Commodore 64 screen
Commodore Nostalgia
Amiga screen


Have you ever seen any of the above screens? If the answer is yes, you have witnessed the greatest computers ever made (the Commodore 64, and the Commodore Amiga)!

I got into the world of computers in 1986. During the summer I visited my neighbor, and he had borrowed a Commodore 64 from a friend, and did we spend alot of time playing games on it, or what! It was my first experience with computers (before that I had only played video games, like my Intellivision, another classic machine I liked!), and it was such a cool experience! So I really had to get myself one, and then my wishes got granted on Christmas the same year, I got myself a Commodore 128! First I only played games on it, but later I got more and more interested in the "scene", I got some demos from friends and liked collecting them. Then a friend of mine asked if we should start a group, I was not really good at programming, but I said yes, and we formed one called Draco. We only made a few demos on the C64, unfortunately there are no copies left of it, and they never got spread. In 1989 I got myself an Amiga 500, and the story is the same, started out by playing games and then got involved in the scene, it was the same group Draco, and now we got some more members too. We released a few demos, they got spread somewhat, but not too much really, but thanks to one of the former Draco members, Frostbyte, I have been able to put them on the Internet (more about that below).

Anyway, here's something more interesting (?) to read! The Commodore 64, and the Amiga, were both popular in the 80's and early 90's. The Commodore 64 was the earlier of them, launched in 1982. It had a CPU called MOS 6510, that unlike today's Pentium 4+ processors was clocked at a whooping 1.02 MHz. But hey, that was more than enough! It had 64 kb of memory, hence its name, and had a palette of 16 colors. The resolution was 320x200 at 16 colors (compared to the modern PC's that often use 1024x768 and 16.7 million colors. But unlike the PC it didn't need to load any operating system that wastes your precious time, just hit the on/off button and you're ready to start.

Also no need to deal with sound card drivers, joystick drivers, printer drivers and so on, just pure plug'n play (this is what I call plug'n play, could plug the things in while it was running and it still worked, no need to reboot the computer)... Another good thing was that the programmers managed to use the 64 kb of memory for both graphics, sounds and other information needed, on todays PC that is not much, a picture, a short sound file or a very simple program, no game with "fancy" graphics and sounds can use that amount of memory nowadays... It had no internal storage unit though, most people had a tape recorder, and some also a diskdrive (most used model was Commodore 1541, I was lucky to own one of those!).


Then came the Amiga, also from the company Commodore. I'll talk about my own Amiga here, I had an Amiga 500, which was the second version. The first version was called Amiga 1000 and was launched in 1985, but that one didn't become very popular, it was the 500 that made people go "Amiga crazy". It was later followed by several models that were better in all ways, but I stuck with my good old 500 though. The Amiga 500 had a Motorola MC68000 CPU clocked at 7 MHz, and 512 kb of RAM as standard. Most people upgraded it to at least 1 mb though, I was one of them. It had a built-in 880 kb diskdrive (most people had one external drive as well, including me), but no hard drive as default, however they became more common later on (I never got any of those though). It was also the first computer that used more than 16 colors, it had a palette of 4096 colors to choose from, which was really impressive at the time. Another good thing was that it didn't need an expensive monitor, you could use the TV if you had an RF-modulator attached to it (a very cheap device).

The Amiga used a Windows-like system called Workbench. Already back in 1985 the Amiga could handle REAL multi-tasking, something that wasn't used in Windows until much later (sometimes I wonder if it still is?). And unlike Windows that takes like 150 mb or more on the hard drive (depending on what version you use), you easily fit the whole system onto one disk, that you booted with, and then had it in the memory. Yet it could handle almost all of your needs. And when you needed to copy a file, and had only one diskdrive and no hard drive, why not use the RAM? Something that still isnt possible with the PC, 13 years later... Figures! :)



Note that our group Draco has nothing to do with the Polish group with the same name. Our group, with members from Sweden and Norway, was active between 1989 and 1992, and I THINK (but I'm not sure) the Polish Draco was founded later, and they might still be active, not sure. But again, we never had any connections whatsoever with the Polish group Draco.

Finally all of Draco's productions for both the Amiga (and C64) are available on the Internet! They are 4 demos and 2 intros made between 1990 and 1992. The files are located at Aminet and LHA archived, except for the XCopy Lame Demo which is a ZIP-file. They are all in raw Amiga format. I don't know how well they will run on todays modern Amigas, since they were all made on the A500 with kickstart 1.3, but hopefully they will run on the newer systems as well! But hope you will enjoy them.

Now there's also an ADF file available (zipped) with all these demos and intros in one single file, this isn't a raw Amiga format file though, but it's made for the Amiga emulators (for example WinUAE or WinFellow).

Finally (October 2003) our ONLY demo Zippy Code for the C64 is available for downloading! Use a C64-emulator (such as CCS64 or VICE) or transfer the d64-file onto a real breadbox and enjoy the only demo we ever released on this machine. Many thanks to Sledge of Fairlight for transferring and sending me it! :-)

Filename Size Released Comments
Laam Som Bara Faan 59K September 16, 1990 Our first release on the Amiga.
XCopy Lame Demo 265K March 17, 1991 Funny practical joke demo, it won't format your floppy disk so don't panic! *NOTE: This is not an LHA but a ZIP archive*
Bakers Demo 89K 1992 Demo by Dr. Baker.
Efter Plugget 181K June 1992 Our last and best demo, note that the Guru Meditation in the beginning is part of the demo.
First Intro 96K 1991 Our first intro.
Micro-Intro 58K June 16, 1991 Intro released at the ECES party in Eskilstuna, Sweden.
draco-productions.zip All above Draco productions as an ADF file (zipped) for use in an Amiga emulator.
Zippy Code 22K 1989 Zippy Code - Our ONLY demo for the C64.



Here are some interesting links about these computers

Commodore 64 Amiga Demo scene

Groups
Number of Commodore fans here since December 23, 1998... C=

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