Computer Club in the Hudson Valley

[KC2NLL]

Question for computer people out there. I live in the Hudson Valley and I recently bought the Commodore 64 Ultimate to update the original setup I had as a kid. Are there any computer clubs in the area like Newburgh, Middletown, Fishkill, Goshen, ETC? I used to know how to operate this computer like the back of my hand when my parents bought me a VIC 20 and then the 64 when I was 10 but now at 56, BASIC and the COMMODORE system users manual might as well be written in Italian because I look at it, remember a fraction of the code, and forgot everything else. It's a shame because I refurbished my old system (had the disc drive 1541, the MPS-801 printer, the 1702 monitor, and the cassette drive refurbished before hooking it up to the newly arrived Ultimate 64), and now I can only play the games preloaded into the system. Just like my local Amateur Radio clubs (OCARC and OC RACES) taught me amateur radio, I need to hook up with a computer club to relearn the systems.

 

[Istarian]

I don't think that sort of thing really exists anymore, aside from initiatives designed to get kids interesting in programming (aka coding)...

Of course there could be some folks out there hanging out in real life, but you probably wouldn't find them via google search.

There are probably some organizations along those lines in bigger cities and their metro areas, but an online "community" seems more likely these days.

There are a few Meetup groups tagged as "computer clubs", but not many and mostly in the western US.

S

Thread 'Anyone interested in a Hudson Valley Vintage/Retro Computers Group?'

Sep 24, 2024

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this post. If it needs to be in another place please inform me. Anyway, here we go:

I would like to propose a Hudson Valley Vintage/Retro Computer User's Group. I like going to the Wall, NJ site for the annual VCF event. But it's over a 2-1/2 drive for me. I used to participate in a Mid Hudson Computer User's Group many years ago. It was primarily focused on the IBM PC users and was around the time of the Internet beginning to take over the world. Somewhere along the line I lost track of it and I can no longer confirm it's existence. We met...

• seaken
• Replies: 48
• Forum: Events and Organizations

• 

^ little bit of discussion on a similar topic between late '24 and late '25

If you're on the southern end there might be some folks down there with common interests at least.

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That said, BASIC is really very easy, as long as you have a proper reference for the commands (keywords) and syntax used by your particular implementation.

And it's often trivially easy to find a digitized version of coding books from back then, if you can tolerate dealing with a PDF file on another device.

The Internet Archive has a lot of other material too, like scanned magazine issues.

E.g.

Peeks & pokes for the Commodore-64 : Liesert, H. J. (Hans Joachim), 1961- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

204 pages : 22 cm

archive.org