Linked by Kroc Camen on Wed 31st Dec 2008 11:11 UTC
At this year's 25th Chaos Communication Congress, an annual four day conference with the slogan "Nothing to hide" reveals everything about the Commodore 64, in 64 minutes. Across 256 slides. The video is now available to download via BitTorrent or FTP. The Commodore 64 is the greatest selling computer of all time; learn how it got there with its quirky hardware, loved by hackers worldwide.
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Member since:2008-10-28
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.
Member since:2007-05-20
Member since:2006-01-23
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.
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.
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Member since:
2005-08-27
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