Commodore 64 Makes a Comeback

PCWorld ^ | 07/14/03 | David Legard

[bedolido]

Popular computers, games from the 1980s will be relaunched.

Tulip Computers, which owns the Commodore brand name, plans to relaunch the brand to take advantage in an upsurge of interest in the obsolete Commodore 64 (C64) computer and its 1980s-era games, the company said in a statement Friday.

Tulip estimates that there are still 6 million Commodore users, who can choose from a range of 6,000 games which were developed for the system.

Tulip is working with Ironstone Partners, which will handle all sales of Commodore 64-related products worldwide and take over the main C64 Web portal. Enthusiasts have made over 10 million game downloads, the site owners have said.

Unauthorized use of the Commodore name by other organizations will be stopped, Tulip said in the statement.

Playing Games Even if the Commodore 64 hardware is obsolete, enthusiasts have written emulators for Windows PCs, Apple Macintoshes, and now PocketPC-based PDAs to enable original Commodore games to run on those systems.

Commodore was one of the pioneers of the PC industry, entering the market in 1977 with its 8-bit PET (Personal Electronic Transactor). The C64 was launched in 1982, followed a few years later by the Amiga.

Slowly, the crucial graphics edge that these systems enjoyed was eroded by successive improvements in Microsoft's Windows OS, and Commodore went into liquidation in 1994. Tulip, based in Amersfoort, Netherlands, bought the Commodore brand name and other assets in 1997.

[LanPB01]

I had the old "One on One" game for my Tandy Color Computer 3. The thing I remember most vividly about it is that Bird, not once, ever made a three pointer.

[bvw]

It looks like an early PDP or Data General computer with the fancy-shamcy toggle switches. I don't remember myself using one, although there was one I could play with that the DCA had.

[adam_az]

Commodore Pet, the original Commie PC!

I learned to program on one of these suckers the summer before 5th grade at a summer class taught at my elementary school. I remember that since so few kids had experience with a keyboard back then, the first project was to type the alphabet so that we could learn where the keys are.

[Paleo Conservative]

Usually, I build my own machines, got enough spare parts, boards, and processors to make about 8 right now. Every machine I make for me has a 5 1/4 drive in it. I still have hundereds of old floppy disks.

I don't want to tell you what to do, but I would transfer any valuable data off of 5.25" or 3.5" floppy disks. When I was transfering my data and software collection, I found quite a few disks that were unreadable or difficult to read. After about ten years the magnetic signals recorded on floppies tends to fade. Yes it is a lot of work to feed floppies into a computer to copy their contents to a hard drive and burn CDs, but the benefit is that CD archives can be copied in just the time it takes to burn a CD. Also, a CD can hold about 1,000 floppies. True the that figure is not for 1,000 completely filled floppies, but how many of your floppies are completely filled? I was amazed at the number of floppies I had that only had one file.

I also discovered that quite often high density 5.25" floppy drives were unable read 360K floppy disks written by a low density drive. I had to resurect an old 16 Mhz 386 and install my only remaining working low density 5.25" floppy drive. I tried putting it in a 66 Mhz 486, but the BIOS didn't like it (I've found that periferals from different computing eras often don't work well together). I had almost 100 360K floppies that could not be read in a high density drive, but all but a handful could be read in the low density drive.

[Physicist]

Proud owner of a Commodore SX-64 Portable Gymnasium checking in.

I even have a Fresnel lens to magnify the 5" screen, à la Brazil.

[evilC]

You think you have tech problems ....

when I were young ....

[Physicist]

And let's not forget the blissful days on hooking up to CompuServe at the blistering dial-up speed of 300 baud...

CompuServe? No way. QuantumLink, baby! My screen name was "Lepton Man".

[satan]

I had a Timex-Sinclair printer, which printed half the screen at a time on cash register tape. You taped the two sides together. Spacing was terrible - circles became ovals.

Next the Commodore 64. Did anybody else have the Sears Roebuck electric typewriter that had a built-in port for a Commodore? What speed!!

[listenhillary]

I think I spent close to $800 for my commadore 64, dual disk drives, turbo cartridge?, star 9 pin dot matrix printer, color monitor.

[Bogey78O]

I have one. Some video modulator must have gave out as the video is garbled.

[Dan from Michigan]

I remember those. I used to have a TRS 80(Radio Shack) and the Intellivison.

That's old school there.

[Bogey78O]

I'm not sure what kind of computer it is but at work we have an old terminal workstation that lists our job dispatches.

It took a while to learn to hit "cursor tab" and send/receive" after every command.

[redhead]

My first computer was a Commodore 128. It handled games VERY well, and was easy to use. Wonder whatever happened to that thing...??

[redhead]

"Load "*",8,1
Ready
Run
Man,those were the days.The wife and I just took it to the Salvation Army not long ago.Anybody remember GEOS?or who could forget Jumpman!"

Dang! Commodore nostalgia! Whod'a thunk it??

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Forgot to post Commodore links. Here's a good site on all products;

Commodore Gallery;
http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/index.html#Lcomps

Also plenty of old models of all types here;

http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp

[Brett66]

My first computer was the Timex/Sinclair, but my first "real" computer was an Amiga.

The Amiga was a quantum leap over comparable computers, it had color 320x200 graphics with stereo sound. All of the IBM machines of the time had green text and a "bleep bloop" internal speaker. Can't believe Commodore didn't sell millions of those.

[nutmeg]

You think you have tech problems ....

when I were young ....

The Commodore 64... now there's a name I haven't heard in awhile!

Reading the posts on this thread makes me feel old... :-(

[razorbak]

What "computing" could you do with an Altair?

[Nowhere Man]

I had one of those. Then I got an Apple //e. Now I run all my old Apple software on my IPAQ.

Me too, I have a TI-99/4A and an Apple //e. Might yank them out someday and see if they work. Would be cool to hook them up to a B&W TV, put on some Alan Parsons Project and pretend it's 1982/83 again. B-) I remember we kids used to write our own games, one game we tried to write but never finished was a NORAD simulation, we did get carried away though, but it was interesting to see what it would be like to order a B-36 strike on Moscow or a B-1 strike on Havana along with scrambling a flight of Sabre jets to knock out Soviet Backfire bombers. B-) I know we mixed up the eras of aircraft a bit, but hey, we went all out to celebrate diversity. B-)

We spent many hours typing in things from David H. Ahl's computer game books. I remember in my junior year in high school, 1983-84, we did a lot of that on a TRS-80 Model III at a friends house when our school was on strike.

[RadioAstronomer]

The Vic 20, Commodore 64, and the Timex ZX80 were the real precursors to the "Computer" generation. I know there were a few others, but these were the ones that had readily available and cheap software(Games Esp.:)).

Lets go back a bit further. :-) IMSAI 8080, MITS Altair, Heathkit H8/H9, Digital Group, Radio Shack Model 1/Level 1, Colecovision, S-100 home-brew, Ti 99-4A, Hp-85, SOL, Commodore Pet, Cosmac Elf, Apple-I/II, etc. hehehehehe

(I have all of these except the Apple-1, SOL, and the Colecovision).

Add to that My PDP-8, Minivac 6010, Commodore 64, ZX-81, TMS-100, Atari-800, ASR-33 Teletype, Decwriter II, Intercolor 2400 terminal, and my core memory stack out of an IBM mainframe; and I have quite a pile of junk. LOL

I love collecting, old computers, slide rules, calculators, and BOOKS! Above all BOOKS!!!!!!!! :-)