Nostalgia

So, nostalgia about computers and the “good ole’ days” gets strong with me whenever I turn on my old Apple II, or pull out any old magazines from the early 80’s or 90’s. My wife laughs at me because I still get goosebumps and a light in my eye describing how I felt when I first saw the Apple IIgs or the Amiga 1000, and how bad I wanted them. It takes me back to when computers were fun, magical, and represented a brave new world to my young mind (with apologies to Aldous Huxley).

So it is with great excitement that I now have in my possession a book on that early time, written about one of the pioneering companies subject to more historical revisionism than most people realize.

“Commodore, a company on the edge” by Brian Bagnall is an in-depth, interesting, and more historically accurate portrayal of the early history of microcomputers in general, but Commodore in particular, than many I’ve read. Most early histories are written by revisionist authors like Robert Cringely and tend to dramatically overstate Apple and IBM’s contributions at the expense of Commodore and Atari, among others.

I’ll post a complete review when I’m done with the book, but just what I’ve read so far has me pining for simpler times. Before I knew acronyms like CCIE, OSPF, NX-OS and had a global enterprise network to tame, I had my Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Amiga 1000 and the Atari ST. They say you can’t go back again, but I’m trying.