The Commodore 64 and the beginning of my online experience.

After my experience with the TRS-80, I drifted away from computers through junior high school, but when I was in high school I bought my own Commodore 64 computer. I started programming again in basic, and I even got a pascal compiler for it. I started with the basic kit, but I added a 5.25 floppy drive as soon as I could afford it. I eventually got a 1.2 meg floppy drive, and then a 5 meg hard drive. For the time it was a pretty souped up computer. 

The biggest change in my life was when I bought a volks modem for it. It was 300 baud, and for the first time I was able to connect with other computers. This was long before the internet was available to the general public, so I was connecting to BBS systems. There were a number of BBS's that were dedicated to the commodore 64, but most of them only had one line, so if someone else was on the system, or the system owner was connecting to another system, all you would get was a busy signal. 

There were also several other bbs systems out there that were run on mini computers. M-Net was probably the biggest one in the Ann Arbor area. The two big things to do on a BBS was post on a forum, or download software. There was a fair amount of shareware out there, but there were a lot of software downloads that included commercial software. I was a poor teenager, so I didn't care. I wanted to try out all the programs I could get a hold of. I also wanted to explore as many types of systems as I could. 

I really loved being a part of the online community, but of course that wasn't enough for me. I saved up and bought the C-Net software, so I could run my own BBS. I also bought a 1200 baud modem which was so much faster than my original modem. I had a second phone line installed in my parents house, I setup the software, and posted the number out on several BBS sites. There was one small problem though. I accidentally posted the house number instead of my BBS number. 

Almost immediately my parents phone started ringing with modem squawks at the other end. Online users were notorious for being online all through the night. To say that my parents were upset with me would be an understatement. My dad had to resort to unplugging the phone at night before going to bed otherwise they would be woken up all night long. It probably only lasted a week or so, but it seemed like forever. I went out to every site I had posted and updated the number and posted on the forums letting everyone know of my mistake. 

My bulletin board systems was call Octavian System. I'm not really sure where I came up with the name. I think I just thought it sounded cool. The C-Net system was written in basic with wedged in machine language. The cool thing was that since it was basic, you had most of the code, so you could modify the systems yourself and add new features. There was pretty cool community off sysops around that would share their hacks, so it was really easy to get started hacking the system and make it really your own.

Being an introvert in school, I really didn't have a lot of friends. The ones I had were really close friends, but running a BBS really opened up my world. It wasn't like today where you have Facebook friends that you have never met, I actually went to a number of sysop parties, and met a number of the people who ran systems.  I didn't make any close friends from the experience, but it was nice to be able to at least put names with the faces. 

I ran my BBS until I moved out in 1985. I took my Commodore 64 with me when I shared a house with some friends from high school. I never hooked up the modem again, but I did do some programming. When I started going to college, the Commodore just wasn't enough of a computer for me anymore. It wasn't long before I really needed a new computer, but that will have to be another post.