How I got here – Part 2

OK, OK, finally getting back to the story line I started back on March 4 about how I got into the software and gaming biz. When we last left our hero, he had been learning about the valiant little Sinclair ZX-80.

The first computer I ever bought for myself was a Timex-Sinclair TS-1000. This was touted as the “first computer under $100”. I bought mine for about $97 at KMart in 1982. This was a slightly re-badged version of the Sinclair ZX-81, successor to my ZX-80. The key difference though was that where the old fashioned ZX-80 had a trifling 1k of RAM the TS-1000 had DOUBLE that! Yes! 2k of RAM.

Through a combination of saving my own money and begging my mom, I soon added the 16k RAM pack for another $49. I also bought my first computer flight simulator – Psion Flight Simulator. Man, I crashed that plane on approach about a thousand times at least. Oh, and we’ll see that Psion name pop up again in a later episode.

The Timex had some amazing features – like the string arrays that were missing from the ZX-80. It could also do crude graphics of an almost bitmap variety. The pixels were just really big – the display resolution was 64x44 pixels.

Tape me away
Like many early computers, a cassette tape recorder was the way you stored programs. This was just a regular old cassette recorder with a cable that connected the earphone and microphone jacks to the computer. To save, you’d press the record buttons on the recorder and the computer would send hellish screeching over the cable to the tape. To load, you’d press play and the computer would listen (sometimes) to the hellish screeching coming to it over the cable. This was not very reliable, so a common practice was to record things multiple times – in case one copy wouldn’t work. If you look at the little number in the circle on the tape picture, that was the number of copies of that program I saved there.
As you look through these tapes, you can see sort of the evolution of the program and my approach to source control and backups as I worked on the game. That’s kind of fun.

I remember there were some contests that Timex had that I entered. One was for the most interesting use of the database program. (I made an English/German flash card database.) Another was for the most interesting use of the spreadsheet program. (I made some kind of club budget tracking sheet.)
And I submitted a couple lame games to Timex magazines for publishing that were rejected.

Rejected!
After I honed my skills a bit, there was a whiff of a possibility of making money writing software. I began working on a kind of economic simulation game that started life as “Colony” on the tape above. Ultimately, it was renamed “Astro-Miner” – complete with a glitzy splash screen on start up. I submitted this to a game publisher and received my first rejection letter.
If you want to try out the glory that is the TS-1000, check out this emulator. Someone wrote the whole computer in Java.
I still have the TS1000 and last I checked it still works – although the RAM pack doesn’t. I used to keep it in my desk at work. And I still have a shoebox full of cassette software for it – including Psion Flight Simulator.

The one and only C-64
In 1983, Commodore came out with the amazing Commodore 64. It was a pricey $595. Not long afterward though, they had a trade-in promotion (I tried to find the ad on the web but couldn’t) – trade in any other computer or video game, working or not, and they’d send you a $100 rebate. Somehow, I convinced my mom and dad to pony up.
Oh man. I still remember the smell of the ozone when I plugged that thing in for the first time.
The C-64 was way ahead of anything else I’d worked with. Sprites, bitmap graphics, gobs of memory, stereo sound.

Sometime in here, when I was a 9th grader, my dad had a heart attack. He recovered, but that took time and being self-employed that meant there wasn’t much money coming in. Somehow, they still bought me a disk drive for the C-64.
Now, Commodore drives were “intelligent” drives. They basically had another computer inside them that was almost as powerful as the C-64 itself. This made them pretty neat, but also very expensive…several hundred dollars. This was a sacrifice for my family. I kind of knew that at the time, but when I think of it now it is huge. I’m guessing that drive was about the same as a house payment.

I worked on some games for the C-64, but I never really completed any that felt the way I had envisioned them. Although I still remember when my mind fully wrapped around what it means to animate a sprite. And I remember the first time I did a “walk cycle” that was synchronized with sound.
My mad skilz were just not up to delivering really good game experiences. HOWEVER, I did stumble on an economic niche and made my first “serious” money programming.
You might remember that in the mid 80’s there were little mom and pop video rental stores all over. This was pre-Blockbuster and pre-Red Box. A lot of times, you had to pay to join these stores and since a lot of people didn’t even own VCRs, they rented those too.
I started doing some consulting work for one local store and ended up writing some software to replace their index card-based paper system.
Then I sold the same software to a couple other stores.
Hey, this idea of writing something once and selling it multiple times…that’s pretty cool! Like printing money.
Here’s the surviving master copy with a prototype of the function key overlay that went with the software.

I had a Commodore 128D which was also awesome, and a couple different Amigas – awesome again. But I still have that original C-64 and disk drive and they still work. I could no more get rid of those than chop off my own arm. Seems like it would be ungrateful. After all, old timers say, “you dance with them that brung ya.”

If you want to try some of these vintage Commodore machines, check out the WinVice emulator. I’ve tried a lot of them and this is one of the best.

Seeing other people machines
While I was in high school, I had a chance to work with Apples in the computer class. I remember being in there actually on the day the shuttle Challenger blew up. Of course, it was passé at that time for people to watch the launches at school. Our class was doing an animation assignment. I think I was doing a juggling clown. Our teacher came in and said, “People always say they remember where they were when President Kennedy was shot. You’ll always remember you were in my class when the space shuttle blew up.”
We thought he was joking and one of the kids switched his animation work to a rudimentary space shuttle blowing up.
Anyway, Apple II’s sucked – and not just because they made the shuttle blow up.

I also remember being asked by one of the school counselors to have a look at a Data General One portable he was thinking of buying in like 1984-ish.

One last story for this installment
I basically ran my consulting business from the office of a teacher at the Payson High. I’d actually cut other classes and come there to work on the program (which was really pretty big), or maybe do my books, or talk on the phone with customers. Sometimes, I’d even leave school for an hour or two to meet with clients.
Man, I’d be so mad if I found out my kids were doing that. :-)

Next time: PCs, and handhelds, and consoles – oh my.