Commodore USA Launching C64 Tomorrow?

I wasn't born yet when these things were released. Can anybody clue me into how it used to be?

the first imac, only awesome.

With an Atom processor, this will be a cheap toy, nothing more. Basically, it sounds like a netbook without the screen. The only thing that would make it actually impressive is a max $100 price.

I cut my teeth on a TRS-80 using cassette metal tape not floppy.

will they put a C64 emulator on it?

I started off with a c64, it was so far out my mom thought I stole it and made me throw it away. So that began my underground years when I took the 64 and stuck it in the basement along with a IBM PC...

ahh the good ol' days...

what the heck is that ???

SWEET!! I had the vic-20, the 64 then the 128. They were kinda fun back in the day.

I actuall played arround with a VIC 20 as the first home computer. When the C 64 came out, I wanted one very badly. I begged my mom to get one and she got it one Christmas. It was better then the the first apples, and it worked in color. Using a TV for the screen was a great plan at the time, because it cut down on the cost of the system. The use of "Sprites" made it very well suited for video games. (sprites were like tiny moveable screens that could contain the artwork for the charactors for games. I learned to program, dial into the Schools computer system, played a ton of games, and was able to print out book reports that I was able to turn in to multiple classes for credit. It was truly a turning point for me. Lots of fond memories.

I must have had 500 games for that puppy. What memories. Some of the games I miss today. Luckily, the best of the bunch (IMHO) -- Impossible Mission -- is available for the Nintendo DS! I only wish I could get the Castles of Dr. Creep, and maybe a dozen others as well ...

yeah. I recall doing the bulk of my BASIC programming on this baby. Not to mention the hours of D&D and other such games.
Wow.... I remember the word processing program, Mirage. You had to load programs into memory from either a tape or 5 ¼" floppy. I typed my senior thesis on it.
Atom will be pretty good, I suppose. I know my co-worker runs 2003 server w/ exchange on an atom desktop. I do hope they incorporate some type of emulator.

Commodore Amiga > C64

I truely miss my C64. I loved playing games on it. At the time, the sound was considered revolutionary. The Amiga was also years ahead of its time. I wish they both would have stuck around and continued development.

I don't think this new toy will make any headway unless it includes emulators and ability to connect the original hardware (cartidges, floppy drive, etc.). It would also be nice if it included a package to play original games.

The Commodore Phoenix looks cool.. for both models, the specs are too low / outdated for a new computer purchase, I think.

I just played MULE yesterday.

Wow this brings back memories, I won My C64 when I was 12 delivering newspapers. From there was later an Amiga 128 then the Amiga 500 and finally an Amiga 4000 with a video toaster. Very nice games for the time, Defender of the Crown anyone.

My C64 is probably a huge reason I got into programming. I had a few cartridge and floppy games but I wanted more so my parents got me a BASIC game programming book and I went on from there.

heres a clue, sitting waiting for a game to load from a tape drive while it made its squeeling sounds only to find out half an hour later there was an error and it crashed back to the command prompt. I was much happier when i got my Atari ST

Heck yes. Defender of the Crown, I remember that. I wasn't any good at it, however. I had it on C64.

pr0n came on vhs tapes and the actresses were hairy

i had a 300 baud modem with mine running a bulletin board (BBS). That 300 baud = 300 bits per second of transfer over a dedicated phone line.

Can somebody gets these kids out of the thread... the adults are talking here, LOL!

Loved my C64. Zork, Bard's Tale and the Ultima series - I killed countless hours on those games. Think I had some really noise daisy wheel printer too with it. Great memories, but I'll pass on this little toy.

In '78 all I had access to was a kit computer with a 6502 CPU and 32K (!) of RAM. And yes, I remember the metal tapes with a cassette recorder...it took over 3 minutes to load BASIC and then you had to load your program. Wait a second...my Windows laptop takes 3 minutes to boot up!!

You know, this looks an awful lot like the old "PC in a keyboard config" that was supposed to be a space saver. The concept, while novel, really didn't pain out (too little power and too much heat). So, I am not sure what niche this low powered rig is supposed to fill.

All I wanted was some ideas...and I got some. Seemed like a more creative time back then, short of some mechanical failures.

All I can say is mister g.. it was a great experience to live through.

The orginal C64 is of course somewhat primitive by today's standards, but back then the concept of owning your own 8-bit computer was considered a privilege. It was also very addictive. As you see here the idea of an all-in-one device is still popular.

The C64's main UK competitors were machines like the BBC (used in schools), Dragon 32, Oric 1/Atmos and also the immensely popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum range. I was a Sinclair patron, but later on was lucky enough to own all manner of hardware. The C64 was generally more robust than the Speccy: the keyboard's look and feel; the decent graphics that didn't have as many artefacts; the sound hardware. These two machines vied for supremacy right until their demise.

Like many people the one drawback I had with the C64 was the difficultly associated with backing up the games, which came on cassette tapes and had to be loaded via a proprietary data recorder. This was a far cry from the Speccy, which could use almost any old tape recorder, dirt-cheap tapes and leads. If the games didn't load on the Speccy first time a common trick was to alter the equalisation and/or volume, and try again..most times it worked. Owners would often swap stuff on C120 tapes, too, that chewed up in the recorder; you could even see the effect the mangled bit of tape had on the game whilst it loaded. This may seem hard to believe, but games took minutes to load back then, not seconds like today.

A lot of titles were 'platform' games, whereby you run around a 2D map collecting objects to make it to the next level. Then games progressed to using isometric views (anyone remember Glider Rider and Alien Highway?!), but that was about as much as these machines could handle since it was almost entirely CPU-bound. A few games did come out in 3D and 4D, however. Despite their smaller memories - 48K for the Speccy and 64K for the C64 - the games were incredible. Some even had 1,000 rooms and it just goes to show what people could do with so little. What could you do today with 48K of RAM?

Mister g, millions of us lost so much time playing and programming these machines, but we loved every moment. This was something new..something powerful..and it was in our hands. It was also something many of us would get into trouble over, either through nicking games or bunking off school/college/work to play them. The games later came out on 'budget ranges', including compendiums where you could have a variety of titles. Add to this the fact you could get the games from almost anywhere: petrol/gas stations, supermarkets, along with magazines crammed with fine print from start to finish, and you had a cultural phenomena that lasted for years. It was cool that so many people could get into this craze and not feel ripped off.

Even when 16-bit machine like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST were cornering the market, there was still an active 8-bit user base. It seemed like everyone in the UK was into this technology, so it bridged a lot of social bridges and spring-boarded many careers.

And yet, with all this going on there were still other interests available for those that weren't hooked on playing games such as Manic Miner or Monty Mole..things like films and music, or just going out with your friends. Maybe this was because despite it's popularity this technology was still something new and therefore had yet to mature or even stagnate. I do miss the days of buying cheap computer games and magazines, talking to my friends about the newest thing..swapping C90 tapes Fortunately I didn't have to wait long to get the same kind of buzz since Commodore went and released the 16-bit wonder machine named Amiga, a machine way ahead of it's time..

Exiting times for many people

Never had a C64, but wanted one (friends had them, and they seemed the business). Our family had an Apple II (more or less the same vintage), but the games on C64 looked so much better. Did get an Amiga 500 eventually though. Ahhh, those were the days.

Leisure suit larry....

I recall a guy that was running a BBS on two of these badboys. He had two lines, and was running WildCat! I think, and even had a 10 cd-rom juke box hooked up to these things.

I personally ran RoboBoard FX, Looked like windows 3.0 on crack once you got logged in.

Hmph, makes me want to fire up DOS on VPC for the memories lol...

Hey, wait a second! If it's a mini-ITX mobo, couldn't somebody EASILY take it apart, and replace the CPU and Mobo with a Sandy-Bridge-based solution? It'd be like a C64 on UltraRoids, but it'd be fun to mess around with! Ultra high-end PC that looks like its from the 80s...

lol I can see it now..

Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of Cyris @ 1600 x 1200 + ultra detail?