dogwomble
11-03-2007, 01:13 PM
The Commodore 64 is the biggest selling personal computer ever made, and also one of the longest selling. It was on sale from August 1982 until April 1994, with a launch price of $US595. During its lifetime, it sold around 17 million units. It is often referred to as the C64, C=64, CBM 64 or VIC-64. The original design earned the nicknames “breadbox” and “bullnose” due to the shape of the case.
The machine came with 64kb RAM of which about 38kb was available to the user. The graphics were based around a VIC-II chip, allowing 40 columns by 25 lines, 16 colours, 8 sprites, scrolling capabilities and two bitmap graphics modes allowing 320x200 or 160x200 graphics. A few “undocumented features” allowed programmers to enhance the graphics capabilities of their programs, for example allowing up to 128 sprites on the screen and displaying more colours than the provided 16. The sound chip was designed by Bob Yannes, and allowed for three channels, and each channel allowed for setting of the ADSR envelope (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release), and allowed for differing waveforms, ring modulation and filtering capabilities. The sound was well ahead of just about any other machine of it’s time. Yannes later formed synthesizer company Ensoniq. The 3-channel sound was the only limitation of the chip, as it only allowed 3 notes to be played at any one time, however programmers worked around this by playing chords as arpeggios. The original sound chip was a MOS Technology 6581, later replaced with an 8580. Many enthusiasts prefer the sound of the original 6581.
The Commodore 64 was extremely flexible in its expansion options, providing various ways to hook the box up to a television or monitor, two joystick ports compatible with the Atari 2600, cartridge slot, tape port, user port, and serial port for disk drives and printers. You could also get memory expansion cartridges. Commodore provided a 256Kb cartridge taking it up to 320kb. Third party products allowed you to go up to 16Mb (but only 2Mb was officially supported). These were designed to work with the GEOS GUI available on the Commodore 64, and were useless for anything else – only 64kb was addressable even with the expansion.
Due to the popularity of the machine, there were a number of titles written for the machine. These ranged from business applications and GUI’s, such as Microsoft’s MultiPlan and Berkeley Softworks’ GEOS, to games such as Donkey Kong, Elite and Ultima. There were also many Commodore provided accessories, for example the 1530 and 1531 tape drives, 1541 and 1571 disk drives, and Commodore 1084 monitor. Third party companies also developed equivalent products that often provided more features, better reliability and extra speed. This was particularly the case for the Commodore disk drives, as they were considered quite slow and some had problems with the motor dying completely or going out of alignment.
There were a number of revisions to the Commodore 64 as well. In 1983, the motherboard was redesigned to try and eliminate some of the heat problems of the earlier machines and reduce costs. In 1986, the memory was changed to use 64kbit x4 chips rather than the original 64kbit x1. In 1987, the motherboard was completely redesigned into a version known as the “short board” and used a different chipset, and combined many chips into one.
There is also a now rare version of the Commodore 64, known as the SX-64. This was a “luggable” machine that looks somewhat like a briefcase when packed up, that had one or two 1541 disk drives and a built in 5 inch screen.
There are apparently a number of cool tricks you can do with a Commodore 64. If you put the basic code PRINT “”+-[x] (where x is any integer) after line number 350800, the BASIC interpreter will crash. You can also enter “screensaver” mode by pressing RUN/STOP and RESTORE, then typing POKE781,96:SYS58251.
The Commodore 64 was a popular machine, which still has a strong following even today. It is fondly remembered by many people who grew up in the 80’s, and has been described as a “console with a keyboard”. It is a true piece of computing history.
The machine came with 64kb RAM of which about 38kb was available to the user. The graphics were based around a VIC-II chip, allowing 40 columns by 25 lines, 16 colours, 8 sprites, scrolling capabilities and two bitmap graphics modes allowing 320x200 or 160x200 graphics. A few “undocumented features” allowed programmers to enhance the graphics capabilities of their programs, for example allowing up to 128 sprites on the screen and displaying more colours than the provided 16. The sound chip was designed by Bob Yannes, and allowed for three channels, and each channel allowed for setting of the ADSR envelope (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release), and allowed for differing waveforms, ring modulation and filtering capabilities. The sound was well ahead of just about any other machine of it’s time. Yannes later formed synthesizer company Ensoniq. The 3-channel sound was the only limitation of the chip, as it only allowed 3 notes to be played at any one time, however programmers worked around this by playing chords as arpeggios. The original sound chip was a MOS Technology 6581, later replaced with an 8580. Many enthusiasts prefer the sound of the original 6581.
The Commodore 64 was extremely flexible in its expansion options, providing various ways to hook the box up to a television or monitor, two joystick ports compatible with the Atari 2600, cartridge slot, tape port, user port, and serial port for disk drives and printers. You could also get memory expansion cartridges. Commodore provided a 256Kb cartridge taking it up to 320kb. Third party products allowed you to go up to 16Mb (but only 2Mb was officially supported). These were designed to work with the GEOS GUI available on the Commodore 64, and were useless for anything else – only 64kb was addressable even with the expansion.
Due to the popularity of the machine, there were a number of titles written for the machine. These ranged from business applications and GUI’s, such as Microsoft’s MultiPlan and Berkeley Softworks’ GEOS, to games such as Donkey Kong, Elite and Ultima. There were also many Commodore provided accessories, for example the 1530 and 1531 tape drives, 1541 and 1571 disk drives, and Commodore 1084 monitor. Third party companies also developed equivalent products that often provided more features, better reliability and extra speed. This was particularly the case for the Commodore disk drives, as they were considered quite slow and some had problems with the motor dying completely or going out of alignment.
There were a number of revisions to the Commodore 64 as well. In 1983, the motherboard was redesigned to try and eliminate some of the heat problems of the earlier machines and reduce costs. In 1986, the memory was changed to use 64kbit x4 chips rather than the original 64kbit x1. In 1987, the motherboard was completely redesigned into a version known as the “short board” and used a different chipset, and combined many chips into one.
There is also a now rare version of the Commodore 64, known as the SX-64. This was a “luggable” machine that looks somewhat like a briefcase when packed up, that had one or two 1541 disk drives and a built in 5 inch screen.
There are apparently a number of cool tricks you can do with a Commodore 64. If you put the basic code PRINT “”+-[x] (where x is any integer) after line number 350800, the BASIC interpreter will crash. You can also enter “screensaver” mode by pressing RUN/STOP and RESTORE, then typing POKE781,96:SYS58251.
The Commodore 64 was a popular machine, which still has a strong following even today. It is fondly remembered by many people who grew up in the 80’s, and has been described as a “console with a keyboard”. It is a true piece of computing history.