[Recorded Dec 10, 2007]
The Commodore 64 was an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, and during it's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totaled close to 17 ...
[Recorded Dec 10, 2007] The Commodore 64 was an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, and during it's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totaled close to 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were developed for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games.
The C64 made an impressive debut at the 1982 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, as recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: All we saw at our booth were Atari people with their mouths dropping open, saying, 'How can you do that for $595?'
The term personal computer was a common term in the early 80's and was used as early as 1972 to characterize Xerox PARC's Alto. During this era of microcomputer innovation, the market was dominated by the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC), the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the Apple II, Tandy Corporation's TRS-80s, and various CP/M machines.
Although the history of the Commodore is rich, the histories of the people and the companies that developed these early personal computers are also critical to the personal productivity tools and business solutions we often take for granted in our daily lives.
This panel discussion is a celebration of the Commodore 64 computer and how it spawned a tremendous market for home, small business, distributed and networked technology.
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What the C64 did have going for it, was #1 a real actually usable keyboard (now we take it for granted, but back then it really was a major factor in choosing a computer -- look at all the rancid keyboards from back then), video out to a TV, a colorful graphics chip with friendly character set and good sound chip, a sexy case for itself and its disk drive, and instant on to a command line prompt - which was useless everyone but someone who was enthralled with basic programming.
well computers have always been a learning experience, did you not know anyone sauve enough too fix some of the manufacturing problems? (i say, while i drop my apple on the table again too seat the chips, or smell smoke due too the worst layout in history) i had 3 originals, one of them modded with resets, freeze frame, and much more, and one of the later cases, that was sexy. my modded one still works. my drives still work.
The C64 had amazing hardware and looking back now, for a great price too. People give Sir Clive Sinclair all the credit for making home computers affordable but they forget that Tramiel was the leader in that idea on a global scale.
I loved the 64 but it was really let down by the onboard BASIC interpreter - it was pitiful compared to what other manufacturers supplied their machines with, but I suppose the low development costs in that respect contributed to the end price...
The C64 was a properly built computer, so many are still running and I've little doubt that if I dug mine out from the attic and plugged it in i'd be playing elite in no time. An absolute legend that changed the game forever, it brought the world of computing to millions and I'm glad that my first experience with a computer was on a C64.
wrong! the vic and C=64 were incredibly shoddily built. Just look at the bubbly traces on any 64 motherboard. Low quality, probably as low quality as they could push them out the door, that's how they could sell them that low and shock the Atari people. And the power supplies (and connectors to them) were notorious for failing. The big crippling factor for the C64 though was lack of a built in disk operating system, that would autoload whatever disk you had in the drive when you powered on
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typing LOAD"*",8,1 to hard for you?
10 PRINT"LOLOSER"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
I loved my shortcut commands not to mention my mega boot speed! ;) Man the good days.
I loved the 64 but it was really let down by the onboard BASIC interpreter - it was pitiful compared to what other manufacturers supplied their machines with, but I suppose the low development costs in that respect contributed to the end price...
Shame :(
on the I Love Techno Festival Belgium for 10.000 people
The Commodore Generation is still alive !