Flashback: The Commodore 64 In Pictures

The Commodore 64 is the computer that launched the careers of many of today's IT experts. Back in the 1980s, you could easily get countless add-ons, accessories, and peripherals for this home computer. For example, one of the best-beloved models in this family was the Commodore 128, whose C128D Diesel version sported a built-in 5" floppy drive. Along with an 80-column RGB monitor, a dot matrix printer, and an ungodly expensive 20 MB hard disk, you could also select from a large number of input devices and a plethora of software.

This breadbox shaped computer--also called a "bullnose" thanks to its rounded front edge--led many young enthusiasts to neglect their school work, and prompted many sleepless (but exciting) nights at the keyboard. At that time, the x86 PC was still chasing the Commodore for market share. These were pioneering days for personal computing technology and interest in the field pushed many people into IT careers. A whole slew of Tom's Hardware editors trace their computing roots back to the C64, or to other early PC precursors such as the VC20, C16, or C166 models. Generally, they moved to Amiga 500s or to the original 8086 PC models from there.

The successor to the "Breadbox"--the Commodore C64C, also known as the Commodore C64 II--became available in 1986. It sold in Germany for around 400 DM (about $200 in the US). When it made its original market debut in March 1983, the original C64 was priced at 1500 DM ($599 in the US). At the time this was a huge sum for schoolkids or college students, to which they had to add the cost of an external floppy drive (about 1100 DM or $360 in the US) and a color monitor. Most users opted instead to use their color TV sets as monitors, using the HF antenna output on the C64. The best video, however, was generally produced using a composite video link between the C64's A/V output and a TV set.

Although the Commodore C64C presented a sleeker and more modern-looking enclosure, it wasn't as popular with tinkerers and hobbyists as was the old "Breadbox" model. This led to a switch back to the older form factor in 1987, which once again let hobbyists take advantage of extra space for hardware add-ons that could be mounted inside the Commodore's case.

The C64C model was also the first small computer to apply the term "personal computer" to machines in the homebrew/home user marketplace. Despite strong competition from the Atari 800 XL, and inroads made by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, lots of buyers opted for the C64 as their homebrew PC of choice. In concert with a rapidly growing population of software titles, this device became enormously popular and successful both in the European market and around the world.

You seldom see designs like this one any more. The Commodore C64 features a keyboard and all of the computing circuitry in a single enclosure. Compared to PC offerings available at the time, this keyboard was really robust, but not terribly ergonomic. Also, some of the keys produced as many as three symbols or actions, a result of the Commodore's extended character-mode graphics.

Here's a look at the connectors on the Commodore C64. At left, you see the expansion port, into which most users plugged in cartridges called "expansion modules." Next up is the HF antenna output for the TV signal, with preset channel selection, a port for a diskette drive or printer, an audio/video or monitor output, a connector for a cassette tape drive (Datasette), and the User Port. Every C64 owner with any claim to system smarts would unscrew the case screws as well, to let them plug in additional internal devices inside the case.

The right-side connectors included two joystick or mouse points, a power switch, and a power port for the external power supply. The PSU went through many design changes during the 11 years that the Commodore C64 remained in active production.

Here's a close-up of the expansion port, which provided a plug-in interface for modular add-ons and game cartridges.

A quick glance at the back of the Commodore C64 box is like gawking at an exhibit of "stone age" technology. Note the 1802 RGB monitor, the monstrous 1541 external floppy drive, and the 7-pin dot matrix MPS 801 printer. They all hearken back to the earliest days of personal computing. This stuff wasn't cheap, either: the total cost for all of these items, plus the C64 itself, ran about 3,000 DM (around $1,500 at then-prevailing exchange rates).

Here's a Commodore C64C with the top opened up to show modifications. During its product life from 1982 until 1992, this computer went through countless design and technical changes. But despite the many changes in internal components that differentiated C64 versions from one another, there were never any software compatibility problems to speak of during this entire period.

Compared to the Breadbox version, the C64C was equipped with a much smaller motherboard.

Though the first Commodore 64 came equipped with a MOS 6410 processor that ran at about 1 MHz, the C64C came equipped with a MOS 8500 instead, operating at the same clock rate. Commodore actually bought MOS Technology, so as to have exclusive access to its chip output. The motherboard also included a very generous 64 KB of RAM (quite a bit for the time), so that users could not only play games, but also run more serious applications as well. Unique for its day, this unit also included an SID 6581 sound chip, which could produce three polyphonic voices at once; this device was also used in professional electronic instruments at the time. In some games, such as Turrican and Turrican II for example, crafty programmers used this circuitry to mix multiple sound sample to produce sound tracks of up to five distinct voices.

The external diskette drive for the Commodore C64 included its own integrated circuitry, with an independent processor and its own local memory. Commodore integrated DOS onto an EPROM inside the drive, so it wasn't necessary to load this code onto the C64 itself. In 1987, this 1541-II disk drive model cost about 500 DM (about $250); the first floppy disks for these drives cost about 100 DM ($50) each!

One programming efficiency unique to the period arose when savvy programmers offloaded various parts of the computing work for their programs to the 1541/1541 II external disk drives available at the time. This permitted them to achieve genuine "parallel computing." Lots of older users will no doubt remember programs that made music by moving these drives' read/write heads, or ones that could vary the intensity of the drive's LED actvity indicator light.

The 1541 drive used older, widely available, 5.25" double-sided, double density floppy disks. The drive itself, however, recorded on only one side of the media, with a maximum per-side storage capacity of 170 kilobytes. With the help of a special "disk notcher" (or some ingenuity and manual dexterity with a knife or hole punch) users could create "flippy disks" that could be turned over and recorded on both sides. To read from or write to the back side of the floppy, users had to pop it out and flip it over (hence the name "flippy disk"). Users then had to keep track of items stored on each side of these disks separately, and label them carefully to keep track of their contents.

This rear-view shot of a 1541 floppy drive shows an aftermarket reset switch wired into the device, which was handy when parallel processing on the drive would go south.

A rear view of the 1541/1541 II enclosure shows its various connectors. From left to right you can see the serial port that managed the link up with the Commodore 64, the interface port that allowed another floppy drive or printer to be daisy-chained to this device, a device indicator, a power input jack, and the on-off switch at the far right.

This extension card plugs into the single expansion port inside the Commodore 64, and provides identical ports for up to three devices outside the enclosure. This particular board comes from German manufacturer Rex Datentechnik, and cost about 200 DM ($100) in 1987 when it was first introduced. On the left, you see a reset button and an on-off switch for the whole board; at the right of each expansion port, you see an on/off switch that controls each individual slot.

This photo shows the extension card from the business end that plugged into the Commodore 64's expansion port. Note the high quality switches, components, and printed circuit board etching work.

With three cartridges plugged into the Rex Datentechnik expansion card, you get a real sense for how this device was meant to be used. Gaming cartridges were by far the most common, but others implementing word processing, circuit design, music composition, programming, and other special functions were available. For an interesting look at a comprehensive list, see the Commodore C-64 Cartridge Rarity List.

For its time, the Commodore C64 was quite energy efficient: its total power draw was only 15 watts. This home computer also was completely silent, since it used no fans.

Only a few Commodore owners were able to treat themselves to this device: the inkjet MPS 1270 (A) printer from Commodore. It used the serial port to communicate with the C64.

The print quality from the Commodore MPS 1270 was lousy, even for its time. Dot-matrix printers from HP made better alternatives for many Commodore owners, though they too were pretty pricey.

The Commodore MPS 1270 inkjet printer worked through a typical Centronics printer interface (upper right). This also allowed this device to work with a conventional PC via a standard 25-pin parallel port.

The paper feed for the Commodore MP 1270 (A) inkjet printer was near the front/bottom of the device.

By the end of the 1980s, more and more cartridges became available for the Commodore 64. This particular cartridge, the Action Replay MK VI, was aimed at hard-core gamers, who might want to save games in progress, or turn off particular sprites within some games.

The Action Replay MK VI cartridge cost up to 200 DM ($100) when it made its market debut.

Here's a shot of the original box for the Action Replay MK VI.

Anybody who remembers the C64 will recognize this tool. A disk notcher enabled users to turn single-sided 5.25" floppies into double-sided "flippies" that could store files on both sides of the media.

You didn't really need a special-purpose diskette notcher to do this job. A regular pair of scissors would also suffice.

For the vast majority of Commodore C64 owners this manual didn't provide anywhere near enough information. Though the original book included fundamentals of BASIC programming and some device information, it was too sketchy to do users a whole lot of good.

Way ahead of its time: at the end of 1986, every Commodore C64C shipped with a copy of version 1.2 of the graphical operating system GEOS. Its user interface included applications such as GeoWrite (for text processing) and GeoPaint (for graphics and image editing), that looked and worked much like similar Macintosh programs of the day.

The budget method for data storage on the Commodore was the Datasette, which used widely-available compact audio cassette tapes as its storage medium. By keeping track of the revolution counter, users could return to and reload stored programs. With help from various types of turbo software accelerators, this cassette drive was about as fast as a diskette drive, and could store more data. But the device also required constant azimuth adjustments to the read/write tape heads, using a jeweler's screwdriver and an azimuth adjustment program to get settings just right. Today's users would never accept such a need for constant calibration and adjustment!

The best-sellling Commodore C64 cartridge of all time was called The Final Cartridge III, produced by Riska B.V. Home and Personal Computers. It included reset and freeze buttons that could permit program execution to be reset, frozen and restarted on demand. It also include a fast loader that increased the speed of the disk drive, and a way to disable all extended features for use with programs that required an unaltered, plain vanilla C64 runtime environment. At its debut, this cartridge cost about $50 (100 DM).

The final days of the Commodore C64 began with the release of GEOS version 2.5 in 1993.

In Germany, the most active outlet for the C64 community was 64'er Magazine, which served for many years as a primary source for market and technical information. In the US and Canada, numerous publications served this community as well, including some names now long forgotten, such as Compute!, Gazette Magazine, Run, Ahoy, Commodore Power Play, ZZap!64, Commodore World, and Die Hard. The Canadian Commodore society has a nice gallery of related publications on its Commodore Computer Magazine Articles archive page. Some used magazine dealers even specialize in reselling used Commodore publications from this era.

This was also an era when lots of important software had to be typed in (or switched in) by hand, using the "Checksummer" utility to key individual code groups one at a time. This work often took an unbelievable number of hours to complete. By today's always-on Internet standards this level of labor (and love) is nearly unimaginable.

A W&T Centronics printer interface for the Commodore 64 and 128 cost nearly $50 (100 DM) back in the day.

A real heavyweight: the Commodore C128D (aka "Diesel"), with its built-in diskette drive and external keyboard, cost nearly $500 (1,000 DM) in 1987.

Despite its name, most users ran the Commodore 128 in its C64 emulation mode. The C128 also included a genuine CP/M operating system onboard as well.

Three CPUs in a single enclosure: 1985 witnessed the introduction of the C128, originally conceived as a successor to the C64. In contrast to the C64, the Commodore 128D worked in three different modes. Along with its native C128 mode, it supported a C64 emulation mode and a CP/M mode. In fact, the C128 also integrated a 4 MHz Z80 processor specifically for CP/M support.

Software designed specifically for the Commodore C128 was rare and hard to find, which is why most users ran their C128's in C64 emulation mode.

Superscript 128 for the Commodore C128.

A great many programs for the C64 required the use of an absolute address-based loader in order to be run. The diskette drive, such as the Floppy 1541/1541-II or the 1581, would then begin execution with a LOAD "*",8,1 instruction, as shown in the Ninja Command instructions here.

This pair of Floppy 1541-II diskette drives replaced an older pair of 1541s. Later, Commodore replaced these units in turn with the 3.5" 1581 model.

Ports and connectors for the Commodore C128D: Unlike the C64, this series also included a genuine parallel port.

Not so light on power consumption any more: the C128 consumed up to 60 watts while in use, thanks in part to the built-in diskette drive.