, my original C16 back in the 80's and my current expanded C16 rarely let me down loading from Datasette. But I do use a Tapuino these days to load/save .tap files.
Show threadCharlie BaloghMar 14

@nohaironheed They were around in Europe much longer indeed, and even longer in the ex-East Bloc. Even for Commodore 64s, which I had. Used it with only a Datasette until late '94, when I got a 386sx PC "for the school".

I still have a soft spot for the C264 series though, because we had them in Hungary as school computers, so it was the first computer I ever had access to as a kid, and wrote my first BASIC programs on them.

So even if I never owned one until much later, I love these things.

Show threadCharlie BaloghMar 14

@nohaironheed In this case, the problem was the Datasette, I think. Which is why it did not load on first try. It's mechanical, probably needed a bit of exercise to wake up after the long sleep. Now it works much better.

Usually I use a Pi1541 or an SD2IEC with my C16/Plus4. Or just load from my 1541Ultimate II+, in standalone mode.

Show threadNohaironheedMar 14
@chainq I love seeing old notes in the game covers, best scores, extra load instructions (c16 games often have mistakes in the covers, wrong joystick ports and things), cheat pokes etc. They remind me of me as a kid doing the same and I wonder where those people are now.