4 ms·

The commodore 64 is still so much in the thoughts of people that played, hacked, have incredible afternoons with it, that a few months ago, to help a friend in

The commodore 64 is still so much in the thoughts of people that played, hacked, have incredible afternoons with it, that a few months ago, to help a friend in economic troubles, I started designing (in the CAD), printing (with a 3D printer) and selling (on Etsy) miniatures of the C64 and we have quite a number of orders every week. I never imagined it to be a popular item in the shop, and I was wrong. If you are curious, this is a picture of the item we ship: https://ibb.co/ZGtL7PY https://ibb.co/ZGtL7PY I modeled other microcomputers of 80s, and have a project to release many models under the creative common license. If you are interested, I'll tweet about it soon. An argument tangent to that: when the Raspberry PI went out I hoped it could be the "new C64", in terms of something that children could play with, start writing code, but nope, nobody so far nailed it. Yet I fully believe there is room for a cheap computer that will introduce children to programming, like in the '80s, to happen.

bullen 5y ago
The problem with the RPi is that it was released with that (educational) purpose in mind, and so the foundation does not take it seriously as a gaming machine (which obviously should have been 99% of the focus just like the C64). The 1, 2 and 3 GPU could not do skin mesh animation because it lacked enought registers and in the 4, half-floats and OpenAL are still buggy in the GPU driver and nobody cares because nobody even tries to use it for anything else than servers. I have switched to the Jetson Nano (1/2 of a Nintendo Switch, actually based on broken Switch chips) which has the right balance between GPU and CPU. Eventually someone will make a TWM desktop for it.
kgwxd 5y ago
I had the same dream but gave up on it quite a while ago. I think the only reason it worked at the time is because there was nothing "better" to compete with. However, as awful as they can be, I'm starting to appreciate some of the content creation platforms (Roblox and TikTok specifically). My 5 year old has pieced together some things that really embody the hacker spirit and legitimately made me say "how the fuck did you do that without any help?"
omarhaneef 5y ago
Pretty sure the magic is that you turn on the device and you can immediately type code. You can load and run, of course. Those are the first commands, but then you can also try print etc. If the raspberry pi didn't open into a linux prompt but a python REPL and you used python to load, save, run, I think it would have the same programmer nudge effect that the 80s machines had.
- gmiller123456 5y ago
  >Pretty sure the magic is that you turn on the device and you can immediately type code. Lots of microcomputers back in the C64's time worked this way. So there's more to it than that. I think it's popularity now is based only on that it was popular in long ago. Why it was so successful long ago, is likely a combination of a lot of factors.
  - omarhaneef 5y ago
    I was unclear: I meant the magic of turning kids into programmers, which I agree was a feature of many (most?) 80s machines. This was in response to the comment I was immediately responding to, and not the article posted.
vikingerik 5y ago
> a cheap computer that will introduce children to programming, like in the '80s The closest equivalent since the mid '90s is the TI graphing calculator. Just turn it on and there's one button to access the programming environment built right in. There's really no other device or environment like that, where you can just jump right into the programming, without having to first learn your way through a dozen layers of abstraction in navigating an OS and file system and software installations and all that.
lokedhs 5y ago
I know one shouldn't do marketing on this site, but I'd love to find a link to the shop so I can buy one. I learnt BASIC programming on a C64, and it's the first computer that I owned. I later learned 6502 assembler on it, and the first demo part I went to was for the C64. I later moved on the the Atari ST where I truly became involved in the demoscene (my nickname here reflects that). But I have so much nostalgia for the machine that I ended up buying another one a few years back. And I ended up paying twice as much as the regular rate, just to get an intact European style box (styrofoam box, compared to the carboard box that was commonly used in the US) because it's the box that my original machine came in. The point I'm making is that it's not just about the machine itself. It's about everything surrounding it, from the feel of the joystick, the way in which we had to plug the computer into the one TV we had, the horrible interference on the TV caused by the RF modulator, and indeed the box the machine was delivered in.
- antirez 5y ago
  Thank you lokedhs, I avoided putting a link initially, but since you asked and this whole thing is in order to help this person that lost their job due to covid, I'll link it here: https://www.etsy.com/it/shop/NerdyGeekyThings https://www.etsy.com/it/shop/NerdyGeekyThings I completely can relate to your feeling: when I was 10 I had a ZX Spectrum, and it was my whole world. Back then my mother had heath issues (later resolved fortunately) and was in Milan while I remained in Sicily with my grandparents. What saved me from thinking bad things was going to the room at the 2nd floor, plugging my spectrum in the TV, feeling it's rubber keys, and even moving the cable in order to make sure the image was stable. And then doing this so magical things: coding or inserting a cassette where new incredible world, in form of games, would emerge.
  - simonebrunozzi 5y ago
    What was your favorite game back then? For me it wasn't the ZX, it was Vic20 and then C64. I wrote my first program on a C64, and then many others. Back then I thought that BASIC was the only way to code. One of my favorite games was "Assedio", written by an Italian programmer, a simple but powerful strategy game. And then, of course, many others.

bullen 5y ago

The problem with the RPi is that it was released with that (educational) purpose in mind, and so the foundation does not take it seriously as a gaming machine (which obviously should have been 99% of the focus just like the C64). The 1, 2 and 3 GPU could not do skin mesh animation because it lacked enought registers and in the 4, half-floats and OpenAL are still buggy in the GPU driver and nobody cares because nobody even tries to use it for anything else than servers. I have switched to the Jetson Nano (1/2 of a Nintendo Switch, actually based on broken Switch chips) which has the right balance between GPU and CPU. Eventually someone will make a TWM desktop for it.

kgwxd 5y ago

I had the same dream but gave up on it quite a while ago. I think the only reason it worked at the time is because there was nothing "better" to compete with. However, as awful as they can be, I'm starting to appreciate some of the content creation platforms (Roblox and TikTok specifically). My 5 year old has pieced together some things that really embody the hacker spirit and legitimately made me say "how the fuck did you do that without any help?"

omarhaneef 5y ago

Pretty sure the magic is that you turn on the device and you can immediately type code. You can load and run, of course. Those are the first commands, but then you can also try print etc. If the raspberry pi didn't open into a linux prompt but a python REPL and you used python to load, save, run, I think it would have the same programmer nudge effect that the 80s machines had.

gmiller123456 5y ago
>Pretty sure the magic is that you turn on the device and you can immediately type code. Lots of microcomputers back in the C64's time worked this way. So there's more to it than that. I think it's popularity now is based only on that it was popular in long ago. Why it was so successful long ago, is likely a combination of a lot of factors.
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  I was unclear: I meant the magic of turning kids into programmers, which I agree was a feature of many (most?) 80s machines. This was in response to the comment I was immediately responding to, and not the article posted.

vikingerik 5y ago

> a cheap computer that will introduce children to programming, like in the '80s The closest equivalent since the mid '90s is the TI graphing calculator. Just turn it on and there's one button to access the programming environment built right in. There's really no other device or environment like that, where you can just jump right into the programming, without having to first learn your way through a dozen layers of abstraction in navigating an OS and file system and software installations and all that.

lokedhs 5y ago

I know one shouldn't do marketing on this site, but I'd love to find a link to the shop so I can buy one. I learnt BASIC programming on a C64, and it's the first computer that I owned. I later learned 6502 assembler on it, and the first demo part I went to was for the C64. I later moved on the the Atari ST where I truly became involved in the demoscene (my nickname here reflects that). But I have so much nostalgia for the machine that I ended up buying another one a few years back. And I ended up paying twice as much as the regular rate, just to get an intact European style box (styrofoam box, compared to the carboard box that was commonly used in the US) because it's the box that my original machine came in. The point I'm making is that it's not just about the machine itself. It's about everything surrounding it, from the feel of the joystick, the way in which we had to plug the computer into the one TV we had, the horrible interference on the TV caused by the RF modulator, and indeed the box the machine was delivered in.

antirez 5y ago
Thank you lokedhs, I avoided putting a link initially, but since you asked and this whole thing is in order to help this person that lost their job due to covid, I'll link it here: https://www.etsy.com/it/shop/NerdyGeekyThings https://www.etsy.com/it/shop/NerdyGeekyThings I completely can relate to your feeling: when I was 10 I had a ZX Spectrum, and it was my whole world. Back then my mother had heath issues (later resolved fortunately) and was in Milan while I remained in Sicily with my grandparents. What saved me from thinking bad things was going to the room at the 2nd floor, plugging my spectrum in the TV, feeling it's rubber keys, and even moving the cable in order to make sure the image was stable. And then doing this so magical things: coding or inserting a cassette where new incredible world, in form of games, would emerge.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  What was your favorite game back then? For me it wasn't the ZX, it was Vic20 and then C64. I wrote my first program on a C64, and then many others. Back then I thought that BASIC was the only way to code. One of my favorite games was "Assedio", written by an Italian programmer, a simple but powerful strategy game. And then, of course, many others.