Haha, this thread could run for months. I believe the limit on chars was 2 lines on a c64 as it had a 40 char display and the Vic 20 would let you bump up to 3.5 lines before it went "NO WAY!"
The beauty of the C64 was (despite what some people think was a hinderance) the direct use of poke/peek statements to do anything as it made the transition from using Basic to 6510 assembly a lot easier. Admittedly it was a crap basic on the 64 but, if you weren't used to anything else (like me upgrading from a Vic 20), was perfectly useable. There were cartridges with extended basic commands as I recall, anyway.
I can still remember wiring a pressure mat buzzer into joystick Port 2 on the C64 and writing my first assembler program that would check for movement right on the joystick (someone stood on the mat under my bedroom carpet) then it would flash the screen a multitude of colours and display "Get out of my room, you b*tch!!"
This was my way of letting my sister know I was onto her for stealing my records :-)
If I'm honest there were good points about both machines - and towards the end of its life there was some incredible stuff coming out for the spectrum considering its sound and graphic limitations. But I'll always consider my original C64 (and later amiga 500/1200) as the greatest machines in my computer history.
Sure, we've all got PC's now but who honestly regards them with the same affection they held of their old 8 bit machines? My C64 was like my little brother I played with it so much. Now the computer I'm writing this on is just a tool.
The beauty of the C64 was (despite what some people think was a hinderance) the direct use of poke/peek statements to do anything as it made the transition from using Basic to 6510 assembly a lot easier. Admittedly it was a crap basic on the 64 but, if you weren't used to anything else (like me upgrading from a Vic 20), was perfectly useable. There were cartridges with extended basic commands as I recall, anyway.
I can still remember wiring a pressure mat buzzer into joystick Port 2 on the C64 and writing my first assembler program that would check for movement right on the joystick (someone stood on the mat under my bedroom carpet) then it would flash the screen a multitude of colours and display "Get out of my room, you b*tch!!"
This was my way of letting my sister know I was onto her for stealing my records :-)
If I'm honest there were good points about both machines - and towards the end of its life there was some incredible stuff coming out for the spectrum considering its sound and graphic limitations. But I'll always consider my original C64 (and later amiga 500/1200) as the greatest machines in my computer history.
Sure, we've all got PC's now but who honestly regards them with the same affection they held of their old 8 bit machines? My C64 was like my little brother I played with it so much. Now the computer I'm writing this on is just a tool.