Into computing? The Commodore 64 will be out for Christmas

“The full-size Commodore 64 reissue will be available from 5 December, priced at £109.99 ($119.99) – considerably less than the $595 it cost when first introduced in 1982.”

I was personally a Ti-99/4a man, but I have to admit, my friends with Commodores could write circles around me in Basic.

True story: I was maybe 13, and I saved my money to buy the TI, but it didn’t come with a monitor. Monitors weren’t even a thing. So I was like, wtf do I do now? I happened to be walking by a garage sale and they were selling an old black and white TV and it had the right ports on the back (really, it was the same ports as every TV had, looking back). Anyway, I picked it up for like $5, lugged it home and hooked it up to my spanking new computer. And LO AND BEHOLD it worked! So there I am, writing little random number generators and GOTO and PRINT routines, real heady stuff. My folks though, man this kid is going places.

Well little did they realize the TV part of the TV? Still worked. So every Sunday night after they’d hit the rack (my folks were early generation boomers, so Sunday night bedtime for them was like 9 pm along with every other oldster in town), I’d wait a while and then fire that thing up. If they happened to see the glow, well, that was just me teaching myself the brave new world of computer technology, right? What it really was, however, was British TV – Kenny Everett at 10, Monty Python at 10:30 Dr. Who at 11, and Dave Allen At Large at midnight. Far as I know, they never knew.