 Igniting The FIRE | SVS speaks about the early days of the group, and how it got formed:
"I had seen a C116 exposed behind a shop's window. I logged in to inquire and was told to me that the successor would have 64kB of memory, and I realized that valuable advantage, having a selfmade computer experience with the Olivetti machines of the company where I worked. I was also told it would have a "Machine Language Monitor", which at the time I had no idea about what that was. The price was more than 900,000 Lira, hence... Out of reach.
Few months passed, when I saw an advertisement that spoke of a shop in Padua whichwould eventually sold that 64kB machine for 420,000 Lira. So, after having convinced my wife (I got recently married) I and a C64 user friend of mine went to buy it. On the way my friend instilled in me a lot of doubts and advised me to get a C64 instead. I didn't listen to it and have never regretted it.
I started programming in Basic, with the only help of the manual. At that time I was used to read "Commodore Computer Club" (CCC) [Ed.: an Italian magazine] which had a page dedicated to the "minor" Commodore machines. Studying the listings for C64 (incompatible with the Plus/4) I started to learn the first rudiments of the Machine Language (ML). I still remember when I tried – crazy idea – to use a JSR $FFD2 on the Plus/4 and an 'A' actually appeared on the screen. I didn't know in fact that the Jump Table was common among all the 8 bit systems of CBM.
After the first programs in Basic, I felt the need to have an Assembler. My C64 friend gave me one written in Basic. I converted it to the Plus/4 and wrote the Macro Assembler core with it. I recall it also taking 20 minutes to compile a single subroutine. Once the basic part in machine code worked on the Plus/4, I used it in turn to encode other parts of itself.
That was the period in which the address of Alex] appeared on CCC, he lived in the province of Treviso, about a hundred kilometers from my house. At the beginning he was selling software obtained from abroad since only he had useful addresses for that. After several meetings, a good friendship began. Alex knew RDG who lived about 10 Km from me. One day he came to see me and we can say that the FIRE group started there.
RDG had a very vast software library and also enjoyed a free subscription to CCC as he had sent them routines (one was for displaying 80 characters in the video). We spent many saturday afternoons exchanging software and informations. I remember Alex advising me not to trade my Macro Assembler for just a game or two as it was worth much more :)
Then came the era of the "swappers". I recall with pleasure the arrival of the postman with the packages containing the foil-wrapped floppies, and the scrolling through the lists that the correspondents enclosed. It was necessary to respond quickly in order to propose the new titles to the correspondents before they got them from the "competition". Because of the swapping, I also built up a stamp kit in order to mark the envelopes with tags like "SVS", "F.I.R.E." "Do not bender" etc. Good old times!" |
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Italy
