OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20711/The_Ultimate_Commodore_64_Talk Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 22 May 2013 19:55:01 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com The best home-computer ever http://www.osnews.com/thread?341998 http://www.osnews.com/thread?341998 Remember the term "home-computer"? :') Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zbigniew) Comments Michael Steil rocks! http://www.osnews.com/thread?341999 http://www.osnews.com/thread?341999 25C3 was great! Only sad thing is that the coverage in english media was fairly non-existant. Only heise-online had some news about it, but not as much as in its german version.

This is such cool talk. I really wished I could have seen this in 1982 ;)
Amazing guy! He hacked the Xboxes and ported Linux. Cool stuff! Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kragil) Comments A truly awesome home computer!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?342000 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342000 I cut my teeth on a Commodore 64 way back in the day when I was just a mere lad. I loved Commodore computers, having gone on to purchase a C128, A500+, and an A2000. I've since run C64 in emulation for years just for some of the old school games which had outstanding graphics and sound for the time. Commodore was a paragon of innovation. Unfortunately they had no business sense. I think if Commodore had remained in business, Apple might not have even gotten out the door with the Mac (since the Lisa on which it was based had such a horrendous start.) Long live Commodore 64! :-) Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cmost) Comments Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342008 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342008 ... the killers of AMIGA :/ Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vermaden) Comments RE: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342009 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342009 Amiga killed itself first ... Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moulinneuf) Comments fanta in space http://www.osnews.com/thread?342010 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342010 Wow that linked mp3 track demoing the advances in c64 music blew me away! Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (frood) Comments My C64 days http://www.osnews.com/thread?342021 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342021 Yes I was at school in the 80's, I had a C64 and loved it, last ninja, International Karate/IK+ where my favorites. The music on C64 was awesome, the two above games had great music tracks, remember how some games had loading music, I think Rob hubbard was one of the best for music on C64.

I sometimes still play C64 games using Vice for Linux, works and looks great considering. Yes the amiga was awesome to, My uncle used to own one, I never owned one myself but I used to use my uncles alot. Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SlackerJack) Comments Music http://www.osnews.com/thread?342023 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342023 I'm hesitant to tell you this but what I'm been listening to nowadays have been Slay Radio and Kohina... Well look it up...

Who needs the real world anyway? ;)

♪ zak mckracken tune ♪ Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bending Unit) Comments RE: Music http://www.osnews.com/thread?342024 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342024 "Slay Radio, the perfect station for coders". I listen to it all the time, and have the entire collection of remix.kwed.org over 2'000 C64 remixes. The C64 music scene truly is huge. I would also highly recommend bit-pop group Thermostatic for great C64-like modern music. (I’d recommend their songs "Metal Skin", "A Quiet Deal", "No Hands" and "Close Your Eyes", all available on iTunes) Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments MSX was better http://www.osnews.com/thread?342080 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342080 I think MSX (Microcomputers with Software eXtensions) was much better. It had a way better graphic and audio chip set and its firmware BASIC interpreter was much more advanced.

On a C64 you had to type something cryptically as:

list "*",8 to just get a list of files, on MSX this was:

files

Later on a CP/M clone, called MSX-DOS was introduced, which was compatible with MS-DOS (used the same "FAT" file system).

Unfortunately MSX never made it to the UK and USA. In the rest of the world it was rather popular.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for MSX:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

Someone gave me a free C64 with floppy disk drive and I was rather disappointed.Edited 2008-12-31 23:58 UTC Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ml2mst) Comments RE: MSX was better http://www.osnews.com/thread?342086 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342086 The MSX was a good idea ahead of its time, but IMHO the VIC and SID chips were much better than the MSX offering, scrolling on the MSX was painful, and while the vernerable AY-3-8910 was a good sound chip, SID was king. ;) I agree 100% on C64 BASIC though, it was horrible, even the Commodore PET had a better basic. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jrash) Comments RE[2]: MSX was better http://www.osnews.com/thread?342103 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342103 Anyone remember Simon's BASIC cartridge for the 64? I still have both this and the 64 around. Awesome. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sonic2000gr) Comments Interesting http://www.osnews.com/thread?342104 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342104 Interesting article and links. My first computer experience was on a Commodore 64, "Introduction to Computers," and "Computer Programming" high school classes in 1985-ish.

In my more recent explorations into vintage computers I never have bought a Commodore 64, but I do have a Commodore 128D which can be run in 64 mode with the press of a button.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the great articles OSNews, and Happy New Year! Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bobthearch) Comments Cool http://www.osnews.com/thread?342121 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342121 I have a old-generation beige C64 in my house. But it doesn't have a 1541 or cassette drive like most C64s. I bought a CMD FD-2000 3.5" 1.6 MB floppy drive many years back. :-P

There is a driver for Windows that enables PCs to read/write hundreds of old system floppy formats and software images copied on them, including FD-2000 and 1541.

So I'm able to download C64 ROMs off the Internet and copy them to floppy and play them on the real machine. However my system is an NTSC model, therefore most PAL games run over-speed.Edited 2009-01-01 17:37 UTC Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Xaero_Vincent) Comments what we don't have today http://www.osnews.com/thread?342124 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342124 the nice thing about the commodore is that you can program right away. You didn't have to install or compile anything or have to figure out what ### cout > {()};;;; is supposed to do. Just type print "hello world"

This was a great way for kids to take the next step with their computers and as a result, when I was a kid, I spent many days typing programs from magazines into my computer. Nobody does that anymore. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ari-free) Comments RE: My C64 days http://www.osnews.com/thread?342131 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342131
I think Rob hubbard was one of the best for music on C64.

The tunes made by Ben Daglish are awesome as well. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zbigniew) Comments Times have certainly changed http://www.osnews.com/thread?342132 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342132 In watching the video, I was struck by the mixed feelings I had about the programming techniques used. After years of aspiring to make my code cleaner, more readable, and more understandable, viewing that as a virtue, all those things like "If you abuse this bug in the hardware that makes the speaker click when you do thus and such, you can simulate an additional drum voice" made me think "now that's clever" and also gave me the heebie-geebies. All those weird video-tweaking techniques, too. Of course, with resources so limited, it made sense to do that kind of thing back then. But it does clash with the mantras of the present.Edited 2009-01-01 21:33 UTC Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[3]: MSX was better http://www.osnews.com/thread?342133 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342133 And did you know Paradoxon Basic? It gave many add-ons similar to those offered by Simon's Basic, while leaving, at the same time, for BASIC programs more than 60 KB free memory... ;)

It was free, published as machine-code listing in german "64'er" magazine. Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Zbigniew) Comments RE[2]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342136 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342136 Care to elaborate on that? Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments RE[2]: MSX was better http://www.osnews.com/thread?342138 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342138
The MSX was a good idea ahead of its time, but IMHO the VIC and SID chips were much better than the MSX offering, scrolling on the MSX was painful, and while the vernerable AY-3-8910 was a good sound chip, SID was king. ;) I agree 100% on C64 BASIC though, it was horrible, even the Commodore PET had a better basic.


You're right about the Texas Instruments graphics processor the original MSX systems used. My Sony HB-201 is incredibly underpowered where graphics are concerned. The MSX2 machines were better off with the higher resolution processors.

I'm not sure you could consider any of Commodore's system software, including their BASIC interpreter, good, but some were worse than others though the Apple II/+/c/e software was rather bizarre as well. Most companies were making it up as they went along, so it's understandable. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments RE[3]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342154 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342154 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga,_Inc.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ahistory.html

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-7.ars Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moulinneuf) Comments RE[4]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342155 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342155 Links are nice for reference (already read all of those pages), but I'd like to hear it in you own words. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments RE: Times have certainly changed http://www.osnews.com/thread?342156 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342156 It clashes with the present because we solve our problems with more and better hardware.

The limits of hardware is the true muse of the software engineer.

Would anybody have believed that a 1 MHz computer with 64 KB of RAM could do 3D, sound unimaginable when it came out, graphic unimaginable when it came out.

Yup, it’s all terrible hacks, but when you have that ceiling and the hardware never changes, those are not hacks - they are inguinity. It’s all hand-written, hand-optimised assembly code.. when you think of it that, it’s cleaner and more 'human' than what your compiler outputs from your nicely formatted ASCII text. ;) Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[5]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342158 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342158 No , It's enough to understand. If you don't or disagree , say why , otherwise I'm not gonna waste more time on Amiga inside a commodore thread. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Moulinneuf) Comments RE[6]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342159 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342159 Oh, snap! You, worried about wasting time on an OS News thread. Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments RE[6]: Commodore ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?342193 http://www.osnews.com/thread?342193 In a way, Commodore DID kill the Amiga. How? Easy - they sold off their manufacturing facilities. At that point, the Amiga was reliant on other companies for the chips. When the CD32, A1200, and A4000 came out, they had to wait (months) for more chips. During that time, people quit buying the older models as they wanted the new ones. Revenue dried up and Commodore couldn't pay the license fee on the XOR patent (Commodore was one of the original companies targeted by the owners of that patent as it made extensive use of XOR in the graphics). The owners of the XOR patent got an injunction against Commodore selling in the US until they paid the fee, and that was the end. Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JLF65) Comments