{"id":283,"date":"2007-03-05T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/283"},"modified":"2007-03-05T10:04:44","modified_gmt":"2007-03-05T15:04:44","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-free-software-for-your-commodore-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/283\/retro-scan-of-the-week-free-software-for-your-commodore-64","title":{"rendered":"Retro Scan of the Week:<\/span> “Our Way of Saying Thanks”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"C64<\/a><\/p>\n
It’s not colorful and it’s not pretty, but this small piece of paper says a lot about how far we’ve come in personal computing.<\/p>\n

I found this 5×10.5″ document in an old box of Commodore 64 ephemera that I inherited from a stranger (along with some of his old speeding tickets) via a hamfest<\/a>. It appears to be the reward for filling out a COMPUTE! magazine survey (circa mid 1980s) and contains the BASIC program code for a game called Amazer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Typed program listings like this were extremely common<\/a> back in the day, but I found this example particularly interesting, as it was intended to be a bonus “gift” program, and they didn’t even bother to send a disk or cassette. Paper was a far cheaper distribution medium, of course, but it’s not even a full piece of paper! They must have had trouble finding a decent game small enough to fit the size of paper allocated by their minuscule gift budget.<\/p>\n

I just did a quick search for “Amazer” on Google and found that some enterprising individual is trying to sell a copy of this very document on eBay<\/a> for $50. He even went so far as to blur out the program listing on his picture! And no, this item is not worth $50. It’s more like a few steps away from toilet paper in terms of actual monetary value. But it’s still a neat historical footnote, no doubt.<\/p>\n

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.<\/em><\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not colorful and it’s not pretty, but this small piece of paper says a lot about how far we’ve come in personal computing. I found this 5×10.5″ document in an old box of Commodore 64 ephemera that I inherited from a stranger (along with some of his old speeding tickets) via a hamfest. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-retro-scan-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}