Prior to them: IMSAI, AIM-20, APPLE-I, ALTAIR-8800 -- hobbyist machines
Posted on 07/14/2003 6:40:59 AM PDT by 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Playing Games Even if the Commodore 64 hardware is obsolete, enthusiasts have written emulators for Windows PCs, Apple Macintoshes, and now PocketPC-based PDAs to enable original Commodore games to run on those systems.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.
Prior to them: IMSAI, AIM-20, APPLE-I, ALTAIR-8800 -- hobbyist machines
Also "One on One" basketball.Dr.J and Larry Bird.
Same here The bottom of the keyboard was worn slick from use.
Life was something connected to local BBS's at 300 baud!
Thanks! I just picked one up for a fiver!
I had the C=16, C=64, SX-64(portable), and finally the ultimate: The C=128!
Still have the 64,SX, and the 128 (although not working :(, I can't throw it away as I wrote too many programs for it. )
As for games:
The MicroProse simulators were very addictive and I played for hours and hours. Airborne Ranger, AH-64 Gunship, Stealth Fighter.
I actually used my Commode-Door 64 for business - utilizing a cheap word processor proggy called PaperClip. Also for a while used a MIDI sequencing program with it written in Basic. Worked really well for what it was.
Of course, what really slowed things down, other than the 6502 processor, was the glacial pace of the serial floppy drives. Met a guy once who modded his drives to parallel and boy those things flew - compared to their speed as serial drives. He also had boxes full of modded processor chips known only by their painted colors...god knows where all those came from.
And let's not forget the blissful days on hooking up to CompuServe at the blistering dial-up speed of 300 baud...
Michael
L-rd have mercy. I owned one of those.
My senior project in College was to de-compile the microcode in the OS and identify various operations and activities performed by said OS.
No my friend,your quest is not yet over.You must acquire the Amiga before your training will be complete : )
Ready
Run
Geez, we're old.
Ahhh... the good ol' days of typing DOS commands. I like to pull up the command prompt every now and then just to see what I remember.
My favorite Tramiel story was the one where he went to visit one of the plants and entered through the loading dock. He saw a guy leaning against a wall inside.
Jack walked up to the guy, pulled out a pad and wrote a note instructing the company cashier to give him a severance check for $1000. Jack handed him the note, told him he was fired and to get his money and get out of his factory.
The guy was pretty happy about it all. He was a truck driver waiting to be unloaded.
LOL! And to think I complain today when my broadband cable lags ever so slightly during primetime evening hours. Yup, sometimes I miss the old BBS days.
The 512 being the Fat Mac. "Fat," because 512 is so much more than 128.
That was my second computer, purchased only a couple of years after my Osborne. Things were changing really fast just then and the Mac was a huge leap in usefulness. Don't have that one anymore, though. It went into a dumpster in 1992 after it stopped working. Wasn't worth trying to fix by then, of course.
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