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Playing Games Even if the Commodore 64 hardware is obsolete, enthusiasts have written emulators for Windows PCs, Apple Macintoshes, and now PocketPC-based PDAs to enable original Commodore games to run on those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

[CathyRyan]

A few months sgo I pulled an old hard copy of a class program project in assemble. All it was was looking for data in a dump and I could not figure it out. I was so depressed. I thought I would always be able to do that in my sleep up until the day I died.

[djf]

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.

[djf]

You still work with the big iron?

[AgentEcho]

Load "*",8,1

If it's possible to have flashbacks to being 12 years old, I just did it.

PEEK POKE

[The_Victor]

Hehehe

[The_Victor]

emulator available here

Seach for MULE to find the game.

[HamiltonJay]

They can't stop an emulator from being downloaded, but they can stop the ROMS for the games... even though the machine is obsolute the copyrights are still valid on the code.

[SamAdams76]

The next town over to me (Lowell, MA) has a huge skyscraper by Route 3 near the Chelmsford town line. It is a massive building as well - about the length of three football fields.

It used to be the world headquarters of Wang Computer. It is hard to believe that just 20 years ago, Wang Computer was a powerhouse Fortune 500 company with unlimited potential. I have never seen a company crash so fast (not even Enron) as Wang. Ten years ago, the building went up for bid at an auction and some enterpreneur snapped it up for a couple hundred thousand dollars. We're talking a building with the square footage of an average mid-size Manhattan office building here!

That was probably the deal of the century. The building was converted into office space for a large number of firms and it appears to be fully leased. That guy must be doing real well for himself.

[AgentEcho]

I had the C=128S. This one looked more like a pizzabox workstation rather than being an all-in-one system.

[Swordmaker]

I wrote a complete bookkeeping program with payroll for the C-64 for one of my clients... worked great and you didn't have to subscribe to a tax update service! She was still using my package last year on her C-128.

[Swordmaker]

POKES and PEEKS... lots of fun...

[Charles Martel]

Gool animated graphic! Hey, does anyone here use Opera 7 as their web browser? Set it to "nostalgia" mode; it's like using a C-64 to browse the web.

[bedolido]

She was still using my package last year on her C-128

That's cool (and frightening at the same time)...lol

[BADROTOFINGER]

I had to figure out M.U.L.E. without the manual. Played that sucker for hours...JFK

[RightWhale]

I have never seen a company crash so fast (not even Enron) as Wang.

A one-man show. He died, the company died. Or maybe it was the other way around.

[Spiff]

Ahhh, the memories. I remember connecting to Compuserve with my first Commodore 64 and a 300 baud modem. It took hours and $$$$ just to download and display a .GIF file. I used it to hack local BBSs (never hurt anything, just grabbed all the password files). And the games were just plain fun (JumpMan, etc.)

[BureaucratusMaximus]

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 that I paid $99.95 for at the local Venture dept. store. I also bought the optional expansion pack which gave it a whopping 64K RAM!

Wow, and I thought I was the only one who had one of those. I remember in one of the magazines there was a music generation program...I thought it was the cats a$$ back then!

[strela]

I had twelve C64 power supplies stored out in my workshop up until a couple of years ago. (Got them at an auction in 1991 and threw out the entire lot 3-4 years ago). I'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice (well, kind of) if I had kept them and Ebayed them.

[anymouse]

Don't forget the Radio Shack Trash-80. :)

[anymouse]

Boy, I haven't seen an IMSAI-8080 since high school. It was the first "personal computer" that I ever used. Saving to and loading from a cassette recorder was better than keypunch cards or teletype tape.