Experiences of the C64 Generation:

Sound of the Tape Drive
The Electronic Brother


Do you also have an interesting C64 experience to share?

Mail to: 64er "dot" online "at" gmail "dot" com

Sound of the Tape Drive
- Jan -

I think I was around 11/12 years old. Although I didn't had one myself my neighbour had a C64. So I do have some memories with the C64 :-)
It was really great sitting with all the neighnour children in his room and watching/playing games (like Pacman :-)).
The sound (noise) of the cassette desk when loading the game and having patience was really great when thinking back about that time.
My first computer was an Alcatel? or something like that...

The Electronic Brother
- Wintermute -

It happened during the 80s: my parents got divorced and now, living with my mum, I often talked to my father on the phone in the evening. During one of these phone calls he mentioned a new job where he had to work on computers. To get familiar with this brand new technology he bought a complete computer system for the home: "It is so exciting what you can do with these things!" He had a program where he was able to control a complete airplane. "The computer simulates everything: the instruments, the behaviour of the plane.. and the surrounding: you can fly through the States wherever you want.. almost like reality!"

During my next visit it was so astounding: "Commodore 64 Personal Computer" was written on a plate on the computer. But my father tought me; he uses it at work! Then we started flying with the flight simulator: the first take offs ended a few seconds later in the sea behind the airport. After a little practice, the crashes became better and ended in one of the sky scrapers near the airport.

After that, the C64 was "shared" during the visits.

Somewhere along the way my father decided to switch to an Atari ST computer and I was supposed to get the C64 - unbelievable!! But, at this time there was a tiny little problem: my school marks were unsatisfactory during the granding period of my secondary school. So my mother decided that the computer had to stay at my father's home for !!!one!!! year!

During this time I swallowed every edition of the German C64 Magazine "64'er". Some private lessons and a lot of home work later the goal was achieved: my Commodore 64 was allowed to come home.

But I was only allowed to use it one hour a day - just to make sure this demonical weird thing didn't decay my young teenage mind. With some tricks such boundaries could be expanded here and there. Despite my mother's concerns, the C64 also appeared to be useful for more important things like printing homework and learning the basics of programming.


Sometime later the C64 was replaced by a used 286 noname PC with 8 MHz, 640 KB RAM, CGA grafix card, green screen and two 360 KB floppy disk drives. But although the PC appeared to be a real professional computer system with DOS, 80 column display and amazing speed of 8 MHz the C64 time remained the greatest computer experience I had in my life: cool sound, great colored grafix, countless fascinating digital surprises and a lot of fun - all together in just one device, and already during the 80s.