We’ve been on a bit of a history trip lately with old computer articles and books, and this one from 1985 certainly fits right in.
In January 1981, a handful of semiconductor engineers at MOS Technology in West Chester, Pa., a subsidiary of Commodore International Ltd., began designing a graphics chip and sound chip to sell to whoever wanted to make “the world’s best video game”. In January 1982, a home computer incorporating those chips was introduced at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. By using in-house integrated-circuit-fabrication facilities for prototyping, the engineers had cut design time for each chip to less than nine months, and they had designed and built five prototype computers for the show in less than five weeks. What surprised the rest of the home-computer industry the most, however, was the introductory price of the Commodore 64: $595 for a unit incorporating a keyboard, a central processor, the graphics and sound chips, and 64 kilobytes of memory instead of the 16 or 32 that were considered the norm.
A fully decked-out Commodore 64 with all the crucial peripherals – tape drive, disk drive, printer, joysticks, official monitor – is still very high on my wish list.
I had everything on your wish list except the tape drive. I still have the Computer/printer/disk drive and a ton of pirate games. A few legit ones too. The Commodore 64 is a classic machine. Jumpman, Scaletrix, Cops & Robbers, Scramble. It really had everything you could want in a home computer.
Me, too. I lived through what I assume you mean the cassette tape drives in the TRS-80 and Tandy Color Computer days. That’s why I never bothered seeking a Commodore Datasette 1530. Even for a collectable the painful memory of waiting for programs to load (even using Novaload) was too great to bear.
Oddly enough, the Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive was a very slow due to its peripheral daisy-chained interface, but a similar program called “turboloaders” fixed that, too, which made the “Fastload” cartridge a ponderous hardware peripheral that did the same thing.
Remembering my first computer, the VIC-20 on b&w tv with tape drive. Booted in seconds and allowed to do everything from the integrated basic interpreter. When I had my first Atari ST, was confused not to have integrated language, had to do everything from floppy discs, just like app stores nowadays. You had to pay for everything if you wanted to give your computer something to chew on. I lack those days when you just switched the damn thing on and had all the “power” at your finger tips.
Uh… the ST came with ST Basic. I admit not the best programming language. But it was free and initially supported.
AFAIK slow C64 floppy was a design error that the management decided wasn’t worth the delay to fix…
I don’t know why you’d want the tape drive. Calibrating the thing right, waiting forever for games to load … ugh
Me and my friend played some games on his a few years ago and I had forgotten how long it took for games to load on that thing.
But I guess it has some charm
There was no charm in waiting for Bruce Lee to load off tape for what felt like at least an hour+, only to crash half the time once it finished.
I still have both a modified and an unmodified c64 systems in storage. The c64 is the undisputed king of being able to take massive amounts of abuse/rage and not even flinch.
The charm was: You had time to talk face to face with your friends while waiting!
You could always play the “boot loader” game. Many games had this. GhostBusters comes to mind. It played a game wile it loaded – I think it was a version of space invaders, but might have been pac man.
Hm, IIRC cracked Ghostbusters on a tape in the format of fast loader cartridge didn’t have this …I never encountered such boot game on C64, I thought PS1 Tekken was first with ~Galaga…
IMHO it should be included on Android, some simple game when it boots.
(instantly the most popular game ever)
Tape drive was inexpensive, it was the only thing many of us could afford – either that, or no storage at all; I had only the tape drive, no floppies.
Oh well, at least it cost me, with C64, only ~70$ new…
With fast loader cartridge and cassettes in its format, it was reasonably fast.
I have everything but the monitor. Both breadbin and C64C nmachines, 1541 and 1541 II, datasette, 603 line printer, joysticks, etc etc.
I had two C-64 monitors, one full color model I dual purposed to my VCR and a second amber monitor my little brothers watched their VCR on. I never actually used the amber monitor with either my C-64 or C-128, but it was surprisingly good for movies.
… as I could not afford one at that time so I had to start with a ZX81.
They really did put the state of the art technique into this box. And due to its misserable BASIC forced thousands of kids to learn assembly 🙂
Edited 2018-07-03 12:10 UTC
All Commodore lovers are invited to attend CRX2018 – Commodore Retro Expo held Aug 24th, 25th & 26th at the Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Bring back all your old Commodore 64/128/Amiga and more memories at the largest Commodore expo in the western United States! Free Admission, vendors only $25 per table! Check it out at http://www.crxevent.com! Co-hosted by the Clark County Commodore Computer Club right here in Las Vegas since 1983!
Buy an U64 motherboard, find a case and keyboard and assemble it with the mobo – and you have your dream C64 🙂
https://ultimate64.com/
Be aware that U64 uses FPGA tech so it will take a year or so atleast to be fully bug free and more featurecomplete.
Jens Schönfeld in Germany also has a new FPGA implementation of C64 in the works C64 Reloaded MK3.
Its been very quiet for a while about it but I think its still going. The MK2 Motherboard that needs original chips is out now.
There is also the Turbo Chameleon 64 – a FPGA computer in a cartridge case that is supposed to be made further runs of, “soon now”.