Speaking of blasts from the past. A name from my past made a sudden return to the high street last year; albeit in Hull. But let me give you the background.....

(Flashback - Feel free to wiggle the screen suitably).

The year was 1982 and I was eleven years old. Much to the surprise and financial horror to my Mum, I'd done well in my eleven plus and had therefore won (it WAS a bet) ownership to my very own, first computer. It was best to shop around and look at what was available in order to make as good a guess as possible. 1982 saw a HUGE number of totally incompatible machines, with wide ranging specifications and prices. Even an eleven year old could see that the future would see a lot of machines become very obsolete and certain computer companies being dead before they got off the ground*1.

It snowed nearly all that winter. So when we did make our trek into pre-Christmas Manchester, it was a magical. Or so it appeared to me, age eleven.

After several false starts with insistent Dixon's staff pushing ZX81's at me (only to have them pushed FIRMLY back at them) and Tandy (AKA Radio Shack attempting to sell me a TRS-80 Color Computer; where I upset the salesman by suggesting it had a calculator keyboard we eventually made it to what was then (probably only for the briefest of times) computer nirvana. Laskys.

I have absolutely no idea where in Manchester it was situated. All I remember is walking down an attractive but secluded and snow covered street and being totally phased by the luminous purple slotted capital letters LASKYS sign that seemed to glow against everything. I may be over egging it a little here. But seeing all the computer kit of a young geek. It was amazing.

Inside was no less so. The staff revelled in the expressions of young kids coming in to see the latest computers and had no problem in letting them have a go at playing on them.

What was there... well, let me see.

BBC Model B - But at £399 for the base unit it then required a monitor, at another £200 at least, then a cassette recorder (£40 or so) plus somewhat at £10 a pop. Making a grand total of £700 or so. Expensive, VERY expensive at the time.

Next to it was the Apple II+ (the E wasn't out until 1983). It looked the business and everybody just seemed to be staring at it. Then there was the price. From what I remember it was a ridiculous £800 for the unit, then another £500 for the monitor (or something as crazy as that), £50 for a decent enough cassette recorder.. by you added up all the must haves it came to around £2000. To put this into context, my Mum bought a NEW Mini Metro that same year and it cost £2500. So the Apple was a none starter. Given what Apple did in 1984... it's just as well I didn't sink all the money into an Apple II+. But I digress.

The Atari 800XL and 1200XL were also on good display and I could see they had a lot of offer. Not least of which was there superior processing power and impressive graphics. Anyone remember Rescue on Fractalus. Anyway, UK support for early Ataris mainly centred around games systems and as a result the 800XL and 1200XL were being firmly pitched as games machines that you could learn on. One more point, the 800XL had 64KB or RAM. Which was pretty impressive back in the day. However, it wasn't cheap. I think it ran at around £250 plus tape deck and software was in pretty much short supply.

I could go on. But what DID catch my eye was a compact (relatively speaking) system that I thought might do well. It was cheaper than most at £199 (plus £30 for the unique tape deck) and offered up 65KB of RAM. It also sported impressive graphics, hardware graphic sprites excellent sound and the relatively fast 6510 processors. What's more, it used standard TV for display and had the option to add floppy disk and printer later on. What was it? Why it was the Commodore 64. Except mine was SO early that it was actually labelled on the case Commodore VIC 64 without the rainbow. I suspect this was a European import of some description; although it had UK keyboard (if there was such a thing).

They used to say that the Commodore 64 was a very reliable machine... so long as you got one that worked and sure enough my first one died shortly after arrival. It's replacement sported rainbow logo and NO VIC. I think it lasted 10 years before I moved on and it was still going strong then. I miss the old war horse. But should I start getting a little TOO over emotional. I'll remember how I had to type Load "$",8 (return) and then List (Return) in order to read the sodding directory on a floppy disk! Somebody was clearly not into 'ease of use' in Commodore. Want the change the background colour? No problem Poke 53281, {colour as a integer 0-15}. Crazy? Naaaaa

3 years later and the Macintosh was launched in the UK (US nearly a year earlier). The rules changed. But it was amazingly expensive. As a respite I used a lovely little OS called GOES on the Commodore 64, via floppy. You used a mouse just like the Mac; only GEOS was pretty cheap (or at least it was when I bought it). It also offered all the Mac had to offer, only on my now ageing Commodore hardware. Take a look at the screenshots on Wikipedia, I'm sure you'll be impressed. Berkeley Softworks did an outstanding job.

Geos, it turns out, also ran on early Apple II hardware.

By 1985 the world was going 16bit and Commodore blew everybody away with their latest product... the Commodore Amiga. For while the Atari ST was faster and in some case slightly cheaper... it lacked the WOW factor the Amiga had. Commodore really had an understanding of its target audience back then and the bouncing ball and picture of King Tut was just amazing. So much so that every computer magazine in the UK seemed to sport a copy of it. It just looked sexy. The reality was less important. Very much like Apple.

But Commodore were their own worse enemy. They introduced a new model the Commodore Plus/4 which was technically brilliant. But it should have come to the market with 128KB of RAM and not 64KB and should have been £199 not £250. Furthermore the comedy built in software was terrible. It would have been smarter to provide GOES on chip and run from their. Another what could have been if somebody had thought about it. It was software incompatible with the Commodore 64... their 30 million unit seller. Oooops.