Added: 3 years ago
From: MN12BIRD
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  • Best computer ever! p.s The reason why it was so cheap was Commodore used to place huge orders for the components, and then not pay them. Those companies then went bust and Commodore then bought them out, thus producing the components at a fraction of the price. Hmmm, not sure about the business ethics on that one lol. Anyway, the C64 was the best gaming era for me, loved it!!!!

  • Never forgotten, using mine as a keyboard to my PC. C64 Forever!!!

  • Kinda forgotten!. Never.

  • I felt so tenderly nostalgic watching this video.... brought tears to my eyes..... sniff.... Thanks for posting it.

  • @namco21gamefreak -

    as a bbc micro owner I recall being intensely jealous of computers that could display Grey. The BBC could display 16 colours out of a palette of... 8 :(

    ... but BBC Basic was an awesome environment to learn to program in (functions with arguments, inbuilt assembler).. and it had Elite.

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  • Nice vid, You had the C64 in schools in the 80's, We had the BBC micro manufactured by Acorn computers here in the UK, I do admit the C64 was a much more powerful system than the BBC, i never owned a C64 but i had a BBC model B using BASIC.

  • A testiment to how popular this was is how well it sold in Britain. Outside the office IBM's and CP/M computers, Britain had a thriving home grown home computer market in the 80's with computers such as the Amstrad 464/6128, BBC micro and Spectrems, but the commodore was the only "affordable" home computer that was not British that was prevelant in the 80's.

  • I loved the Ghostbusters game for the Comm64.

  • the c64c had a different sound chip (witch sounded worse)

  • Yeah I know this video is old .But in it you were saying you didn't know how the printer plug in.It's uses the same port as the disk drive.So on the bk of the disk drive there are 2 ports 1 in 1 out .So you have to daisy chain it

  • The disk drive might have been more common in North America but in the UK, most owners used cassette decks. 3-5 mins to load a game, usually with music playing at the same time. I started off with a VIC 20 then progressed to a Sinclair ZXSpectrum 48k followed by a Commodore 64, but a later model that looked more like an Amiga 500 - I can't remember the name of it. I loved the CBM64 but eventually moved on to the Amiga 500.

  • I still type in a thousand-line MLX program from time to time. LOL.

  • You sound stereoish lol!!!

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  • Good stuff. I wonder what the rumored modern reboot is gonna look like.

  • Are Those NAD audio components in the background under the TV?

  • @dallase1 I wish! That's some Technics stereo receiver I had. Now I use a Marantz 1550 and I have a Chinese tube amp (Jap caps and Russian tubes)

  • I wonder why this sold so much better than the 32 bit IBM PCs at the time. Strange.

  • @Roflcopter4b C64 came out in 1982 and IBM was using the 8086 witch was 16-bit. In 1982 IBM PC's with a disk drive cost $2,000 or more and still didn't have the sound or color graphics comparable to the C64 witch was geared more towards gaming. IBM's were business machines first and foremost until EGA graphics came out in 1984 (same year as the 286) and adlib sound cards in 1987. In the early to mid 80's the C64 trumped the $2,000 machines in games, sound and graphics and only cost $600!

  • @MN12BIRD I have to second this. When I was a kid my first computer ever was the 8088 (came out after the 8086) and even that machine's games were not on par wiht the 8-bit consoles. with CGA graphics and really really terrible sound (ONE channel piercing sound!)

  • il primo amore non si scorda più

  • just pulled mine out of the basement setting it up in the dining room

  • Oh no... I miss my C64 so much! There is something about this computer that makes me nostalgic in a big way. Perhaps is it my youth that is gone with it.

    Too bad Commodore made bad strategic choices otherwise they could have been Apple today. Oh well...

  • not exactly a gaming system, was a computer although its true it was dominated and loved by gamers and programmers, good vid

  • could u imagine what this could do if it had a 64bit 6502 cpu it ran at 3 Ghz with 4 gb of ram and updated video and sound chips with GEOS ? IBM PC's would be toast

  • I loved my C64 , you could run geOS on it and it looked like Lisa or Windows 3.1.

  • Man had the Vic20 for $799 in around 82 alot of money! But when the C64 came out I cried. 1541 was good I thnk a drive by the name of sky was kool? amiga was hot but again no money. Then again I got an Amstrad mmm why of why hehe...all good

  • how come early modems had the phone on top of it or attached to it?

  • @joshbot360 Probably either just marketing to symbolise connectivity or so you could still use the phone when the modem wasn't being used.

  • I had original C64, the tape deck and big-ass disk drive that wasn't much faster than the tape deck. I did a lot of BASIC programming. All the sprite symbols were on the front of the keys. Unfortunately my disk drive died and I found that I could fix it by swapping one of the chips from the C64. However I made a mistake one day and fried the graphics. I was so sad.

    Later I got the slim-version and the smaller drive. What an upgrade! I loved that version.

  • I learned how to program on this! God I loved the C64!

  • Vegeta, What does the scouter say about how many C64 Applications there are?

    IT'S OVER 9000!

  • A wonderful machine for it's time. However, this wasn't a console. It was a Home computer with a friggin tape drive. The Master System simply had the C64 beat for games because it didnt have to wait 2 or 3 mins to load up each sodding level.

    On the other hand, you could program a C64 which gave it the edge for independent developers.

  • @SamusDrake

    "sodding level"...

    Sorry, not my fault you're British or Australian. Here in the States we used disk drives. And cartridge games on the C64 had no wait time.

  • @Hiraghm

    LOL. No need to apologise for I forgive you...

    That was the problem for UK computers during the 80s - the recession demanded tapes to be the medium of choice. Trust me, your experience of the 8-bit era was much less painful than ours!

    I remember owning our first PC(a 486sx) and I just couldn't believe the leap from cassettes to floppy disks. It was if God himself said "and from this day forward you will no longer fetch tea and biscuits whilst waiting for your games to load!"

  • @SamusDrake Casettes were super cheap, most games only cost a fiver, loading times were a small price to pay to pay a small price.

  • @SamusDrake Ah yes the agony of a Tape Loading Error.

    I was lucky enough to have a C64, which I'm amazed my parents paid for given that the ZX Spectrum was less than half the price. Although, if you weren't gaming the BBC Micro beat them both, it's program language was brilliant.

    As you in the UK you might want to check out this BBC docu-drama about Sinclair vs Acorn on youtube MICRO MEN (it starts at part 0).

    It's very funny, and very good.

  • @d1bx4pp

    Cheers for the tip. I've not actually looked at the BBC micro, but I guess now is a good time as any...

  • that box is worth more than the actual computer

  • was a nice computer, i had a beeb, which was excellent

  • I have a working commodore64 with 1541 disk drive, monitor and printer and some programs and games on flobbys, but I dont have the original box anymore :[

  • Everyone I knew who had a c64, including me, had never seen a c64 floppy drive. We all had tape decks only. It was all about tapes in the UK.

  • HAIL COMMODORE!!!

    Forgotten? not quite! I'll never forget that machine! I played hours and hours as a kid. And yes the sounds and music were awesome, actualy I sometimes search youtube just to hear some of the old tunes from then.

    But one thing is for sure:

    THE COMMODRE 64 DOESN'T GET ITS CREDITS IT SHOULD!!!

  • I have a Commodore 128, which basicly became a fiasco, but it has a Commodore 64 chipset inside. I know quite well what you are talking about. Great Computer at that time. I'm still using him from time to time.

  • whats the differences on commodore monitor 1702 and 1701? id notice nothing looks different on them both,

  • Nice video. I have always like classic computers, I have a question though. I have come acroos the chance to get a TI-99/4A

    with disk drives probably cassette, speech synth, expansion bay, expander to hold up to three carts at once, controllers, games and software and all the hookups for free and there is nothing wrong with it. I am not sure if I should take it though, what is your opinion, is it worht it. also the owner said if I do not take it he will throw everything out.

  • is that a silver label C64? those are worth alot among collectors like myself.

  • can you use a nintendo "gray box" RF switch or a sega genesis model 1 RF switch with the C64?

  • Commodore 64, along with DOS PC gaming may be being written out of history in this 'multiformat world' we now have, and one day people may believe the 80's were all about the 2600, the 90's all about NES and Playstation and the 00's all about next-gen console gaming, it won't change the fact that all the innovation and imagination we in the computer games of the day, not the consoles that mostly and platform games back then!

  • The Commodore 64 is NOT forgotten.. there are still a lot of people who still remember it, and many of them have real C64's which they still use (like me, hehe). It's still as great machine as it ever was - just because PC has a lot of CPU power nowadays compared to the C64 doesn't change the C64's great and un-emulatable capabilities! It's great computer for music composing, picture creation, programming and game playing etc. There's nothing like an authentic C64 running a great game on a TV!

  • @Lutanamo It's forgotten in America, where Nintendo really eclipsed it by 1988 or so. Still, there are many people who remember it here, mostly people who used it in the years from 1983 to 1986, before the NES became big.

  • Commodore 64 forgotten???

    No way Man I was there.... So many were there!!!!

    Surely, These were only ever used for gaming...

    and hey it's Not as good as the speccy!!!!

    NO WAY!!!

    NOT THEN...

    NOT NOW...

    NOT NEVER!!! x

  • I'm doing a project on the c64 at college and you have no idea how useful this is, thanks!

  • 64k RAM wasn't really THAT much back then, the more expensive model of the original Apple ][ had 64k, and it came out in 1978...

    The reason why Commodore could make their own chips was because they had a tactic where they bough a ton of components from a contractors, didn't pay for them, then bought them and forgave their or depbts when the contractors went bankrupt due to Commodore's unpaid bills.

  • Man!!! Good review.But should've mentioned more about the sound.Especially the 6581 SID chip inside these things.These sound chips are now being classed as legendary.These were the best sounding devices of their time.People actually pull SID chips from old commodores to make synthesizers.

  • This is a great computer. What I like about it is it's got what it's called a SID chip which is the Commodore 64's sound chip.

  • There were mostly tape games sold for C64's in the UK. Disk drives were less popular. We even made our own versions of some games so there are two version of some arcade ports, like Bionic Commando.

  • Commodore games now the Wii so you can download it on your SDcard or Wii HD

  • I think I saw something about that in a Wii shop channel update, but I've not seen any on the Wii Shop Channel itself, perhaps the games aren't available in Australia. There's no category for C64 games within the Wii Shop Channel, so i don't know what's going on there.

  • my friend got a megadrive off ebay and they forgot a cable he found it off his dads old computer which he just discovered is a c 64 and hes gonna scab it off his dad for cheap

  • 10,000 applications AND 20,000 games!!!!!!

  • I was on the Vic 20 for most of my time in the 80's *rosy glow coming from cheeks* - I was very envious of people who had NES, C64's, Spectrums etc.. I eventually got an Amiga 500 after I owned 2 Atari ST's which both died on me (surely the 360 of its time?) - it was worth the wait, the Amiga was a total powerhouse. I'm going to check out the C64 someday though for sure!

  • LOL The 360 of its time. I didn't know the Atari was so unreliable.

  • Have you seen the Commodore SX 64 Executive computer? I just picked up one not too long ago.

  • Oh wow that portable one? That would be sweet!

  • The C64C came out in 1986

  • Excellent video. Thanks.

  • Speaking of Commodore, you oughta review its breakthrough computer-- the VIC-20. :-)

  • These were very popular here in the UK in the late eighties (a few years before the Megadrive and SNES era). I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2A at the time, although I kind of knew that the C64 was the better machine for games.

  • indeed, i have the zx spectrum 48k

  • Wasn't the TRS 80 series relatively inexpensive for the time, and popular? (the big players early on were Commodore, Apple, Tandy, and Atari)

    The TRS 80 Model I came out the same year as the Atari VCS (1977) and was priced just under $600. (granted that was a little more than in 1982)

    I beleive the Model III was also a pretty decent gaming console for the time.

  • The Commodore PET series also launched in 1977. With the Apple II arround the same time. (the Atari 8-bit series slightly later)

    I guess the TRS-80 Model III would be somewhat contemporary with the C64, though it was a bit older. (and the model 4 was newer than the C64)

  • there were 15,000 games or there about made for this great machine one of my faves of all time

  • I have both Models!!

  • So what!!

  • Commodore? WTF is that wow 1982 very old

  • Total nonsense. Go away

  • I have a feeling I'm gonna like your videos. *subs*

    :D

  • Well goodbye and way to believe someone who emailed you and doesn't know me. I got $300 credit from work not my Mom and didn't mention that because the part time workers didn't get anything and one of them watches my videos. The ASIC processor in the SegaCD DOES DO hardware scaling. Look it up douche. bye.

  • I don't know I put a wanted ad up in my local kijiji and got 3 replies back in one day!

  • Great review, though I would have mentioned the 64C was modeled to look more like the C128. Plan on reviewing that one? It's a great machine and is TOTALLY backwards compatible with the 64.

  • not biggest, longest

  • I used to have a C64. I also had an Amiga. You should go look for that next Jake

  • I used to play my C64 everyday; I miss it dearly

  • The reason why they could make theyre own parts was that they used to order a bunch of parts from a smaller company and not pay them. After those companys went bancrupt for not geting paid commodore would always buy them.

    Thay were the biggest marketing jerks at the time

  • I use to play N64 using this monitor, and like I said, C64 made solid hardware, all my commodore64 stuff still works. :)

  • Also Sega joysticks and Atari joysticks work on the commodore64.

  • I've read not to use Sega joysticks as the resistance is different and people have burnt out the joystick controller circuit inside the C64. Might not be true but I didn't want to try it!

  • Mmm you might be right, not sure either. I've never heard that before O_O Every time I used sega master system joysticks it worked :O

  • I had a Spectrem and a Amstrad CPC 464. Maybe a review on one of them someday...

  • My commodore*64 and 1541 disk drive and even the 64monitor and printer all still works, I got some games and programs on flobbys that still play :) I also have a working Sega master system and Atari 2600. I'm on a 2001 dell 8200 at the moment :l

  • I remember the commodore 64.

  • Are posting a part 2?

    Going more in depth will the older systems.

    Keep it up.

  • What happened to your video introduction?

  • No time.

  • I used to have a Vic20, man it had some good games!

  • Sería ideal que estos videos de MN12BIRD, tuvieran subtítulos en castellano.

    It would be ideal than these videos of MN12BIRD, have subtitles in Spanish.

  • LOL Spanish eh? I can't speak Spanish but if I did that I'd have to sub every other language too!

  • Wow so you picked up 2 commadore 64's!? I'm looking forward to the next video.

  • Much more than 2 lol. You'll see in pt 2.

  • Are you Launching pt2 tonight?

  • yes he is

  • Oh man I love mine! :)

    I still have the 64, the 64C (the white one) and the 128. Never had the tape drive though...just the 1541 and 1581 drives (the 3.5 inch drive).

    We also had the (dont have it anymore) IBM PCjr around the same time.

  • I understand The 64C was made in Hong Kong. Did the 1581 disk drive work with the Commodore 64?

  • Yes it did work with the C64....I used both the 1541's and 81's back in my BBS days.

  • where you get

  • awesome altered beast on the c64 I'd like to see that port

  • Definitly, that was the first thing I thought when I was that AB was released on it!!

  • oh you lucky guy, i really want a c64

  • the c64 and the amiga 500 were _huge_ here in europe

  • They still are. The demoscene is still big over there too.

  • I know, I watched some demos in an emulator a few months ago.

  • im kind of confused. how can you store data on cassettes if cassettes dont have memory?

  • Just like a CD can store either music or data, so could a cassette. Actually, works more like a floppy disc, as both a floppy and a cassette stored data by magnetically altering the surface of the tape/floppy (as opposed to a CD being 'burned'.

  • i kinda get it, but once again they dont have memory! i dont see how a computer can read a non-digital format and run games with it!

  • who said its not digital? Audio tapes may not be digital but the tape medium itself can be written to digitally. Like hotdaddy said its no different than the surface of the floppy disk. Anytime you store information on a medium... its memory so yes tapes are memory. The biggest problem with tapes is you have no random access I mean you really want to go from the beginning of the tape to the end in order. They are commonly used as backup on servers too. VHS tapes can also hold digital data.

  • i see. how much memory can the tapes store then?

  • Well not much on the C64 tapes I think 600KB! Modern backup tapes for servers can hold like 800GB on one "cassette" cartridge but they aren't the same shape or design as an audio cassette.

  • 600KB is a lot for the C64! ._. im surprised they can hold that much. how big are modern cassette tapes?

  • 600KB is virtually nothing.

  • for an almost 30 year old system it is.

  • back in the day, 600KB was all you needed. Think of how simple the programs were in the early 80's.

  • i had a c64 in the 90s, i loved it, my dad got it in germany with like 3 boxes full of games, and all the addons, then he gave it away :(

  • my dad had one of these lol

  • Great video, Jake.

    I never knew the system was going until 1994!

  • i had one just like that some years ago!!! i loved it... i had it with the tape deck... i wanted the floppy drive but couldn't find one and afford it..

  • Excellent video as always 5/5.

  • I have an Apple IIe from 1983 with Monitor, System, Diskett Drive and Printer. Back then this was worth about $2500. :)

  • I bought 2 off eBay a few weeks ago for £3.50. Even came with a few carts like Feindish Freddy and Terminator 2.

    But I never owned one as a kid, my parents bought me an Amstrad CPC, which were slightly more powerful.

    Also you need to read up on the head of Commodore at the time, Sam Tramiel and what a bastard he was, he'd buy chips off companies, not pay for them, then bought them when they went bankrupt and then forgave the debt!!!!

  • do you think youll ever get an amiga?

  • I would love to get a 16-bit Amiga but MAN they aren't and never were common in North America. Finding one I would imagine around here would be hard to do. I got all this C64 stuff inc multiple systems, tons of disk drives, 2 monitors, tons of games (you'll see it all in pt.2) for $70!

  • HOLY SHIT COMMODORE 64

    YOUR A VID GOD!

  • I didn't know much about this system...wow the games did look great for the time!

  • Yeah me neither I've never owned a C64 until just the other day and the games I found really surprised me.  I remember playing them alot when I was a kid at like school or the library or whatever but none of the games they had where good ones I guess!

  • have bolder dash, donkey kong?

  • rofl 400$ for a 5.25 floppy drive. I remember getting a memory upgrade for my tandy from like 256kb to 640kb man programmers used to do so much with so little. great video as usual.

  • Excellent! Haven't had one for many years but plan to get again someday or maybe a C128.

    Look forward to next video.

  • Are you keeping up with the commodore!?!?... cause the commodore is keeping up with you!!

  • vista ready :P

  • i loved my 64! my favourite games were "green beret", "ghost n goblins", "antiriad", "1942", and some others ... i think the sound was the absolute best!

  • That's cool. btw, when you use the S-Video, where do you connect the sound?

    I also remembered some of your older videos that the sega systems you have that uses RF and you said it doesn't work with your TV turner, have you tried using a RF Modular so you can connect the sega system to the RF modular and then to the TV turner? or would that not make a difference?

  • Oh yeah SMS, Genesis, GenesisII, 32X and Saturn won't work RF to my TV Tuner but if I run RF to VCR, VCR Composite to TV Tuner it works and I can record them that way. The S-Video on a C64 is divided into two separate RCA male cables. You get 3 out of the A/V cables with a C64 but of course only 1 is for audio (mono) and the other two yellow and red are Chroma and Luma video signals.

  • ah ok, yeah, I forgot about the good old VCR's lol. I don't even have a VCR in the house lol. But anyway, what video capture software you use?

  • Yeah I picked up a used Sharp or something for like 6 bucks lol.  I used it to record Saturn games like Daytona and Sega Rally. Oddly enough the DC works fine to the TV tuner and every other system I have just the older Sega ones don't.

  • I was lucky with the master system, genesis and saturn I have, they all came with AV cables for each of the systems I picked up. I have my genensis/32x/sega cd hooked up using the composite AV cables and using the audio output on the sega cd so I can get stereo out and still have decent picture quality. I may pick up another dreamcast just so I can have the box for it because every other sega system I have has the original boxes for them, and in really good shape.

  • Oh sorry I have AV cables for SMS, Genesis and Genesis2 (32X) and they don't work on the TV Tuner. That's what I meant to say the RF on my TV Tuner never works for anything. Its the AV composite video that doesn't work from the old Sega systems to the TV Tuner. I can run it in and out of the VCR and then it works. Weird eh?

  • thats funny i have one

    i use the monitor for nes/atari2600/genesis reviews in my bedroom

    it has a great picture

    only thing i need for it is a boot disk

    is it worth a lot?

  • oh ok, that is odd, I thought its because thr RF doesn't work, but also the RCA connectors on those sega systems? What kind of TV turner you have? Now I want to see if mine would work on my TV turner, then again, my media center pc isn't powerful enough to be smooth and look good, which sucks because I hate pointing my camera at the TV to record, the only time it works is point the camera at my LCD monitor and that's because I have a VGA box for the dreamcast which looks great, 480p at its best.

  • It all comes out of one lead, it's a special 7 pin prong one you need to buy.

    It's the same one the Mega Drive had.

  • I got a Commodore 64 off a friend for free with games & all!

  • where do you get all your stuff?

  • Wait until Pt.2 you'll see the mountain of C64 crap I have and where it all came from.

  • ebay or VV?

  • $600? I could buy a 2 Wiis with that money! anyways great vid! 5/5 stars and faved

  • $600 back in 1982 is more like $900 today! But this was still cheaper than the AppleII and Atari's it was competing with.

  • *Faints*

    Dude! Also how much was Atari and Applell?

    Thnk for info.

  • Computers were expensive back then. I mean a fully loaded 80286 IBM with a 10MB HD and a few MB's of RAM back in the early 80's might cost ya 10 grand!  Once again $10 grand back in '82 could buy you a brand new Mustang GT! These ~$1000 "Home" PC's were considered cheap compared to a full blown IBM. The AppleII was over $1,000 I'm sure.

  • the Atari 800xe was just a pinch over a grand,, and the appe 2 was getting closer to a grand and a half. Not to forget that just after the 64 came the 16 in 1984,,, now that was a beast to reckon with!! lol

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