Information AboutC64 |
For the hip hop group, see Commodore 64 (band) .
The Commodore 64 personal computer released in August 1982 became the best selling single computer model of all time. The Commodore 64 is commonly referred to as the '''C64''', other less common names include '''CBM 64'''/'''CBM64''', '''C= 64'''. It is also affectionately nicknamed the "breadbin" due to its shape. The C64, together with the 2006 .. According to the '' Guinness Book Of World Records '', the Commodore 64 remains the best selling ''single computer model'' of all time. Unlike computers that were distributed only through authorized dealers, Commodore also targeted Department Store s and toy stores. The unit could be plugged directly into a television set and play games, giving it much of the appeal of dedicated Video Game Console s like the Atari 2600 . The affordable pricing contributed to the 1983 Crash Of The Video Game Market . Approximately 10,000 Software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer Demo Scene . Though the original hardware is now used only by a few hobbyists, Emulator s allow anyone with a modern computer to run these programs on their desktop (with varying degrees of success and functionality). HISTORY Origins In January 1981, MOS Technology, Inc. , Commodore's Integrated-circuit design subsidiary, initiated a project to design the graphic and audio chips for a next generation Video Game Console . Design work for the chips, named MOS Technology VIC-II (graphics) and MOS Technology SID (audio), was completed in November 1981. A game console project was then initiated by Commodore that would use the new chips was called the ''Ultimax'' or alternatively the '' Commodore MAX Machine '', engineered by Yashi Terakura from Commodore Japan. This project was eventually cancelled after just a few machines were manufactured for the Japanese market. At the same time in mid-1981, Robert Russell (system programmer and architect on the VIC-20) and Robert "Bob" Yannes (engineer of the SID) were critical of the current product line-up at Commodore, which was a continuation of the Commodore PET line aimed at business users. Instead, with the support of Al Charpentier (engineer of the VIC-II) and Charles Winterble (manager of MOS Technology) they proposed a true low-cost sequel to the VIC-20 to Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel . Tramiel dictated that the machine should have 64KB of RAM memory since prices on the memory market were declining. Although 64 kB of RAM cost over US $100 at the time, he knew that DRAM prices were falling, and would drop to an acceptable level before full production was reached. Tramiel also set a deadline for the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show , in the first weekend of January. The meeting was in November so this gave the engineers about two months to complete working prototypes for the show. The product was Codename d the VIC-40. The team that constructed it consisted of Robert Russell, Robert "Bob" Yannes and David A. Ziembicki. The design, prototypes and some sample software was finished in time for the show, after the team had worked tirelessly over both Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. When the product was to be presented, the VIC-40 product was renamed C64 in order to fit into the current Commodore business products lineup which contained the ''P128'' and the ''B256'', both named by a letter and their respective memory size. The C64 made an impressive début, as recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: "All we saw at our booth were Atari people with their mouths dropping open, saying, 'How can you do that for $595?'" The answer, as it turned out, was Vertical Integration ; thanks to Commodore's ownership of MOS Technology 's Semiconductor Fabrication facilities, each C64 had an estimated production cost of only $135. Winning the market war The C64 faced a wide range of competing Home Computer s at its introduction in August 1982. With an impressive price point coupled with the 64's advanced hardware, it quickly out-classed many of its competitors. In the United States the greatest competitors to the C64 were the Atari 800 and Apple II . The Atari 800 was very similar in hardware terms, but it was very expensive to build, which soon forced Atari to move their production to the Far East. It also forced Atari to redesign their machine to be more cost effective, resulting in the 600XL/800XL line. The aging Apple II was no match for the C64's graphics and sound abilities, but was very expandable with its internal expansion slots, a feature lacking in the 64. In the United Kingdom , the primary competitors to the C64 were the British-built Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC . Released a few months ahead of the C64, and selling for almost half the price, the Spectrum quickly became the market leader. The C64 would rival the Spectrum in popularity in the latter half of the 1980s, eventually outliving the Spectrum (which was discontinued in 1992). One key to the C64's success was Commodore's aggressive marketing tactics. Commodore sold the C64 not only through its network of authorized dealers, but also placed it on the shelves of department stores, discount stores, and toy stores. Since it had the ability to output Composite Video , the C64 did not require a specialized monitor, but could be plugged into a television set. This allowed it (like its predecessor, the VIC-20) to compete directly against video game consoles such as the Atari 2600 . Aggressive pricing of the C64 is considered to be a major catalyst in the Video Game Crash Of 1983 . In 1983, Commodore offered a $100 Rebate in the United States on the purchase of a C64 upon receipt of any video game console or computer. To take advantage of the $100 rebate, some mail-order dealers and retailers offered a Timex Sinclair 1000 for as little as $10 with purchase of a C64 so the consumer could send the computer to Commodore, collect the rebate, and pocket the difference.A contemporary rumor stated that while Commodore scavenged most trade-in computers for spare parts, its employees used the TS1000s as Door Stop s. Timex Corporation departed the marketplace within a year. The success of the VIC-20 and C64 also contributed significantly to the exit of Texas Instruments ' TI-99/4A and other competitors from the field. C64 successors and the 64C In 1984 Commodore released the SX-64 , a portable version of the C64. The SX-64 has the distinction of being the first ''full-color'' portable computer. The base unit featured a 5 inch (127 mm) CRT and an integral 1541 floppy disk drive. Although critically acclaimed, due to its significantly higher price over the standard C64, fewer than 10,000 had been sold by the time it was discontinued in 1986. In 1984, Commodore released the Commodore Plus/4 . While many industry critics viewed this as an attempt to replace the C64, it was in fact a replacement for the VIC-20 . The Plus/4 offered a higher-color display, a better implementation of BASIC (V3.5), and built-in software. But because it was a replacement for the VIC-20 and not the C64, Commodore committed what was perceived by critics and consumers as a major strategic error by making it incompatible with a majority of the existing C64 software library. To top it all off, the Plus/4 lacked hardware Sprite capability and had much poorer sound - even inferior to that of the VIC-20 - thus seriously underperforming in two of the areas that had made the C64 a star. Furthermore, none of the C64's external peripherals save for the monitor and most joysticks were compatible with the port connections on the Plus/4, and the promised floppy drives were not available for the first three months the Plus/4 was in the stores. The misconceived and misperceived new machine flopped, to no one's surprise except Commodore's, while demand for the C64 merely increased as old store stock was being liquidated to make room for the supposedly superior replacements. On a side note, the Plus/4 was later dumped on TV audiences the next year via phone sales and two-minute "infomercials". Commodore created a dummy company called the C.O.M.B. Company . While the acronym reportedly stood for "Commodore Overstock Management Bureau", it was more commonly referred to as an acronym for "Crawling Out My Butt", referring to the sheer numbers of Plus/4s that were stuck in warehouses across the country that were eventually returned to Commodore. Commodore was determined not to repeat the same mistake, and made sure that the eventual successors to the C64—the Commodore 128 and 128D computers (1985)—were as good as, and fully compatible with, the original, as well as offering a host of long-sought improvements (such as a structured BASIC with graphics and sound commands, 80-column display capability, and full CP/M compatibility). The basic design of the 128, in fact, had already been marketed successfully in the Northern European and Scandinavian countries as early as 1983 as the Commodore B-128 . As the Commodore 128 and other manufacturers' more advanced computers came onto the market, Commodore positioned the 64 as an entry-level computer, lowering the price as necessary. In 1986, Commodore released the Commodore 64C ('''C64C''') computer, which was functionally identical to the original, but whose exterior design was remodelled in the spirit of the C128 and other contemporary design trends. In the U.S. , the C64C often came bundled with the third-party GEOS GUI -based operating system. An active demoscene At the time of its introduction, the C64's graphics and sound capabilities were rivalled only by the Atari 8-bit Family . This was at a time when most IBM PCs and compatibles had text-only graphics cards, Green Screen monitors, and sound consisting of squeaks and beeps from the built-in tiny, low-quality Speaker . Due to its advanced graphics and sound, the 64 is often credited with starting the computer subculture known as the Demoscene (see Commodore 64 Demos ). As of the turn of the millennium, it is still being actively used as a demo machine, especially for music (its Sound Chip even being used in special sound cards for PCs). For all other than die-hard enthusiasts, however, the C64 lost its top position among demo coders when the 16-bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga were released in the mid-80s. The demoscene is far from being dead even more than 20 years after the C64 was invented. New games are still being developed. A noteworthy one is '' Enhanced Newcomer '', which took almost 10 years of development. The differences between PAL and NTSC C64s cause compatibility problems between US/Canadian C64s and those from most other countries. Most demos run only on PAL machines. 1990s and 2000s hardware In 1990 the C64 was re-released in the form of a games console, called the C64 Games System (C64GS). It was basically a C64 motherboard modified to orient the cartridge connector to a vertical position, to allow cartridges to be inserted from above. A modified ROM replaced the BASIC interpreter with a boot screen to inform the user to insert a cartridge. Needless to say, the C64GS was another commercial failure for Commodore, and was never even released outside of Europe. In 1990/91, an advanced intended successor to the C64, the Commodore 65 (also known as the "C64DX"), was prototyped, but never released. In the summer of 2004, after an absence from the marketplace of more than 10 years, PC manufacturer Tulip Computers BV (owners of the Commodore brand since 1997) announced the C64 Direct-to-TV (C64DTV), a Joystick -based TV Game based on the C64 with 30 games built into ROM. Designed by Jeri Ellsworth , a self-taught computer designer who had earlier designed the modern C-One C64 implementation, the C64DTV was similar in concept to other mini-consoles based on the Atari 2600 and Intellivision which had gained modest success earlier in the decade. The product was advertised on QVC in the United States for the 2004 holiday season. Some users have installed 1541 floppy disk drives, hard drives, second joysticks and keyboards to these units, which give the DTV devices nearly all of the capabilities of a full Commodore 64. The DTV hardware is also used in the mini-console/game '' Hummer '', sold at Radio Shack mid-2005. As Of 2005 , C64 enthusiasts still develop new hardware, including Ethernet cards, specially adapted Hard Disk s and Flash Card interfaces. HARDWARE Graphics and sound The C64 used an in and out of the processor's address space, and to operate the Datasette tape recorder) and had 64 Kilobyte s of RAM , of which 38 kB were available to built-in Commodore BASIC 2.0 . The graphics chip, VIC-II , featured 16 colors, eight Sprites , Scrolling capabilities, and two bitmap graphics modes. The standard text mode featured 40 columns, like most Commodore PET models. Computer / Video Game and Demo programmers quickly learned how to exploit quirks in the VIC-II to gain additional capabilities, like making more than 8 sprites appear, and move, simultaneously. The sound chip, SID , had three channels with several different Waveform s, Ring Modulation and filter capabilities. It, too, was very advanced for its time. It was designed by Bob Yannes, who would later co-found synthesizer company Ensoniq . Yannes criticized other contemporary computer sound chips as "primitive, obviously (...) designed by people who knew nothing about music." Often the game music became a hit of its own among C64 users. Well-known composers and programmers of game music on the C64 were Rob Hubbard , Ben Daglish and Martin Galway , among many others. The SID chip has a distinctive sound which retained a following of devotees. In 1999, Swedish company Elektron produced a SidStation synth module, built around the SID chip, using remaining stocks of the chip. Several bands use these devices in their music. Hardware revisions Cost reduction was the driving force for hardware revisions to the C64's motherboard. Reducing manufacturing costs was vitally important to Commodore's survival during the price war and leaner years of the 16-bit era. The C64's original ( NMOS based) motherboard would go through two major redesigns, (and numerous sub-revisions) exchanging positions of the VIC-II, SID and PLA chips. Initially, a large proportion of the cost was lowered by reducing the number of discrete components used, such as diodes and resistors. 1982)]] The VIC-II was manufactured with 5 Micrometre NMOS technology, clocked at 8 MHz. At such a high clock rate, it generated a lot of heat, forcing MOS Technology to use a ceramic DIL Package (called a "CERDIP"). The ceramic package was more expensive, but it dissipated heat more effectively than plastic. After a redesign in 1983, the VIC-II was encased in a plastic DIL package, which reduced costs substantially, but it did not eliminate the heat problem. Without a ceramic package, the VIC-II required the use of a Heatsink . To avoid extra cost, the metal RF Shielding doubled as the heatsink for the VIC, although not all units shipped with this type of shielding. Most C64s in Europe shipped with a cardboard RF shield, coated with a layer of metal foil. The effectiveness of the cardboard was highly questionable, and worse still it acted as an insulator, blocking airflow which trapped heat generated by the SID, VIC and PLA chips. The SID was manufactured using NMOS at 7 and in some areas 6 micrometres. The prototype SID and some very early production models featured a ceramic DIL package, but unlike the VIC-II, these are extremely rare as the SID was encased in plastic when production started in early 1982. In 1986 Commodore released the last revision to the "classic" C64 motherboard. It was otherwise identical to the 1984 design, except that it now used two 64 kbit ×4 DRAM chips rather than the original eight 64 kbit ×1. After the release of the C64C, MOS Technology began to reconfigure the C64's chipset to use HMOS technology. The main benefit of using HMOS was that it required less voltage to drive the IC, which consequently generates less heat. This enhanced the overall reliability of the SID and VIC-II. The new chipset was re-numbered to 85xx in order to reflect the change to HMOS. In 1987 Commodore released C64Cs with a totally redesigned motherboard commonly known as a "short board". The new board used the new HMOS chipset, featuring new 64-pin PLA chip. The new "SuperPLA" as it was dubbed, integrated many discrete components and TTL chips. The 2114 color RAM was integrated into the last revision of the PLA. Power problems The C64 used an external Power Supply . While this saved valuable space within the computer's case, the supply itself was barely adequate for the C64's power requirements and occasionally failed from overheating. Some users purchased heavier-duty, better-cooled, third-party power supplies. Later in the Commodore's lifetime, third-party power supplies became increasingly important when used in conjunction with Creative Micro Designs ' peripherals. Of particular note, a C64 coupled with a RAM expansion or CMD SuperCPU required more power than the original Commodore power supply could provide. EXTERNAL HARDWARE Main article: Commodore 64 Peripherals SOFTWARE Main article: Commodore 64 Software REPRESENTATIVE SCREENSHOTS |
Image:C64 Koala Painterpng
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/KoalaPad/Painter_" class="copylinks"> Koala Paint <br/>Koala/Audio Light (1983) |
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Image:C64 GEOSpng
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)" class="copylinks">GEOS (desktop)<br/>Berkeley Softworks (1986) |
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Image:C64 Donkey Kongpng''
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Donkey_Kong_(arcade_game)" class="copylinks">Donkey Kong ''<br/> Atarisoft (1983) |
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Image:C64 Winter Gamespng''
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Winter_Games" class="copylinks">Winter Games ''<br/> Epyx (1985) |
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Image:C64 IKPluspng''
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/International_Karate_Plus" class="copylinks">International Karate+ ''<br/> System 3 (1987) |
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Image:C64 Creatures IIpng''
| "http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/Creatures_2_(C64)" class="copylinks">Creatures II ''<br/>Thalamus/Apex (1993) |
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