8 ms·
Introducing the New Commodore 64
- th0ma5 16y agoI'd like to see a working prototype at least. Those who are fans know that seemingly starting with the success of the original product and then the Amiga, the company has always had some kind of problem delivering something new.
- jerf 16y agoA "working prototype" of a bog-standard nVidia/Intel computer in a glorified case? I don't think this is rocket science here.
- joeld42 16y agothis is just a PC casemod. bleh.
- skeltoac 16y agoIt might actually do better if it were marketed that way. Make it whatever standard form factor will fit inside the plastics and spend the rest on an Ubuntu theme.
- iuguy 16y agoThese are the same guys that did the Phoenix[1] a while back, which was essentially a knock off import that didn't do very well. The C64 looks like a refination of the Phoenix in a C64-style case. Strangely there's no CPU specs I could find. [1] - http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Phoenix.aspx http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Phoenix.aspx
- teach 16y agoHow I wish I had a working 1541 disk drive! I've got scores of programs on floppy disk that I wrote when I was 11-14 years old that I'd love to read again. I doubt the disks are still readable, though. They haven't always exactly been stored properly.
- SwellJoe 16y agoYeah, I still have my Color 64 BBS boot disk, which had a bunch of custom games, graphics, and other stuff I made when I was about 12. I'd be amused to see that stuff again, though I also suspect it's probably long gone, since the disk has been passed from bookshelf to garage to attic to storage, etc. over the 20+ years since.
- noonespecial 16y agoI found my old C64 in my parents basement. Just before I ebayed it, I hooked it up. The old disks were surprisingly resilient and my 300 baud modem still worked. I transferred many of the programs I wrote as a child in basic. It was damn near a visceral experience to hear Renegade whistle out its ancient tune as my C64 connected... I can now say that I have code I wrote when I was 10... and then goto ashamed.
- Groxx 16y agoA terrifying website, with lots of renders, few photos, and a non-functioning store. That's pretty "meh" in my book, and it even gets a Raised Eyebrow of Questioning.
- adrianbye 16y agomaybe a smart MVP ;-)
- tesseract 16y agoThe PC guts seem boring and will inflate the price. Why not do a reissue with functionality closer to that of the original, based on the C64 DTV [1] which cost $20 or $25 when it was on the market, and sell it at a $50-to-$100 price point? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV
- reitzensteinm 16y agoAgreed. This seems like a tween product - too inauthentic to appeal to Commodore 64 fans and too ugly to appeal to anyone looking for a media PC.
- alanfalcon 16y agoAnyone who is interested in this stuff that hasn't heard Jeri Ellsworth's Google Lecture about her life and her experience designing the C64 DTV 30-games-in-one joystick must watch this. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1053309060448851979# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1053309060448851979...
- daeken 16y agoIf this had a SID chip (or multiple!) in it, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. As it stands, it's just a straight up PC with... a C64 emulator.
- tesseract 16y agoIf your primary interest in the C64 is to play with the SID, why not forgo the C64 emulator and form factor and use a dedicated SID based MIDI synthesizer (e.g. http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/wilba_mb_6582 http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/wilba_mb_6582)?
- URSpider94 16y agoAnd, it's missing the original C64 game ports (like Atari joystick ports), which had OUTPUT capability!
- inji 16y ago> Realtek ALC662 6-CH HD Audio This should totally be SID, MOS 6581!
- tomconte 16y agoThis is obviously an April's Fools joke, except they missed the deadline, which is typical Commodore ;-) In other news, if you want to join 60,000+ fans of the REAL C64, there's a Facebook Page for that: http://www.facebook.com/c64.fans http://www.facebook.com/c64.fans
- dpapathanasiou 16y agoIf it's a joke, they've been at it for a while; it was supposedly going to be ready for Xmas 2010: http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-brief/51285-commodore-makes-new-computer-with-very-old-looking-hardware http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-brief/51285-commodore-makes-...
- eru 16y agoI like the C64 laptop much more (http://benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop)---it http://benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware... uses the actual old hardware.
- marcusestes 16y agoCramming a modern PC into a vintage C64 reproduction really is a terrible idea. But as an old Commodore / Amiga fanboy I have to admire Barry Altman (CEO of Commodore USA) for attempting to reawaken the brand. After the sad bankruptcy spiral and eventual shutdown of Commodore the trademarks ended up in the possession of a company based in the Netherlands called Tulip Computers (Now Nedfield) who makes commodity PC workstations. The did a little cheapo licensing of the brand here and there but basically showed no intention of breathing life into the brand again. Mr. Altman appears to have incorporated Commodore USA with the sole purpose of attaining trademark licenses and attempting to tap into the large and very latent Commodore enthusiast market. It doesn't feel like he's going to succeed. But I applaud him for trying. Now that Steve Jobs' face has taken the place of Big Brother in that 1984 ad, it feels to me that the landscape needs a new "creative computing" competitor. The Commodore brand could be such a cool fit, if they only had a decent product. They should reproduce the 4000 / Video Toaster combo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymVNhy4dw8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymVNhy4dw8
- tesseract 16y ago> the landscape needs a new "creative computing" competitor I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but there is one. Arduino.
- drblast 16y agoYeah, Arduino does have that same spirit. The nearly direct access to the hardware was what made the C64 so cool. This new C64 has none of that, unfortunately.
- daeken 16y ago> The nearly direct access to the hardware was what made the C64 so cool. This new C64 has none of that, unfortunately. Every PC has near-direct access to the hardware. There's nothing stopping you from writing your own BIOS, bootloader, kernel, or anything else -- it's easier than it ever was before. Many people (including myself) really do this, and enjoy it.
- TheSwede75 16y agoStill have my original Brown-Box, with Cassette player. . . I will ONLY buy this if MR-Z comes back onto the field to crack games!
- tomconte 16y agoOK, when in doubt about any C64 stuff, the only place to go is the Lemon64 forum, and this seems to be real... IN 1982, BOTH THE ORIGINAL COMMODORE "C64" & DISNEY'S BLOCKBUSTER "TRON" WERE RELEASED. ALMOST 30 YEARS LATER, THEY BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY RE APPEAR ON APRIL 5, 2011. http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37431&highlight= http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37431&highl... And if you are like me an Unbeliever, check out Disney's TRON partners page: http://disney.go.com/tron/index_flash.html#/partners http://disney.go.com/tron/index_flash.html#/partners
- xbryanx 16y agoGotta break out all my old C64 casette tapes.
- phren0logy 16y agoMaybe hosting the site on an actual C64 wasn't such a good idea...
- nzjames 16y agoI may be the only one who likes this. I've recently been looking for an old commodore 64 for nostalgic reasons, there is no practical reason to own one unless you're a demo purest. But I'm also in the market for an HD media player and the specs look up to the task. I can get my retro gaming and media fix in one package and decommission my xbox1. Sure the price will be inflated but I can imagine leaving this sprawled out on my lounge floor provided there are some decent retro usb/wireless joysticks to go with it.
- defroost 16y agoFrom the FAQ: "10. What is Commodore OS? Our new Commodore operating system, will be a unique Commodore and AMIGA centric Linux distribution, that will grow over time into something far greater. Commodore OS will not be your run of the mill Linux distribution." http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_FAQ.aspx#Q10 http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_FAQ.aspx#Q10 Judging from the website's fondness for the long deprecated bgcolor tag and animated GIF's, my confidence them producing such an OS is not particularly high at this moment.
- kwantam 16y agoI'm not sure I follow. Are you claiming that unless one is well versed in css and html5, one is incapable of creating a decent linux distribution? debian.org gives the lie to such a notion, methinks. I suppose you might counter that the good old Amiga was a feast of multimedia technologies, and that somehow the modern equivalent is a pretty web page. Again, I'll disagree with you; creating a media-centric OS is a pretty far cry from making a pretty web page. Heck, a slick-looking commodoreusa.net page might turn off potential customers who'd otherwise be drawn in by the nostalgia stirred by the "ancient" look and feel. That was certainly my reaction.
- defroost 16y agoDebian? debian.org is a million times more modern, with RSS feeds, translations in around 30 languages, decent looking markup, etc. I was just making an observation about the 90's style source code, and said nothing about slickness, or prettiness. This seems a bit of an oddity for a tech company, since one would have to search for hours to find anything similar in 2011. Of course, writing an quality operating system and coding a simple website are nowhere near the same level of difficulty.
- hvs 16y agoI'm not saying that they are going to create a great OS, but those that know web design and those that build operating systems are often a disjoint set.
- chipsy 16y ago
- rikthevik 16y agoWow. If those aren't too expensive, I'd love to get one. What a fantastic desktop machine. This kind of seems like a late April fool's joke, however.
- xsive 16y agoCommodore USA have been promising this stuff for ages and nothing has materialised. It looks like vapourware to me.
- malkia 16y agoSomething more portable (iPad-ish) or more like a little toy with keyboard, or mini-usb where you can plug one, and HDMI on the out would've been better. But I guess people cared about the keyboard. I did - for my Pravetz 8C (Apple ][/e clone)
- torpor 16y agoThe Open Pandora runs all Commodore software pretty well, is portable, has a decent keyboard, has USB Host and Device, WLAN too, and is an awesome little Linux box to boot .. (As for your Pravetz, I wish I had a Pravetz 8D - Oric Atmos clone! Still got my Atmos..)
- Udo 16y agoThis is a lost opportunity. They could have revived the brand by putting out a new Commodore. Modern hardware, super-slim, "the keyboard is the computer", inexpensive. Maybe with a very simple and fast OS, like a light Linux or BSD or whatever became of the Amiga OS.
- lucasjung 16y agoIf you click around their website a little, you'll find that they're doing more or less exactly that. Most of their products are modern "computers as keyboards," and they say that they are working on a Commodore/Amiga-flavored Linux distro with a heavy emphasis on emulation for backwards compatibility with classic Commodore and Amiga software. I'm a little skeptical about the "inexpensive" part, though. No prices are posted, but from the pictures and specs I don't think that they've driven costs low enough to tap into the netbook market.
- Udo 16y ago> If you click around their website a little, you'll find that they're doing more or less exactly that. I tried to, but the server was overloaded...
- wyclif 16y agoAnybody have a price on this?
- michael_dorfman 16y agoCome on, it was one click away from the parent article: http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64Select.aspx http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64Select.aspx
- duck 16y agoI wonder if it will play my Frogger cassette tape that I still have up on the shelf? :)
- mixmastamyk 16y agoWhere's the RF connector to hook up to the TV if need be? I'd like to send one back in time to myself circa 1982 ... but what good is it if there's no capable display device?
- mambodog 16y agoI think this should have been re-imagining of the C64 as a first computer for a new generation of hackers. I'm thinking of a high-level, empowering, introductory programming environment in the vein of Hackety Hack or Love2D (because lets be honest, kids want to make games), running on a Linux with an easy-to-use desktop environment (Ubuntu/Unity?). The hardware would be netbook/mobile type stuff and internet oriented with SSD storage, Wifi, and HDMI for video output. No optical drive. Oh yeah, and a gamepad, the modern equivalent of the joystick. I'm too young to have grown up with a C64 myself, but to me this would seem like a more worthy spritual successor.
- asciilifeform 16y agoThis is not a Commodore 64. It is a cruel mockery. The main appeal of the Commodore was simplicity and understandability. This is a PC, that is to say, a piece of junk overgrown with cancerous accidental complexity.
- wbhart 16y agoI would love to buy a computer that is a modern upgrade of the Commodore 64, as if the machine had continued to evolve. In other words, the CPU would be a say 32 bit evolution of the original CPU with obvious changes to the instruction set as found in the C64. The memory space would be flat 32 bit addressable up to a gigabyte. The sound and video hardware would work in a similarly simplistic way as the original C64 did. But the CPU would have similar performance to a modern CPU. It would also have a modern (size) hard drive. The whole thing could be done as an emulator. But the important thing would be performance. The virtual machine would have to convert one assembly language to the other by compiling it on the fly, e.g. to say x86 code, and not by interpreting it slowly! And of course the thing would have ROM BASIC built in and/or a simple Amiga style classic look and feel OS. At the very least I'd buy one of these machines, especially if you put it in a C64 keyboard style box.
- jerf 16y agoWe don't have virtual memory because the evil Intel monopoly forced it on us. In fact they were late to the game. We have it because it's a good idea. We don't have mediated access to hardware because the evil Intel monopoly forced it on us. We have it because it's a good idea. Had Commodore stuck around and continued to evolve some things may very well have been different, especially in the UI arena, but I think you'd find that by now the Commodore brand would have had to do the equivalent of the System 9 -> OSX upgrade by now at least once no matter what.
- gaius 16y agoThere was a PowerPC Amiga IIRC http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html
- Sukotto 16y agoI'm not sure why I still feel so strongly negative towards Commodore for destroying the Amiga brand.... but I do. Even after all these years.
- gaius 16y agoI'm not sure either, since I doubt there is one single person the same between this incarnation of Commodore that that one.