Jim Butterfield was my childhood hero. He was really friendly and he knew everything there was to know about Commodore computers. Bonus from his Wikipedia page, his wife ran for office in Toronto under the Rinoceros party.
Wow, I remember when tach manuals were actually printed on paper, but it seems like a long time ago now.
It’s still important to eat the SGML spore before eating the device cookbook rhizome if you want to know what pseudo-16bit junking is going on in your ARM54 of choice.
Commodore had these wonderful spiral bound, heavy clay paper manuals. They were fantastic.
Weren’t they that chunky-plastic with the rectangular holes? Those were the WORST. I mean, the manuals were great – but a spiral binding would have been so much better, I think. The plastic would break and the pages pop out or shred some of the bits between the holes…
Mine were bound with a white coated wire. It may have been a Punch and Bind and not a true spiral. I don’t remember the hole shape. We bought it at Sears in 1984. It had already been out for a couple of years but to me it was amazing and new. Maybe they had different production runs for the manuals and we got different ones. They sold them for 12 years after all.
Loved my C-64. I programmed with it, took it apart, rebuilt it, did my homework, and even beat Impoosible Mission with it…ah, to be a brat in the '80s…
Oh man, now peeks and pokes are flashing through my head!
I still have mine in the garage, and a 1541 line printer. I may have a disk drive and tape drive for it. I know the C64 itself is missing the SID chip, sadly, but they’re available on eBay. Either it’s missing or just not working.
I should dust it off one day. Maybe set it up next to the Timex/Sinclair I also have in a box in the closet.
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