One of the most striking things about these photos is the terrible ergonomic situation. The C64 started out ergonomically-bad with its keyboard four inches above the surface, and then most of these people are using it on top of a dresser or something, with a tiny screen at a bad angle.
I had a much better setup back when I got my C64, but I still blame it for the back and vision problems I have now. It's a far cry from my current standing sit/stand desk with proper office chair and large, bracket-mounted monitor. I used to sit at a wobbly table, wrists at a terrible angle to reach the C64 keyboard, with a 17" CRT screen inches from my face. I'm surprised I didn't end up with brain cancer.
That's definitely interesting, and I think there is some real merit to it, although I think it's dangerous not to consider ergonomics. A coworker of mine had severe carpal tunnel syndrome and it was visible on scans, so not just in his head. He had a surgery that dremel'ed out some space for his nerves in his wrists and it helped a lot.
You seem open to it which is good! One thing I would like to clarify - it isn’t “just in your head”. That’s a common misconception.
These are long term emotional states that cause real physical changes that show up on scans. Myself, I had an EMG that showed nerve damage as evidenced by a plateauing signal on the ulnar and median nerves. I slept with wrist braces for months. Then someone referred me to this and I’ve needed nothing for many years with taking no precautions.
Emotional states can very obviously cause physical changes - it’s why people blush for just one example. Or why people get sick to their stomach when they’re in anxious. This is just a less obvious psychogenic physical manifestation.
> Emotional states can very obviously cause physical changes - it’s why people blush for just one example. Or why people get sick to their stomach when they’re in anxious.
It might seem obvious, but it's not obvious that the causation doesn't go the other way instead - the physical changes cause the emotional states.
"while most would think the order of emotional experience would be that a person sees a bear, becomes afraid, and runs away, James thought that first the person has a physiological response to the bear, such as trembling, and then becomes afraid and runs. According to James, the physiological response comes first, and it is perceived as an emotion and followed by a reaction."
If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff" out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. ...What kind of an emotion of fear would be left, if the feelings neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition of it in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called manifestations. - William James, What is an Emotion?, 1884
It really is remarkable how much knowledge/awareness we have now of ergonomics. I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in my 20s because of kinked wrists. Fortunately I was able to avoid surgery by wearing corrective braces for a few months, and now my brain just holds my wrists straight now when I type. It was a really scary time though to think that I might not be able to use a keyboard when my work is all computer-based.
An aside: let these photos be a lesson to us amateur photographers. You don't always need to shoot from a standing position.
I see so many photos of children (especially) where it looks like the photos were taken by a drone given how relatively tall the adult taking the photo is to the child.
I made a point of getting down to my children's level to take photos of them when they were young.
I suppose back in the 1950's or so when people had waist-level cameras we had less of the drone photography thing.
One of the best tips for new street photographers (and any type of photographer, really) is to never take a photo straight on from a standing position. It’s not unique and it’s the viewpoint that most people see every day.
Instead, lay on the ground, shoot at an angle, get on top of a bench, etc. I can’t remember the source, but I once read a quote that summed this up:
“If you don’t look ridiculous while taking a photo, you aren’t being creative enough.”
Pure nostalgia! I was seven when my father got me one. Apparently I declared in a dramatic voice that "We have now entered... THE COMPUTER AGE!!!". Honestly, the things one could do with that machine were intoxicating.
The Commodore 64 is the one computer that I have kept with me over the years and multiple moves across the country. It has been turned on in 20 years and would likely fail in countless ways if I tried, but it has some truly nostalgic vibes.
If you want to try it, don’t use the original power supply. They have a common failure where a voltage regulator will fail and feed high voltage on what should be a five volt line. Buy a recently made replacement power supply - there are tons of them.
There are common failure points on most Commodore 64s. PLA chips and memory chips are common and good news is there are modern replacements! 6526 and VIC-II chips are a little less common failures that don’t have modern replacements. They probably would if not for the recent chip shortage that killed some promising FPGA projects.
I got my first Commodore 64 in 1982 and my first modem (300 bps Mitey Mo) in 1985. In the past year I’ve gotten into component level repair of Commodore 64s in general but I’ll be tackling a non-working 1541 drive and a non-working 1702 monitor next. The Commodore 64 motherboard is actually pretty easy to repair using a Dead Test cartridge.
Fire it up! SD2IEC, pi1541 and Ultimate II+ are good 1541 drive replacements to use with a real Commodore 64 in ascending order of quality/price.
* The best single indicator of whether the photo was taken in the US/Canada/Germany or elsewhere is whether there is a disk drive next to the computer. Disk drive? Almost certainly US/Canada/Germany. Datasette with no disk drive? Likely somewhere else.
* The person with his feet up on the desk in photo 12 is watching TV. The Commodore 1701/1702 monitor is still prized today because of its excellent picture quality, including chroma/luma input from a Commodore 64 or 128. The box on the monitor that resembles a PCjr is a TV tuner box.
* Photo 9 shows a Commodore 1571 drive, designed for the Commodore 128, with the 64. When used with the 64 the 1571 is no faster than the 1541, but at least is not susceptible to the latter's head-knocking and inevitable alignment issues.
* Conversely, as discussed elsewhere, photo 15 shows a 128 being used with the Commodore 1541 drive. The 1541 is fully compatible with the 128 in 64 mode, but in 128 mode isn't compatible with the latter's burst mode or double-sided disks.
Is anyone else getting some bizarre and graphic advertisements on this site? I was a little confused why picture of C64s "might trigger" me, then scrolled into images of a vivisection and a sexual assault. There were, eventually, C64 images.
I'm on Google Fi VPN, but I don't think that really accounts for the nature of these ads.
Yes, the ads are trash and the creator of this should be ashamed.
This "article" is just another example of what makes the web terrible.
The sad thing is the content (vintage c64 pictures) would otherwise be interesting, but I guess the hope of making a few pennies off of some annoying ads is too much to resist.
I paused my ad blocker and the ads that showed up were annoying and slowed everything down but thankfully none of them were of the type you were served. Ad networks are really weird sometimes in how they select which ads to give to which people. Maybe for you it was random.
Holy Carpal Tunnel Batman! I had forgotten just how much of a rise there was on the C64 keyboards. The one photo with a Commodore 128 in it shows that was a design consideration for that model.
Well, now you know why the original C64 was (lovingly) called "the breadbox" in Germany. Later "all-in-one" computers (C128, Amiga 500, Atari ST) were better, but the keyboard was still higher than we're used to today...
I enjoyed looking at these photos. For some reason I had assumed that kids in the 80's didn't have computers (especially considering lots of kids don't have computers today).
I'm sure it's just a consequence of demographics, but you don't see or hear nearly as much about people who started their computing lives as adults. I got my first computer (a Timex/Sinclair 1000) in 1983, when I was 28, and the first of several Commodore 64s less than a year later...and by the time I had kids, six years after that, I had a PC. The C=64 was as formative to my life as it would have been to any grade schooler in my day.
I don't think I have a photo of me with our C64, but here I am with a Vic20 in 1982:
http://hokstad.com/images/the-hidden-library/vidarvic20.jpg