[Story Researching] Commodore 1986 Questions

[Goggles2114]

Groovy. So I consider my last thread a success. I know a tiiiiiiiny bit about Commodores. However it's nothing I feel comfortable with so i'm just going to give an outline for the character I plan on having own the thing.

Not poor so much as 'not having a great deal of disposable income'. This itself is a problem since even with a far cheaper price than the Apples it's still $500ish for a c64 plus cost of floppies. Modems, anything else that would be needed simply to dial out and that's not even touching any hardware upgrades that might be considered 'essential'.

Then again as one of the posters in the apple thread mentioned, it's not the hardware so much as how you use it. I've seen some of the stuff on youtube and jawdrop at what the humble breadbox keyboard could do.

Then again I'd heard at some point the C64 price dropped to somewhere closer to $200 and I'm considering this character getting her mitts on one mid to late 85.

Now then, how would someone that not only doesn't have a college fund but who's family is more in the lower middle class side of things able to afford all this? First thought that comes to mind is taking out a loan. Far from ideal and it would mean the lady in question (or rather her dad) would have to plan Everything beforehand, and outside of maybe donations, trading work for parts, or something the initial setup is gonna be it. This is why she has made it a point to learn all that can be learned about what hardware she has rather than try going for the upgrade tredmill. She literally has no other choice.

Thought is, later in the story (or starting in one of the later stories if I go with a collection rather than a novel) she'd get awarded the computer club prize for the semester. Not sure what it'd be since i don't want it to be money and with said club having people that have everything from Apple][+, Vic20, TRS80's and God knows what else along with the consoles of the era I'm not sure what else it could be without somebody getting irritated. All i am sure of is after winning she is able to either directly or by trading for what she wants, get a better modem, and (if possible) get more ram... or possibly some otherstuffs.

Where the guy in my last thread is more 'substitute deep knowledge with MORE POWER' and is more a Power User than a Hacker this girl is a definate deep level hardware nut. She can and might pull burnt/broken/faulty chips and replace them with pulls from systems pulled from dumpsters. She'd be deep in either the cracking or demo scene, and she's proud of it too.

Only thing I'm unsure of is how they'd actually go from 'Apple is better' 'You have more money than brains. Look what I've done with my commodore.' to being friends by the time they both get dumped into highschool. Maybe finding something both of them agree is the bigger problem (like say... IBM? Ma Bell? How do you unite different factions in the 8 bit war?)

 

[barythrin]

Chronological Commodore timeline. Looks like in 86 the C64 may have been $150 new, though it would depend how one buys it and then what accessories. I think cassette tape drives were cheaper than floppies but for a hardware geek yes they'd want a floppy for the vast speed improvement in loading time. It could be that someone sold their c64 set for cheap when upgrading to a 128 and possibly upgraded their floppy drive as well. She could end up with a c64 and 1541 drive from an ad in the paper for a price close to a new c64 with no accessories.

Or maybe she did some dumpster diving and ended up finding some equipment that she pulled a few chips here and there and was able to make one working computer out of a few bad systems and drives that were discarded. The c64 used a 6502 processor so even pulling a dead Apple II out of the dumpster would give her a spare processor. The floppy drives also had a full 6502 in them as well.

Not to make her an instant criminal and it sounds like they may have the money to do some stuff after finding the base equipment (note: the charm in many of these systems was the ability to connect them to the TV you already owned and not have to purchase a monitor), but if she was poor and a "bad guy" type character then her dumpster diving hobby could have landed her with some receipts with credit card numbers which she could be a bad person and order the equipment to a vacant house. But that does certainly set a specific moral for the character which may not be accurate or desirable.

For the prize maybe it'd be a programming book, book with programmable basic games or basic applications. There were also "Inside your Commodore" or Computes guide to <system>/memory maps that went further into the internals of the system and how to do advanced programming techniques which demo writers and hacker types would love. That might get you into more assembly/machine language type coding where you can get much more access and performance out the hardware depending on what you're writing.

Yes they'd probably both be proud of their systems vs an IBM so that's common ground. Plus as with the other thread, if they happened to be on the same BBS then they could grow to be infatuated with each other from random postings, to just plain hormones and the wonder of who this other user is, etc. lol or maybe one of them keeps tying up the BBS phone line and the other person keeps seeing their phone number as the last user on the board.

Some software games had double sided disks with a copy for Apple on one side and C64 on the other btw Could be they both wanted that game which the legit copy would have either version.

 

[Goggles2114]

Worst I plan on her doing is phreaking and warez. Credit cards are a strict no-no (it's stealing from People rather than Faceless Companies after all. ) I do like that you could, with some trial, error, and a bit of soldering know-how, get the cpu from an apple ][ to work for a commodore. Might have that come up later. I dunno.

Hm. Could the c64 use a co-processor or would it be a useless hunk of parts glommed on that you'd need to hand code software to recognize and make use of?

Edit: See. This is why I like going to these places rather than Ye Olden Wiki. You get user memories and experiances along with the bare facts and timeline of events. Which is what I'm needing most, knowledge of the things that wouldn't hit wiki due to being either unverifiable, done with original research, or just plain illegal at the time.

Edit v2: I like the idea of one looking for software and the other having one of those flipper disks... but not knowing how to break the copy protection to just upload the thing. Thanks for letting me in on that (since i didn't know flipper disks existed.)

Edit v3 (Goddamnit I need to stop finding new stuff I wanna say): Could see this girl cobbling together an amiga between purchased hardware, cannibalizing dead systems bought at flea markets, dives for stuff and traditional jobs getting money for the stuff she wants New New rather than New to me New. It'd be roughly the same time as her counterpart would get his GS, possibly a bit after as a way of one upping him (might also be how he gets a stereo audio out board since she's bound to find other stuff in her own quest for upgrades.) Pity the Amiga can't run c64 stuff. Also.... the frik were they thinking when they made the C16? Really.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Only thing I'm unsure of is how they'd actually go from 'Apple is better' 'You have more money than brains. Look what I've done with my commodore.' to being friends by the time they both get dumped into highschool. Maybe finding something both of them agree is the bigger problem (like say... IBM? Ma Bell? How do you unite different factions in the 8 bit war?)

... I guess I'm coming in late or something or a little confused, but... as a general rule by 1986 or so "IBM as Big Brother!" idea was starting to be a strong enough force to trump at least some of the "intra-species rivalry" between the loyal partisans of other platforms; IE, as much as, say, the Atari ST-ers and the Amiga Freaks hated each other they hated IBM even more...

That said I remember that Apple was sort of lumped into the same pile as IBM, seen as a purveyor of un-innovative and overpriced hardware that only sold as well as it did because of the lock the company had on the (insert segment here) market. (With IBM and Apple it was "business" and "education" respectively.) If there was one thing that Atari and Commodore eight-bit owners could agree on it was that their machines were both amazing compared to an Apple ][ at twice or three times the price. I also recall was that the dynamic was different between the eight-bit users and the owners of the new 16/32 bit systems which debuted around the 1985 timeframe; in my memory the eight-bit users actually seemed less ferociously attached to their systems than the sixteen-bitters; it was like a persecution complex came bundled in the box with every Atari ST or Amiga compelling the owner to scream at everyone who would stand still long enough to listen that their particular machine was infinitely more powerful than a (by that time similarly priced or possibly cheaper) XT clone, only an idiot would pay twice much as their baby for a Mac, etc, etc. The eight-bitters had their rivalries, there's no denying that, but it generally seemed that the users of those machines were somewhat more willing to admit that everybody's platform, including the one they'd bought into, had its own strengths and weaknesses. (The exception here was usually users who had little or no experience with any computer than the one they'd bought, in which case sheer xenophobia was probably the best explanation for their religious fervor. Apple users perhaps most often suffered from this.) You might even see more infra-company rivalry than intra-company in the cases of companies like Apple and Commodore that introduced new, incompatible 16/32 bit lines like the Macintosh and Amiga. The owners of the new machines would treat the 8-bit owners like second-class citizens, and the 8-bit users would fret about the new machines because they'd be convinced, rightly so, that their introduction means they'll eventually be abandoned and forced to upgrade.

Something else to remember is that by 1986 some of the older eight bit platforms were really on their last legs. The black-and-white TRS-80s were still on sale but it was obvious that Tandy expected the users of those machines to switch to the PC compatible Tandy 1000 series, and it seems to me that most of the owners eventually did so without putting up much of a fight. Likewise the Atari 800 series had pretty much been put to bed, with systems like the 130XE still available but practically no marking support was out there for them. Even systems that were 1986 introductions, like the Color Computer III (and to a lesser extent the Apple IIgs) were pretty much dumped on the market as a sop to wring a little more money out of a market the parent company figured was a dead end. And many a savvy longtime user was able to sniff the aroma of eminent death on those new machines and jumped ship instead of buying. (I did that myself, consenting to get an XT clone instead of a Color Computer III to replace my CoCo system in late 1986.) A "general" computer club around that time would have a hard time excluding users of IBM-based machines simply because many of their oldest members would be buying them themselves. People who were absolutely intolerant of their presence would have to segregate themselves into brand-specific clubs/user groups, where an Apple user would never run into a Commodore user anyway.

So... I don't know how great the idea "we all hate enemy X" as a force to bring geeky kids together really would be. A Commodore user probably hates Apple as much as they hate IBM, and an Apple ][ user is too busy fretting about having his machine discontinued and being forced to buy a Macintosh to worry much about either IBM *or* Commodore. And from a broader standpoint... If two kids' relationship hinges in any way what company's products they identify with then I'd have to say it's probably not going to end well. Yes, there are, for instance, dating sites that exclusively cater to idiots who worship at the shrine of Steve Jobs, but show of hands who thinks this is really a good idea. Anyone? Bueller?

Anyway, whee.

 

[Goggles2114]

Excellent point, and the idea of them meeting over an interest rather than rivalry seems more promising anyway. So one having a disk the other would want, but doesn't know how to get past opy protection (but the other does.) Seems the best probable way of getting together.

Could even be the board got wiped shortly before the new school year and the 'don't be an intolerant derp' rule put in place because the flamewar pretty much fragmented the whole place into non-functionality.

Edit: Then after they finally meet there's other hobbies (DnD, similar interests in SciFi movies. The eternal Star Wars v Star Trek debate. Plus totally non-geek hobbies like hiking or cycling or stuff.) I just need some excuse to get two different people from diff backgrounds to meet/know eachother before school starts.

 

[barythrin]

Perhaps she makes a hobby of finding broken systems/trashed systems and fixes them and posts an Apple IIe she fixed and had no interest in on the BBS. That would get her some income from mostly nothing but scrounging together parts from older systems and also get her the ability to save up for an Amiga that she'd certainly want to upgrade to vs the 64.

 

[carlsson]

Could the c64 use a co-processor or would it be a useless hunk of parts glommed on that you'd need to hand code software to recognize and make use of?

As far as I know, there were virtually zero CPU or co-processor upgrades for the C64 around that time. Perhaps some crazy German (yes, they have all kinds of weird electronic projects in Germany) had come up with a 2 or 4 MHz overclocked CPU but that would be about it. CMD released the SuperCPU, a 20 MHz 65816 many years later and it was (and still is) a very expensive piece of hardware anyway.

The only expensive hardware upgrade a C64 owner around 1986 or rather 1987/88 might dream of would be a RAM Expansion Unit, abbreviated REU which came as 256K, later on 512K. It was useful with the new graphical add-on system GEOS, as a buffer for copying floppy disks and a handful other uses. It never was a major item, more something one might have read about and thought sounds cool.

Pity the Amiga can't run c64 stuff.

Well, backwards compatibility never was the norm. There are a few exceptions from this rule, like I suppose the Apple 8-bit series and Atari 8-bit home computers. To some degree, backward compatibility poses a limitation to how great improvements can be made, or at least how expensive the new systems should be. It also confuses the 3rd party market: should we continue to focus on the old machines or take advantage of the new features on behalf of leaving out a big customer group? See the Commodore 128, which had a rather limited number of programs and add-ons compared to the number of units that were sold. I'd wager at least 2/3 of those virtually never were booted in the native C128 mode.

Also.... the frik were they thinking when they made the C16? Really.

Ah, one of my favorite stories. The original point supposedly was to produce a very cheap computer to compete on the European market vs the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It is said that us Europeans are less willing to spend a lot of money on purchasing the latest items than what Americans are. See for example floppy drives vs tape recorders. I don't know if the 1541 was much more expensive over here than it relatively was in the USA, but while most Commodore owners upgraded to a floppy drive as soon as they could afford it, users in Europe would stick to a cheap tape recorder for a lot longer.

Anyway, long story short is that the TED project got delayed, improved and extended until it no longer would be possible to match the ZX price (and at that time, Sinclair would anyway have a huge software library and user base to compete against). Then the C16 was pitted as a replacement for the VIC-20 as an entry level machine, and the Plus/4 as a work horse with more memory. However both lacked features that made the C64 successful: sprite graphics and SID synthesizer sound. I suppose in the end, Commodore just had to release the C16 and Plus/4 at any cost, since they had spent so much time developing them. I think people like Commodore engineer Bil Herd might want a word on this too. ;-)

 

[Druid6900]

Well, I've always thought that the best plot elements were simple and believable.

Given the outline you've set forth, how about this;

Poor chick wins the C64 system w/1541 and whatever modem you like by answering a very geeky question on a radio station contest?

And, as for meeting, Boy meets girl, girl fixes bad RAM chip in boy's IIe et c., et c.,

Simple, believable and doesn't involve car chases, helicopter snatches or alien abductions LOL

 

[njroadfan]

Chronological Commodore timeline. Looks like in 86 the C64 may have been $150 new, though it would depend how one buys it and then what accessories. I think cassette tape drives were cheaper than floppies but for a hardware geek yes they'd want a floppy for the vast speed improvement in loading time.

Speed and the 1541... this is a work of fiction right?

 

[Goggles2114]

Definitely fiction.

As for the rest. Sure I"m going to go for elements of silly because... why not (not sure what will survive editing or not.) However I want to leave things feeling like immersion isn't broken. Hate that when reading i get a slap to the face.

Think I"m gonna go with the chick learning how to solder and repair to get stuff they normally wouldn't be able to without waiting till funds become avalible, or having to pool money with friends (a second disk drive, possibly more ram, A printer if I'm feeling like stretching it... but printers have the problem of getting ink for the bloody things so i dunno.)

I really like the idea of the six week/three month/mid-semester prize being somewhat dependent on who wins (generalist means they have to plan on somebody with a nintendo winning vs someone that's got a dec rainbow.) Might be a few pre-selected options but won't be ordered/bought till there's a winner. Pllus books are one HELL of alot cheaper than gear.

As for a radio station or possibly a store sponsored thing. I like that. Might run with it. Thanks.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

I'll give you a handful of recollections, as one who owned Commodores in the mid 80s and knew many others who did. (I'll leave the plot elements to you.)

In 1985, a 64 cost anywhere from $150-$200, depending on where you bought it. A 1541 cost about $200. A lot of people connected them to ordinary TVs to save money. Some lived without printers, or just bought the cheapest printer they could find. There were some $100 printers in those days. They weren't worth that, but they were out there and people bought them. Paper and ink weren't terribly expensive, and you could rewind the ribbons and spray them with WD-40 and use them two or three times. I knew people who did that. And people didn't print as much then, because printers were slow, and there just wasn't as much to print as there is today. You printed your letters and your papers for school, so a box of 250 sheets of paper lasted a long time.

Tape drives were common in Europe but not in the States. By 1985, when you went into a store that sold software, you didn't see tapes. You saw disks and a few cartridges.

In 1985, the 64 was at or near its peak in popularity. Commodore was selling 3 million of them a year at that point.

Computer advice was hard to come by in those days. Some people ended up with 64s because that was the only computer you could buy at mass-market retailers. And some ended up with them because it was all they could afford. People tended to buy the same thing as the people they knew. People thought my dad was nuts for thinking there was any reason to have a computer in a home. Dad bought one because he knew that was the future, and he knew I was interested in it, and he didn't want me to miss out on the opportunity. I think that's how a lot of people ended up with Commodores. They were the cheapest thing out there, but a decent Commodore setup still ran $350, minimum, and that was a significant amount of money then. (It would be about $700 in today's dollars.) But not out of reach for middle-class families who were willing to sacrifice in order to catch the wave early.

Don't sweat the second floppy drive. Very little software took advantage of it, and relatively few Commodore owners bothered with one. They bought the 64, perhaps with a drive and perhaps not. The drive was the next purchase if not. Then they started thinking about printers and software and maybe a modem. Memory expansion was even less common. I had one, and it was years before I met anyone else who had one. Most software assumed a 64 and a single 1541, because that was what they could count on people having, and as a result of that, that was all most people ever bought. And it was surprisingly capable, even in that configuration.

 

[Goggles2114]

Most helpful.

Had considered the idea of the owner making her own memory expansion when she has to rebuild hers (it gets busted by somebody that didn't like the fact she wasn't cowed into doing whatever he liked, which leads to a few plot-relevent things happening.)

Yes that's borderline unpossible, or at least very tedious if you can scavange from dead/discarded units. However the point is to show not only is she capible of doing it, but also if she didn't then there'd be no replacement.

Would the Commodore be able to write to a file format apples at school could read? If so that'd be a good way for her to get her assignments printed out. If not, then the printer tricks you explained would probably come into play.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

I'm going to zero in on your disk question first, because the answer to that is absolutely not. And certainly some people at the time would have told her there was no way to get data from her Commodore into the school's Apples. But there was a way to do it, and the solution to the problem is something you could definitely use.

Commodore and Apple disk formats were completely incompatible, so the only way to get data from a Commodore to an Apple at the time was to use either a modem, or a null-modem. Commodores and Apples used incompatible serial ports. Adapters to convert the Commodore user port to standard RS-232 required five parts: a circuit board, an edge connector for the user port, a DB-25 connector for the other end, and two chips--a 1488 and 1489, if memory serves. Lots of companies made them, and they cost around $40. I didn't know anyone who made their own, but someone who knew how to solder certainly could have. And I suppose a little bit of dumpster diving behind a computer repair store could conceivably yield the parts required to make that RS-232 adapter. A discarded modem or Apple printer or a discarded PC RS-232 card would have the DB-25 connector she would need, and most likely would have the 1488 and 1489 chips. The hardest part to find would be the card edge connector that would connect it all to the Commodore user port. Finding an edge connector intended for something else and cutting it to length with a hacksaw could work. Just have her leave unconnected any pins that don't line up.

So she makes a homemade adapter, then, to move data to an Apple for printing or anything else, takes her 64 and 1541 to school in a backpack, plugs it into an Apple monitor, plugs the homemade adapter into the 64, plugs a printer cable from the Apple into the adapter (yes, the Apple printer cable also could function as a null-modem cable), loads up a terminal program on both machines, transfers the file over to the Apple, then plugs the printer back in, loads a word processor and print.

To show additional savvy, she could even use a terminal program she wrote herself on both ends. She also would need a program to convert the 64's non-standard ASCII to the standard ASCII that an Apple word processor would understand. If she hadn't done that, her documents would have come across in reversed case (lIKE tHIS) on the Apple. It's been years since I wrote a program that did that conversion, but one could probably do it in about 10 lines of Basic.

And yes, all of that mess probably would be easier than getting a Commodore word processor to print to an Apple printer. If you want her to be really, really good, she could eventually modify an off-the-shelf word processor to print regular ASCII directly to the Apple printer. It would involve some pretty heroic work with either a machine language monitor or a disk sector editor. So where would a financially strapped teenager get a word processor? She could buy a magazine issue that had a type-in word processor (about $4) or find the magazine at a library. She could pirate one. Or write her own. #1 or #2 would be the most feasible.

And one more thing: It would have been perfectly feasible for her to learn these skills from books at a library. Especially a big-city library.

Regarding memory expansion, it was extremely uncommon in 1986. It appeared first on the 128, and on the 64 much later (probably 1987 or 88 ). Software had to be specifically written to support it, and it took a long time to appear. It appeared late on the 128, and then technical difficulties delayed it appearing on the 64 even longer. And then, once there finally was some software to support them, a memory chip shortage hit. That kept prices high, and not everyone who advertised them actually had any supply. They were expensive--around $200.

I had one, but the only other people I knew who had them were BBS operators. The only software I can think of that actually made good use of the memory expansion were disk copiers, the GEOS graphical environment, and BBS software.

The units had one proprietary chip that Commodore made itself, which was why nobody cloned them back then. Salvaging parts from discarded units wouldn't have been very feasible because there just weren't any units being discarded.

Hopefully I didn't bore you too much with the gory details about Commodore memory expansion. It was much messier on Commodores than it was on Apples. I'd argue that's the one thing Apple handled better than Commodore did.

 

[Goggles2114]

No man that's quite alright. I know just enough to know that even if I don't go into the gory details or handwave 'dumpster diving plus soldering plus The Book Fort I've been building equals Awesome' it might be needed if I want to show her lecturing someone who doesn't think a girl would know what she's doing and just glommed a mishmosh together that (in their mind) is just gonna fry everything.

The problem with writing competent characters is if you don't know the material you have to know where to find said information, and this place is pulling it up in spades.

...now I need to find a BBS that could accept connections from lots of diff system types (apple, mac, commodore, sinclare, etc.) Was thinking DEC-Rainbow but I dunno. I really don't.

Edit: Re Printing: Considered the idea of her calling a friend's computer up and sending the files to him either for stowing on a spare disk so she could print at school or so he could print at home (haven't decided if he'll have a printer or not. Probably not, at least at first.)

 

[geoffm3]

I'll give you a handful of recollections, as one who owned Commodores in the mid 80s and knew many others who did. (I'll leave the plot elements to you.)

In 1985, a 64 cost anywhere from $150-$200, depending on where you bought it. A 1541 cost about $200. A lot of people connected them to ordinary TVs to save money. Some lived without printers, or just bought the cheapest printer they could find. There were some $100 printers in those days. They weren't worth that, but they were out there and people bought them. Paper and ink weren't terribly expensive, and you could rewind the ribbons and spray them with WD-40 and use them two or three times. I knew people who did that. And people didn't print as much then, because printers were slow, and there just wasn't as much to print as there is today. You printed your letters and your papers for school, so a box of 250 sheets of paper lasted a long time.

Tape drives were common in Europe but not in the States. By 1985, when you went into a store that sold software, you didn't see tapes. You saw disks and a few cartridges.

In 1985, the 64 was at or near its peak in popularity. Commodore was selling 3 million of them a year at that point.

Computer advice was hard to come by in those days. Some people ended up with 64s because that was the only computer you could buy at mass-market retailers. And some ended up with them because it was all they could afford. People tended to buy the same thing as the people they knew. People thought my dad was nuts for thinking there was any reason to have a computer in a home. Dad bought one because he knew that was the future, and he knew I was interested in it, and he didn't want me to miss out on the opportunity. I think that's how a lot of people ended up with Commodores. They were the cheapest thing out there, but a decent Commodore setup still ran $350, minimum, and that was a significant amount of money then. (It would be about $700 in today's dollars.) But not out of reach for middle-class families who were willing to sacrifice in order to catch the wave early.

Don't sweat the second floppy drive. Very little software took advantage of it, and relatively few Commodore owners bothered with one. They bought the 64, perhaps with a drive and perhaps not. The drive was the next purchase if not. Then they started thinking about printers and software and maybe a modem. Memory expansion was even less common. I had one, and it was years before I met anyone else who had one. Most software assumed a 64 and a single 1541, because that was what they could count on people having, and as a result of that, that was all most people ever bought. And it was surprisingly capable, even in that configuration.

I'd say this is very accurate and reflects my own experience with the Commodore 64 as well. It was by far the most popular system among the people that we knew growing up since it had such a low price compared to other machines.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

BBSing was universal. With my Commodore, I dialed into boards running on everything imaginable: other Commodores, Apples, IBMs, CP/M, even Atari. Sending documents over modem to a friend was doable; I'm sure I printed a thing or two for friends over the years myself.

The only caveat to BBSing was the different forms of ASCII. Commodore and Atari terminal software could translate to/from standard ASCII. I'm not sure when terminal software that took advantage of each machine's extensions to ASCII appeared, so that may be a problem you'd have to write around. Not sure that's all that interesting of a detail anyway.

Owners of different computers did end up on the same boards, and some of the rivalries were friendly and some not.

I'm also pretty sure that it was in 1986 that the Commodore 1600 VIC-modem started showing up at liquidators for 20 bucks. It was a terrible, terrible modem (it was my first modem so that opinion is from personal experience) and some would argue it wasn't worth that low price, but it could get people in the game. You literally dialed the number with a regular telephone, unplugged the handset, and plugged the bare cord into the back of the modem to use it. That's why it cost $20 when other 300 baud modems cost $50 or $100. It was slow, too. It transmitted 30 characters per second, so not even a full line of text per second. A screen full of text took almost 30 seconds to appear.

 

[carlsson]

If you still want to play with the concept of memory expansion, I suppose a skilled hardware hacker could cobble together their own battery backed up RAM cartridge. Normal cartridges were ROM/EPROM, possibly EEPROM (not sure if it can be reprogrammed while running) but a RAM cartridge would be easier to use and would hold its content as long as the battery holds.

 

[azog]

If you're going to talk online stuff, don't forget Q-Link. You could go back to places such as CompuServe (or Compu$Serve, as we spelled it), and Delphi, but it was Q-Link (based on an earlier system called PlayNET, both of which Q-Link and eventually AOL were based upon) that was _the_ online community for Commodore. It wasn't as nefarious as some BBSes, probably due to exposure, moderation, and stuff, but you could easily meet up with other Commodore fans. I even remember going to a Q-Link party somewhere in New England.

Users communities, both online and actual groups, were pretty tight-knit back then. The Commodore crowd sneered at the Atari crowd, and vice versa, and just like today, the Apple crowd sneered at the rest of the world. If you had a computer that displayed color and played sound, it was a "toy", because all the big boys only did 80 columns in monochrome with no sound.

If you were attending user group meeting, they were pretty machine specific, unless it was a CP/M group.

 

[ThreeBowls]

I was a teenager during this time frame and had no trouble affording a C-64, 1541, and a modem with my paper route profits. It probably took several months of saving and sacrificing baseball card purchases, but acquiring this equipment for someone with a job and some savings discipline wouldn't have been too hard.

Transferring text files to other computers wasn't something that was common, but a Christmas give of a 1526 printer gave me everything I needed for school papers.

 

[barythrin]

Perhaps the gift from the computer club was a gift card or money which she took and combined with some savings from her other hobby and was able to afford X or a printer to start doing school work with. Or maybe her parents after seeing and deciding her interest in computers could be a good path for her future/job wise saved up and got her a printer for the holidays so she could also use it for school work. Maybe they knew the school had Apple computers and she was going through so much effort with her own written program to convert her text files or programs to Apple format (someone mentioned it would be reverse CAPS, I don't know but I think uploading it probably wouldn't?) then uploading it to her friend who had an Apple computer and was also in the computer club. She would meet her friend and be able to turn in her Apple II disk or paper at school.

Her friend owning an Apple and converting her docs would get her into the Apple crowd and possibly also be a link to meet the other kid who was an Apple fan and even possibly end up with a game of interest between the two of them.

I'm not sure how common it was (tried doing some research but am a little confused on timelines) but in the 90s on fidonet there were message based RPGs being played such as StarTrek and D&D. Wasn't as cool as dialing into a system and playing a text adventure game on the school server (heck, meybe she eventually gets legitimate access to help the school with their own BBS to post news and updates for anyone to dial in and check and then adds a D&D game to the server for online play) but again, being semi-turn based and story telling folks would join a team, get assignments, and play along and send a new message with what they were doing. One person would be in charge of the main story line and how much you could do but for the most part it was just like live roleplaying at a table, just with some latency while you wait for your crew or game/dungeon master to reply.