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64 Turns 30
Posted by
8TrackMind
,
07 January 2012
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retro commodore 64 computers
The venerable Commodore 64 turns 30 this week, having been first introduced to the world at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
The C64 had a profound impact on two industries. Not only did its low price ($525 at retail, compared to $1200 plus for the base Apple II model) further Apple's work at popularizing the computer for home use, the C64 became an incredibly prolific video game platform, on which many future game programmers cut their teeth.
It was a quirky system, especially the enormous 5140 floppy drive accessory, which was nearly the size of the computer itself, about 4 times the weight, and often seemed like it was going to shake itself off your desk while accessing information off 5 1/4" disks. Despite this, the Commodore 64 became one of the most popular single computer lines ever, selling over 22 million units.
Although the 64K of internal memory in the C64 seems infinitesimally small, this powerhouse helped change the face of computing.
Who had one of these? what was your build like when you finally went the way of PC or Mac?
I ended with 2 1541's , 2 1581's, a CMD ramlink with a bunch of very expensive for the time ram (simms) running Jiffydos normally with GEOS as a GUI front end. I had two printers- one was a daisy wheel (think typewriter without keys) and the other a dot matrix. (oh yeah and a series of modems starting from a 300 baud, then 1200 finally a 2400!!)
Geos I remember was great - it allowed you to access any data that was in any drive- so if I had discs in all my drives and cartridges I would just go to the icon in the gui - click with my mouse and access the drive to start a program or look at the contents.
amazing little machine for it;s time- had color and sound way before PC's did which is why I kept it for so long.- only moved when the graphical web browser became a big thing.