What computer would you recommend for people who are just getting into the hobby of retro computing?

[potatohead]

1 minute ago, phoenixdownita said:

Even when you take a crap you hardly get to decide shape (aside mostly tubular), color (mostly brown-ish but I've seen me going Pantone™ at times) or smell (from "did I do anything" to "please someone call 911, my nose is under attack), with proper nutrition you may get ahold of a couple.

This is hilarious, and quite unexpected.  

[JamesD]

Okay, look... I don't HATE the C64 BASIC.
But if I want a beginner to get interested in programming, it's not going to be my choice.
When I was in high school, a younger brother of a friend wanted to show me something he'd done on his computer.
He drew a turkey on the screen with his computer.
You'd have though it was the Mona Lisa by the way he talked about the program he wrote.
So I stop by, he loads a program, and runs it. 
It's sort of a stick figure turkey made of lines and circles. 
But that wasn't the important part.
This 7 or 8 year old had drawn it out on graph paper, and had written the program himself. 
It was probably the first graphics program he had ever written, and seeing the excitement on his face was the coolest thing ever.
He was exstatic when I smiled and told him "That's awesome!  Good Job!"
I just don't see that moment happening with C64 BASIC. 
Simons BASIC or BASIC 3.5, yeah.  Just not what comes with the machine.

[JamesD]

11 minutes ago, potatohead said:

BASIC is also for people to get good use out of the computer.  Most things don't need to be fast.  Games are the hard case, obviously.

 

I know a guy who made a lot of money writing business apps in the Basic that came with most PC's.  I made a little windowing system for him.  One could be looking at reports, or inputting data, and it would pop up and display something and or take input and go away.  The whole works was text, monochrome display.  Those programs saved people a lot of time.  Was enlightening to see at the time when I was still beginning.

 

Having seen that, I came to realize BASIC is good for capturing knowledge and or automating some things.  One of the first things I did in BASIC that I went on to use over and over was sheet metal layout calculations.  One could measure a little, input some numbers and get back exactly what was needed to make the part, given material, tooling and other variables.  Did it on my Apple, then ported it to a little pocket computer I had.  The folding one.  Used it for years.  

 

On my Atari, I produced a basic inventory system for a guy down the road.  Was simple, but saved him a ton of time.  Everything fit on one floppy disk.  He could just copy for the month, file it away and continue...

 

Right now, if I were working in a shop, my Model 100 would be killer!  Lasts forever on a set of batteries, has graphics, a respectable Basic, and it would not take long to go through and put programs together to get whatever it is done, quick, old school, right.  That little pocket computer ended up making me a ton of money.  Later on, I wrote those same utilities inside a CAD system.  Not only would it do the math, but it would generate the entities needed for CNC processing.  Sold a bunch of those for a couple hundred a pop.  Got my first 386 that way.  Basic mapped right over to the simple language built into the CAD software.  All the skills mapped over, leaving me with some math to sort out.  Late 80's, early 90's.

 

That "Cosmic Aliens" effort is respectable!  That's using GET AND PUT, isn't it?  I always thought that functionality was pretty great.  A lot can be done with it.

 

 

The account manager program I wrote on the TRS-80 Model III for the high school could easily have been mistaken for all assembly.
The Model III let you set a scrolling area by changing a BASIC variable in RAM.  That made the header always stay on the screen while it scrolled down.
I embedded machine code to do the reverse scroll, and the thing just flew up and down when you used the arrow keys looking for an account. 
Then you could select an account with enter, make changes, and the total was updated accordingly.
I wish I had a copy of that, it was pretty cool. 

A local gas company had a BASIC program that ran on an 8 bit computer.  It made calculations as to how many gallons were in any of the different tanks they had at the facility.
That stayed in use till they sold out to another company a little over 10 years ago.
BASIC can be quite useful for certain applications.

[JamesD]

23 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

As we all know there are 3 variables at play:

1) scope

2) quality

3) time

 

you get to choose 2, the 3rd comes out of your choices.

 

Or, in a much more direct way:

Even when you take a crap you hardly get to decide shape (aside mostly tubular), color (mostly brown-ish but I've seen me going Pantone™ at times) and smell (from "did I do anything" to "please someone call 911, my nose is under attack"), with proper nutrition you may get ahold of a couple.

Totally tubular will forever have a new meaning for me.

[JamesD]

2 hours ago, potatohead said:

6803, but I digress.

 

I get the impression everyone knows best what everyone else should get out of retrocomputing!  Come on, laugh.  It's funny.  OF COURSE we all go for what we know and enjoy.  OF COURSE.

 

 

It actually wasn't about the 6809 vs 6803 mistake.
It was how far out of my way I went to repeatedly point out I didn't recommend the MC-10, only to have one reply after another from people address recommending that machine.

As far as recommendations go there might be one exception.
If you want to learn assembly, the 6803 is one of the easier to learn CPUs.
The 16 bit support makes a lot of things easier than the 6502, and you don't have to worry about all the special cases of what instruction works with what register on the Z80.
The code is very easy to port to the 6809, but you don't have to worry about some of the special cases where you can use or not use features on the 6809.
When I port between these CPUs, I often port to the 6803 first, then other CPUs because it's just easier to do it that way.
*edit*
Note that you can do this with an emulator, VMC10 is quite good and includes an excellent debugger that lets you step through the code using the assembler's .lst output
This lets you see the comments, labels, etc...
 

Edited October 7, 2020 by JamesD

[phoenixdownita]

18 minutes ago, JamesD said:

Totally tubular will forever have a new meaning for me.

I don't know what to say, sometimes it is rabbit day for me (pellets, pellets and more pellets), other days Montezuma's revenge (doesn't really matter I've never been to Mexico), then there's the day of the dingleberry, humans are a miserable race, only consolation is that I've seen my cat having a few issues of her own ("consolation" being a very very generous term because when she scrapes her butt into the carpet to get "the cat version of a dingleberry" sorted out I'm the one to clean the streaks ... glorious day awaits after that!!!)

 

Programming under the wrong management chain is like that, you know it's going to be crappy, but that's about it.

 

Note: I've been sipping me some Rum, so if the mods feel like "cleaning up" I would understand.

[JamesD]

37 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

I don't know what to say, sometimes it is rabbit day for me (pellets, pellets and more pellets), other days Montezuma's revenge (doesn't really matter I've never been to Mexico), then there's the day of the dingleberry, humans are a miserable race, only consolation is that I've seen my cat having a few issues of her own ("consolation" being a very very generous term because when she scrapes her butt into the carpet to get "the cat version of a dingleberry" sorted out I'm the one to clean the streaks ... glorious day awaits after that!!!)

 

Programming under the wrong management chain is like that, you know it's going to be crappy, but that's about it.

 

Note: I've been sipping me some Rum, so if the mods feel like "cleaning up" I would understand.

Drink more rum... please

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, potatohead said:

Having some graphics support helps a lot.  People can plot output, see math play out, all sorts of things.  It's one of the things that makes a BASIC nice.  And it doesn't take much.  Even just two colors is plenty.  

Yes. I had all kinds of fun discovering the nature of mathematics by plotting simple lines at first, then circles and spirals, then progressing to advanced 3D Bessel functions. It was a window into another world. In Applesoft BASIC of course. Sometime later I discovered Einstein Compiler and used its magic to convert those tiny 10-liner graphics experiments into machine language.

 

Today I can cheat by doing the same thing, but running everything at hundreds of MHz through and emulator. Fast enough to animate and morph them in real-time. Love it!

 

5 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

The sad realization is that no BASIC available on 8bits allows you to get any close to the games you'd try to reproduce. The 80s was the time of twitchy arcade games and BASIC just did not cut the mustard. You can barely scrape the barrel.

I quickly learned the difference between assembly and BASIC straight away. And I was ok with BASIC not being suitable for arcade games. Most of my recreational and productive programming was in BASIC. And I only used assembly to write small utilities or things to control the hardware in a certain way. Modem "drivers" and control tools. Clock interfacing. Maybe some graphics transition routines, text movement routines, AE Line mods, things like that.

 

My best BASIC works would have been the BBS mods and doors - For Tele-Cat and NetWorks. And of course the graphics experiments.

 

I also kept gaming and programming quite separate. Two totally different things. One night it would be programming. Another, game playing.. Two completely different mindsets. I never was interested in duplicating arcade games in BASIC. I let the pros do it and was thoroughly happy to explore the early virtual worlds they created for me.

 

5 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

So even if BASIC did get me interested in programming, that's really all it did for me. As I said earlier I had the chance to try for an extended amount of time both an 800xl and a ZX-Spectrum but did not fell I missed out on either with my combo C-64 and MSX ... they are all valid options to start on.

BASIC was an easy language and as a kid only half-way through primary school, I picked up on it with what seemed like moderate effort. Assembly was too cryptic (at that moment) and not all my buddies knew it anyways. But they all understood BASIC to varying degrees.

 

I learned Applesoft and one or two of the TRS-80 dialects. And to a much lesser extent Atari and C64. Not that they didn't fit my infantile needs or were defective or anything, I just didn't have the time to discover and exploit other platforms. Apple II was quite enough!

 

I also clearly recall that the features of Applesoft BASIC were totally irrelevant to me when I was in the catalog-reading phase prior to purchase. I was mesmerized by the 100 chips on the mobo. Impressive!

[Mr SQL]

23 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

 

Some of my friends did become professional programmers. I didn't as I didn't have the mathematical abilities. However, I don't see how using BASIC had much to do with a person's future success as a coder. It's a beginner language and one that typically isn't structured in a way that helps learning better, more advanced languages. Even then there were those who frowned upon learning BASIC at all because of the "bad habits" it encouraged. And of course, eventually it stopped coming standard with computers. 

 

And come on, my Apple II, Atari, and Commodore friends would have been better off playing fewer games and programming more? What does that even mean? As kids we had lots of time. You're not going to be particularly well-rounded if all you can do is program all day on your computer rather than doing other stuff with it. And goodness knows gaming and "sharing" back then led to its own type of knowledge.

 

And I love how the C-64's BASIC is being painted as the scourge of the BASIC language world by some in this thread. The tens of thousands of BASIC programs weren't coded under duress (and people continue to do impressive stuff with it to this day). It was perfectly functional and easily extendable. Using Peeks, Pokes, mixing in machine language, etc., worked fine. You could do some impressive stuff in a few lines of code like just about any BASIC.

 

And about 38K of free BASIC memory is somehow too generous and we should limit people to less than 4K to teach them to be efficient? What? Everything had to be efficient on old computers. We always came up against limitations back then regardless of what the machine was, be it a ZX81 or an Amiga 2000. 

Great post and perspective and all good questions.

 

BASIC was designed as a tiny Fortran on the Dartmouth Time Sharing system so that all college students and not just engineers could learn to program simply.

 

Chess is simple programming too with only about 10 commands but ensuing relational calculus is potentially so complex that IBM used it to find potential programmers before the BASIC experiment.

 

Putting BASIC on all of those home computers was an extension of the Dartmouth BASIC experiment intended for everyone, and the more challenging low memory footprints like 4K of RAM coupled with a capable BASIC allowed better development of potential.

 

Today we find some of the best programmers were influenced by these early duress coding constraints. Unfortunately many of the bright minds with potential who received a C64 may have missed the chance to see their potential fully developed in part because of the large 40K RAM available to BASIC and the direction towards a more consumer oriented gaming system like Nintendo.

 

Good point @JamesD about learning potential and there is a significant connection between the programming tools that were introduced to children's developing minds then when programming was "for everyone", and what we see Today when programming is only for elitists and consumers are just using computers to be pushed around by push content advertising.  

 

@phoenixdownita as to weather I would recommend the Interact - yes I would after reading the details about it's Dartmouth designer on this page here. And Simons BASIC is fantastic but not relevant as James pointed out - this was not a meaningful participant in the experiment like 30 million C64s.

 

[Bill Loguidice]

58 minutes ago, Mr SQL said:

 

@phoenixdownita as to weather I would recommend the Interact - yes I would after reading the details about it's Dartmouth designer on this page here. And Simons BASIC is fantastic but not relevant as James pointed out - this was not a meaningful participant in the experiment like 30 million C64s.

 

I of course had an Interact Home Computer and good amount of software and accessories for it in my collection (there was a reason I got rid of most of my collection - just way too much stuff), and again, it's not something I'd recommend to anyone except the most hardcore enthusiast. Depending upon what model you get, the keyboard can be decent to awful, and it has several quirks including a particularly low native resolution. As with all computers of that type - extreme outliers - you're unlikely to want to use it for much more than exploring its oddities and differences from other platforms. Of course, the biggest issue is finding them anymore, let alone finding them in working condition. This is one of those cases where going to emulation would almost certainly be better than the real thing for most people who are not already hardcore into the vintage computing hobby.

[potatohead]

1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Interact Home Computer

The one person I know who got started on one of these is an embedded software / hardware engineer today.  Earlier, I wrote about modest capability sometimes being a good thing.  Batari Basic is an example of how that all works.

 

When there isn't much, in a way the path forward to some goal is more clear.  People took the little bit the VCS offered and did something.

 

Machines like that Interact are kind of the same way.  They self-select for the people who get it and are looking to learn.  Others will move on pretty quick.  The one nice thing about that machine is the display is a simple bitmap.  So it doesn't do much, and text density is terrible, but it does do graphics too.  The minimum is there!  LOL, bare minimum, IMHO.

 

[potatohead]

3 hours ago, Mr SQL said:

when programming was "for everyone", and what we see Today when programming is only for elitists and consumers are just using computers to be pushed around by push content advertising.  

Today, Javascript and Python are for everyone.  Both can offer an interactive environment too.  It's a whole lot like BASIC and the early 8 bit scene in many respects.  Point a little kid at one of the browser JS dev toy pages and interesting things can happen.  Same as it did back then.  Put a kid in front of something that let them interact with the TV, and they could just start like so many of us did.

 

[bluejay]

I'm surprised the MC-10 was mentioned at all. It's much worse than the Color Computer. It's a budget computer; it has a horrible keyboard, no disk drive support, limited RAM, etc. The only going for an MC-10 is its BASIC, and that's not a big enough selling point to make it even remotely as good as something like an 800xl. A budget computer simply cannot compete with serious computers such as the Apple II line. The ZX Spectrum would be an exception as it was so popular and well supported even today.

[Bill Loguidice]

5 minutes ago, potatohead said:

The one person I know who got started on one of these is an embedded software / hardware engineer today.  Earlier, I wrote about modest capability sometimes being a good thing.  Batari Basic is an example of how that all works.

 

When there isn't much, in a way the path forward to some goal is more clear.  People took the little bit the VCS offered and did something.

 

Machines like that Interact are kind of the same way.  They self-select for the people who get it and are looking to learn.  Others will move on pretty quick.  The one nice thing about that machine is the display is a simple bitmap.  So it doesn't do much, and text density is terrible, but it does do graphics too.  The minimum is there!  LOL, bare minimum, IMHO.

 

Again, I'd never dissuade anyone from getting a computer that strikes their fancy - heck, the last few computers computers and consoles I re-acquired recently were an IBM PCjr, CD-i, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Enterprise 64, and CGL Sord M5, among others, so I'm on a roll with obscure and/or failed platforms - I just merely take issue with the suggestion that certain specific computers like the MC-10 and Interact are good choices for all but a select few people. Not everyone is cut out to deal with oddball keyboards, RF output, and lack of traditional storage options. That's where one of the more mainstream choices is a better bet, again, keeping in mind that there's no perfect solution and every platform has its pluses and minuses.

[potatohead]

All comes down to talking to the people.  And it comes down to what we know too, particularly if it's going to be a shared experience.  

 

No need to place a bet, given one can get a little info in advance of the decision.

 

"What retro computer would YOU pick?"

 

"Before I just say something, let's talk about what is out there some."

 

"Aren't they all the same these days?  Old computers?"

 

"Nope!  Things were all over the place.  You can get popular game oriented machines with spiffy hardware made today to make things pretty easy and fun.  If you are into hardware or programming, some of these older machines can take add on cards, or mods that can be fun to do.  Restoring them works like old furniture does too.  It's a labor of love there.  Ever want to program?  Or do you program today?  These old environments are lean and mean.  And we've got a lot of examples one can work from today.  Even game compos where people build and share their game creations and feedback to one another.  Some of these machines were quite powerful, others were just a bit more than toys.  Many different experiences to be had.  It's not like today where most computing related stuff looks and works the same."

 

"That's a bigger scene than I thought."

 

"Here, let me show you some of my stuff and what I'm doing right now."

 

[...]

 

"I just want to play some kick ass old games."

 

"Dude, you want a C64, or ..."

 

"Have always wondered how things work"

 

"Check out this Apple!  It's the PC before there was a PC."

 

"Did you know we used to get programs out of magazines at the grocery store, type 'em in, and play games, change 'em?"

 

"Grocery store?

 

"LOL, yeah was a lifeline for many of us learning and gaming."

 

"I remember...."

 

"Oh yeah, that's an Atari.  Let's talk about the different ones.  And you will want an add on..."

 

"What game do you remember from back then?"

 

"Here, you gotta play this!"

 

Etc...

 

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by potatohead

[Bill Loguidice]

9 minutes ago, potatohead said:

Today, Javascript and Python are for everyone.  Both can offer an interactive environment too.  It's a whole lot like BASIC and the early 8 bit scene in many respects.  Point a little kid at one of the browser JS dev toy pages and interesting things can happen.  Same as it did back then.  Put a kid in front of something that let them interact with the TV, and they could just start like so many of us did.

 

Not much has changed, really. There were plenty of options back then in programming languages and plenty of options in construction sets and similar tools that helped simplify a lot of the grunt work in designing software or games, and there's even more of that today, i.e., code-level stuff and click and place type of stuff. While we can pine for the days of BASIC on just about every computer - and certainly the lot of us here have that nostalgia - just like with gaming, I'd argue today is the best time to be a developer, whatever form that may take.

[potatohead]

And if one is interested in electronics?

 

Golden times right now.  Most things can be sourced for a song.  Kits, boards, components.  Want to build your own video game system?  Now's the time.  Hasn't been better.

 

Want to literally build your own retro computer?

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc

 

Start here.  This guy is taking people through the basics, and you can get kits!  Once you get going, you can add your own bits to it and make some of the same choices people made back in the day and learn some useful skills along the way.

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by potatohead

[doctorclu]

There is only one choice, the Mattel Aquarius of course.

 

 

[Bill Loguidice]

19 minutes ago, doctorclu said:

There is only one choice, the Mattel Aquarius of course.

 

Ha, I actually really like the Mattel Aquarius and have it to round out my Intellivision/ECS stuff. It doesn't mean I'd ever recommend it to anyone. ;-) The best part has always been the "convenient" placement of the Reset button.

[JamesD]

The Aquarius was a pretty good computer... for 1977.  That can be said for a lot of "loser computers".
To someone out there that "loser computer" probably started them down a road that lead to them to a long career in computers.

This video came up in my youtube playlist today.
Her experience getting started with an old machine is a pretty good example of why I suggested "THE C64" rather than the original hardware.
There's less to deal with getting started.

 

[Bill Loguidice]

13 minutes ago, JamesD said:

The Aquarius was a pretty good computer... for 1977.  That can be said for a lot of "loser computers".
To someone out there that "loser computer" probably started them down a road that lead to them to a long career in computers.
 

My "loser computer" comment seems to be something you like to go on about in this thread, so let me clarify your misunderstanding. If you read what I actually wrote and that I put "loser computer" in scare quotes (and then specified what I meant thereafter), I was merely referring to the fact that it was a computer that isn't considered a first or second tier (or sometimes third tier) platform and sold and was supported poorly in comparison, etc. So you can probably drop bringing up "loser computers" now unless you'd like to make the definition your own to mean something completely different than intended.

 

I've had and used more personal computers and consoles than just about anyone, so I'm the last person to discount any of them. They're all fascinating in their own way and of course as long as someone was exposed to something, that's always better than nothing, regardless of how weak the technology, how poor the keyboard, how badly it sold, etc. It can all lead to more things for the sufficiently motivated.

I hope that provides some additional clarity as we continue to drift further and further away from the OP's very clear 8 categories of what was desired in an old computer, as in there's never been any mystery or question of what that hypothetical user's needs were. None.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Bill Loguidice

[Arnuphis]

The Aquarius came out in 1983. And it was in no way any kind of success. 

 

And yes, since several posters have drifted away from the very clear parameters set by the OP lets remind ourselves of them.

 

1. Price. These retro computers can end up quite expensive, sometimes well above the budget a newbie to world of retro computing would be willing to pay.

2. Game library. Most people who want to get into retro computers are most likely going to want to play games.

3. Ease of file transfers to/from modern devices. It is quite a hassle to deal with old cassettes and floppies, so modern forms of file transferring would be handy.

4. Powerfulness(or whatever you call it) of the computer. A computer has to be powerful to be able to run fun games.

5. Ease of use. Who would want to use a computer that requires you to be a rocket scientist to operate?

6. Reliability. Newbies are probably not capable of repairing a broken computer. It can't just randomly blow up.

7. Video output. RF sucks.

8. BASIC. Some people might want to mess with a bit of BASIC. A horrible version of it won't do.

 

So the computer you suggest needs to meet all are nearly all of these criteria and not just number 8. 

[potatohead]

Still Apple 8 bit for me.  Meets all criteria well.

 

And I will just continue talking to people as they get into retro as I always have.

 

 

 

 

Re:  Video

 

That woman is great!  Totally entertained watching and hearing her do battle to play some games on that C64.  Maybe the barrier to entry isn't as high as we might think it is.  She was on a mission!  Got it done.

 

Nice pick on the Dell monitor.  I want one of those.  Prefer my CRT, but...  That's a handy, dandy screen.

Edited October 7, 2020 by potatohead

[Bill Loguidice]

12 minutes ago, Arnuphis said:

The Aquarius came out in 1983. And it was in no way any kind of success. 

 

 

The 1977 things was just JamesD's joke about the mythical statement by a Mattel Electronics employee that went something like "the system for the 70s". The Aquarius did always look really cool, though, and still does, so they at least nailed that part of it in my opinion. The little known Aquarius II (probably less than 1000 units produced) actually had a decent keyboard, but obviously never really went anywhere either.

[potatohead]

I've only seen an Aquarius in two places:

 

Online, peeps showing them off.

 

And in the pawn shop, next to the TOMY TUTOR, in the "pay what you want" bin.