…so I enjoyed this article from the Globe and Mail.
I hadn’t heard the acronym TPUG in years. It brought back a lot of memories.
Through the 1980s I had two C64s, then a C128 (which lasted me until I bought my first PC in 1993), and the only formal computer course I ever took used Commodore PETs. I played with an Amiga for a while, though I never owned one.
When I bought my first C64 it was in preference to an Apple II. It cost $895 Can., ca. 1980, and the 1541 Disk Drive was another $895. It came with a little apple core pendant: Commodore was taking a bite out of Apple, you see. (I wonder where that went? It might be collectable.)
The first word processor I ever owned was PaperClip for the Commodore 64. I’m pretty sure my novels Soulworm, Spirit Singer and The Dark Unicorn were all written in PaperClip. So was Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, I think. (Any of them that weren’t were written on one of those other old-fashioned thingamajiggies…oh, yeah, “typewriters,” that’s what they were called.) A lot of my early books have chapters that, not coincidentally, are exactly as long as the maximum file size you could have on PaperClip–10 to 12 pages.
Ah, the good old days…these are the kinds of things we early computer adopters will be telling our grandchildren some day.
Not quite the same as walking to school barefoot through the snow uphill both ways, but it’s the best we’ve got.
