Commodore 64 reincarnated as quad-core Ubuntu box The Commodore 64 has been reincarnated as a 3GHz quad-core PC with 3D graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, a DVD-RW drive, and a 500GB hard disk. All that's left is the built-in keyboard. And the name. In this case, that 64 can only mean a 64-bit processor - not 64 kilobytes of memory. Memory's up to a decidedly un-1980s eight …
Poor effort on the keyboard design - they didn't even replace the Windows keys with the C= chicken heads. And what on earth is a touchpad doing on a desktop-based machine? If they insist on such a thing, couldn't they at least drop the keypad and put the touchpad in its place? The C64 had mouse support you know!
still have a working C64 brown case from 1982 , 1541 (floppy) drive .. 256kb memory expansion cartridge .. a pair of working later C64 white case ( though one of those has a dead joystick port )
I doubt the hundreds of floppies I have work .. but I might be surprised .. GEOS "OS" from about 1986 actually had and mentioned "windows" as I recall .. and Lords of Conquest was a great game, as was a rather advanced physics model in Arctic Fox by Dynamix
"We were told, basically, that Commodore decided to build a simpler, lower-cost, black-and-white machine without a lot of the pizazz of the Apple II."
Woz must be thinking Vic 20 or .. C64 was 16 color from the start and games that had action and joysicks, rather than the (mostly) text based games I remember from Apple II around the same time.
now .. where do I find a paper and a ribbon for my Okidata 80 column dot matrix printer ?
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> now .. where do I find a paper and a ribbon for my Okidata 80 column dot matrix printer ?
At the local suplier of such things. I have 2 fresh ribbons for it and quite some paper. I hardly use printers but I must say dot matrix beats most anything these days.
cat plaintextfile > /dev/lp0 -> get printed text :)
We, the viewers, feel that your OS Page needs larger OS clipart! Especially the Chrome one. Might not be completely visible from space.
(But your technical snippets on Chrome and Comodo would be pretty hard to enhance any further, I'll grant you that.) And bonus for referring to yourself in the first person on the OSX section. Class.
Is this site truly run by Croatia?
As the first post points out, even the "Super" key has that weird, squiggly squares symbol on it.
It's probably just some money men (who know diddly about computers) bought the rights to the name, bought a license to distribute and now have this "new" Commodore.
Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won't.
Back when you'd get a computer magazine and it would have the source code printed there for you to input into your own machine. Spend hours putting it in and then debugging it.
So Commodore had a good idea in cost reducing a PC, but then they went and put as much horsepower into the floppy drive! That sort of screwed up the cost advantage.
Apples were marginally more useful. An Apple II was still too expensive to buy for an incoming college student. I ended up with a C64 instead. The C64 almost did things. Almost.
Ah, those were the days, you and your friend sitting in front of the machine reading the code out loud:
"ten"
"space"
"R"
"E"
"M"
"space"
"Intergalactic space adventure"
"new line"
"20"
"space"
"D"
"I"
"M"
"space"
"SPACESHIPS"
"open bracket"
"5"
"close bracket"
...etc. You get the picture.
Having the entire computer inside the keyboard was a brilliant design decision, and one that I've long lamented the demise of. In the old days I had my C64 on my desk with the 1541 disk drive underneath the monitor and it took up bugger-all space. The Amiga 500 / 1200 wss even better because it had the drive built-in, it was was just that, mouse, and monitor. Even the 90s desktop format PCs were good because you could put the monitor on top of them, too.
And then along came this "tower/upright" bullshit design, where desk space normally allocated to coffee cups, Coke cans, coding notes and magazines now had to be given up for a bloody great upright box you couldn't put anything on top of, and cables snaking from hell to breakfast all over the desk to the monitor, mouse and keyboard instead of decently running under the desktop case.
Would have been nice the see the chicken head keys back, not to mention the keyboard graphics, but I suppose we can't have everything. Definitely interested in this one!
Sounds from the website that they have no right to the name yet...
From their News Page:
"We are hard at work here trying to solve the problems of world hunger & global warming; not to mention finding a way to achieve international peace and the cure for all the horrible ailments that beset mankind.
On top of all this, we are diligently and fervently entrenched in the negotiations that will allow us to place this cute little logo nameplate on our all-in-one computer."
Until the website changes or a press release appears, I say "Meh."
Back in the day, I had an argument with my computing teacher in school regarding the merits of various machines. He argued that the school's BBC Micro B computers with 32KB of RAM, 2MHz 6502, 8 colours, no sprites and basic TI (3-channel + noise) sound was a REAL computer, and my Commodore 64, with 64 KB of RAM, 1 MHz 6510, 16 colours, 8 sprites and SID (3-channel + digi) sound was just a toy. I said that the specs of each system were comparable; where the BBC had the faster CPU the C64 had more RAM, and each was effectively capable of solving the same computational problems. Just because the C64 was a third the price of the BBC didn't make it any less powerful a machine.
In later years, the Amiga would suffer the same stigma of being called a "games machine" despite it's vastly superior graphics, sound and computing power compared to the IBM PCs of the time. So to me this business of calling cheap mass-produced computers "toys" simply because they didn't have a 4-digit price tag smacked of techno-snobbery, a problem which ultimately brought about the failure of the Amiga and left us stuck with the cludgy and inefficient Intel x86 architecture we have to endure today, instead of Motorola's beautiful and truly multi-tasking 680x0 and PowerPC processors as the norm. How powerful would these processors have become by now, if the techno-snobs had just gotten over their elitist attitude and gone with Amiga technology, instead of just dismissing it as a toy? 3.4 GHz TRUE 64-bit Quad-core RISC anyone?
The Apple II was what got Apple on the road to their millions! Woz designed the thing from the ground up using pen and paper, it was running businesses for years and years after production stopped. The Apple III was complete pants compared to the Apple II.
Get yourself a copy of the book "iWoz", Woz's autobiography and you will genuinely appreciate what a genius the guy is and how much of an influence he had on the IT biz.
OK, so this one has "Commodore" on it. But hasn't this form factor been done a few times before? You know, computer-in-a-keyboard format?
Yeah, I started on a school's PET 2001N, and then I bought my VIC-20, and then a Commodore 128 and I upgraded its video memory. Ah, those were the days. Whip open the case, unsolder the old memory, solder in the new memory. I had four drives hanging off of it.
Too bad CBM executives were chicken heads. The Amiga was good, but it needed business-type graphics for it. There is only so far you can go targeting the video industry.
Um, yeah, like how many pre-PCs were like this? Beeb, Electron, Oric, Dragon, Vic20... you name 'em.
In more recent times, the Amigas, the Acorn A3000/A3010 too.
I'm not sure I agree with a return to a computer-in-a-keyboard, because it is rarely the case when the thing is the size of just a keyboard. That said, I certainly agree with the poster who thinks tower cases are horrible. I don't like them either. The monitor of my older PC is sitting atop the RiscPC. The PC itself... uh... stuffed in the corner on top of the clunky old VCR. I mean, what the hell can you do to make a tower case fit into the aesthetic of your desk? It's the wrong size for everything.
...a good for cooling. And. Err. Umm. Yeah.
One of these "PC in keyboard" things with some kind of wireless connection to a TV/monitor would be good. You could then hide that tower in the closet and have it do all the heavy-lifting (transcoding, broadcast recording, media serving etc).
I want more money so I can buy more toys...
providing additional horizontal storage space, and looking really, really cool with the glow neon lights thingies shining through the cases.
I still use the homemade computer desk I made for my c64 way back in the day. Drilled holes in it to help cool the sucker. I loved the computer part but hated the power supplies. I was always replacing them because they'd burn out. Haven't owned a desktop style case since then. Towers are great for cooling and over-sized power supplies that don't burn out. And I still have memories of using that first 150 bps modem to connect to Compuserve.
Half a PC, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be. But half the PC has got to be, vis-à-vis its entity - d'you see? But can a PC be said to be or not to be an entire PC when half the PC is not a PC, due to some ancient history?
Sinclair tried this too, about 22 years ago with the ill-fated PC200. At least this new Commodore's specs aren't obsolete 5 years before it launches (assuming it's not vapor)
Or when Rover decided to stick an MG badge on an already badge engineered Honda Domani....
Keeping the car analogy:
This is like BMW's effort at ruining the Mini.
An original part from the original mini wont fit on it. It doesn't run the same engines. It doesn't even have the retro rubber suspension. It is as big as a Maxi and less well packaged.
Like this C64, the only thing they have similar are keeping the badge at a cynical attempt at appealing to trendy retro twenty-somethings.
But still not a bad choice for a design. I can imagine these things being useful for office PC's nice and compact.
The touchpad is indeed unnessecary in my opinion. Its gonna be a desktop machine so you're going to plug in a mouse anyway.
Still, depending on the price I can see these machines being used at the workplace or in classrooms.
... so this company is just cashing in on the name and producing something that resembles a commodore 64 in the same way that a pair of converse resembles a pair of DM's.
Now if someone actually *modded* an old commodore 64 and managed to squeeze modern processing power inside, with the same retro outside *plus* commodore 64 emulation mode - then I'd be impressed.
We've already got one of those machines, but not at those specs. It is a Cybernet ZPC-9000 and they are a piece of shit! If the new one performs like the old then it is a big no no.
Of course, I haven't tried Linux on it. I am waiting for my boss to finally give up on it (he keeps saying he will) and pass it over for me to give it an attempted resurrection. At the moment it has Windows Dead Person, er I mean Windows XP on it.
The home computers were all colour. The PET was monochrome. But then I seem to remember the Apple was monochrome right up to the 1990's whilst the 64 had sprites and dazziling graphics. Tramel then made the Atari ST which was actually pretty good and cheaper than the Amiga.
I suspect that it was lack of compatibility which saw the end of most of the 1980's computers.
If only the MSX, Japanese Z80 machines had come out a bit sooner, we may have seen the home computer evolve into the machines we use today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
Z80 computer manufacturers always seemed to find a way of preventing a disk from one machine being read in another.
However it was the success of Acorns BBC Micro with it's very simple 6502 CPU which sporned the Acron RISC Machine CPU or ARM processor. Varients of this are used in most Windows PDAs and loads of routers and other gadgets with embedded linux.
I think the idea of a 1980's home computer is still valid since home computers were very big as games machines. Perhaps encouraging the use of a keyboard on a PS3 might be better. Perhaps encouraging people to plug their console into a proper monitor would also help.
and it looks shit.
Buying the Commodore name as a cheap marketing gimmick won't impress anyone if your product is still ugly Chinese import crap.
Who really wants a machine that's fragile and easily breakable like a laptop, but impractical to move like a desktop?
And to reiterate an earlier point, it's so ugly. I had hoped silver painted plastic was finally dead and buried but it seems people just won't stop making this crap. If you think it looks horrible now, picture it in 6 months when your wrists have rubbed the nasty silver paint off to reveal the even nastier grey plastic underneath. No no no!
A few comments:
--Why does it have a touchpad? And assuming that's even slightly a good idea, why is it off to the left somewhat?
--No possibility for expansion I guess. Should have made it a full-fledged laptop or at least pretty like a MAC.
--We'd all likely be running Commodore machines these days if Jack Tramiel wasn't such a hothead that used everyone that came across his path and treated every employee he had like utter shit. C= was full of innovation in those days. If there's any justice, in the next life Tramiel will be reincarnated as Chuck Peddle's toilet.
I still have 2 that still work including the switchable 3/16K RAM pack and the "Super Expander" that gave 1024x 1024 addressable resolution ( although colour was limited to 20 x 35 (IIRC) addresses.
Did I mention I still have my ZX81 as well..... :o) although i haven't tested that one in years
I could never afford a C64 so I had to make teh best of my VIC so had it controling relays to open curtains, switch lights etc on/off. All the cabling and exposed connections in my bedroom was the best ever deterrent for keeping an inquisitive Mum away from those magazines you didn't want her to find!!!
"They're even linking to information about EFI, which allows a normal PC to run OSX **ILLEGALLY** on non-Apple hardware."
The same way that a DVD RW allows me to copy films **ILLEGALLY**.
EFI is an Intel Technology - NOTHING to do with Apple. It's used in Itanium systems I believe. So what's wrong with including EFI with a machine? Not's Apple's tech...
See: www.intel.com/technology/efi
"How will OSX work - it's not Apple hardware"
OSX runs on commodity x86 hardware. Couse it will work. People have it running on standard PC's, on netbooks, servers etc. Get over yourself - OS X is nothing special or unique. (Unless you count Apple's marketing dept. which I realy admire as it's their biggest asset)
"You cannot legally buy and run OSX on non-Apple hardware"
I can legally buy OSX if I want. Their EULA says I shouldn't install it on non-Apple hardware, but the clue is in the title... EU stands for End-User. Unless the hardware reseller installs it for them it's not a problem...
"I can legally buy OSX if I want. Their EULA says I shouldn't install it on non-Apple hardware, but the clue is in the title... EU stands for End-User. Unless the hardware reseller installs it for them it's not a problem..."
This is probably the latest (snow leopard)
ie http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx106.pdf
Now take leopard
ie http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx105.pdf
Notice the slight difference in wording? Apple-labelled vs Apple-branded? So as long as I stick an Apple sticker on my generic x86 boxen I should be fine to run OS X Leopard on them (which I have done before but don't btw because I just find linux easier to cope with). Hell, you could dymo up Apple, stick it on and it'll still be legal I would argue.
Snow Leopard might require a wee bit more of a stretch of definition, I guess you could 'brand' an Apple onto your box casing...At any rate I have not bothered with a snow leopard upgrade to my macs (because my intel one runs fine at the moment, and for my powerpc...I needn't mention Apple's neglect of ppc).
Seriously, until they make decent affordable desktop boxen I can see well why hackintoshes exist.
Oh, and Apple, if you're reading, I'd just like to take this opportunity to flip you the bird.
The VIC-20 was a colour machine, and pre-dated the C64. The Commodore PET was B&W IIRC (almost certainly because the VIC-20 was the first colour home computer around). The Apple ][ was green-screen. The Apple ][ was brought out around the time of the Commodore Pet, so why are you including the Apple ][ and the C64 in the same article? Some of us remember those days, even if we were in primary school!
Also the VIC 20 had 4 channel sound, including a white noise channel, some of the games that you could load as a cartridge had fabulous graphics and sound for the time. And it was robust as hell (and I don't just mean the case). C64 was just a great evolution of that platform (although I could never afford one).
There was a color (sic) version of the Apple ][, but the original was black-and-white (actually black-and-green, as Apple only sold a green monitor). I never saw one actually with a coloUr monitor (damn the Yanks and their spelling), but I did use one with a monochrome monitor. It was a PAL model so it could have been that the colour was provided by a third party board, replacing the Apple PAL card.
At the time that the C64 was selling, Apple had moved on to the Apple ][e and the Apple ][c, which were enhanced and compact versions.
I preferred the Beeb myself. Just could not see the attraction of the C64's poor Basic, slower processor, minimal expansion, expensive (and slow!) floppy drives, and lack of bank-switched ROM that allowed you to switch applications on a whim. The (one) hardware sprite, and a more flexible sound hardware did make a difference, but the extensive software interrupt driven sound system on the BBC allowed similar effects to be created, albeit with a greater effort from the programmer.
The C64 was a better system than the Spectrum, though, but that should not detract from the design genius that produced the speccy at the price it sold at.
"I preferred the Beeb myself. Just could not see the attraction of the C64's poor Basic, slower processor, minimal expansion, expensive (and slow!) floppy drives, and lack of bank-switched ROM that allowed you to switch applications on a whim. The (one) hardware sprite, and a more flexible sound hardware did make a difference, but the extensive software interrupt driven sound system on the BBC allowed similar effects to be created, albeit with a greater effort from the programmer."
The BBC Micro was 6502 based or 6512 based if you had a BBC Micro B (rarer); the Commodore 64 had a Motorola 6510 (later model that the 6502). I personally think the C64 was the better machine but to be honest the BBC Micro wasn't a bad but the C64 had things like the SID chip and Commodore at this time were possibly the best computer company at the time. Also Commodore owned MOS (the 6502 and 6510 manufacturer which gave Tramiel control over the 6502 based markets; I believe from what I've read in "On the edge" that Tramiel really like virtual integration).
Trameil left Commodore as he had a fight with Irving Gould (the Commodore financer) as he wanted his sons to take over from him, Irving didn't agree and Tramiel went off to take over Atari at about the same time that Commodore bought the Amiga design from Hi Toro (which Atari had been previously financing) and then Atari tried to sue Commodore over it - and then we had the Amiga vs Atari wars.
If I remember right Chuck Peddle is responsible for a lot of the extra commands in BASIC for tape control and they bought BASIC rights from Microsoft because Gates didn't believe in the 6502 processor (he like x86 based chips).
I think Woz is silly to even compare the C64 to the Apple 2; the C64 was simply better.. Commodore made some great hardware designs but they didn't all get released due to Commodore management.
The C64 is still the best-selling single personal computer model of all time.
I was and still am an Amiga nut so I know quite a lot about this subject.
"The BBC Micro was 6502 based or 6512 based if you had a BBC Micro B (rarer); the Commodore 64 had a Motorola 6510 (later model that the 6502). I personally think the C64 was the better machine but to be honest the BBC Micro wasn't a bad but the C64 had things like the SID chip and Commodore at this time were possibly the best computer company at the time. Also Commodore owned MOS (the 6502 and 6510 manufacturer which gave Tramiel control over the 6502 based markets; I believe from what I've read in "On the edge" that Tramiel really like virtual integration)."
There was nothing rare about the BBC Micro Model B (I still have mine though it has been many years since I booted it), and it ran a 6502A, same as the model A. What you may be thinking of is the Model B+ which Acorn released as a stopgap between the end of the Model B run (the Model A was discontinued earlier) and the original BBC Master. The Model B+ used the same case as a Model B but had a different motherboard run around a 6502B. It is, as you say, a very rare beast but given that it delivered few actual advantages over the Model B and was nowhere near as good as the Master and the Master Compact, it wasn't that big a seller.
As for any comparison between the Apple ][ and the C64, there were a few years between them and, while the Apple did have some impressive addons that could be construed as bringing it into line with everything that the C64 was capable of, the C64 offered it all straight out of the box, and a fraction of the price. That doesn't mean that the Apple was bad; it just belonged to an earlier technology than machines such as the C64, the Beeb and others of the age.
Coat for one...
I have an Atari 800 and used an Atari ST. The Atari 800 trounced the C64 (OK, perhaps the C64 had a better sound chip). I admit, I was an Atari fanboi. My Atari VCS and Atari 800 are still in my loft.
Jack and his son Sam Tramiel killed Atari.
That said, considering Jack Tramiel's life story, I admire him.
I seem to recall an earlier attempt at doing this.
Called the "Commodore 64 web.it".
Google it, occasionally they appear on ebay too.
It too was a headless laptop. The specs were somewhat less though:
A 486 processor
OS choice of Windows 3.1 or an early version of CE
Think it had Smartsuite installed too.
I seem to recall that the OS was installed on some sort of ROM chip?
The tenuous link it had to the original (other than the licenced name), was a built in C64 emulator, so you could download your favourite C64 tapes (of course, so long as you held the rights to owning the original tape...)
Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun
Cracking game!
You had to compete in events to gain enough cash to keep the circus from being closed by a businessman whom you owe money to.
An apt theme, given the current recession. Only this time the clowns are in the banks...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiendish_Freddy%27s_Big_Top_O%27Fun
Well, maybe. But my problem is, I need 6' arms to operate the keyboard and see the screen simultaneously without glasses (I use my Asus 701 with glasses, but it's only occasional use).
Now, to prevent the railway-like grooves getting deeper from constantly having to roll my castor-equipped chair back and forth, this computer means I can position the display away from the keyboard so I'm happy with both. Plus, use the LCD telly as a display when I'm watching pr0 - er, interesting news items.
Oh, sod it. I'll just buy a desktop...
(Shouldn't they be called "Deskunders"*, 'cos that's where everyone sticks 'em nowadays? Maybe not. Bad marketing. A bit too close to "Guzunder" - nick for a chamber pot, so-called 'cos it 'guzunder' the bed)
*Unless they hang from one of those nifty frames one can fit to hang the machine from the bottom of the desk surface, in which case I propose the name "deskudder"
The device is a Cybernet Zero-Footprint-PC.
http://www.cybernetman.com/
Cybernet apear to be a real, typical Taiwan (HQ)-China (Manufacturing)-California (Registered Office) outfit (gotta just love globalisation)
The only thing this guy seems to be doing is suggesting a link with the Commodore branding (which he does not appear to own rights to), and the use of EFI (on a "small, internally mounted module, supplied by others").
Does the name Psystar mean anything to anyone?
Every time I see another Commodore article, I remember how things were, and how they could have been. It takes some real skill at knuckleheadedness to piss a company up the wall the way Commodore did. You start off with the biggest-selling and best-quality 8-bit micro (C64). You move on to the biggest-selling and best-quality 32-bit micro (Amiga), which is a full decade ahead of anything that IBM PCs and Apple Macs can give you in terms of performance, the business software is state-of-the-art too, and it's the best games machine in the world. There's a half-dozen magazines devoted solely to your products. How bad does your business sense have to be, if you can't capitalise on that kind of advantage?
There have been a number of references in this whole thing to Acorn. I'd take issue with this idea about the "best" but one thing certainly links Commodore with Acorn... they both crapped up their marketing. Both companies produced some fine tech, a lot of which still has a bearing on today's machines, but both managed, one way or another, to kill themselves through poor marketing, either by concentrating too heavily on markets that were, at best, transitory, or just by being completely anonymous.
That's one reason why we have been left with the VHS of computers, the "PC", with little left otherwise to choose from (not sure how to fit Apple into all this, especially given their shift closer to generic "PC" boxen in recent times).
The "classic" wedge shape in 2010 is ugly. And the back of the computer will be a complete mess with all those cables coming onto your desk to attach. It looks like a Checkmate A1500 at the rear if anyone remembers that.
And where's the HDMI output to attach to your TV?
No thanks Commodore USA. I would rather have a more compact laptop or a mini tower under my desk. Thanks for the nostalgia but your efforts will sadly be consigned to the dustbin. There are no benefits to this design. We can already buy a cheaper, smaller laptop and use its VGA (or HDMI!) output to a nice big monitor if that's the idea.
In 1997, Acorn Computer was finally asset stripped and closed for good, bringing to an end a long line of innovative boxes. Some years later, a company bought the name Acorn from some obscure source and used it to sell PCs. Some claims were made about Acorn being "back" or some such rot, but the people making the claim were made to quickly backpedal as it became clear that all the company was doing was selling PCs, which is hardly the innovation that Acorn Computer was known for.
Now we see a company has bought another name from the past. Commodore was known as a company that produced some innovative machines in the 8-bit and 16-bit era. Lest we forget, the C64 was not alone; you can go right back to the Pet if you like, a machine that was pretty popular in its day, or forward to the various Amiga machines. So what is this company selling?
Sounds like another gimmick to me.
If you've got a decent OS (any linux in the last few years, OS X, and any version of windows since, I think XP SP1, possibly even pre-SP1) it's not a problem, most of them have rudimentary drivers for USB devices in the install media. For that matter, most of the current motherboard BIOS will support USB keyboards and mice as well. These days you really have to go out of your way to find a new system that won't work with a USB keyboard.
When - in the 70's I wanted to learn about these new-fangled 'microprocessors', a director-friend of mine at Courtaulds in Coventry (defunct) told me they were developing around a 4-bit processor, the Intel 4040.
He repaid my enthusiasm by giving me the Intel 4040 user manual. I still have it, somewhere.
Unfortunately for me it was the equivalent of being given a pillow-full of feathers, a bottle of glue, a stepladder, a book by a bloke called "Icarus" and told "Now you can learn to fly". I didn't have a clue what the state diagrams, etc. meant.
Couple of years later, I got a Sinclair MK14. Eventually. By 'eventually', I mean that I paid for it, and after several (mostly unanswered) phone calls, it arrived, after about 6 weeks. Cost me a lot of money - can't remember how many shillings, but a lot for me at the time.
Point is, www.commodoreusa.com can't give prices. Neither can www.cybernetman.com/ - they'll send a quote - or call me - I suspect they seem to be just trying to judge the level of interest before they make any. As, I suspect Sinclair did (It was quite successful - 50,000 sold - and to me, it was a godsend)
Caveat emptor.
Now there was a real PC - The Science of Cambridge MK14. It was way ahead of its time* and had a truly amazing spec for 40 quid:-
256 bytes or RAM (could be expanded to a whopping 1/2KB)
A 20-key hexadecimal keyboard.
A gorgeous red on black 7-segment LED display - a full 9 digits wide.
The entire machine was housed in...well, whatever housing you wanted to make.
No - not for me. I have a A1200 and a C64 with disk drive at home. Does not look anything like them.
Really though has anyone plugged one in recently? things have moved on people. I do run old games in emulators which show the game play aspect of the old school game designs but I've only ever turned the A1200 on once in recent years. I cant really recomend it.
I don't want it to look like a C64 unless its an exact copy. anything else is a pointless effort.
also it probably does not run "Amiga" since it was never a OS, It might run workbench 3.1 through an emulator, Just like my PC does.
If this thing doesn't have custom chips then what is the point?
Commodore was all about custom silicon that blew away the competition, from the C64 SID chip that was a 3 note poly hybrid synthesizer (digital oscillators, analog filter) to the ground breaking chips in the Amiga.
This is just another PC in a odd looking box.
what nonsense. I have had an identical PC from Cybernet for almost 4 years now. Here is the
link to the website. ofcourse mine had a celeron D processor and windows xp. but they offer C2d in their recent configs. The ZPC (Zero-Footprint-PC) is the name of the model. Here is the link to the website.
http://www.cybernetman.com/
So basically someone is just renaming a product that is already been in the market for over 5 years and selling it as a new line. They sure as hell aren't cheap. When my power cord went out I had to shell out almost $80 for a proprietary one from the company. So if you dont want to wait for "The June Launch of the Commodore Store" you can just buy one from Cybernet.
LoL...
Amar
also:
"The cacophonous pinging of slot machines as hopeful players try another spin, the shouts of exuberant – and exasperated – gamblers as they court Lady Luck, mixed with the myriad conversations, laughter and the calls of dealers and pit bosses all may create the impression that a busy casino is truly a place of chaos. But the Silver Slipper Casino in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, demonstrates how managers in the multi-billion-dollar gaming industry impose order on the apparent madness through meticulous financial controls and state-of-the-art technology to monitor every game, every transaction and every player, win or lose. "
Did AManFromMars write this site?
Something potentially lamer than an iMac... interesting.
(It is not wise, in my opinion, to shoehorn everything, I mean everything into one box, unless you're talking laptops for the advantage of mobility. Otherwsie, you have all the disadvantages of a laptop and desktop bound pc with none of the advantages of either).
A lot of LCD TVs are usable as computer monitors. It does depend on whether you have a compatible output from the computer.
It's a niche market, reliability is an issue, and if you want a games machine, get a games machine. But, with USB drives as well, this is a workable idea. One thing's for sure, you only covered this because of the Commodore name, so somebdy maybe had the right idea to buy the rights.
This article (surprisingly for The Register) gets things wrong. The machine Commodore built instead of buying the Apple design (and hiring those two bozos) was the PET, not the C64.
As for Woz... That fat bearded revisionist is so full of crap (and himself). Jack Tramiel and the Commodore board wasn't interested in sustaining a business? Of course they were. Steve, what Apple was interested in was gouging consumers with giant profit margins for an inferior line of machines.
You used to matter, Woz. But since you started drinking the Apple Kool-Aid, you've become just a laughable has-been. Get on your Wheel of Zeus and peddle yourself out of here.
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