boards became instrumental in bringing smaller cliques of users together.
Some Commodore 64 software displayed intro screens from these small groups
- groups that never actually 'cracked' copy protection but were merely
groups of kids who gathered to collect and to play games.

Whereas much of the Commodore PET and Vic-20's software culture was
homemade software, the Commodore 64 offered great amounts of commercial software. The C64 was a gamer's delight with games bring produced by
companies such as Epyx, Activision, Ocean and Broderbund. By now there
were many people who knew how to program in 6502 machine code and who had experience in creating software on the PET and Vic-20.

All across North America and Europe, teenagers with their Commodore 64 computers were hacking away into the night. Some of them would sell their games to small software houses while others formed their own software companies. The games that many of us played weren't designed by adults;
they were designed by teenagers who'd grown up on the Commodore series.

There was now enough software out there to perform any task that you'd want
- games, spreadsheets, word processing (Paperclip) and GEOS. Programming
for fun and for learning purposes seemed to take a back seat to the gaming.
I think part of the reason was that there was no longer a necessity for creating your own software because others were now doing it for you. This isn't to say the C64 didn't still have casual programmers who made software
for fun or for their own purposes, TPUG continued to release C64 homebrew software. My brother was never a game player, he continued to focus on programming and created a word processor and a machine language decompiler
for the C64. We still have those disk images.

I ended up meeting two brothers who lived nearby me. I met them
coincidentally through a friend who ran his own C64 BBS. That friend had
also been introduced to me by another mutual C64 friend. The brothers
wrote their own bulletin board system (BBS) which was comparable to any
other C64 BBS on the market. It was a great piece of work and they ended
up selling copies to local kids to run their own BBS systems. Commodore 64 BBS's became a central meeting place for many local teenagers. This was
for many people, their first online interaction with others.

By the 1990's the majority of software manufacturers had left the C64 as
had many of the kids who used to own them. Software was still being
released although not as frequently. The world was moving on. Now people
were purchasing 386 computers to use with Windows 3.1.

There are still many diehard C64 users and groups in existence. With no commercial software being produced some people would fix older games that
were never properly working. Other enthusiasts have produced hardware
devices for the C64 such as the DTV and the 1541 Ultimate which are sold online. There are new music and graphic demos being released and the occasional new game.

The teenagers who used to type in games from magazines and pass floppy
disks back and forth at basement copy parties are grown up now. They have families, careers and responsibilities to others - and the Commodore
computer is now a thing of the past. The baseball fields are a little
quieter as is the street that we lived on - outdoor play is not as
appealing compared to sitting on your couch with a video game console.
Young people can now have 1,000 friends follow them on social media of
which they might know ten of them personally. Online chats can be held
with strangers from the other side of the world and you'd never even know
if your neighbour owned a computer.

The Commodore computer was for many of us our entry into the world of computers. It was the entry into learning to use our imaginations and creativity. It also provided us with a means to meet new people in our neighbourhoods no matter what their age was. To me, it was probably the greatest social network of all time.

100 END

Editor's note: There were certainly TRS-80, Apple and Atari users during
the early 1980's. This article isn't to suggest that the Commodore
computer was the only means of meeting new people. That said this is a Commodore promotional publication!



*************************************
SETTING UP A NEW E-BAY AMIGA 1200
By Bartosz Debski
*************************************

In previous article I have compiled an Amiga buyer's guide. This article
is a follow up and focuses a bit more on what to do with your new purchase.

The Decision has been made, I want A1200. I have managed to buy one on
eBay and it finally arrived. My Amiga came with a power brick, mouse and a single Workbench 3.0 floppy. You may want to buy your Amiga with games and joysticks which will give you a running start but I did not mind to get barebones.

First things first. I plugged it into power socket and did a test. My Commodore 1085S monitor greets me with familiar 3.0 Kickstart screen.
Workbench floppy in and system is loading. All seems to be OK but my
workbench floppy clearly struggles and I'm getting read errors while trying
to open some tools. Either the floppy is bad or a drive. Surprisingly I managed to buy a cleaning floppy from Maplins (UK electronic shop) but
there are still plenty on eBay. Although I did not want to wait and price
was actually good from Maplins. To my relief the cleaning floppy did the
job and my drive now works fine. Bit of overall cleaning and I'm quite confident that my purchase was worth it. The Computer also came with a
mouse. The Mouse was in need of new switches for the buttons though.
Another eBay purchase (new switches), soldering iron and about 10 min of
work, now my mouse feels like new now.

Now I have got my hardware ready but what's next? Games are my primary
reason why I got my Amiga and my plan is to install HDD in form of a CF
card with an adapter. To use a hard drive you need to have a Workbench OS.
If your Amiga did not come with a disk set, you have got three options.
First one is to order from AmigaKit a Workbench 3.1 disk set. This is a genuine way and the disks will come with a serial number which you can
activate in order to have support from Cloanto.

The Second and probably most complete solution is to get from AmigaKit a pre-installed CF card with Workbench on it. You can also get an adapter
and a cable. All you need to do is to plug that into your computer and the system is ready to use.

The Third option is to purchase AmigaForever. This way you can get,
legally, the Workbench and Kickstart files and prepare your CF card on your modern PC. AmigaForever also gives you an UAE emulator for Amiga which is
a great software on its own.

If you haven't bought option two, then you will need a 4GB CF card, 44pin
ATA to CF card adapter and 44pin ATA cable. eBay is your friend, but not
all CF cards are suitable; so bit of research is needed before purchase. I bought a disk floppy set and prepared my CF card on the Amiga. It takes
less than 10 minutes to do and system is ready.

Next stop WHDLoad.

Getting extra software onto your new hard drive can be a bit tricky.

The Easiest way is to get it through UAE. There are plenty of videos
online on how to do it. Your HDD can be mounted and UAE will load your
system. Alongside your disk, UAE will mount normal folders as hard drives which will allow you to transfer files and install software. There are
other ways of transferring the files like via data cable, PCMCIA network
card or another CF cards and PCMCIA adapter but UAE is the most convenient.

WHDLoad is free but it can be registered for £15. Some games will not work
on the unregistered version and I deeply advise you to register. Think
about it, it will cost the price of about three boxed Amiga games of eBay
and you will support all hard work made to run most of the games from your
hard drive.

To run WHDLoad you need RAM. The 2MB in A1200 is enough to run plenty of
games but not all. Especially as AGA games usually require the full RAM,
and you might feel disappointed that your investment so far does not work
as you would hope so. To fully utilize the power of WHDLoad you need at
least 1MB of extra RAM. Unfortunately this is not a cheap upgrade. Your option is to find an expansion card with RAM on it or to invest in a PCMCIA SRAM card. The latter is still produced, and used with CNC machines so
those are not hard to find but you are looking to spend £60+. Expansion
cards are usually at least twice as pricey but you are not buying just RAM. Such cards also comes with faster CPU so investment is worthwhile.

As a strong alternative to HDD solutions you might consider Gotek USB
drive. It costs around £30, already flashed with new firmware and ready to
go. For about extra £20 you can get external interface so it can be used
as second floppy drive. This option is very convenient and hassle free but
it will only emulate FDD, nothing more. Load times or Kickstart incompatibility on few games are still present.

Whatever option you will invest in, your Amiga will be ready to bring your memories back or if you are new to Amiga world, it will show you how
amazing this world can be. For me, whole process of getting my computer
ready is great on its own right. Searching the internet for parts, guides
and reminding myself what games i have played creates that great feeling
that i think is somewhat lost with modern PCs.

COMMODORE FREE EDITOR NOTE: I think the PCMCIA memory card only operates
at 16bit on the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 600 so may slow down your machine, (comments are welcomed on this) but the best advice is, to fit memory via
the "trapdoor" as it's called or port on the bottom of the machine


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