[alkaloid]

I'm so grateful my father (RIP) came home with a Commodore VIC-20 from Sears in 1983.

We were incredibly poor, so my mother nearly killed him, but he insisted that personal computers were here to stay, and that his children needed to become acquainted.

Nearly 40 years later, he was right. I have made, and continue to make, a great living on these crazy machines.

[jhgb]

We were not incredibly poor, although we probably would have been considered as such by US standards (which I'm sure were quite different at the time from Czechoslovak standards). We did have to smuggle our C64 over the Iron Curtain though, so I hope that this counts as something.

[thrtythreeforty]

Stories like this fascinate me. (I've lived in the US my entire life so it's just completely foreign to my worldview.) What was logistically involved in getting ahold of one? And what were the "legal" alternatives?

[jhgb]

> What was logistically involved in getting ahold of one?

Having a grandfather who left the country in 1968 for West Germany gifting me one when we visited him.

> And what were the "legal" alternatives?

Buying one at an outrageous markup in an exclusive shop. I don't remember the exact number (although I could find it out) but the price tag was something like five month of average Czechoslovak wages at the time. Apparently in the US the equivalent would have been paying $10000 for one (in 1988, mind you). Of course in Germany it cost something like 299 DM or so...

[rasz]

In Poland for a very long time private ownership of typewriters, fax machines, radio transmitters and computers was illegal without special permissions (>3 year prison term). You have to remember this was the time CIA was smuggling those to Poland with the help of Church. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/world/reagan-and-pope-rep...

>The report in Time adds many new details, particularly the role of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Roman Catholic Church in opening networks across which telephones, fax machines, printing presses, photocopiers, computers and intelligence information moved to Solidarity.

Personal possession anecdote from book "High-tech za żelazną kurtyną. Elektronika, komputery i systemy sterowania w PRL" (978-83-8098-094-5)

>In 1984, "Informatyka" magazine, involved in the dissemination of these machines, reported on the adventures of Mr. Przemysław, who received in April [...] a package from his brother in Toronto, containing the VIC-20 microcomputer, power supply, cassette recorder, a set of cassettes for television games and English language learning and connecting cables. The Customs Office in Gdynia refused to issue an import license, stating that it could issue [...] only if the computer was necessary for the citizen's professional or scientific work

It slowly got better in second half of the 80s. COCOM relaxed import sanctions in 1984 on low end 8bit gaming machines:

"New Media Behind the Iron Curtain: Cultural History of Video, Microcomputers and Satellite Television in Communist Poland" https://research.utu.fi/converis/getfile?id=51338894&portal=...

>The breakthrough in the domestication of computers in Poland took place in the mid-1980s, most likely between 1984 and 1986. In the global context, this might have been relatively late, but in the context of the Eastern bloc it seems that Poland was within the norm. There are two main reasons behind this chronology: one international, one local. Firstly, on an international level, the embargo on 8-bit technology was relaxed in 1984. Computers had been at the heart of the CoCom debate since the mid-1970s, but – as Mastanduno reports – it was not until July 1984 that the embargo on the most popular 8-bit microcomputers was removed, even though at the same time new restrictions were introduced regarding various telecommunications software and solutions.

In 1985 you could finally legally buy 8bit Atari in Pewex - chain of shops exclusively accepting $western currency$. Personal ownership of western currency was illegal :-) but regime was running low on foreign cash to repay international loans so they came up with this brilliant plan of opening shops where you could spend your smuggled black market money semi officially.

>Secondly, on a local level, as Kluska reports, in the autumn of 1984, the “[Polish] customs office ceased to make it difficult for citizens to import microcomputer equipment.”

In 1986 weekend computer market opened up in Warsaw in rented School building. It ran weekly uninterrupted up to ~2012 with one location change. Interview with founder https://spidersweb.pl/plus/2021/04/gielda-komputerowa-prl-la... VHS recording from 1994 https://archive.org/details/gielda-komputerowa-na-grzybowski... Official 'Polish Film Chronicle' newsreel from 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxQqsqqH8ao

[protomyth]

Yep, we traded in our Atari VCS (2600) with 23 cartridges for an Atari 400 and two game cartridges (Missile Command and Pac-Man). He spent money that was in short supply to buy a 410 (tape recorder) and the BASIC cartridge. We learned to program and that made all of the difference years on.

There was a small slice of time where consumer, programmable computers were affordable to a large audience in the 80's and very early 90's. Adding to that era was the magazines that provided amazing content such as programs and news. Antic, Byte, Creative Computing, and Dr. Dobbs were the building blocks.

[biztos]

What I really loved about those magazines, living in a small town, was how they simultaneously showed you the variety of what was out there, mostly through the small ads, and the speculative future of the technology through the articles, while also giving a kid the ability to grow their skills Right Now in the form of printed-out programs.

[protomyth]

Computer Shopper was the last time I welcomed the ads. You learned so much from those ads.

[bombcar]

Before the widespread pricing on the internet I remember following computer parts via the ads in the local weekly computer paper.

DRAM was $32 a meg for soooooo long

[TacticalCoder]

Lucky you! I had the BASIC cartdrige for the... Atari 2600. It'd come with a joystick in two split halves which, if I remember correctly, you had to plug in the joystick ports (so one in each port). My memory may be failing me for it was a very long time ago. I still fondly remember the first lines I drew, in colors, using BASIC. One of my very first program.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I had BASIC for the Atari 2600 (called Atari VCS at the time). It came with two controllers that had membrane keyboards. There were not enough keys for the alphabet so you had to use key modifiers to type the full A-Z and 0-9 character set. It was immensely tedious and really a bummer to use. I’m surprised you got far enough to do graphics with it. I dont recall being able to do anything except every simple text-based things like:

10 print “hello”

20 goto 10

[robocat]

Good images of the manual and the keyboard overlays: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-basic-programm...

64 bytes of basic tokens - so program size was limited to about 10 short lines.

https://atariprojects.org/2019/12/24/try-basic-programming-o... with video of a program running: https://atariprojects.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/BASIC-V...

[TacticalCoder]

Yup I wrongly wrote "joystick" split in two halves but I meant a keyboard split in two halves. It's the same as you describe. I don't remember much: maybe I'm mistaken my memories of the 2600 for those of the 600 XL.

[flomo]

IIRC it didn't even have strings, but it did have drawing commands.

[IMSAI8080]

BBC Micro for me round these parts but same idea. The 80s were a golden age for bedroom coders and the various 8-bit machines round the world launched thousands of careers. The fact that the machines came with a programming language (and even booted straight into it) gave many cause to experiment. It faded out in the 90s when the concept of what a home computer was changed.

[btgeekboy]

We weren’t well off either, but my dad was able to get a decent deal when our neighbor upgraded. It was put into my room for lack of space - and the rest is history.

[bombcar]

For sooooo long the upgrade cycle was so short that you could live quite cheaply and comfortably by inserting yourself in the right place in the chain.

In college I’d upgrade every three to six months and sell the old system off to someone for a good percentage of the new hotness.

[synu]

Exact same computer, and we were poor too. I learned BASIC on it and basically never stopped coding since then. It’s strange to think about how different my life might have been without that computer.

[alkaloid]

> It’s strange to think about how different my life might have been without that computer.

Isn't this the honest truth.

[yawn]

Similar story. Learned Logo at school on a Vic-20. Loved it so much I taught myself Basic at Kmart by grabbing the Basic User's Guide off the shelf and typing stuff into one of the C64s on the display case. It impressed my dad so much he put one on layaway. Been programming ever since.

[iancmceachern]

Same story here, but with a Tandy 100 RLX. We sold our Nintendo NES to help pay for it.

[cgh]

Same, except it was a C64. Many happy days and nights spent learning BASIC and later 6502 assembly with 3 metres of snow on the ground outside and pitch black by 3:30 pm.

[haolez]

Same here. Got my 386 in 1994 (in Brazil nonetheless!).

[mlom]

i have a similar story about a 486 from the 90s. i have a lot of skills now and can do things many other people cannot, include make a lot of money if i want. but look around you, and ask, how does your personal wealth in this industry, which people are now forced to participate in to access basic life needs like food and transportation and social services, represent "progress" for anyone but you? are our operating systems secure? do they respect our privacy? or are we being spied on and stolen from by an increasingly ubiquitous industry with no conscience or self awareness?

[alkaloid]

> access basic life needs like food and transportation and social services

You are so very right. Do we even realize that smart cell phones have become a required utility? So 25 years ago I would have had a $50 phone bill instead of a $500 phone bill for phones that are required for me to do anything with my government, like renew a driver's license.

Many made fun of "Obama phones," but I think I understand the point of them. I'm not a fan of these phones (and technology in general) leaving people behind because they cannot pay for it.

> or are we being spied on and stolen from by an increasingly ubiquitous industry with no conscience or self awareness

In the name of "security." Yes, we are being spied on and treated as human batteries, just like in the Matrix.

[mlom]

no, people still act like mobile phones are luxury items. they're not. they're cheap, but rent isn't. it's very easy to be homeless and have a phone. all it means is that you can complain and be literally dying on the street but someone on some social media app will say it can't be that bad, you're on the internet :p a lot of "nerd" culture is still living in a world more than ten years gone, a world of precocious suburban kids on their desktop computers… it's not like that now…

(haha wow, speaking of which, hn edits emoji out of posts on this site, amazing)

[CharlesW]

> or are we being spied on and stolen from by an increasingly ubiquitous industry with no conscience or self awareness?

It sounds like you're equating "tech industry" with Big Tech¹, but the tech industry is not an evil monolith. Even Alphabet is not an evil monolith, Apple is a radically different beast than Meta, etc.

If you've decided that working in tech is default evil, you could choose a political path focused on breaking up and regulating Big Tech. But there are also plenty of good people leveraging tech for good, too.

¹a.k.a. "MANAMANA": Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, and Adobe

[mlom]

greed is evil, and i see you all every day getting paid to fuck up our world. i see you online and i see you in person when you try to spend your money on me and services i provide. you have not succeeded in distinguishing yourself, you are all members of a technocratic class enriching itself at the expense of our environmental resources.

[jgerrish]

  how does your personal wealth in this industry

The Living Computer Museum in Seattle is closing down. Paul Allen's estate, who gave so much money and built several Seattle organizations, seems to be focusing money elsewhere.

Like Bill Gates philanthropy, I assume they believe focusing resources towards vaccines and other general population philanthropic investments is more important.

The Living Computer Museum was unique. I remember especially they had a room set up like an old 80s living room with an Atari VCS 2600, and a window looking outside. It wasn't important in the sense of "progress", but it provided a shared historical perspective.

I hope whatever takes its place is cool.

I'm tired of moving.

[watersb]

What?!

The Living Computer Museum is unique in that they maintain running instances of the computers in their collection.

For instance, the only running CDC 6600 series (a 6500, I think).

What's more, they offer free remote logins on at least some of their computers.

If they were to shut down, we'd be in danger of losing a significant chunk of tech history.

[digisign]

Why is it closing down? I see it has been closed due to covid, but most places are now open with a few minor restrictions.

[mlom]

bill gates promoted one of the most brutal and polluting industries in the world, a complete environmental disaster rooted in slavery, with the phrase "a PC on every desk". he created a horrible and bloated ecosystem that has plagued our lives and he has just attempted to do the same with an insane biosecurity apparatus. i never want to hear any of these people's opinions on vaccines or anything like this again. they are dangerous worthless frauds. philanthropy is just what gates turned to after he got chased out of his own business for sexual harassment.

[cbm-vic-20]

I have pretty much the same story.

[hereforphone]

You may want to double-check the definition of 'incredibly poor'.

[madengr]

The kid down the road from me in rural VA had no indoor plumbing, but had a VIC 20.

I eventually got a C64, but that was after my dad brought home a IBM PC for a few months to do chemical calculations in a spreadsheet. He said it was revolutionary that he could put this machine on the factory floor reactor and develop plug-in-chug calculations for reactions.

He also contracted a local EE to develop a CNC marine buoy winding machine based on the PC. I remember talking to the guy as a kid and he said it was compiled BASIC. It interfaced to the gantry motors and servo system via a giant, custom control board he made.