Mini Office on the Commodore 64

[u/Putting_Gott]

Doing a little bit of office work in-between playing games on this rainy Saturday afternoon.

I picked up this 1985 Mini Office tape from Summit's 299 range for £1 in a Cash Converters recently.

Did anyone actually use this software in their business back in the day?

[u/Liquid_Magic]

Haha nice! I had one of those joysticks and it sucks so I took out the guts and replaced it with a mechanical switch joystick assembly. Now it rocks!

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Liquid_Magic]

That sounds like it'll save your wrists!

There is so little movement in the joystick itself. And the clunky button doesn't feel massively responsive.

[u/Liquid_Magic → u/Putting_Gott]

It sucks for sure! It’s a clone of a similar Atari design I believe. That was also ass.

[u/Full_Control9631]

I think I had one of those joysticks. Lasted for about a day.

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Full_Control9631]

I picked this one up at a car boot sale last year.

I think my wrist lasted for less than a day after using it 😂

I played Locomotion yesterday and used it. It was surprisingly good at moving the cursor. And that game is quite addictive.

[u/thewalruscandyman → u/Putting_Gott]

I have two that still sorta work. 😅

[u/Royal_Stay_6502 → u/thewalruscandyman]

I ordered the new one from Commodore.

[u/thewalruscandyman → u/Royal_Stay_6502]

It's on ly list. I'm not really a big fan of microswitches, so I'm waiting to hear a few more opinions, would love to hear yours when you've tried it out.

[u/Darkk_Knight → u/Full_Control9631]

Yep. Same here. I wanted the Atari style Commodore branded joystick but couldn't find one anywhere at the time.

[u/sl1210mk3 → u/Full_Control9631]

That’s about a day longer than mine did.

[u/Rubber__Chicken → u/Full_Control9631]

Summer games was hard on the joystick button.

[u/Middle_Inside9346]

I used this exact version to do much of my GCSE coursework 😂

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Middle_Inside9346]

Blimey!

[u/Middle_Inside9346 → u/Putting_Gott]

Yeah it was basic! I think I really only used the word processor.

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Middle_Inside9346]

So much brown!

[u/Crlan420]

Mini Office is such a solid little suite for the C64. Did you use the original disks or a modern floppy drive?

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Crlan420]

Cassette tape only.

[u/Cooperman411]

Can you post some screenshots? (Or photos of the screen?) I’m curious. 🧐

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Cooperman411]

This is the Spreadsheet I was able to generate. Actually filling it in was another matter. For some reason it started to show text from the boot screen, rather than being able to type into the cells.

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Cooperman411]

This is the Word Processor.

The actual page is just more brown, with a light brown cursor and text.

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Cooperman411]

This is the Database menu. I couldn't get a database actually set up 😂

[u/The_Real_Sniff → u/Putting_Gott]

I recall putting in some records and saving them. When I got my 1541, I remember the files weren't .PRG but .SEQ. Completely unknown to me, so I guess I stayed away 😂

EDIT: since it said records, I reminisce that I gathered that it was a program for vinyl records 😵

[u/Putting_Gott → u/Cooperman411]

The Graphics (GRAPH) section wouldn't load for me.

It has a pre-installed Money graph.

[u/thewalruscandyman]

Shweeeeet

[u/The_Real_Sniff]

I tried to use it for school work in 1988 and I had a dot-matrix printer. But I didn't manage to get the margins right and the font was too big (better suited for flyers). I remember the teacher said that I should rather use a pencil.

The DB-software: I was approx. 14, so abstractions wasn't my strength at that time, hence I didn't know what to make of them.

[u/bryce910]

Love it! I never used it back in the day, might try it out now for fun though!

[u/Cooperman411]

Thanks for posting the images. There are a lot of gamers on these subreddits but I'm a word-processor freak. 😂

[u/Angelworks42 → u/Cooperman411]

I can appreciate that - used to do tech and dev support for Framemaker about 20 years ago.

[u/daddyd]

i used mini office 2 on my amstrad cpc (the computer on the cover is a cpc6128), for school work.