by Bill Wood: ws.wood@zetnet.co.uk

It all started with a Commodore 64 roughly 15 years ago. A great start, within a month it was back from whence it came as it no longer worked. The machine just died – no nothing. The supplier advised that it would be back within a month, all in good working order. Alas a month passed and no C64 – my computer was lost without trace. I ended up with a brand new, new style C64. With the machine disappearing I never found out the cause of failure.

This was great. I was now the proud owner of a computer. Frequent nights were spent burning the midnight oil inputting programs published in the magazines of the day. Various types of programs were published ranging from graphics, how to add a sprite in your favourite game, converters (currency, temperature), to Morse Code Tutors. With all the lines input the big question was would it work. Invariably the answer was no! Hours spent pouring over a TV screen with an output of 40 Characters to a line, checking for errors, try, try, try again: eventually getting it to run - a tweak here and a tweak there to get the program to appear on screen to your liking.

Program storage was on C15 tapes and a tape drive linked to the computer. When doing a Save it was definitely time to make a coffee. It was so slow. (Tapes could be copied using a twin tape portable radio recorder). The error checking procedure gave birth to the idea of printing out the BASIC program listing to compare with the magazine listing. Invariably next months issue produced an amendment – if only I had waited! This was an excuse to acquire a Commodore Dot Matrix Printer which could not be used late at night as the noise woke up my Wife. The Dot Matrix Printer was trouble free during the period of my ownership although ribbons were used at an amazing rate. My only complaint was the noise which was common to all Dot Matrix Printers. (In offices the printer was housed in a special housing to deaden the noise). All this with a memory of 64K.

In January 1983 I received the results of my City and Guilds Radio Examination and in February I obtained my Amateur Radio Licence with the call sign GM6 TKL. The C64, being the workhorse at that time for Amateur Radio, was fitted with RS232 adaptors for Morse (CW), Slow Scan Television and Radio Teletype (RTTY). The converters were home-made and made use of the RS232 port. The converters for CW and Slow Scan TV were extremely simple as they were receive only. In the case of Morse the dots and dashes received were converted into characters and displayed on screen. The slow scan signals displayed pictures on the screen. The RTTY converter was slightly more complex as this unit used both a receive and a transmit facility. Messages were typed out on the keyboard and simultaneously appeared on the screen of the person you were in communication with. To simplify, this was similar to a two teleprinters linked by telephone line communicating with each other, only in the case of RTTY the link was by radio signal. The modem for use with Packet Radio was more complex, mains powered, and linked the computer to a 2M transceiver for sending and receiving packet signals. With the passage of time I regret that the circuit diagrams are no longer available. I mentioned earlier that Morse code tutor programs had been input. These were useful as I had intended to take the Morse test to obtain a Class A licence. However, in the battle between Radio and computers - computers won and now the only thing that remains is my Class B Amateur Radio Licence and Call Sign. The next acquisition was a modem for use with Compunet.

I had seen an advert for ICPUG in the magazines and thought that this might be the thing for me, but was sceptical about joining. I spotted an advertisement for several years ICPUG Journals in Micro Mart for £4.00 and decided to buy. This was a great investment (I'll second that! The seller was someone with no sense of value. - Ed) – a wealth of information now at my finger tips. My first impressions were that the Journals were way above my head, a little bit daunting. Many articles on PETs and their associated disk drives – when I was looking for information on the C64. Eventually I found some gen on the C64, great stuff but oh what did it all mean ? I found that on going back to the article again it started to make more sense.

This led me to decide to join ICPUG. If I wanted to know more about computers I was starting off on a rather steep learning curve. With the wealth of information amongst the members of ICPUG it soon became obvious that there were a number of people who were techies but keen to impart their knowledge for the benefit of others. I was a member for eight years and eagerly awaited the arrival of the latest copy of the Journal, usually a quick scan then laid aside till I had time to read and digest.

My next venture was to obtain a Commodore C128, more memory, a 1571 disk drive, which used 5.25 disks, and a Commodore monitor which allowed an 80 character display. Saving to disk, as opposed to tape, speeded up the saving of data. By using CP/M a whole new world was beginning to dawn. Word processors and spreadsheets became a reality. Imagine being able to use SuperCalc on a 128. The possibilities became endless. Eventually, a 1581 drive became available which allowed the use of 3.5 floppies (720 Mb). With one of these drives daisy chained onto the 1571 it gave quite an expansion. The first C128 was a so called portable with a plastic casing which had a recess formed into the base for storing the keyboard. This was bought in ignorance trying to further my desire to have a C128.

Reading the Journals produced more information on the C128. I discovered that two versions had been produced; a portable which had a recess in the base of the plastic case for storage of the keyboard and also a metal cased desktop, (C128D), with an internal 1571 disk drive. My portable was soon disposed of and a desktop, (C128D), acquired.

I may just have been lucky in that I did not experience any of the problems which existed with the disk drives. It may have been that they were there but I was blissfully unaware.

I have just spent a pleasant few hours browsing through the Journals for the years 1984 – 1992, (with the exception of 1990 which I do not have). As some of the topics mentioned have been extensively dealt with in past copies of the Journals, I append references should you wish to explore the topics more fully.

At this point, 1992, I made the decision to move on to a PC, in preparation for my retirement. This would be the beginning of another learning curve, which would help to keep the old brain box active. The PC activities will be the basis for a future article.

REFERENCES

1. The AEA Micropatch – Review by Mike Todd

        CW and RTTY for the C64

        Vol 6 No 6 November 1984 Page 420

2. The Computer in Amateur Radio by Mike Todd G8AZY

        Vol 7 No 6 November 1985 Page 470

3. C128 – First Impressions by Tom Nuttall

        Vol 8 No 2 March/April 1986 Page 157

4. Packet Radio and Computers by Robin Harvey

        Vol 8 No 6 November 1986 Page 525

5. CP/M and the Compunet Modem by Archie Swan

        Vol 11 No 6 November 1989 Page 558

Journal Contents