80's

This was a surprise gift that I and my brothers received when we were children. The sound effects were good although the graphics were very simple, but when we are a child than everything is great. The Lot of Darkness and Ovni were my favorites. The most famous game is the Eat-Eat "Come-Come" in Portuguese. Link Odyssey.

The TK-85 was my first computer. It had language Basic, it had to be plugged to the TV, it accepted cassette tape to save and load programs, the memory was of 16Kb and the programs execution could be normal (that was slow) and fast (it disabled the video while executing the program). It had some programs that presented strange characters when List command was executed. I remember that I liked when I learned that those characters were indeed machine language and at that time it was a mystery.

This was my second computer that accepted cartridges with games the same way as video-game and also accepted cassette tapes to load and save programs. The computer had to be plugged on the television and had 16 colors. One thing interesting was that although it accepted 16 colors there was some combinations of colors that could not be presented side by side because the memory was not big enough to store all the variations of colors. To make interesting drawings in Basic it was possible to create a code called Sprites. It had to be based on a matrix of bits that represented the picture. Each time the Sprite position is changed the Sprite was automatically removed from the last position and drawn on the new position. Using this computer I made my first test of machine language. Finally he had understood a small book about that. I had transformed the commands into machine codes: LD HL, 0x8000 - LD A, 10 - LD (HL), A - RET. After that I called the program with USR (0) and executed the command Print peek (0x8000) and there it was the byte 10. Wikipedia: Hotbit.

During the year of 1985 I started to study English and Computers in a school called CEBEL. The room of computers had some CP-500 there. We were expecting to have lesson in the computer room but the teacher did his first 5 lessons in the normal room. This made all students very upset. Finally we had a lesson in the computer room and was a real party. After some time I received a white CP-500 from my father. This computer CP-500 was spectacular. It had many new features compared with all the other computers I had. It accepted tapes but what was really impressive was the floppy disks. It only recorded data in the upper face. Some friends of mine taught me how to make the modifications in the other face without damaging the floppy and make it possible to use the other face of the floppy disk too. I had colleague from a long time ago whose father had a black CP-500. When I visited him we exchanged programs and played games together. I explored every details of the computer that I could. I had bought a magazine with a disassembler program written in machine language. It was a very long programs. So I had to make a dump of the memory in the floppy disk and edit the program writing bytes directly on the floppy disk tracks. I had to be careful to not change the internal control bytes. I remember that it asked some help for a friend of my brother to read all the pages with hexadecimal numbers to see if I had written the bytes correctly. He was bored for sure... Also I made some programs in assembler. One program was to make the screen blink very fast. It was the more complex program than I wrote at that time. It got each byte that represented 6 pixels and looked for the inverse one in a table. The screen blinked very fast. When I started the graduation I showed the program to a colleague. It asked to me why did I not use XOR to invert them. I was surprised because I was able to reduced the program size from 4 pages to half a page and get the same result. It had some small games like Cosmic and Galaxy that were definitively my two favorite games.

I explored every details of the computer that I could. I had bought a magazine with a disassembler program written in machine language. It was a very long programs. So I had to make a dump of the memory in the floppy disk and edit the program writing bytes directly on the floppy disk tracks. I had to be careful to not change the internal control bytes. I remember that it asked some help for a friend of my brother to read all the pages with hexadecimal numbers to see if I had written the bytes correctly. He was bored for sure... Also I made some programs in assembler. One program was to make the screen blink very fast. It was the more complex program than I wrote at that time. It got each byte that represented 6 pixels and looked for the inverse one in a table. The screen blinked very fast. When I started the graduation I showed the program to a colleague. It asked to me why did I not use XOR to invert them. I was surprised because I was able to reduced the program size from 4 pages to half a page and get the same result. It had some small games like Cosmic and Galaxy that were definitively my two favorite games. A page that describes it in Portuguese: CP-500.

This was my next computer after the CP-500. The Solution 16 had more memory, accepted two floppies disks with double layer and the processor was 16 bits. Although I received this computer in the year 1990, I had to comment on it. The monitor continued to be only green color. The keyboard could be attached to the part frontal part of the cabinet. Behind the video there was an opening to be able to hold the computer. There was even a folder saying that the Solution 16 was portable, very funny. The picture of a well-dressed person with necktie holding all that weight as if the computer was a laptop as hilarious. It was possible to see his veins on his neck due to the computer weight... After some time there was a chance to change one of the floppy readers by one Hard Disk of 3 megabytes. This was a huge amount of space by that time. What I did not know was that the computer did not have enough power to supply energy to all computer components plus the Hard Disk, so the video, that was already very small, got ever smaller... I knew that there was a possibility to compensate this loss by making some adjustments in the interior part of computer. The problem was that the screws to open the cabinet was in a very bad position. I had to get a tool and ask an specialized office to make it thinner by removing some parts of metal and to bow the tool almost like it was a "L" shape. After going through all these process I finally opened the cabinet and compensated a little bit the size of the video, not before taking two electrical shocks...

I did not have a Atari, but I had friends that had and this became the Atari even more interesting. Also the games were very good. The English school CEBEL had a promotion in which we indicate a friend to study there and we gained a video-game cartridge. I indicated one friend to make course in CEBEL. I asked for a Odyssey cartridge. In the day to receive the gift they gave me an Atari cartridge, that is it, I had an Atari cartridge but not a video-game. Wikipedia: Atari.

This was a Christmas surprise and was a lot of fun. The were many levels and the higher ones were very difficult and seemed to never finish. Link Simon Says.

I found some people who also had this toy. I jumped with both feet to see how fast the car ran.

This was a very nice puzzle to spend time. It took a lot of time to solve the past parts.

This was a very funny toy. Kids trying to catch a glass of water with the toy and trying to dring the water...

This was a promotion that we could gain some Io-ios. It was great, there were competition at the school to see who did the best maneuvers.

This was also a very nice promotion. We gained some small sodas with the size of a finger.

This was a nice soda called Crush that made success.

I used to ask my parents to buy this juices, not because they were good but because of the shape of the plastic bottle.

There were always some packages of this Kisuco at home.

This candy was a success, but almost anyone that I talked that remember that had at least one situation where it was stuck on the throat and was not able to swallow, having to wait it to dissolve by itself...

This package of little Chiclets were interesting. People bought a package but placed everything in the mouth at once...

This "Ping-Pong" did success at that time and I liked the one with mint.

The chocolates of that time had a similar packing like this chocolate named Prestige.

This chocolate was rare due to its cost, but for a children perspective it was sensational, tasty, and had a total unusual format of triangle.

These coins to make phone calls were big, heavy and you have to have a lot of them to make a good phone call.

This tennis made success at that time. It had a different shape but it was not good on the orthopedic perspective. But kids does not pay attention to it.

This program was sensational. Here on Brazil it was called "A Gata e o Rato" (The Mouse and the Cat).

This Alph the ET used to pass Sundays mornings. It was a lot of fun.

The Batman were a lot of fun and the combat scenes were followed with action words like, "pow", "plack", etc... lots of fun.

The Dragons Cave cartoon was very good, although they never returned to Earth. I liked that arc that fired rays of light.

This was a classic at that time. All ages liked that. The main character Chaves were very good, but the Kiko was the best.

This Chips series was very good mainly because of their bikes and the sonorous track.

This movie was called "Curtindo a Vida a Doidado" in Brazil (Enjoying the Life a Lot). Without doubt I wished that Ferris had a lot of fun and that it was not caught.

Back to the Future was a classic at that time. I always watched it whenever I had a chance.

At some moments I kept thinking how would my life be if I lived closed to the ocean and had a friend called Flipper... It would be great.

I saw the Ghost-busters on a cinema. I've got impressed on the very first ghost on the movie.

Let's stop here! Come on... seriously, it was the best movie for kids of the 80's: Goonies... With twelve or thirteen years old... I considered it without doubt the best movie.

Those bad Gremlins were hilarious. They smoked, drank, made everything, fun.

Who did not see at least one episode of He-Man?

I was frustrate because Peter Parker did not get credit for the pictures he took of the spider-man...

What about that sad song while David Benner walked alone at the end of each episode?

I still do not believe that I had karate classes influenced by the Karate Kid film...

On Brazil this cartoon was called "Ligeirinho" (Fast or speedy). It did not see it frequently but when it passed it was a lot of fun.

When you thought it was impossible to escape... there he was, McGyver, to show how...

Everybody watched that Brazilian show called "Trapalhões" on Sundays nights.

The sound track of the Pink Panther made all the difference...

Still today there are a lot of people that watch the Woody Woodpecker.

This was a Brazilian local stories from Monteiro Lobato and the episodes were sensational.

The Smurfs were fun indeed.

I have to confess, I liked the Super Vicky very much.

Thunder Cats, was great at that time. It was innovative and what about that sentence: thunder, Thunder, THUNDER CATS, hooooooo .....

Sunday mornings...

Ultraseven, I wanted that transformation glasses for me...

This was a local program that did success on Saturday nights.

There were other programs that I remember from that time: Blade Runner, ET, Lady in Red, Rocky I, II, III, IV and the V, Trom, Star Wars, Rambo, Galactica, Star Trek the original series, and many others.