My Computer Memories: Early 90s

Some of my earliest childhood memories involve spending time with my family using computers, exploring games and software. Computers accompany me through life and it all started with the Commodore 128 in the early 90s.

The Commodore 128

The first home computer in my family was the Commodore 128 in the early 90s. I remember spending time with my father, mother and sister playing games like The Great Giana Sisters, Test Drive, Maniac Mansion, Cauldron II or Lemmings on weekends, afternoons and when relatives were visiting. My father had a good variety of games, basically everything you could imagine: puzzle games, shooters, side-scrollers, jump-and-runs, adventures, driving games and sports games.

And it was mostly a game console for me, as I was too young and without English language skills to have any ambitions to program BASIC on the computer. The only BASIC commands we needed were used for listing disk contents and for running games. But there was also actual productivity software: I vaguely remember how clunky it was to use a joystick to control the cursor of a very blue desktop environment on cartridge. Because of the gaming focus we mostly ran the C128 in the blue C64 mode and the green C128 mode had barely anything to do. CP/M was bundled was well, but I haven’t had the slightest clue what to do with that disk.

Accessories

Even with programming knowledge I wouldn’t want to read text on screen for a longer period of time. The C128 was connected via antenna cable to a TV (a PAL CRT for picture and sound) and text was mostly blurry. Nevertheless my father must have done some basic word processing or typing on it because we also had an old Olivetti needle printer at one point.

Besides that, you had to have at least one Competition Pro joystick, and we had many (clones) over the years since they kept breaking. The joystick as an essential input device. The Commodore 1571 disk drive was used for loading games and much less so was the datasette drive. I don’t know if I still would have the patience to wait through the long loading times, just to e.g. run Test Drive.

Music

I did forget lots of games, but what I didn’t forget is the amazing music that was an essential part of so many of them, thanks to the SID sound chip. To this day I could listen for hours to the Giana Sisters or Jinks menu music by Chris Hülsbeck, the Shiftrix music by Software 2000 or watch the creepy Maniac Mansion intro. Thanks to the High Voltage SID Collection and the VICE emulator, I can — and I do! There are even concerts!

Legacy

Eventually, the Commodore 128 was replaced by our first family PC around 1997, but I still have the computer, the disk drive, stacks of diskettes, cassettes and cartridges; all stuffed away in the basement. I wouldn’t risk powering it up though, because of the potentially dangerous power supply and the lack of a proper CRT TV. Maybe that’s a project for the future, but ideally an expert should take a look at the state of the machine first.

The plastic cases of the C128 and its relative, the C64C, were a bit flatter and sleeker than the more iconic breadbin cases of the original C64. I prefer that design over the breadbin, so I really hope that official recreations will be made available as well, just like the C64 Ultimate.

But I don’t use the C128 anymore and I don’t believe it would be as much fun as it was as a kid. And yet, it’s inseparably connected to the memories I have of my father and my childhood. I still listen to SID music from time to time, watch retro repair videos on YouTube or emulate the games I remember.

The Commodore 128 got me into games; games got me into computers and computers are an important part of my life.