1982 Commodore® 64, Close Up of a Legend. (Final Version)

[raffatellu]

i love this computer....

[jabg2011]

I owe so much to Commodore, it's because of them I really became interested in computers.

[Headroom23]

Intresting. Would've been nice to have audio, but intresting nevertheless.

[BeeFittyTwooz]

i'm gonna get one of these, but hopefully with less RAM, 64k is just to much for me. I think i'll be able to play crisis 2 on max settings.

[Mindbyte]

Haha cool video :)

Nice idea building a "street" of macro-recordings.

[chipwaver]

PLEASE SHOW ALL COMMENTS, else the comments and answers may be mixed up and most unreadable...

...find it at bottom of this page!

[jkeelsnc]

I should add that despite the amazing capabilities of this legendary little machine some of its weaknesses should be noted as well. Its built in basic was not that great. Also, the built in DOS was not that great either. Additionally, the disk interface could be have been much better.

Some of those problems were solved. The Epyx fastload cartridge with its built in DOS wedge made DOS commands easy. It was very transparent and the few programs that didn't work had their own fastload routine

[maddogmcrae]

@jkeelsnc Some of those shortcoming were a result of some dumbass decisions made by management. The version of basic was indeed hastily cobbled together. The version of Basic on the 128 was originally intended for the 64 but was unstable.

The SID chip was supposed to have 6 voices, but due to budget issues, it only got 3. But the Sid Chip designer went on to better things and started the company that brought us the Soundblaster sound cards.

[jkeelsnc]

What chipwaver says is true. Programmers really squeezed the potential from this little machine. And the results were quite spectacular for an 8 bit machine.

Commodore always did offer machines that were ahead of their time when first released. Look at the Amiga. It held its own above anyone else for years after it was released. It was not until the early 90's that PC's could come close to the Amiga.

[chipwaver]

@jkeelsnc exactly bro!

[snake2006]

@jkeelsnc

It Commodore went hadn't gone broke due to mismanagement then the Amiga would still be superior to the PC.

[jrag1000]

@snake2006

it's a shame isn't it? Imagine what they could be doing today...

The stuff that machine could pull off without overheating and without crashing as much as i remember... lol

there's always some greedy bastard inside every company...

[Astroboi64]

dude, im 12, and i say, 5/5! man, the extra colse-up always pays, right?

[FerralVideo]

By what I can tell, Commodore continued producing this computer from 1982 clean to 1995 when they went bankrupt. Ah, I can still feel the controller in my hand playing Bruce Lee or Hot Wheels with my brother. "LOAD"$",8" "LIST" "LOAD"*",8,1" <3 So much fun began with those three lines....

[chipwaver]

The C64 was THE MACHINE! Looking back it was the computer with best Video + Sound - Chip, for years - and the programers gave it's best! ANYTHING was possible with that 64k Machine, even Video-Editing, years before any other machine in our homes was able to do such things... damn so many wrong decission of the C= Managers after the C64, they could still be ruling the Multimedia-Segment with up to date Machines...

[chipwaver]

You are so right, that Machines have got their very special smell, even after all those years, I can confirm this!

[gamorbab]

You got C64 in 1995?? Agh. Oh well, for me the magic was in the 80's. By 1995, even a C64 couldn't save the day anymore. You should've been there in 1984 or so.. ahh, those memories.

[19FD89]

the C64 was my first computer! I was 5 (1995) when i got it from my dad!