After three articles about the different incarnations of the Commodore 64, it’s now time to talk about Commodore’s flagship 8-bit-computer, the amazing Commodore 128. Some may notice that I have completely skipped the C16/116/Plus4 series, but since I only want to write about the computers I own myself and those have never found a way into my collection, I’ll just suggest the respective Wikipedia articles instead. There are three different C128 models: the standard C128 you see in the top right image, the C128D with its integrated 1571 floppy and detached keyboard and the C128DCR, which is basically the same, but with a part metal case and some inner modifications. But this first of two articles is mainly about the original C128, which was introduced in January 1985 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, three years after the debut of the C64 and a breakneck development time of only five months.

Just a quick update what’s going on here on the blog except all the computer nostalgia: It’s been a while since I had decided to switch over all my websites completely into English, but the blog templates are still mostly German. Yesterday I finally started changing this here on the blog – fortunately I designed the template in such a flexible way that I only have to change some text descriptions in the code. What I’m not going to do, of course, is to translate all the older blog posts, but everything from now on will be in English, save for some very seldom exceptions.

While I was poking around in the template, I also did something I wanted to do a long time ago: I changed the links in the top menu bar from the old HTML parts of the website to the blog categories. That means that the buttons Books, Music, Computer, Games and Sim now point to the respective blog categories instead of the very old and only half-finished HTML-only parts of the site. DVDLog and Foto will continue to redirect to the two external sites, though. This is only a temporary measure – the grand plan is still to make dedicated landing pages for these sections which will display the latest blog postings from the category, but also will have their own menus and subpages. I haven’t deleted the old pages from the server, they’re still there – only they’re not linked from the main menu anymore.

The first section which I will probably work on is the Computer area. The current Vintage Computing postings will be a basis for the Commodore section, but the goal is to create a full computer history almost up to the present day. The other “microsites” will be created when I have time or just when I feel like it – the bottom line is still that this whole website has been under construction since I first started it in 1998 and it probably always will be. It’s been fun so far and I see no reason to stop tinkering with the website :-).

Last week I wrote about the original Commodore 64 in its breadbox shape, which was almost, but not fully retired in 1986 when the C64-II with the new modern case designed after the C128 was introduced. While the new C64-II was overall a success, there was some backlash about the new case which was not liked by everyone. Commodore listened to its customers and in 1987 brought back the old breadbox case, but now in a slightly different colour and with the same mainboard as the C64-II. The look was a hybrid between the two generations of Commodore computer design from the brown tones of the early 1980s and the new beige cases first seen with the C128 and the Amiga in 1985.

In the previous post, I had written about my own original Commodore 64 from 1989, which was actually the very last model sold, a C64-II. Many years later, around 2003, when I already had acquired a C128D as a replacement for my broken floppy drive, I decided to get some more of the Commodore hardware I never had, specifically an original C64 of the first generation. In those days there were plenty of C64 auctions on Ebay to choose from and finding specific models like the one in this photo was not difficult, but this computer still needed a little work to be museum-worthy.    

In October 2012, I had written a blog post with a collection of Google+ Hangouts, which I had last updated and translated into English about a year ago. Since it’s been a while and some things have changed, it’s time for another updated and revised edition, which now includes not only on-air hangouts, but also a couple of Podcasts from an earlier article I had originally written in German only. It does not matter if you have time to watch hangouts live, because everything is archived and together with the enormeous archives of the podcasts there is a lot to discover. With this collection, you can fill your media player queues for years!   

Two years ago, at the end of the second live broadcast of Astronomy Cast, Pamela Gay and Nicole Gugliucci announced their amazing citizen science project CosmoQuest, in which, of course, also many other amazing people are involved. Myself, I didn’t even notice it until much later, but when watching some early Astronomy Cast videos last year, I discovered that the moment of announcement on January 1st, 2012 was actually preserved for posterity in the video I’ve embedded below.

So, this is where it all began two years ago. I hope that CosmoQuest will have a bright future, despite all the recent funding problems. But they all have done so much and built such a momentum that I think cannot be stopped that easily!

For my last blog posting of 2013 I decided on something unusual. Because it was really the year of Google+ for me, I shared out a few of my circles over there in the last few days. This was not an easy decision, because although Google+ is all about circles, I have to admit that I’m not a big circle sharer. This is mainly because my own collection of circles is rather chaotic, but I chose five of my most important circles to share at the end of this year to highlight and thank all the amazing people I’ve met there. I actually shared the circles yesterday directly on Google+ and this is just a blog article collecting those posts together, but this will be the start of a regular feature. But before we come to the circles…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Photography Essentials – This one is my “small” Photography circle of people I mainly found in the beginning about one year ago. These are people whose posts I don’t want to miss even when I don’t have time to look at all the other circles. Don’t be angry if you’re not in there – there are two more much bigger photo circles coming up after this!

Photography One – This is the first part of my “big” hand-picked Photographer circles. Everybody from the Essentials circle is also in here, plus everyone I noticed in other circles, who plussed or commented on my posts or who I learned to know through other people. If you’re not in there, either I haven’t noticed you yet or you don’t fulfil my one requirement: you have to post your own work. There are only original photography content creators in here

Photography Two – The second part of my “big” Photographer circle. I had to split it to be able to share it because of the 500 user limit. This second circle is the one I constantly add new people to and maybe I’ll post an updated version once in a while!

Science, Space & Astronomy – One of the other things I try to get involved in, or at least promote, is everything about these three fields and for this reason I have a hand-picked circle with everything about science, spaceflight and exploration and astronomy around. It’s a relatively low-noise group, but everyone from space journalists and scientists from the CosmoQuest / Universe Today crowd, many astronauts and a lot more people are in there. If you want even more, have a look at Fraser Cain’s Super Science Circle, on which my circle is, of course, partly based on.

Astrophotographers – There is some overlap with the Science circle, but I chose use a separate circle for astrophotography to see all the beautiful images in one place. Credit where credit is due, though: this circle is also based, but not completely similar, to one with the same name originally shared by Fraser Cain.

This is just the beginning, let’s see what 2014 will bring…! :-)

Instead of continuing my Commodore story in the Vintage Computing series, I’m going to take a break this week between the holidays and write about some fantastic books and other material, both new and old about the computers of yesterday.

The first entry is a book I found about one year ago through a Slate article – the seemingly cryptic title 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 refers to a tiny BASIC program running on the Commodore 64 that produces an instant maze line by line on the screen, like you can see it in the image on the right (click on it to enlarge). This program is why I love the simplicity of the old Commodore computers – you just can’t do something like this on a modern PC! The book is not strictly about programming, but about programming and computer culture – it takes the one-line program as a basis for a stroll through the computer history of the 1970s and 1980s. Sometimes things get a little too overanalyzed, but on the whole 10 Print… is very fascinating. The PDF is thankfully free to download on the website of the book, but a very pricey printed version is also available.

Another interesting free book is again not solely about programming, but about the games industry of the 1980s is It’s Behind You: The Making Of A Computer Game from Bob Pape. It’s not even Commodore-related, because the author was responsible for the port of R-Type, a popular shoot’em’up console game, for the ZX Spectrum, but for his very interesting and fascinating tale I’ll gladly make an exception even if I know next to nothing about the innards about that other 8-bit machine.

Those are the two newer free books, but if you are looking for more vintage computer books and magazines, I also found some great places on the web. Note that these digital republications are technically copyright violations, but considering their age the downloads at the following links can probably be seen as fair use nowadays.

DLH’s Commodore Archive has literally thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of old books about just every Commodore computer ever built. The collection is awesomly extensive and even contains a vast archive of manuals for all sorts of software and hardware. There is also a fair amount of software in the form of diskimages including a collection of disk- and tape-magazines. The primary language is English, but there are also a few books available in other languages like German.

64’er Online provides a near-complete PDF archive of the German 64’er Magazin with the blessings of the publishers, or more exactly their successors. The original Markt & Technik has long ceased to exist and the name was even eradicated this year when the parent company chose to give up publishing. But this website has almost every issue of the 64’er Magazin from April 1984 to January 1999 – the only drawback is that for legal reasons all the wonderful vintage ads had to be blurred out. But the articles are all intact and are today of great historical value, providing an exciting chronicle of the Commodore 64 and 128 in the 1980s and 1990s. A similar archive can be found here, which also has the Sonderhefte, which are missing on the 64’er-Online website.

The C64 Base is hosted by a pecuilar storage site, but I found the link while searching for old manuals – and this site has them aplenty. There are also tons of books, magazines and advertisements in many languages and even a huge software archive is somewhere inside the directory structure. I’m not entirely sure if this can still be described as completely legal or if it was even meant to be public, but I’m willing to take the risk of linking to it because there is so much amazing history in there. I can’t guarantee that there is not something dubious hidden somewhere in there, but to me it looks like a legitimate endeavour to save historical documents which otherwise would be lost forever.

I was debating about posting this, but since +Scott Lewis has already shared another version of the song, which is sadly blocked here in Germany, over on Google+, I’ll just do it too with an alternate working link. I think White Wine in the Sun is one of the greatest modern Christmas songs ever written and expresses my feelings about the season perfectly. I know that Tim Minchin can be pretty caustic when it comes to Religion, but this is definitely not one of those songs! This video is a fan-recorded version from the end of Brian Cox’ and Robin Ince’s Uncaged Monkeys live show from 2011 at the Brighton Dome and features Professor Brian Cox at the piano and Tim Minchin on guitar and vocals.

If you’re still here at this point, you can also watch one of my other favourite Christmas songs called Woody Allen Jesus, also from Tim Minchin. This one actually caused a lot of controversy when exactly this performance on the Jonathan Ross Show was cut out at the last minute out of the TV broadcast by the ITV bosses in 2011. Tim Minchin himself uploaded it onto his own Youtube account, this upload is just one with a corrected aspect ratio. There are other performances around, but I think this original is the best and freshest one.

And maybe something more traditional in closing: Pamela Gay in her alter ego persona Pamela Quevillon has recorded a wonderful reading of a less known Charles Dickens story called The Christmas Tree. And with this I wish everyone Happy Holidays again!

I’d like to wish all family, friends, regular readers, commenters and all other visitors Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year or any other holiday greetings you prefer! Myself, I like Happy Newtonmas because Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, but I’m very democratic in that respect.

At this time I usually write a longer retrospective article about what’s going on here on the websites, but I think I will skip it this year and just say that the last twelve months may not have been very productive from my angle, but it was still a blast. I’ve written lots of blog posts about a multitude of things here, posted several daily photos over on the Photography Blog and the only thing I didn’t really manage is write more movie and dvd reviews over on DVDLog, but since I’ve been busy everywhere else including Google+, I think that can be excused. Connecting to other people all over the world via social networks has been a lot of fun this year – especially the photographer and science communities on Google+ are amazing to say the least. Oh yes, and I’ve begun to switch my websites completely over from German to English, a process which has still not completely finished.

Instead of taking a complete break between the holidays, I’m only going to put DVDLog into a winter hiatus until February and keep on posting a few photos and collected galleries on the Photo Blog. I will also be sharing some of my Google+ Circles over the holidays which I will afterwards collect here in a blog posting sometime at the end of the week. In a more leisurely and relaxed time, there will also be new and updated version of my hangouts and podcasts recommendations with some special thanks to all the wonderful people who have been tirelessy creating amazing content all year.

So, have a nice and relaxing winter holiday, everyone – I’m going to be semi-around in the next few days and will be taking everything very easy.