The term "personal computer" and short-form "PC" go back well before IBM's PC in 1981. In 1978, the PET was one of the leading PCs; the "P" in PET even stands for Personal!
Goes back much older than that. Only "personal computer" was a descriptor used in advertisements. I'm pretty sure some ads in the late 1950's for the Casio calculator and LGP-30 said personal computer. Back then it meant one person can operate it. By the time the PET came out all computers were personal computers besides mainframes. Minicomputers from the 70's were basically giant Commodore 64's. I think the term "micro-mini" us better for the IBM PC. Small like a micro, but expensive, and designed more for business and not so much the average person.
@@64jcl I think its the opposite people who are younger or are older but had no computers before the 1990s don't know that there where these micro computer platforms like the pet or zxspectrum they only think there was always just pc and mac like today.
Wayne Green's most successful magazine was CD Review, a monthly mag which covered the active Classical CD scene in the 80s and 90s. They were known for their double ratings for CDs - 1 through 10 for Sound Quality, and 1 through 10 for the Performance. A 10/10 review meant a CD was particularly good, and if you ran a classical record store, you knew it was going to sell well. Because CD Review's review system was so popular with readers, Wayne Green became one of the most influential people in the adoption of the Compact Disc format, and major record companies really kissed up to him.
Don’t feel bad about missing out on an RPG from 1978, let me save you the trouble: What do you want to do? 1 You have chosen to fight. Missed! Goblin attacks! 10 damage. You are dead. Play again?
Yes, but consider the limitations of the platform. You just couldn't write a big fancy robot SHMUP on a computer like the barely extended ASCII-capable and text mode-only PET.
@@ropersonline Oh, @The 8-Bit Guy could indeed! Look at his genius game "Attack of the PETSCII Robots" :) Ok, it's not running on an 8k Model, but except the memory limitations, there was way more possible than this casino-like "game". ;)
@@GentryBa1 Nonsense. It's 2021, most of those old computers are irreparably broken, and they weren't that great to begin with, so why would anyone even want to fix them? There's just no interest in that when they couldn't even run Windows Home Basic, only PET Basic, which isn't as good. If someone actually made games for those old and busted platforms now, they wouldn't exactly be straining to fulfil orders; they'd be sitting at home all day twiddling their thumbs. Today's informed and discerning consumers expect nothing less than triple-A quality software, like Star Citizen and Cyberpunk 2077.
@@ropersonline That's your opinion... look how the prices went up for those old stuff. Sure it's not common anymore- but it's growing over the last few years.
@@GentryBa1 It's not just my opinion; it's the opinion of me and everybody else who was first in line to buy the Zune. You've got to bet on a winner, like IBM personal computers. And nothing Bill Gates has done has ever ended in failure.
"A lot of software was just sold in a little plastic bag." - For an instant, I imagined a clear plastic bag full of ones and zeroes like so much bulk candy.
If you think about it, all you're buying is just a single number. It's a really long number with many bits, and it took a lot of work to find it among countless other similar numbers that do nothing or crash the computer, but it still is just a single number.
more often - a printed card (typically black&$ white only) slid in the font, and a tape or floppy slid behind that. Sometimes with paper card on the top, folded and stapled like a candy bag - so they could be put on peghooks. I just miss those old "shareware compilation" areas at CompUSA and similar - they sold a bunch of floppies with shareware apps prerecorded on the disks, sometimes in a fancy display case - the disks mostly just disk+sleeve, any docs were on the disks.
Wayne was very famous in ham radio and passed not too long ago. His callsign suffix was NSD, which he said stood for NEVER SAY DIE. He was into collodial (sp) silver too. A very interesting guy.
I still have my 2001 PET from 1979, and it still works. My father, an electronics engineer, added sound to an otherwise mute PET, and installed a speaker in the monitor section. Many of his former projects live on, although he's been gone 20 years now.
4:59 -- I think they are actually different product codes. The instruction booklet is product 14P, the casette 15P, and the box 16P -- all packaged together.
@@jameschamplin1742 Ditto. I know at work (government contractor) we have to put part numbers on every individual piece of everything that goes into a product, in addition to an overall part number for the product itself. Not an uncommon practice for business tracking inventory, where individual pieces are provided by different contractors. You might be able to buy printed documentation booklets in quantities of 5, boxes by 7, tapes by 11 (numbers made up), so it becomes very useful for people who track such things to send a request to manufacturing to order another batch of booklets by a well defined product number, because you've run out of just the one part.
I like how much personality this instruction has. Today you'd get stock THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS. One of my hobbies is letter writing and I always feel the compulsion to write to those long defunct companies and see if someone will get it. Thanks to international post prices hike my will gets tempered. EDIT: hope you'll dump the tape into archive.org :-)
The most interesting part is the disclaimers in the manual where they disclaim the program can do anything other than cause acute aggravation. It's hard to believe that aspect goes back so far. These early disclaimers should have been thrown out of court the very first time a judge saw them. But because they didn't, they became precedent. There is no reason software should be exempt from any warranty laws.
I love the Davisburg, MI plastic tape reel clip. I pick my son up from Davisburg every week and there is not much in that town! Now I’m curious to go see if the company is still around.
If you start running out if things to make a video about you should try showing us how to add different words to the Commodore magic voice. It only comes with just over 230 or so built in words but as Gorf and wizard of war show… more can be added via programming. I’ve never seen a video that covers this topic. Anyway, love your channel. Always impressed with you programming skills.
1978, my birth year! This demo proves just how great magnetic storage really is. People always say that their old CD-Rs, DVD-R's and other media burned from as little as 10-15 years ago fails... yet here we are with an old commodore datasette keeping it's data intact for over 40 years. Amazing. Maybe we should be backing up all our modern PC's using audiotape :-)
I'd long wondered and regretted how there never was any system that treated compact cassettes like DECtape or ½ inch tape, with a real file system and so on, but then I found out about the Coleco Adam, which sort of tried that and failed.
@@8_Bit "[citation needed]" slash "reliable compared to what?" Plenty of tales out there from tapeland about keeping one's fingers crossed for a successful load while off having their tea. And I have a distinct memory of playing Forbidden Forest on tape at a friend's (because, as we've discussed, Cosmi sold a disk/tape combo and this was the friend who still only had tape in the mid-80s) and something going slightly glitchy with the load, so that the game never progressed beyond the snake stage. Fun for a while, in an absurdist way! But not an experience I'd ever had with the disk version!
4:20 Poor Sinclair 1000 people 4:30 That's not terribly uncommon in small municipalities, especially 45 years ago. Even today, if you send something to the Department of Treasury - IRS in Kansas City, they know where to send it, no need for other information. 6:25 Sounds like a pamphlet we need to find for your collection 8:25 Is their super glue acid free? I know the original formula is but it expands so it wouldn't work here. Just don't want to see it eat that tape. 9:00 I picked up a bunch of VIC-20 tapes recently and archived them to SD card before using them. Planning to do that? Would be cool to put it on one of the archive sites 18:59 You can now afford exactly one more vintage machine bought from eBay
The sound of typing on a pet always takes me back. So distinct, so lovely. Cool to see this unboxed and with those auction prices, no wonder you ended up with a casino game, hahaha.
Physical cassette quality was very important. I still remember some third rate companies making them cheap and were quickly unreliable (friction,stop moving). I could open them and put the tape in another first rate company casing (TDK, my fav)
The way CA bottles tend to apply much more than desired, I'd put a drop on some wax paper and use a toothpick to transfer a small amount to the felt pad mount.
I've found it works better in these tiny applications to add a drop of the glue to a piece of paper, then use a toothpick to transfer a more precise amount of glue.
Peterborough! That's two towns over from where I grew up. My mom worked for Byte Magazine in Peterborough so I wonder if she knew Wayne. She probably ran into him back in the day so I'll ask next time I see her for sure. Fun side note and tangent that's probably unrelated, but back in my BBS days there was the infamous "A.I.O" all-in-one hacker for doing all sorts of nefarious things with your modem (You could find it on all the local BBS's---I found my copy on the Cereal Port in Rindge, NH). A.I.O. claimed to be made by a "Joe King" (obviously a pseudonym, come on) from Peterborough, New Hampshire. Wouldn't it be fun if the people who designed this software were also involved with making the A.I.O.? Eh, it's probably a coincidence. I guess sleepy old Peterborough had some programming talent back in those days.
So i guess Instant Software was a software publishing arm of the main magazine publishing company, and people wrote their own PET programs from home it would seem. Would be interesting if Charles Stuart was still around in his 60s/ 70s and could say what the whole development experience was like and also how his programming career turned out.
My first computer was a Commodore +4 with a datasette looked exactly like this one only in different colour. That was anything but reliable. I had a hard time loading even original tapes. I had to adjust the head all the time though even that not always helped. At some point I was so desperate that I actually bought a head adjuster software. Guess what. It came on a tape. On a tape that never load after the first several succesful tries. Hillarious.
It's amazing how back then how awesome this would be, and also amazing today how AWFUL it would be. But I could see myself spending hours with this in my younger days.
This takes me back to the days as a kid of Radio Shack and I would play on all the old Tandy TRS-80's. And then I would grab my free comic book on the History of Electronics.
I still have the Chimera cassette somewhere for the PET. Unfortunately I don't have the original packaging. I'd say Instant Software was slightly below Cursor magazine for the quality of their offerings back in the day. Both of the Datasette units I have still work perfectly after all this time.
great stuff. I just missed these 70ies computer years and started having computers in 1985 but mayb an idea how to apply super glue: Pour a drop of that somewhere it does not matter and then pick up way way tinier amounts from that drop with a toothpick, a needle or whatever is small as that. THIS is enough to fix something like this fluff -thing in the cassette ;-)
4:21: Was this address sufficient because there was only one Instant Software in Peterborough, NH? And though not the case here (with the town's sole 03458 ZIP code): Wasn't it a thing that you could get basically your own ZIP code? Isn't that still a thing in places? Does someone know?
Could never figure craps out....and forget about baccarat. This program was probably submitted by one of his magazine subscribers. I still have some copies of Byte in my basement.
Street addresses/PO Boxes on mail were often only a thing in big cities in the early 20th century, and were not strictly necessary in small town post offices for much longer. Since the company name is on the card, and the zip code guarantees it will go to the correct post office, it would still get delivered -- and in fact would probably still be delivered even today since small-town post offices are pretty good about it. It goes back to the old days when you'd just address it "Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Muddletown, Commonwealth of Virginia" and a human would make sure it got to its intended recipient. Sometimes for clarity they'd include the name of the house the person lived in, just the name of the road they lived on, or their occupation to provide clarity in case they had a common name. You can still send mail this way to small towns, you don't even have to use a ZIP code as it's not mandatory, and your mail will probably not get dead lettered as long as the town has only one post office. (The sorting system in the USPS can infer the rest of the information as long as there is a street address OR a zip code OR there is only one post office in the town). I still occasionally see business addresses advertised for corporations without a PO box or street address listed, but with a ZIP code. The destination post office knows the company and knows how to deliver it. This only applies to first class mail. The rules for how you address bulk mail are stricter (for instance a ZIP code is mandatory).
I remember here in Finland you could get the post correctly delivered to one friend by writing the postal code, town and above that "the red house in the middle of field" - except in Finnish. It was a very small town and everyone there knew that house :D
2:37 I think James Bond preferred Baccarat. 8:28 So the pad itself doesn't perish? They do in 8-track tapes. 10:28 Is that a thing? Did the original PET 2001 have a different character set? 13:25 Did the old PETs have CHR$(14) and CHR$(142)? The main game doesn't seem to have any code to switch to uppercase from the lowercase of the instructions program. 17:07 How can you bet more than your bankroll? You're going to be in hock to the mafia! 17:29 What if you bet a negative amount and lose? Players should always do this on "Jeopardy!"! 19:05 You're a quadrillionaire, though apparently not the first: www.itproportal.com/2013/07/18/paypal-accidentally-creates-worlds-first-quadrillionaire/ (2^63 cents). 19:58 The PET screen seems to have a bit of a "persistence" effect.
re: inverted upper/lower case on original PET 2001, apparently! Check out www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/PETx/petfaq.html Search for "Original ROM PET have reversed reversed upper/lower case characters"
PC = "personal computer" and the Commodore PET is one of many PCs that had that term applied to them before IBM's PC: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers
I do get what you're saying, but no matter what we need some context to really know what is meant by "PC". In 1981, IBM called their machine the IBM PC because the term "PC" was already around. Then "IBM PC compatible" became a common meaning, but then that changed into "MS-DOS compatible PC" and then again into "Windows compatible PC" as IBM lost their leadership of this platform.
@@8_Bit , yeah it wasn't meant as critique, just that a video with our beloved Commodore computers should have the word Commodore somewhere in the title at least so that people can find your brilliant videos when they search for them here. Btw my experience is the same as yours here, I have a massive tape compilation for my C64/Vic20/C16/Plus4 and I'd say over 95% of the tapes boot still fine and some of those are getting close to 40 years old now.
There's a listing for a sold copy still up on ebay. Seems is was same author, but blackjack and roulette. www.ebay.com/itm/294021327408 . As Robin notes, these old pet games appear to be fetching high prices.
"Dollers" was spelled wrong in that Instructions program. 😏 I looked up his archived website from the Wikipedia link. Looks like he turned into a bit of a crackpot (ie nutcase) in his old age. At least he did something good when he was younger.
Now I had to go look at Wayne's old website too and wow... just wow. =o The man clearly had lost all sanity before he passed. =( Even sadder from what I can find, the author of this software Charles M Stuart died young. =( His mother lived until 2007, but he passed much earlier. I am pretty sure this is him: peoplelegacy.com/charles_m_stuart-415D3X From what I can tell Chuck Stuart was pretty active in the early PET community, and wrote articles for PUG's newletter, as well as for Compute! magazine. Later on he seemed to be embroiled in a lawsuit with a company that bought his software, then repackaged and resold it as their own. Chuck LOST the lawsuit sadly, due to how inept the courts were at handling software copyright back in the day. I can't imagine how that would have affected him. =( Though reading to the end it seems the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal in 1986 but I can't find any case law for a retrial so I don't know what happened after that. casetext.com/case/cms-software-design-systems-v-info-designs
6:50 you skipped over the worst part of that page where they disclaim the programs will do anything. This is the beginning of the software industry being nothing but a racket. These disclaimers got worse and worse as time went on. By the early 80s they had disclaimers like "we take no responsibility for any damage or loss of data, even in cases of gross negligence or deliberate harm" Of course, today, they basically say nothing other than "we can do what we like, whenever we like and by using this software you agree to arbitration and the rules set out by such arbitration" These are the earliest examples of how contract law turned into a racket.
While I find the subject matter very interesting in most of your videos and indeed the commentary itself, for some reason the style of only seeing a hand making motions while you are talking is triggering to me. I have tried to get past it, but it continues to trigger me. I suspect a static picture would work better for me. From a brief look at comments, I fear I may be the only one that can't handle this style. My loss I suspect. Anyway, I wish you all the best, and I plan to revisit your videos one day and see if I can get past my issue LOL.
The term "personal computer" and short-form "PC" go back well before IBM's PC in 1981. In 1978, the PET was one of the leading PCs; the "P" in PET even stands for Personal!
Yes I know this and no doubt many others on our age, but the vast majority consider PC to mean an IBM compatible.
I understand, but perhaps some of them will be curious to know what PC meant before the IBM PC.
Goes back much older than that. Only "personal computer" was a descriptor used in advertisements. I'm pretty sure some ads in the late 1950's for the Casio calculator and LGP-30 said personal computer. Back then it meant one person can operate it. By the time the PET came out all computers were personal computers besides mainframes. Minicomputers from the 70's were basically giant Commodore 64's. I think the term "micro-mini" us better for the IBM PC. Small like a micro, but expensive, and designed more for business and not so much the average person.
That makes IBM pretty ballsy to just call their PCs PC. Imagine if Ford made a new Sedan model called the Ford Sedan Car.
@@64jcl I think its the opposite people who are younger or are older but had no computers before the 1990s don't know that there where these micro computer platforms like the pet or zxspectrum they only think there was always just pc and mac like today.
Wayne Green's most successful magazine was CD Review, a monthly mag which covered the active Classical CD scene in the 80s and 90s. They were known for their double ratings for CDs - 1 through 10 for Sound Quality, and 1 through 10 for the Performance. A 10/10 review meant a CD was particularly good, and if you ran a classical record store, you knew it was going to sell well.
Because CD Review's review system was so popular with readers, Wayne Green became one of the most influential people in the adoption of the Compact Disc format, and major record companies really kissed up to him.
I can only imagine the kind of disclaimers he issued to the audiophile community.
Don’t feel bad about missing out on an RPG from 1978, let me save you the trouble:
What do you want to do? 1
You have chosen to fight.
Missed!
Goblin attacks!
10 damage.
You are dead.
Play again?
Get ye flask
You could make a "Casino II: Craps" entry on Twin Galaxies and submit your $1E+15 high score!
And then wait until you're busted playing it on an emulator.
@@F40PH-2CAT Billy, time to come in for supper... wait what?
It's kind of amazing what passed as entertainment software back then.
Yes, but consider the limitations of the platform. You just couldn't write a big fancy robot SHMUP on a computer like the barely extended ASCII-capable and text mode-only PET.
@@ropersonline Oh, @The 8-Bit Guy could indeed! Look at his genius game "Attack of the PETSCII Robots" :) Ok, it's not running on an 8k Model, but except the memory limitations, there was way more possible than this casino-like "game". ;)
@@GentryBa1 Nonsense. It's 2021, most of those old computers are irreparably broken, and they weren't that great to begin with, so why would anyone even want to fix them? There's just no interest in that when they couldn't even run Windows Home Basic, only PET Basic, which isn't as good. If someone actually made games for those old and busted platforms now, they wouldn't exactly be straining to fulfil orders; they'd be sitting at home all day twiddling their thumbs. Today's informed and discerning consumers expect nothing less than triple-A quality software, like Star Citizen and Cyberpunk 2077.
@@ropersonline That's your opinion... look how the prices went up for those old stuff. Sure it's not common anymore- but it's growing over the last few years.
@@GentryBa1 It's not just my opinion; it's the opinion of me and everybody else who was first in line to buy the Zune. You've got to bet on a winner, like IBM personal computers. And nothing Bill Gates has done has ever ended in failure.
"A lot of software was just sold in a little plastic bag." - For an instant, I imagined a clear plastic bag full of ones and zeroes like so much bulk candy.
_"Here kiddo, have some game!"_ **pours zeros and ones from The Bag**
_"Oh gee thanks Mr"_
If you think about it, all you're buying is just a single number. It's a really long number with many bits, and it took a lot of work to find it among countless other similar numbers that do nothing or crash the computer, but it still is just a single number.
more often - a printed card (typically black&$ white only) slid in the font, and a tape or floppy slid behind that. Sometimes with paper card on the top, folded and stapled like a candy bag - so they could be put on peghooks. I just miss those old "shareware compilation" areas at CompUSA and similar - they sold a bunch of floppies with shareware apps prerecorded on the disks, sometimes in a fancy display case - the disks mostly just disk+sleeve, any docs were on the disks.
Wayne was very famous in ham radio and passed not too long ago.
His callsign suffix was NSD, which he said stood for NEVER SAY DIE.
He was into collodial (sp) silver too.
A very interesting guy.
I still have my 2001 PET from 1979, and it still works. My father, an electronics engineer, added sound to an otherwise mute PET, and installed a speaker in the monitor section. Many of his former projects live on, although he's been gone 20 years now.
Did you get Attack of the Petscii Robots yet? It comes with an adaptor for a Super Nintendo controller for your PET.
I just turned 43 this week, had a heart attack a couple weeks ago, this tape works better than me after 43 years lol
Happy Birthday, and I hope you feel well again soon.
4:59 -- I think they are actually different product codes.
The instruction booklet is product 14P, the casette 15P, and the box 16P -- all packaged together.
Came by just to mention this. :)
@@jameschamplin1742 Ditto. I know at work (government contractor) we have to put part numbers on every individual piece of everything that goes into a product, in addition to an overall part number for the product itself. Not an uncommon practice for business tracking inventory, where individual pieces are provided by different contractors. You might be able to buy printed documentation booklets in quantities of 5, boxes by 7, tapes by 11 (numbers made up), so it becomes very useful for people who track such things to send a request to manufacturing to order another batch of booklets by a well defined product number, because you've run out of just the one part.
Hey from Peterborough NH! I grew up right next to there, always a surprise to hear that something comes from NH.
"...this one is not just a crap game." - Priceless!
I like how much personality this instruction has. Today you'd get stock THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS.
One of my hobbies is letter writing and I always feel the compulsion to write to those long defunct companies and see if someone will get it. Thanks to international post prices hike my will gets tempered.
EDIT: hope you'll dump the tape into archive.org :-)
Perhaps not the most riveting game ever, but it's always cool seeing new old stock stuff being unboxed.
The most interesting part is the disclaimers in the manual where they disclaim the program can do anything other than cause acute aggravation.
It's hard to believe that aspect goes back so far. These early disclaimers should have been thrown out of court the very first time a judge saw them. But because they didn't, they became precedent. There is no reason software should be exempt from any warranty laws.
I love the Davisburg, MI plastic tape reel clip. I pick my son up from Davisburg every week and there is not much in that town! Now I’m curious to go see if the company is still around.
If you start running out if things to make a video about you should try showing us how to add different words to the Commodore magic voice. It only comes with just over 230 or so built in words but as Gorf and wizard of war show… more can be added via programming. I’ve never seen a video that covers this topic. Anyway, love your channel. Always impressed with you programming skills.
1978, my birth year! This demo proves just how great magnetic storage really is. People always say that their old CD-Rs, DVD-R's and other media burned from as little as 10-15 years ago fails... yet here we are with an old commodore datasette keeping it's data intact for over 40 years. Amazing. Maybe we should be backing up all our modern PC's using audiotape :-)
The Commodore datasettes never cease to amaze me with how reliable and robust they are.
And slow! Or was that just the C64?
Tape was slow on all the Commodore machines, but at least it was reliable.
The fact that the datasettes still work after almost forty years without maintenance is a testament to their robustness.
I'd long wondered and regretted how there never was any system that treated compact cassettes like DECtape or ½ inch tape, with a real file system and so on, but then I found out about the Coleco Adam, which sort of tried that and failed.
@@8_Bit "[citation needed]" slash "reliable compared to what?" Plenty of tales out there from tapeland about keeping one's fingers crossed for a successful load while off having their tea. And I have a distinct memory of playing Forbidden Forest on tape at a friend's (because, as we've discussed, Cosmi sold a disk/tape combo and this was the friend who still only had tape in the mid-80s) and something going slightly glitchy with the load, so that the game never progressed beyond the snake stage. Fun for a while, in an absurdist way! But not an experience I'd ever had with the disk version!
4:20 Poor Sinclair 1000 people
4:30 That's not terribly uncommon in small municipalities, especially 45 years ago. Even today, if you send something to the Department of Treasury - IRS in Kansas City, they know where to send it, no need for other information.
6:25 Sounds like a pamphlet we need to find for your collection
8:25 Is their super glue acid free? I know the original formula is but it expands so it wouldn't work here. Just don't want to see it eat that tape.
9:00 I picked up a bunch of VIC-20 tapes recently and archived them to SD card before using them. Planning to do that? Would be cool to put it on one of the archive sites
18:59 You can now afford exactly one more vintage machine bought from eBay
The sound of typing on a pet always takes me back. So distinct, so lovely. Cool to see this unboxed and with those auction prices, no wonder you ended up with a casino game, hahaha.
Physical cassette quality was very important. I still remember some third rate companies making them cheap and were quickly unreliable (friction,stop moving). I could open them and put the tape in another first rate company casing (TDK, my fav)
"You win 1E15", that casino is now broke
The way CA bottles tend to apply much more than desired, I'd put a drop on some wax paper and use a toothpick to transfer a small amount to the felt pad mount.
I've found it works better in these tiny applications to add a drop of the glue to a piece of paper, then use a toothpick to transfer a more precise amount of glue.
Peterborough! That's two towns over from where I grew up. My mom worked for Byte Magazine in Peterborough so I wonder if she knew Wayne. She probably ran into him back in the day so I'll ask next time I see her for sure. Fun side note and tangent that's probably unrelated, but back in my BBS days there was the infamous "A.I.O" all-in-one hacker for doing all sorts of nefarious things with your modem (You could find it on all the local BBS's---I found my copy on the Cereal Port in Rindge, NH). A.I.O. claimed to be made by a "Joe King" (obviously a pseudonym, come on) from Peterborough, New Hampshire. Wouldn't it be fun if the people who designed this software were also involved with making the A.I.O.? Eh, it's probably a coincidence. I guess sleepy old Peterborough had some programming talent back in those days.
""...this one is not just a crap game..." Hope no one ever misinterpreted that!
You have such an awesome collection! Thanks for sharing with us!
wOW THAT WAS FUN! i NEVER EXPECTED THE CASSETTE TO WORK THAT WELL. cONGRATS ON NOT GETTING SUPER GLUE INTO THE REELS
Tapes are surprisingly good media formats, all of my TRS-80 Colour Computer games from early 80's still all work perfectly.
Thanks for the video. It was interesting to learn that Wayne Green had a software publishing company. I mostly knew of him for 73 magazine.
So i guess Instant Software was a software publishing arm of the main magazine publishing company, and people wrote their own PET programs from home it would seem. Would be interesting if Charles Stuart was still around in his 60s/ 70s and could say what the whole development experience was like and also how his programming career turned out.
My first computer was a Commodore +4 with a datasette looked exactly like this one only in different colour. That was anything but reliable. I had a hard time loading even original tapes. I had to adjust the head all the time though even that not always helped. At some point I was so desperate that I actually bought a head adjuster software. Guess what. It came on a tape. On a tape that never load after the first several succesful tries. Hillarious.
It's amazing how back then how awesome this would be, and also amazing today how AWFUL it would be. But I could see myself spending hours with this in my younger days.
Omg, man. Amazing work. Great videos. Gretings from Serbia ;)
This takes me back to the days as a kid of Radio Shack and I would play on all the old Tandy TRS-80's. And then I would grab my free comic book on the History of Electronics.
It's interesting that the mag tape still worked after such a long time.
Even in text mode, this is an interesting game.
Not bad for 1978.
18:41: You're such a chad; you're just flexing your quad(rillionaire)s(tatus).
I still have the Chimera cassette somewhere for the PET. Unfortunately I don't have the original packaging. I'd say Instant Software was slightly below Cursor magazine for the quality of their offerings back in the day. Both of the Datasette units I have still work perfectly after all this time.
Nice. The instructions actually mentioned the word "dollers" on screen. Not sure if that was intentional :)
I'm going with you to the casino! You were on a roll :) haha.
Wow, that game is as old as me. Time sure does fly.
The programmer was almost 60 when he wrote that program.
Wonderful! Takes me back to my early days with the PET. So this would have been for the 2001 PET I guess.
great stuff. I just missed these 70ies computer years and started having computers in 1985
but mayb an idea how to apply super glue:
Pour a drop of that somewhere it does not matter and then pick up way way tinier amounts
from that drop with a toothpick, a needle or whatever is small as that. THIS is enough to fix something
like this fluff -thing in the cassette ;-)
The dry humor is expertly done.
another hit of retro classic stuff
awww yeah that's the stuff
Hey Robin -- did you make a backup of the tape? I'd love to try playing this on my PET emulator :)
Wayne Green would be 100 years old next year.
When you head to Vegas look me up. I want to be a Kajillion-aire too.
4:21: Was this address sufficient because there was only one Instant Software in Peterborough, NH?
And though not the case here (with the town's sole 03458 ZIP code): Wasn't it a thing that you could get basically your own ZIP code? Isn't that still a thing in places? Does someone know?
Awesome ! Retro arc!
Could never figure craps out....and forget about baccarat. This program was probably submitted by one of his magazine subscribers. I still have some copies of Byte in my basement.
8:51 Pro tip, Standard pencil or a cheap bic pen is what you need.
What a time capsule! But BASIC still tastes bitter after so many years :-D
Wherever that was stored all this time, it was dry and it was cool. Likely someones basement.
Street addresses/PO Boxes on mail were often only a thing in big cities in the early 20th century, and were not strictly necessary in small town post offices for much longer. Since the company name is on the card, and the zip code guarantees it will go to the correct post office, it would still get delivered -- and in fact would probably still be delivered even today since small-town post offices are pretty good about it.
It goes back to the old days when you'd just address it "Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Muddletown, Commonwealth of Virginia" and a human would make sure it got to its intended recipient. Sometimes for clarity they'd include the name of the house the person lived in, just the name of the road they lived on, or their occupation to provide clarity in case they had a common name.
You can still send mail this way to small towns, you don't even have to use a ZIP code as it's not mandatory, and your mail will probably not get dead lettered as long as the town has only one post office. (The sorting system in the USPS can infer the rest of the information as long as there is a street address OR a zip code OR there is only one post office in the town).
I still occasionally see business addresses advertised for corporations without a PO box or street address listed, but with a ZIP code. The destination post office knows the company and knows how to deliver it.
This only applies to first class mail. The rules for how you address bulk mail are stricter (for instance a ZIP code is mandatory).
I remember here in Finland you could get the post correctly delivered to one friend by writing the postal code, town and above that "the red house in the middle of field" - except in Finnish. It was a very small town and everyone there knew that house :D
Is there a conversion program to get the old basic to work on the newer PET? Seems like a good thing to have
If you fill out and send off the registration card, I’ll do the same for my fastload by Epyx. ;)
4:18 "My Timex Sinclair was good for something" LOL nice cameo!
That game is still being sold as "coinbase" or something.
What happened to Casino I, strange how one of the first games was a sequel.
The suspense is killing me... need to know whether you safely put the lock tab back on the tape 📼. Should still be playable in another 43 years.
Yeah, it's back in, that tape is LOCKED IN, should be good for my grandkids to play.
Hello, tech support? So I've tried adding water, now where's the software?
James Bond plays Bridge, you insensitive clod! JUST KIDDING (not about the Bridge though, it is his game) :D The "not just a crap game" made me LOL :D
Almost too much.... Perfect.
Timex Sinclair 1000 got ROASTED.
Wow what does the circled P before the 1978 mean?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_copyright_symbol
That's sooo cool
Cool!
So ... Did you send in the customer survey to Instant Software?
is this game available on Stadia?
2:37 I think James Bond preferred Baccarat.
8:28 So the pad itself doesn't perish? They do in 8-track tapes.
10:28 Is that a thing? Did the original PET 2001 have a different character set?
13:25 Did the old PETs have CHR$(14) and CHR$(142)? The main game doesn't seem to have any code to switch to uppercase from the lowercase of the instructions program.
17:07 How can you bet more than your bankroll? You're going to be in hock to the mafia!
17:29 What if you bet a negative amount and lose? Players should always do this on "Jeopardy!"!
19:05 You're a quadrillionaire, though apparently not the first: www.itproportal.com/2013/07/18/paypal-accidentally-creates-worlds-first-quadrillionaire/ (2^63 cents).
19:58 The PET screen seems to have a bit of a "persistence" effect.
re: inverted upper/lower case on original PET 2001, apparently! Check out www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/PETx/petfaq.html Search for "Original ROM PET have reversed reversed upper/lower case characters"
I guess you should consider changing the title of this video as its not a PC game (as in IBM compatible) but a Commodore Pet game.
PC = "personal computer" and the Commodore PET is one of many PCs that had that term applied to them before IBM's PC: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers
I do get what you're saying, but no matter what we need some context to really know what is meant by "PC". In 1981, IBM called their machine the IBM PC because the term "PC" was already around. Then "IBM PC compatible" became a common meaning, but then that changed into "MS-DOS compatible PC" and then again into "Windows compatible PC" as IBM lost their leadership of this platform.
@@8_Bit , yeah it wasn't meant as critique, just that a video with our beloved Commodore computers should have the word Commodore somewhere in the title at least so that people can find your brilliant videos when they search for them here. Btw my experience is the same as yours here, I have a massive tape compilation for my C64/Vic20/C16/Plus4 and I'd say over 95% of the tapes boot still fine and some of those are getting close to 40 years old now.
I'm willing to bet the two just means it's craps for computers, and the game Casino 1 refers to the actual game at a real casino.
i saw those on ebay, i wonder if there is a tap file on the net somewhere, maybe zimmers.net...
Me too, but they were too expensive for my Canadian Pesos 🥴
What happen to Casino I?
There's a listing for a sold copy still up on ebay. Seems is was same author, but blackjack and roulette. www.ebay.com/itm/294021327408 . As Robin notes, these old pet games appear to be fetching high prices.
"Dollers" was spelled wrong in that Instructions program. 😏
I looked up his archived website from the Wikipedia link. Looks like he turned into a bit of a crackpot (ie nutcase) in his old age. At least he did something good when he was younger.
It seems an unusually high percentage of tech/computer people go that way if they manage to live into old age.
Now I had to go look at Wayne's old website too and wow... just wow. =o The man clearly had lost all sanity before he passed. =(
Even sadder from what I can find, the author of this software Charles M Stuart died young. =( His mother lived until 2007, but he passed much earlier. I am pretty sure this is him:
peoplelegacy.com/charles_m_stuart-415D3X
From what I can tell Chuck Stuart was pretty active in the early PET community, and wrote articles for PUG's newletter, as well as for Compute! magazine. Later on he seemed to be embroiled in a lawsuit with a company that bought his software, then repackaged and resold it as their own. Chuck LOST the lawsuit sadly, due to how inept the courts were at handling software copyright back in the day. I can't imagine how that would have affected him. =( Though reading to the end it seems the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal in 1986 but I can't find any case law for a retrial so I don't know what happened after that.
casetext.com/case/cms-software-design-systems-v-info-designs
that's a lot of money
I always wonder if Robin’s wife is fine with all his rarities in his collection. His house must a museum or hoarder mansion 🤪
All my old computer stuff is in the basement, mostly out of sight. The rest of the house is fairly normal :)
Instant Software… just add software!
DOOOD!
6:50 you skipped over the worst part of that page where they disclaim the programs will do anything. This is the beginning of the software industry being nothing but a racket. These disclaimers got worse and worse as time went on. By the early 80s they had disclaimers like "we take no responsibility for any damage or loss of data, even in cases of gross negligence or deliberate harm"
Of course, today, they basically say nothing other than "we can do what we like, whenever we like and by using this software you agree to arbitration and the rules set out by such arbitration"
These are the earliest examples of how contract law turned into a racket.
James bond played ba-ku-ra
Don't pass on a roll of 3+1.. and you still won cause the next roll was a 2+1.. that's lucky or.. just lucky ;)
While I find the subject matter very interesting in most of your videos and indeed the commentary itself, for some reason the style of only seeing a hand making motions while you are talking is triggering to me. I have tried to get past it, but it continues to trigger me. I suspect a static picture would work better for me. From a brief look at comments, I fear I may be the only one that can't handle this style. My loss I suspect. Anyway, I wish you all the best, and I plan to revisit your videos one day and see if I can get past my issue LOL.
#AddictionWarning
Only 20 minutes and you already broke a brand new, shiny boxed game that has been quietly and happily lied there all those years. Thats rude!