The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an
8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by
Commodore International
Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mac ...
(first shown at the
Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
). It has been listed in the
Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
as the highest-selling single computer model of all time,
with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for . Preceded by the
VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...
and
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...
, the C64 took its name from its of RAM. With support for multicolor
sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.
The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s. For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year,
outselling
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...
s,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
computers, and the
Atari 8-bit family of computers. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview, "When I was at Commodore we were building C64s a month for a couple of years."
In the UK market, the C64 faced competition from the
BBC Micro
The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...
and the
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer.
Referred to during development as t ...
, but the C64 was still the second most popular computer in the UK after the ZX Spectrum.
The Commodore 64 failed to make any impact in Japan. The Japanese market was dominated by Japanese computers, such as the
NEC PC-8801,
Sharp X1
The , sometimes called the Sharp X1 or CZ-800C, is a series of home computers released by Sharp Corporation from 1982 to 1988. It is based on a Zilog Z80 CPU.
The RGB display monitor for the X1 had a television tuner, and a computer screen co ...
,
Fujitsu FM-7
The FM-7 ("Fujitsu Micro 7") is a home computer created by Fujitsu. It was first released in 1982 and was sold in Japan and Spain. It is a stripped-down version of Fujitsu's earlier FM-8 computer, and during development it was referred to as th ...
, and
MSX.
Part of the Commodore 64's success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts
in-house to control costs, including custom
integrated circuit chips from
MOS Technology
MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is mos ...
. In the United States, it has been compared to the
Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production.
Approximately 10,000 commercial
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
titles have been made for the Commodore 64, including development tools, office productivity applications, and
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
s.
C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
, to run these programs today. The C64 is also credited with popularizing the computer
demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...
and is still used today by some
computer hobbyists.
In 2011, 17 years after it was taken off the market, research showed that brand recognition for the model was still at 87%.
History
![C64 startup animiert](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/C64_startup_animiert.gif)
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
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
. Design work for the chips, named
MOS Technology VIC-II
The VIC-II (Video Interface Chip II), specifically known as the MOS Technology 6567/8562/8564 (NTSC versions), 6569/8565/8566 (PAL), is the microchip tasked with generating Y/C video signals (combined to composite video in the RF modulator) and D ...
(Video Integrated Circuit for graphics) and
MOS Technology SID
The MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device) is the built-in programmable sound generator chip of Commodore's CBM-II, Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore MAX Machine home computers. It was one of the first sound chips of it ...
(Sound Interface Device for audio), was completed in November 1981.
Commodore then began a game console project that would use the new chips—called the ''Ultimax'' or the ''
Commodore MAX Machine'', engineered by Yash Terakura from Commodore Japan. This project was eventually cancelled after just a few machines were manufactured for the Japanese market. At the same time, Robert "Bob" Russell (system programmer and architect on the
VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...
) 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
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...
line aimed at business users. With the support of Al Charpentier (engineer of the VIC-II) and Charles Winterble (manager of MOS Technology), they proposed to Commodore CEO
Jack Tramiel
Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home comput ...
a low-cost sequel to the VIC-20. Tramiel dictated that the machine should have of
random-access memory
Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the ...
(RAM). Although 64-
Kbit dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips cost over at the time, he knew that 64K DRAM prices were falling and would drop to an acceptable level before full production was reached. The team was able to quickly design the computer because, unlike most other home-computer companies, Commodore had its own semiconductor
fab to produce test chips; because the fab was not running at full capacity, development costs were part of existing corporate overhead. The chips were complete by November, by which time Charpentier, Winterble, and Tramiel had decided to proceed with the new computer; the latter set a final deadline for the first weekend of January, to coincide with the 1982
Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
The product was
code named the VIC-40 as the successor to the popular
VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...
. The team that constructed it consisted of Yash Terakura,
Shiraz Shivji
Shiraz Shivji (born 1947 in what is now Tanzania) was the primary designer of the 1985 Atari ST computer, and one of the engineers of the Commodore 64.
Biography
Shiraz Shivji, born 1947 in what is now Tanzania, was of Indian Ismaili heritage. ...
, Bob Russell, Bob Yannes, and David A. Ziembicki. The design, prototypes, and some sample software were finished in time for the show, after the team had worked tirelessly over both
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...
and
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
weekends. The machine used the same case, same-sized motherboard, and same
Commodore BASIC
Commodore BASIC, also known as PET BASIC or CBM-BASIC, is the dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET of 1977 to the C128 of 1985.
The core is based on 6502 ...
2.0 in
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
as the VIC-20. BASIC also served as the
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
** Thin-shell structure
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard o ...
and was available immediately on startup at the
READY
prompt. When the product was to be presented, the VIC-40 product was renamed C64. The C64 made an impressive debut at the January 1982
Consumer Electronics Show, 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 was
vertical integration
In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the suppl ...
; due to Commodore's ownership of MOS Technology's
semiconductor fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...
facilities, each C64 had an estimated production cost of .
Reception
In July 1983, ''
BYTE
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
'' magazine stated that "the 64 retails for . At that price it promises to be one of the hottest contenders in the under- personal computer market." It described the SID as "a true music synthesizer ... the quality of the sound has to be heard to be believed", while criticizing the use of Commodore BASIC 2.0, the floppy disk performance which is "even slower than the
Atari 810
The Atari 810 is the official floppy disk drive for the Atari 400 and 800, the first two models in the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It was released by Atari, Inc. in 1980. The single-density drive provides 90 kB of storage. The 8 ...
drive", and Commodore's quality control. ''BYTE'' gave more details, saying the C64 had "inadequate Commodore BASIC 2.0. An 8K-byte interpreted BASIC" which they assumed was because "Obviously, Commodore feels that most home users will be running prepackaged software - there is no provision for using graphics (or sound as mentioned above) from within a BASIC program except by means of POKE commands." This was one of very few warnings about C64 BASIC published in any computer magazines.
''Creative Computing'' said in December 1984 that the 64 was "the overwhelming winner" in the category of home computers under . Despite criticizing its "slow disk drive, only two cursor directional keys, zero manufacturer support, non-standard interfaces, etc.", the magazine said that at the 64's price of less than "you can't get another system with the same features: 64K, color, sprite graphics, and barrels of available software". The Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer was the runner up. However, this was only one of twelve categories being voted on, depending on the price and what people wanted to do with a computer. The same article also said "Although there was no single best all-around system, we noted that one system stood out because it was mentioned in so many categories. Although many systems were mentioned in two categories, just two systems were mentioned in three categories, and only one in four categories—the Apple Macintosh." Apart from this, the
Apple II was the winner in the category of home computer over , which was the category the Commodore 64 was in when it was first released at the price of .
Market war: 1982–1983
![CBM64Cartridges](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/CBM64Cartridges.JPG)
Commodore had a reputation for
announcing products that never appeared, so sought to quickly ship the C64. Production began in spring 1982 and volume shipments began in August. The C64 faced a wide range of competing
home computers,
but with a lower price and more flexible hardware, it quickly outsold many of its competitors.
In the United States, the greatest competitors were the
Atari 8-bit 400, the Atari 800, and the Apple II. The Atari 400 and 800 had been designed to accommodate previously-stringent
FCC
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdictio ...
emissions requirements and so were expensive to manufacture. Though similar in specifications, the C64 and Apple II represented differing design philosophies; as an
open architecture
Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture supp ...
system, upgrade capability for the Apple II was granted by internal expansion slots, whereas the C64's comparatively closed architecture had only a single external
ROM cartridge port for bus expansion. However, the Apple II used its expansion slots for interfacing to common peripherals like disk drives, printers, and modems; the C64 had a variety of ports integrated into its motherboard which were used for these purposes, usually leaving the cartridge port free. Commodore's was not a completely closed system, however; the company had published detailed specifications for most of their models since the Commodore PET and VIC-20 days, and the C64 was no exception. C64 sales were nonetheless relatively slow due to a lack of software, reliability issues with early production models, particularly high failure rates of the
PLA chip, which used a new production process, and a shortage of 1541 disk drives, which also suffered rather severe reliability issues. During 1983, however, a trickle of software turned into a flood and sales began rapidly climbing, especially with price cuts from to just (equivalent to $ to $ in ).
Commodore sold the C64 not only through its network of authorized dealers, but also through department stores, discount stores, toy stores and college bookstores. The C64 had a built-in
RF modulator
An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source.
RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs a ...
and thus could be plugged into any television set. This allowed it (like its predecessor, the VIC-20) to compete directly against video game consoles such as the
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocesso ...
. Like the Apple IIe, the C64 could also output a
composite video signal, avoiding the RF modulator altogether. This allowed the C64 to be plugged into a specialized monitor for a sharper picture. Unlike the IIe, the C64's NTSC output capability also included separate luminance/chroma signal output equivalent to (and electrically compatible with)
S-Video
S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video ) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate chan ...
, for connection to the
Commodore 1702 monitor, providing even better video quality than a composite signal.
Aggressive pricing of the C64 is considered to have been a major catalyst in the
video game crash of 1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including ma ...
. In January 1983, Commodore offered a $100
rebate in the United States on the purchase of a C64 to anyone that traded in another video game console or computer.
To take advantage of this rebate, some mail-order dealers and retailers offered a
Timex Sinclair 1000
The Timex Sinclair 1000 (or T/S 1000) was the first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982, with a US sales price of US$99.95, making it the cheapest ho ...
(TS1000) for as little as with purchase of a C64. This deal meant that the consumer could send the TS1000 to Commodore, collect the rebate, and pocket the difference;
Timex Corporation
Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into ...
departed the computer market within a year. Commodore's tactics soon led to a
price war
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...
with the major
home computer manufacturers. The success of the VIC-20 and C64 contributed significantly to the exit from the field of
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...
and other smaller competitors.
The price war with Texas Instruments was seen as a personal battle for Commodore president Jack Tramiel.
Commodore dropped the C64's list price by within two months of its release. In June 1983 the company lowered the price to $300, and some stores sold the computer for . At one point, the company was selling as many C64s as all computers sold by the rest of the industry combined. Meanwhile, TI lost money by selling the
TI-99/4A
The TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A are home computers released by Texas Instruments in 1979 and 1981, respectively. Based on the Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor originally used in minicomputers, the TI-99/4 was the first 16-bit home computer. ...
for .
TI's subsequent demise in the home computer industry in October 1983 was seen as revenge for TI's tactics in the
electronic calculator
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics.
The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...
market in the mid-1970s, when Commodore was almost bankrupted by TI.
All four machines had similar memory configurations which were standard in 1982–83: for the Apple II+
(upgraded within months of C64's release to with the Apple IIe) and for the Atari 800.
At upwards of , the Apple II was about twice as expensive, while the Atari 800 cost $899. One key to the C64's success was Commodore's aggressive marketing tactics, and they were quick to exploit the relative price/performance divisions between its competitors with a series of television commercials after the C64's launch in late 1982.
The company also published detailed documentation to help developers,
while Atari initially kept technical information secret.
Although many early C64 games were inferior Atari 8-bit
ports
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...
, by late 1983 the growing installed base caused developers to create new software with better graphics and sound.
It was the only non-discontinued, widely available home computer by then, with more than 500,000 sold during the Christmas season;
because of production problems in Atari's supply chain, by the start of 1984 "the Commodore 64 largely has
he low-endmarket to itself right now", ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' reported.
1984–1987
With sales booming and the early reliability issues with the hardware addressed, software for the C64 began to grow in size and ambition during 1984. This growth shifted to the primary focus of most US game developers. The two holdouts were
Sierra, who largely skipped over the C64 in favor of Apple and PC compatible machines, and
Broderbund
Broderbund Software, Inc. (stylized as Brøderbund) was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits ''Choplifter'', ''Lode Runner'', ''Karateka'', and '' ...
, who were heavily invested in educational software and developed primarily around the Apple II. In the North American market, the disk format had become nearly universal while cassette and cartridge-based software all but disappeared. So most US-developed games by this point grew large enough to require multi-loading.
At a mid-1984 conference of game developers and experts at
Origins Game Fair
Origins Game Fair is an annual gaming convention that was first held in 1975. Since 1996, it has been held in Columbus, Ohio at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
Origins is run by The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA). Origins was c ...
,
Dan Bunten
Danielle Bunten Berry (February 19, 1949 – July 3, 1998), formerly known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game ''M.U.L.E.'', one of the first influential multiplayer video games, and 1984's '' T ...
,
Sid Meier
Sidney K. Meier ( ; born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian-American programmer, game designer, designer, and video game producer, producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the ''Civilization (series), Civiliz ...
, and a representative of
Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the company ...
said that they were developing games for the C64 first as the most promising market.
By 1985, games were an estimated 60 to 70% of Commodore 64 software.
''
Computer Gaming World'' stated in January 1985 that companies such as
Epyx
Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher active in the late 1970s and 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before ren ...
that survived the video game crash did so because they "jumped on the Commodore bandwagon early".
Over 35% of
SSI's 1986 sales were for the C64, ten points higher than for the Apple II. The C64 was even more important for other companies,
which often found that more than half the sales for a title ported to six platforms came from the C64 version.
That year, ''Computer Gaming World'' published a survey of ten game publishers that found that they planned to release forty-three Commodore 64 games that year, compared to nineteen for Atari and forty-eight for Apple II,
and
Alan Miller stated that
Accolade
The accolade (also known as dubbing or adoubement) ( la, benedictio militis) was the central act in the rite of passage ceremonies conferring knighthood in the Middle Ages. From about 1852, the term ''accolade'' was used much more generally to ...
developed first for the C64 because "it will sell the most on that system".
In Europe, the primary competitors to the C64 were British-built computers: the
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer.
Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colour ...
, the
BBC Micro
The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...
, and the
Amstrad CPC 464. In the UK, the 48K Spectrum had not only been released a few months ahead of the C64's early 1983 debut, but it was also selling for , less than half the C64's price. The Spectrum quickly became the market leader and Commodore had an uphill struggle against it in the marketplace. The C64 did however go on to rival the Spectrum in popularity in the latter half of the 1980s. Adjusted to the size of population, the popularity of Commodore 64 was the highest in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
at roughly 3 units per 100 inhabitants, where it was subsequently marketed as "the Computer of the Republic".
Rumors spread in late 1983 that Commodore would discontinue the C64.
By early 1985 the C64's price was ; with an estimated production cost of , its profitability was still within the industry-standard markup of two to three times. Commodore sold about one million C64s in 1985 and a total of 3.5 million by mid-1986. Although the company reportedly attempted to discontinue the C64 more than once in favor of more expensive computers such as the
Commodore 128, demand remained strong.
In 1986, Commodore introduced the 64C, a redesigned 64, which ''Compute!'' saw as evidence that—contrary to C64 owners' fears that the company would abandon them in favor of the
Amiga and 128—"the 64 refuses to die".
Its introduction also meant that Commodore raised the price of the C64 for the first time, which the magazine cited as the end of the home-computer
price war
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...
.
Software sales also remained strong;
MicroProse
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and video game developer, developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization (series), Civilizatio ...
, for example, in 1987 cited the Commodore and IBM PC markets as its top priorities.
1988–1994
By 1988,
PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
s were the largest and fastest-growing home and entertainment software markets, displacing former leader Commodore.
Commodore 64 software sales were almost unchanged in the third quarter of 1988 year over year while the overall market grew 42%,
but the company was still selling 1 to 1.5 million units worldwide each year of what ''
Computer Chronicles
''(The) Computer Chronicles'' is an American half-hour television series, which was broadcast from 1983 to 2002 on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television and which documented various issues from the rise of the personal computer from ...
'' that year called "the
Model T
The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relati ...
of personal computers". Epyx CEO
David Shannon Morse
David Shannon Morse (April 15, 1943 – November 2, 2007) was the cofounder of Amiga. In 1982, he left Tonka Toys (where he was Vice-President of Marketing) and became the Chief Executive Officer at Hi Toro, Inc., which he co-founded and which l ...
cautioned that "there are no new 64 buyers, or very few. It's a consistent group that's not growing... it's going to shrink as part of our business."
One computer gaming executive stated that the
Nintendo Entertainment System's enormous popularityseven million sold in 1988, almost as many as the number of C64s sold in its first five yearshad stopped the C64's growth.
Trip Hawkins
William Murray "Trip" Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate.
Career
A fan of the Strat-O-Matic Football pen and paper games, Hawkins started his f ...
reinforced that sentiment, stating that Nintendo was "the last hurrah of the 8-bit world".
SSI exited the Commodore 64 market in 1991, after most competitors.
''
Ultima VI
''Ultima VI: The False Prophet'', released by Origin Systems in 1990, is the sixth part in the role-playing video game series of '' Ultima''. It is the third and final game in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. ''Ultima VI'' sees the player retu ...
'', released in 1991, was the last major C64 game release from a North American developer, and
''The Simpsons'', published by
Ultra Games
Ultra Software Corporation was a shell corporation and publishing label created in 1988 as a subsidiary of Konami of America, in an effort to get around Nintendo of America's strict licensing rules in place at the time for the North American ma ...
, was the last arcade conversion. The latter was a somewhat uncommon example of a US-developed arcade port as after the early years of the C64, most arcade conversions were produced by UK developers and converted to NTSC and disk format for the US market, American developers instead focusing on more computer-centered game genres such as RPGs and simulations. In the European market, disk software was rarer and cassettes were the most common distribution method; this led to a higher prevalence of arcade titles and smaller, lower-budget games that could fit entirely in the computer's memory without requiring multiloads. European programmers also tended to exploit advanced features of the C64's hardware more than their US counterparts.
In the United States, demand for 8-bit computers all but ceased as the 1990s began and PC compatibles completely dominated the computer market. However, the C64 continued to be popular in the UK and other European countries. The machine's eventual demise was not due to lack of demand or the cost of the C64 itself (still profitable at a retail price point between £44 and £50), but rather because of the cost of producing the disk drive. In March 1994, at
CeBIT in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, Commodore announced that the C64 would be finally discontinued in 1995,
[Amiga Format News Special. "Commodore at CeBIT '94". ]Amiga Format
''Amiga Format'' was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future plc. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling '' ACE'' to EMAP, Future split the dual-format ...
Issue 59 page 21
May 1994. noting that the
Commodore 1541
The Commodore 1541 (also known as the CBM 1541 and VIC-1541) is a floppy disk drive which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore's most popular home computer. The best-known floppy disk drive for the C64, th ...
cost more than the C64 itself.
However, only one month later in April 1994, the company filed for
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...
. When Commodore went bankrupt, all production on their inventory, including the C64, was discontinued, thus ending the C64's 11 and a half year production. Claims of sales of 17, 22 and 30 million of C64 units sold worldwide have been made. Company sales records, however, indicate that the total number was about 12.5 million. Based on that figure, the Commodore 64 was still the third most popular computing platform into the 21st century until 2017 when the
Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...
family replaced it. While 360,000 C64s were sold in 1982, about 1.3 million were sold in 1983, followed by a large spike in 1984 when 2.6 million were sold. After that, sales held steady at between 1.3 and 1.6 million a year for the remainder of the decade and then dropped off after 1989. North American sales peaked between 1983 and 1985 and gradually tapered off afterward, while European sales remained quite strong into the early 1990s.
The computer's designers claimed that "The freedom that allowed us to do the C-64 project will probably never exist again in that environment"; by spring 1983 most had left to found
Ensoniq.
C64 family
Commodore MAX
![Commodore MAX Machine (shadow) (xparent bg)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Commodore_MAX_Machine_%28shadow%29_%28xparent_bg%29.png)
In 1982, Commodore released the
Commodore MAX Machine in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. It was called the Ultimax in the United States and VC-10 in Germany. The MAX was intended to be a game console with limited computing capability and was based on a cut-down version of the hardware family later used in the C64. The MAX was discontinued months after its introduction because of poor sales in Japan.
Commodore Educator 64
![Commodore Educator 64 (standout version)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Commodore_Educator_64_%28standout_version%29.jpg)
1983 saw Commodore attempt to compete with the
Apple II's hold on the US education market with the
Educator 64
The Educator 64, also known as the PET 64 and Model 4064, was a microcomputer made by Commodore Business Machines in 1983. It was sold to schools as a replacement for aging Commodore PET systems. Schools were reluctant to adopt the Commodore 64 ...
,
essentially a C64 and "greenscale" monochrome monitor in a PET case. Schools preferred the all-in-one metal construction of the PET over the standard C64's separate components, which could be easily damaged, vandalized, or stolen. Schools did not prefer the Educator 64 to the wide range of software and hardware options the
Apple IIe was able to offer, and it was produced in limited quantities.
SX-64
![Sx-64 build crop](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Sx-64_build_crop.jpg)
Also in 1983, Commodore released the
SX-64, a portable version of the C64. The SX-64 has the distinction of being the first commercial ''full-color''
portable computer
A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another and included a display and keyboard together, with a single plug, much like later desktop computers called '' all-in-ones'' (AIO), that integrate the s ...
. While earlier computers using this form factor only incorporate monochrome ("green screen") displays, the base SX-64 unit features a color
cathode-ray tube (CRT) and one integrated
1541 floppy disk drive. Even though Commodore claimed in advertisements that it would have dual 1541 drives, when the SX-64 was released there was only one and the other became a floppy disk storage slot. Also, unlike most other C64s, the SX-64 does not have a datasette connector so an external cassette was not an option.
Commodore 128
Two designers at Commodore, Fred Bowen and
Bil Herd
Bil Herd is a computer engineer who created several designs for 8-bit home computers while working for Commodore Business Machines in the early to mid-1980s.
Biography
He attended the Indiana school system. Herd did not have a college degr ...
, were determined to rectify the problems of the
Plus/4. They intended that the eventual successors to the C64—the
Commodore 128 and 128D computers (1985)—were to build upon the C64, avoiding the Plus/4's flaws.
The successors had many improvements such as a BASIC with graphics and sound commands (like almost all home computers not made by Commodore ), 80-column display ability, and full
CP/M compatibility. The decision to make the
Commodore 128 plug compatible
Plug compatible refers to " hardware that is designed to perform exactly like another vendor's product." The term PCM was originally applied to manufacturers who made replacements for IBM peripherals. Later this term was used to refer to IBM-co ...
with the C64 was made quietly by Bowen and Herd, software and hardware designers respectively, without the knowledge or approval by the management in the post
Jack Tramiel
Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home comput ...
era. The designers were careful not to reveal their decision until the project was too far along to be challenged or changed and still make the impending Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Upon learning that the C128 was designed to be compatible with the C64, Commodore's marketing department independently announced that the C128 would be 100% compatible with the C64, thereby raising the bar for C64 support. In a case of
malicious compliance
Malicious compliance (also known as malicious obedience) is the behavior of strictly following the orders of a superior despite knowing that compliance with the orders will have an unintended or negative result. The term usually implies following ...
, the 128 design was altered to include a separate "64 mode" using a complete C64 environment to try to ensure total compatibility.
Commodore 64C
![C64c system](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/C64c_system.jpg)
The C64's designers intended the computer to have a new, wedge-shaped case within a year of release, but the change did not occur. In 1986, Commodore released the 64C computer, which is functionally identical to the original. The exterior design was remodeled in the sleeker style of the
Commodore 128. The 64C uses new versions of the SID, VIC-II, and I/O chips being deployed. Models with the C64E board had the graphic symbols printed on the top of the keys, instead of the normal location on the front. The sound chip (SID) was changed to use the MOS 8580 chip, with the core voltage reduced from 12V to 9V. The most significant changes include different behavior in the filters and in the volume control, which result in some music/sound effects sounding differently than intended, and in digitally-sampled audio being almost inaudible, respectively (though both of these can mostly be corrected-for in software). The 64 KB RAM memory went from eight chips to two chips. BASIC and the
KERNAL
KERNAL is Commodore's name for the ROM-resident operating system core in its 8-bit home computers; from the original PET of 1977, followed by the extended but strongly related versions used in its successors: the VIC-20, Commodore 64, Plus/4, ...
went from two separate chips into one 16 KB ROM chip. The
PLA
PLA may refer to:
Organizations Politics and military
* People's Liberation Army, the armed forces of China and of the ruling Chinese Communist Party
* People's Liberation Army (disambiguation)
** Irish National Liberation Army, formerly called ...
chip and some TTL chips were integrated into a
DIL 64-pin chip. The "252535-01" PLA integrated the color RAM as well into the same chip. The smaller physical space made it impossible to put in some internal expansions like a floppy-speeder. In the United States, the 64C was often bundled with the third-party
GEOS graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...
(GUI)-based operating system, as well as the software needed to access
Quantum Link
Quantum Link (or Q-Link) was an American and Canadian online service for the Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated starting November 5, 1985. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia, which later became ...
. The 1541 drive received a matching face-lift, resulting in the 1541C. Later, a smaller, sleeker 1541-II model was introduced, along with the 3.5-inch
microfloppy 1581.
Commodore 64 Games System
![C64GS-Console-Set](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/C64GS-Console-Set.jpg)
In 1990, the C64 was repackaged in the form of a game console, called the
C64 Games System (C64GS), with most external connectivity removed. A simple modification to the 64C's motherboard was made 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. Designed to compete with the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System, it suffered from very low sales compared to its rivals. It was another commercial failure for Commodore, and it was never released outside Europe. The Commodore game system lacked a keyboard, so any software that required a keyboard could not be used.
Commodore 65
In 1990, an advanced successor to the C64, the
Commodore 65
The Commodore 65 (also known as the C64DX) is a prototype computer created at Commodore Business Machines in 1990–1991. It is an improved version of the Commodore 64, and it was meant to be backwards-compatible with the older comput ...
(also known as the "C64DX"), was prototyped, but the project was canceled by Commodore's chairman
Irving Gould
Irving Gould (1919–2004) was a Canadian businessman credited with both saving and sinking Commodore.
Commodore was originally formed in Canada and initially produced mechanical typewriters and calculators. In 1965, Jack Tramiel, Commodore's foun ...
in 1991. The C65's specifications were impressive for an 8-bit computer, bringing specs comparable to the 16-bit
Apple IIGS. For example, it could display 256 colors on the screen, while
OCS based Amigas could only display 64 in
HalfBrite mode (32 colors and half-bright transformations). Although no specific reason was given for the C65's cancellation, it would have competed in the marketplace with Commodore's lower-end Amigas and the
Commodore CDTV
The CDTV (from Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, later treated as a backronym for Compact Disc Television) is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional ...
.
Software
In 1982, the C64's graphics and sound capabilities were rivaled only by the
Atari 8-bit family and appeared exceptional when compared with the widely publicized
Atari VCS
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
and
Apple II. The C64 is often credited with starting the computer
subculture known as the
demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...
(see
Commodore 64 demos
The Commodore 64 (C64) demos are demonstrations of what can be done to push the limits of the Commodore 64 computer, made by programmers, musicians and artists.
Though it was not unusual to find demos that displayed a single picture, only music ...
). It is still being actively used in the demoscene, especially for music (its SID sound chip even being used in special sound cards for PCs, and the
Elektron SidStation
The Elektron SidStation is a musical synthesizer sound module, built around the MOS Technology SID mixed-mode synthesizer chip originally used in the Commodore 64 home computer. It was produced by the Swedish synthesizer company Elektron, and ...
synthesizer). Even though other computers quickly caught up with it, the C64 remained a strong competitor to the later
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
s
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and
Sega Master System
The is an 8-bit
third-generation home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was originally a remodeled export version of the Sega Mark III, the third iteration of the SG-1000 series of consoles, which was released in Japan in 1985 and ...
, thanks in part to its by-then established software base, especially outside North America, where it comprehensively outsold the NES.
Because of lower incomes and the domination of the
Sinclair Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer.
Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colour ...
in the UK, almost all British C64 software used cassette tapes. Few cassette C64 programs were released in the US after 1983 and, in North America, the diskette was the principal method of software distribution. The cartridge slot on the C64 was also mainly a feature used in the computer's first two years on the US market and became rapidly obsolete once the price and reliability of 1541 drives improved. A handful of PAL region games used bank switched cartridges to get around the 16 KB memory limit.
BASIC
![Simons Basic Splash Screen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Simons_Basic_Splash_Screen.gif)
As is common for home computers of the early 1980s, the C64 comes with a BASIC interpreter, in ROM. KERNAL, I/O, and tape/disk drive operations are accessed via custom BASIC language commands. The disk drive has its own interfacing
microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
and ROM (firmware) I/O routines, much like the earlier CBM/PET systems and the Atari 400 and Atari 800. This means that no memory space is dedicated to running a
disk operating system, as was the case with earlier systems such as the Apple II and
TRS-80
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...
.
Commodore BASIC 2.0 is used instead of the more advanced BASIC 4.0 from the PET series, since C64 users were not expected to need the disk-oriented enhancements of BASIC 4.0. The company did not expect many to buy a disk drive, and using BASIC 2.0 simplified VIC-20 owners' transition to the 64.
"The choice of BASIC 2.0 instead of 4.0 was made with some soul-searching, not just at random. The typical user of a C64 is not expected to need the direct disk commands as much as other extensions, and the amount of memory to be committed to BASIC were to be limited. We chose to leave expansion space for color and sound extensions instead of the disk features. As a result, you will have to handle the disk in the more cumbersome manner of the 'old days'."
The version of
Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first ...
is not very comprehensive and does not include specific commands for sound or graphics manipulation, instead requiring users to use the "
PEEK and POKE" commands to access the graphics and sound chip registers directly. To provide extended commands, including graphics and sound, Commodore produced two different cartridge-based extensions to BASIC 2.0:
Simons' BASIC
Simons' BASIC is an BASIC extension, extension to Commodore BASIC, BASIC 2.0 for the Commodore 64 home computer. Written by British people, British programmer David Simons in 1983, who was 16 years old at the time, it was distributed by Commodore I ...
and
Super Expander 64. Other languages available for the C64 include
Pascal,
C,
Logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...
,
Forth
Forth or FORTH may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine
* ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008
* ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw
* Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotla ...
, and
FORTRAN. Compilers for BASIC 2.0 such as Petspeed 2 (from Commodore), Blitz (from Jason Ranheim), and Turbo Lightning (from
Ocean Software
Ocean Software Ltd was a British software development company that became one of the biggest European video game developers and publishers of the 1980s and 1990s.
The company was founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and was based in Manchester. ...
) were produced. Most commercial C64 software was written in assembly language, either cross-developed on a larger computer, or directly on the C64 using a machine code monitor or an assembler. This maximized speed and minimized memory use. Some games, particularly adventures, used high-level scripting languages and sometimes mixed BASIC and machine language.
Alternative operating systems
Many third-party operating systems have been developed for the C64. As well as the original
GEOS, two third-party GEOS-compatible systems have been written: Wheels and GEOS megapatch. Both of these require hardware upgrades to the original C64. Several other operating systems are or have been available, including WiNGS OS, the Unix-like
LUnix
LUnix, short for "Little Unix", is a Unix-like multi-tasking operating system designed to run natively on the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 , operated from a command-line, and the embedded systems OS
Contiki
Contiki is an operating system for networked, memory-constrained systems with a focus on low-power wireless Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Extant uses for Contiki include systems for street lighting, sound monitoring for smart cities, radia ...
, with full GUI. Other less well-known OSes include ACE, Asterix, DOS/65, and
GeckOS
Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from .
Geckos ar ...
. A version of
CP/M was released, but this requires the addition of an external
Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...
processor to the expansion bus. Furthermore, the Z80 processor is underclocked to be compatible with the C64's memory bus, so performance is poor compared to other CP/M implementations. C64 CP/M and C128 CP/M both suffer a lack of software; although most commercial CP/M software can run on these systems, software media is incompatible between platforms. The low usage of CP/M on Commodores means that software houses saw no need to invest in mastering versions for the Commodore disk format. The C64 CP/M cartridge is also not compatible with anything except the early 326298 motherboards.
Networking software
During the 1980s, the Commodore 64 was used to run
bulletin board systems using software packages such as
Punter BBS, Bizarre 64,
Blue Board, C-Net,
Color 64, CMBBS, C-Base, DMBBS, Image BBS, EBBS, and The Deadlock Deluxe BBS Construction Kit, often with
sysop-made modifications. These boards sometimes were used to distribute
cracked software
Software cracking (known as "breaking" mostly in the 1980s) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software (software cracker), especially copy protection featur ...
. As late as December 2013, there were 25 such Bulletin Board Systems in operation, reachable via the
Telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet contr ...
protocol. There were major commercial
online services
An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, ...
, such as
Compunet
Compunet was a United Kingdom based interactive service provider, catering primarily for the Commodore 64 but later for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. It was also known by its users as ''CNet''.
It ran from 1984 to May 1993.
Overview
Compune ...
(UK),
CompuServe
CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...
(US later bought by
America Online),
The Source
''The Source'' is an American hip hop and entertainment website, and a magazine that publishes annually or . It is the world's longest-running rap periodical, being founded as a newsletter in 1988 by Jonathan Shecter. David Mays was the ma ...
(US), and
Minitel
The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France.
The service w ...
(France) among many others. These services usually required custom software which was often bundled with a
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
and included free online time as they were billed by the minute.
Quantum Link
Quantum Link (or Q-Link) was an American and Canadian online service for the Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated starting November 5, 1985. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia, which later became ...
(or Q-Link) was a US and Canadian online service for Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated from November 5, 1985, to November 1, 1994. It was operated by
Quantum Computer Services
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
of Vienna, Virginia, Vienna, Virginia, which in October 1991 changed its name to
America Online and continued to operate its AOL service for the
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...
and Apple Macintosh. Q-Link was a modified version of the PlayNET system, which Control Video Corporation (CVC, later renamed Quantum Computer Services) licensed.
Online gaming
The first graphical character-based interactive environment is ''Club Caribe''. First released as ''Habitat (video game), Habitat'' in 1988, ''Club Caribe'' was introduced by LucasArts for Q-Link customers on their Commodore 64 computers. Users could interact with one another, chat and exchange items. Although the game's open world was very basic, its use of online avatars and the combination of chat and graphics was revolutionary. Online graphics in the late 1980s were severely restricted by the need to support modem data transfer rates as low as 300 bits per second. Habitat's graphics were stored locally on floppy disk, eliminating the need for network transfer.
Hardware
CPU and memory
The C64 uses an
8-bit MOS Technology 6510
microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
. It is almost identical to the MOS Technology 6502, 6502 but with three-state buses, a different pinout, slightly different clock signals and other minor changes for this specific application. It also has six I/O lines on otherwise unused legs on the 40-pin IC package. These are used for two purposes in the C64: to Bank switching, bank-switch the machine's read-only memory (ROM) in and out of the processor's address space, and to operate the Commodore Datasette, datasette tape recorder. The C64 has of 8-bit-wide dynamic random-access memory, RAM, of 4-bit-wide static color RAM for text mode, and are available to built-in
Commodore BASIC
Commodore BASIC, also known as PET BASIC or CBM-BASIC, is the dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET of 1977 to the C128 of 1985.
The core is based on 6502 ...
2.0 on startup. There is of ROM, made up of the BASIC interpreter, the KERNAL, and the character ROM. As the processor could only address at a time, the read-only memory, ROM was mapped into memory, and only of RAM (plus in between the ROMs) were available at startup. Most "breadbin" Commodore 64s used 4164 DRAM, with eight chips to total up 64K of system RAM. Later models, featuring Assy 250466 and Assy 250469 motherboards, used 41464 DRAM (64K×4) chips which stored per chip, so only two were required Since 4164 DRAMs are 64K×1, eight chips are needed to make an entire byte, and the computer will not function without all of them present. Thus, the first chip contains Bit 0 for the entire memory space, the second chip contains Bit 1, and so forth. This also makes detecting faulty RAM easy, as a bad chip will display random characters on the screen and the character displayed can be used to determine the faulty RAM.
The C64 performs a RAM test on power up and if a RAM error is detected, the amount of free BASIC memory will be lower than the normal 38911 figure. If the faulty chip is in lower memory, then an
?OUT OF MEMORY IN 0
error is displayed rather than the usual BASIC startup banner. The color RAM at $D800 uses a separate 2114 SRAM chip and is gated directly to the VIC-II.
The C64 uses a somewhat complicated memory banking scheme; the normal power-on default is to have the BASIC ROM mapped in at - and the screen editor/KERNAL ROM at –. RAM underneath the system ROMs can be written to, but not read back without swapping out the ROMs. Memory location contains a register with control bits for enabling/disabling the system ROMs as well as the I/O area at . If the KERNAL ROM is swapped out, BASIC will be removed at the same time, and it is not possible to have BASIC active without the KERNAL (as BASIC often calls KERNAL routines and part of the ROM code for BASIC is in fact located in the KERNAL ROM).
The character ROM is normally not visible to the CPU. It has two mirrors at and , but only the VIC-II can see them; the CPU will see RAM in those locations. The character ROM may be mapped into – where it is then visible to the CPU. Since doing so necessitates swapping out the I/O registers, interrupts must be disabled first. Graphics memory and data cannot be placed at or as the VIC-II will see the character ROM there instead.
By removing I/O from the memory map, – becomes free RAM. The color RAM at is swapped out along with the I/O registers and this area can be used for static graphics data such as character sets since the VIC-II cannot see the I/O registers (or color RAM via the CPU mapping). If all ROMs and the I/O area are swapped out, the entire 64k RAM space is available aside for locations /.
– is free RAM and not used by BASIC or KERNAL routines; because of this, it is an ideal location to store short machine language programs that can be accessed from BASIC. The cassette buffer at – can also be used to store short machine language routines provided that a Datasette is not used, which will overwrite the buffer.
C64 cartridges map into assigned ranges in the CPU's address space and the most common cartridge auto starting requires the presence of a special string at which contains "" followed by the address where program execution begins. A few early C64 cartridges released in 1982 use Ultimax mode (or MAX mode), a leftover feature of the failed MAX Machine. These cartridges map into and displace the KERNAL ROM. If Ultimax mode is used, the programmer will have to provide code for handling system interrupts. The cartridge port has 16 address lines, which grants access to the entire address space of the computer if needed. Disk and tape software normally load at the start of BASIC memory ($0801) and use a small BASIC stub (e.g.,
10 SYS(2064)
) to jump to the start of the program. Although no Commodore 8-bit machine except the C128 can automatically boot from a floppy disk, some software intentionally overwrites certain BASIC vectors in the process of loading so that execution begins automatically rather than requiring the user to type RUN at the BASIC prompt following loading.
Around 300 cartridges were released for the C64, mostly in the machine's first years on the market, after which most software outgrew the cartridge limit. In the final years of the C64, larger software companies such as
Ocean Software
Ocean Software Ltd was a British software development company that became one of the biggest European video game developers and publishers of the 1980s and 1990s.
The company was founded by David Ward and Jon Woods and was based in Manchester. ...
began releasing games on bank-switched cartridges to overcome this cartridge limit.
Commodore did not include a reset button on any of their computers until the CBM-II line, but there were third-party cartridges with a reset button on them. It is possible to trigger a Reboot#Cold versus warm reboot, soft reset by jumping to the CPU reset routine at (64738). A few programs use this as an "exit" feature, although it does not clear memory.
The KERNAL ROM went through three separate revisions, mostly designed to fix bugs. The initial version is only found on 326298 motherboards, used in the first production models, and cannot detect whether an NTSC or PAL VIC-II is present. The second revision is found on all C64s made from late 1982 through 1985. The third and last KERNAL ROM revision was introduced on the 250466 motherboard (late breadbin models with 41464 RAM) and is found in all C64Cs. The 6510 CPU is clocked at (NTSC) and (PAL), lower than some competing systems (for example, the Atari 800 is clocked at ). A small performance boost can be gained by disabling the VIC-II's video output via a register write. This feature is often used by tape and disk fastloaders as well as the KERNAL cassette routine to keep a standard CPU cycle timing not modified by the VIC-II's sharing of the bus.
The Restore key is gated directly to the CPU's non-maskable interrupt, NMI line and will generate an NMI if pressed. The KERNAL handler for the NMI checks if Run/Stop is also pressed; if not, it ignores the NMI and simply exits back out. Run/Stop-Restore normally functions as a soft reset in BASIC that restores all I/O registers to their power on default state, but does not clear memory or reset pointers, so any BASIC programs in memory will be left untouched. Machine language software usually disables Run/Stop-Restore by remapping the NMI vector to a dummy RTI instruction. The NMI can be used for an extra interrupt thread by programs as well, but runs the risk of a system lockup or undesirable side effects if the Restore key is accidentally pressed, as this will trigger an inadvertent activation of the NMI thread.
Joysticks, mice, and paddles
The C64 retained the D-subminiature, DE-9 joystick Atari joystick port from the VIC-20 and added another; any Atari-specification game controller can be used on a C64. The joysticks are read from the registers at and , and most software is designed to use a joystick in port 2 for control rather than port 1, as the upper bits of are used by the keyboard and an I/O conflict can result. Although it is possible to use Sega game pads on a C64, it is not recommended as the slightly different signal generated by them can damage the CIA chip. The SID chip's register is used to control paddles and is an analog input. Atari paddles are electrically compatible with the C64, but have different resistance values than Commodore's paddles, which means most software will not work properly with them. However, only a handful of games, mostly ones released early in the computer's life cycle, can use paddles. In 1986, Commodore released two mice for the C64 and C128, the 1350 and Commodore 1351, 1351. The 1350 is a digital device, read from the joystick registers (and can be used with any program supporting joystick input); while the 1351 is a true, analog potentiometer based, mouse, read with the SID's analog-to-digital converter.
Graphics
The Video Display Controller, graphics chip, VIC-II, features 16 colors, eight hardware
sprites per scanline (enabling up to 112 sprites per PAL screen), scrolling capabilities, and two bitmap graphics modes.
Text modes
The standard text mode features 40 columns, like most
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...
models; the built-in character encoding is not standard ASCII but PETSCII, an extended form of ASCII-1963. The KERNAL ROM sets the VIC-II to a dark blue background on power up with a light blue text and border. Unlike the PET and VIC-20, the C64 uses "fat" double-width text as some early VIC-IIs had poor video quality that resulted in a fuzzy picture. Most screenshots show borders around the screen, which is a feature of the VIC-II chip. By utilizing interrupts to reset various hardware registers on precise timings it was possible to place graphics within the borders and thus use the full screen.
![Fonts-C64](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Fonts-C64.png)
The C64 has a resolution of 320×200 pixels, consisting of a 40×25 grid of 8×8 character blocks. The C64 has 255 predefined character blocks, called PETSCII. The character set can be copied into RAM and altered by a programmer.
There are two colour modes, high resolution, with two colours available per character block (one foreground and one background) and multicolour with four colours per character block (three foreground and one background). In multicolour mode, attributes are shared between pixel pairs, so the effective visible resolution is 160×200 pixels. This is necessary since only 16 KB of memory is available for the VIC-II video processor.
As the C64 has a bitmapped screen, it is possible to draw each pixel individually. This is, however, ''very'' slow. Most programmers used techniques developed for earlier non-bitmapped systems, like the Commodore PET and TRS-80. A programmer redraws the character set and the video processor fills the screen block by block from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.
Two different types of animation are used: character block animation and hardware sprites.
Character block animation
The user draws a series of characters of a person walking, say, two in the middle of the block, and another two walking in and out of the block. Then the user sequences them so the character walks into the block and out again. Drawing a series of these and the user gets a person walking across the screen. By timing the redraw to occur when the television screen blanks out to restart drawing the screen there will be no flicker. For this to happen, the user programs the VIC-II that it generates a raster interrupt when the flyback transformer#History, video flyback occurs. This is the technique used in the classic ''Space Invaders'' arcade game.
Horizontal and vertical pixelwise scrolling of up to one character block is supported by two hardware scroll registers. Depending on timing, hardware scrolling affects the entire screen or just selected lines of character blocks. On a non-emulated C64, scrolling is glasslike and blur-free.
Hardware sprites
A sprite is a movable character which moves over an area of the screen, draws over the background and then redraws it after it moves. Note this is very different from character block animation, where the user is just flipping character blocks. On the C64, the VIC-II video processor handles most of the legwork in sprite emulation; the programmer simply defines the sprite and where they want it to go.
The C64 has two types of sprites, respecting their colour mode limitations. Hi-res sprites have one colour (one background and one foreground) and multicolour sprites three (one background and three foreground). Colour modes can be split or windowed on a single screen. Sprites can be doubled in size vertically and horizontally up to four times their size, but the pixel attributes are the same – the pixels become "fatter". There are 8 sprites in total and all 8 can be shown in each horizontal line concurrently. Sprites can move with glassy smoothness in front of and behind screen characters and other sprites.
The hardware sprites of a C64 can be displayed on either a bitmapped (high resolution) screen or, alternatively, on a text mode screen in conjunction with fast and smooth character block animation. In contrast, software emulated sprites found on systems without support for hardware sprites such as the
Apple II and
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer.
Referred to during development as t ...
required a bitmapped screen.
Sprite-sprite and sprite-background collisions are detected in hardware and the VIC-II can be programmed to trigger an interrupt accordingly.
Sound
The SID chip has three channels, each with its own ADSR envelope generator and filter capabilities. Ring modulation makes use of channel no. 3, to work with the other two channels. Robert Yannes, Bob Yannes developed the SID chip and later co-founded 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 has become a hit of its own among C64 users. Well-known composers and programmers of game music on the C64 are Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, Tim Follin, David Whittaker (video game composer), David Whittaker, Chris Hülsbeck, Ben Daglish, Martin Galway, Kjell Nordbø and David Dunn among many others. Due to the chip's three channels, chords are often played as arpeggios, coining the C64's characteristic lively sound. It was also possible to continuously update the master volume with sampled data to enable the playback of 4-bit digitized audio. As of 2008, it became possible to play four channel 8-bit audio samples, 2 SID channels and still use filtering.
There are two versions of the SID chip: the 6581 and the 8580. The MOS Technology 6581 was used in the original ("breadbin") C64s, the early versions of the 64C, and the
Commodore 128. The 6581 was replaced with the MOS Technology 8580 in 1987. While the 6581 sound quality is a little crisper and many Commodore 64 fans say they prefer its sound, it lacks some versatility available in the 8580 – for example, the 8580 can mix all available waveforms on each channel, whereas the 6581 can only mix waveforms in a channel in a much more limited fashion. The main difference between the 6581 and the 8580 is the supply voltage. The 6581 uses a supply—the 8580, a supply. A modification can be made to use the 6581 in a newer 64C board (which uses the chip). The SID chip's distinctive sound has allowed it to retain a following long after its host computer was discontinued. A number of audio enthusiasts and companies have designed MOS Technology SID#Hardware reimplementations, SID-based products as add-ons for the C64, x86 PCs, and standalone or Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) music devices such as the
Elektron SidStation
The Elektron SidStation is a musical synthesizer sound module, built around the MOS Technology SID mixed-mode synthesizer chip originally used in the Commodore 64 home computer. It was produced by the Swedish synthesizer company Elektron, and ...
. These devices use chips taken from excess stock, or removed from used computers. In 2007, Timbaland's extensive use of the SidStation led to the Timbaland plagiarism controversy, plagiarism controversy for "Block Party" and "Do It (Nelly Furtado song), Do It" (written for Nelly Furtado).
In 1986, the Sound Expander was released for the Commodore 64. It was a sound module that contained a Yamaha YM3526 sound chip capable of FM synthesis. It was primarily intended for professional music production.
Hardware revisions
![3 versioner av c64 (modified)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/3_versioner_av_c64_%28modified%29.jpg)
Commodore made many changes to the C64's hardware during its lifetime, sometimes causing compatibility issues.
The computer's rapid development, and Commodore and Tramiel's focus on cost cutting instead of product testing, resulted in several defects that caused developers like Epyx to complain and required many revisions to fix; Charpentier said that "not coming a little close to quality" was one of the company's mistakes.
Cost reduction was the reason for most of the revisions. Reducing manufacturing costs was vitally important to Commodore's survival during the
price war
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...
and leaner years of the 16-bit era. The C64's original (NMOS logic, NMOS based) motherboard went through two major redesigns and numerous sub-revisions, exchanging positions of the VIC-II, SID and programmable logic array, PLA chips. Initially, a large portion of the cost was eliminated by reducing the number of discrete components, such as diodes and resistors, which enabled the use of a smaller printed circuit board. There were 16 total C64 motherboard revisions, aimed at simplifying and reducing manufacturing costs. Some board revisions were exclusive to PAL regions. All C64 motherboards were manufactured in Hong Kong.
IC locations changed frequently on each motherboard revision, as did the presence or lack thereof of the metal RF shield around the VIC-II. PAL boards often had aluminized cardboard instead of a metal shield. The SID and VIC-II are socketed on all boards; however, the other ICs may be either socketed or soldered. The first production C64s, made in 1982 to early 1983, are known as "silver label" models due to the case sporting a silver-colored "Commodore" logo. The power LED had a separate silver badge around it reading "64". These machines also have only a 5-pin video cable and cannot output S-video. In late 1982, Commodore introduced the familiar "rainbow badge" case, but many machines produced into early 1983 also used silver label cases until the existing stock of them was used up. In the spring of 1983, the original 326298 board was replaced by the 250407 motherboard which sported an 8-pin video connector and added S-video support for the first time. This case design was used until the C64C appeared in 1986. All ICs switched to using plastic shells while the silver label C64s had some ceramic ICs, notably the VIC-II. The case is made from Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, ABS plastic which may become brown with time. This can be reversed by using a process known as "retrobright".
ICs
The VIC-II was manufactured with 5 micrometre, micrometer NMOS technology and was clocked at either (PAL) or (NTSC). Internally, the clock was divided down to generate the dot clock (about 8 MHz) and the two-phase clock, two-phase system clocks (about 1 MHz; the exact pixel and system clock speeds are slightly different between NTSC and PAL machines). At such high clock rates, the chip generated a lot of heat, forcing MOS Technology to use a ceramic dual in-line 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 dual in-line package, which reduced costs substantially, but it did not totally eliminate the heat problem. Without a ceramic package, the VIC-II required the use of a heat sink. To avoid extra cost, the metal radio frequency, RF electromagnetic shielding, shielding doubled as the heat sink for the VIC, although not all units shipped with this type of shielding. Most C64s in Europe shipped with a cardboard Electromagnetic shielding, 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 originally manufactured using NMOS at 7 micrometers and in some areas 6 micrometers. The prototype SID and some very early production models featured a ceramic dual in-line package, but unlike the VIC-II, these are extremely rare as the SID was encased in plastic when production started in early 1982.
Motherboard
In 1986, Commodore released the last revision to the classic C64 motherboard. It was otherwise identical to the 1984 design, except for the two 64 kilobit × 4 bit DRAM chips that replaced the original eight 64 kilobit × 1 bit ICs. After the release of the Commodore 64C,
MOS Technology began to reconfigure the original C64's chipset to use HMOS production 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 renumbered to 85xx to reflect the change to HMOS.
In 1987, Commodore released a 64C variant with a highly redesigned motherboard commonly known as a "short board". The new board used the new HMOS chipset, featuring a new 64-pin PLA chip. The new "SuperPLA", as it was dubbed, integrated many discrete components and transistor–transistor logic (TTL) chips. In the last revision of the 64C motherboard, the 2114 4-bit-wide color RAM was integrated into the SuperPLA.
Power supply
![Commodore 64 - Joystickports, EinAus-Schalter, Poweranschluss](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Commodore_64_-_Joystickports%2C_EinAus-Schalter%2C_Poweranschluss.jpg)
The C64 used an external power supply, a Linear power supply, conventional transformer with multiple tappings (as opposed to Switched-mode power supply, switch mode, the type now used on PC power supplies). It was encased in an epoxy resin gel, which discouraged tampering but tended to increase the heat level during use. The design saved space within the computer's case and allowed international versions to be more easily manufactured. The Commodore 1541, 1541-II and
1581 disk drives, along with various third-party clones, also come with their own external power supply "bricks", as did most peripherals leading to a "spaghetti" of cables and the use of numerous double adapters by users.
Commodore power supplies often Mean time between failures, failed sooner than expected. The computer reportedly had a 30% return rate in late 1983, compared to the 5–7% the industry considered acceptable.
''Creative Computing'' reported four working computers out of seven C64s.
Malfunctioning power bricks were particularly notorious for damaging the RAM chips. Due to their higher density and single supply (+5V), they had less tolerance for an overvoltage condition. The usually failing 78xx, voltage regulator could be replaced by piggy-backing a new regulator onto the board and fitting a heat sink on top.
The original PSU included on early 1982–83 machines had a 5-pin connector that could accidentally be plugged into the video output of the computer. To prevent the user from making this damaging mistake, Commodore changed the plug design on 250407 motherboards to a 3-pin connector in 1984. Commodore later changed the design yet again, omitting the resin gel in order to reduce costs. The follow-on model, the Commodore 128, used a larger, improved power supply that included a fuse. The power supply that came with the Commodore REU was similar to that of the Commodore 128's unit, providing an upgrade for customers who purchased that accessory.
Specifications
Internal hardware
* Microprocessor CPU:
** MOS Technology 6510/8500 (the 6510/8500 is a modified MOS Technology 6502, 6502 with an integrated 6-bit I/O port)
** Clock speed: or
* Video:
MOS Technology VIC-II
The VIC-II (Video Interface Chip II), specifically known as the MOS Technology 6567/8562/8564 (NTSC versions), 6569/8565/8566 (PAL), is the microchip tasked with generating Y/C video signals (combined to composite video in the RF modulator) and D ...
6567/8562 (NTSC), 6569/8565 (PAL)
** 16 colors
** Text mode: 40×25 characters; 256 user-defined chars (8×8 pixels, or 4×8 in multicolor mode); or extended background color; 64 user-defined chars with 4 background colors, 4-bit color RAM defines foreground color
** Bitmap modes: 320×200 (2 unique colors in each 8×8 pixel block),
160×200 (3 unique colors + 1 common color in each 4×8 block)
** 8 hardware
sprites of 24×21 pixels (12×21 in multicolor mode)
** Smooth scrolling, raster interrupts
* Sound: MOS Technology SID, MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID
** 3-channel synthesizer with programmable ADSR envelope
** 8 octaves
** 4 waveforms per audio channel: Triangle wave, triangle, Sawtooth wave, sawtooth, Square wave, variable pulse, white noise, noise
** Oscillator synchronization, ring modulation
** Programmable filter: high-pass filter, high pass, low-pass filter, low pass, band-pass filter, band pass, Band-stop filter, notch filter
* Input/Output: Two MOS Technology CIA, 6526 Complex Interface Adapters
** 16 bit parallel I/O
** 8 bit serial I/O
** 24-hours (AM/PM) Time of Day clock (TOD), with programmable alarm clock
** 16 bit interval timers
* RAM:
** 64 KB, of which 38 KB were available for BASIC programs
** 1024 nybbles color RAM (memory allocated for screen color data storage)
** Expandable to 320 KB with Commodore REU, Commodore 1764 256 KB Commodore REU, RAM Expansion Unit (REU); although only 64 KB directly accessible; REU used mostly for the
GEOS. REUs of 128 KB and 512 KB, originally designed for the C128, were also available, but required the user to buy a stronger power supply from some third party supplier; with the 1764 this was included.
Creative Micro Designs also produced a 2 megabyte, MB REU for the C64 and C128, called the 1750 XL. The technology actually supported up to 16 MB, but 2 MB was the biggest one officially made. Expansions of up to 16 MB were also possible via the CMD SuperCPU.
* ROM:
** (
Commodore BASIC
Commodore BASIC, also known as PET BASIC or CBM-BASIC, is the dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computer line, stretching from the PET of 1977 to the C128 of 1985.
The core is based on 6502 ...
2.0;
KERNAL
KERNAL is Commodore's name for the ROM-resident operating system core in its 8-bit home computers; from the original PET of 1977, followed by the extended but strongly related versions used in its successors: the VIC-20, Commodore 64, Plus/4, ...
; character generator, providing two character sets)
Input/output (I/O) ports and power supply
![Commodore-64-Computer-BL](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Commodore-64-Computer-BL.jpg)
* I/O ports:
[ 090505 computermuseum.li]
**
ROM cartridge expansion slot (44-pin slot for edge connector with 6510 CPU address/data bus lines and control signals, as well as GND and voltage pins; used for program modules and memory expansions, among others)
** Integrated
RF modulator
An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source.
RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs a ...
television antenna output via an RCA connector. The used channel could be adjusted from number 36 with the potentiometer to the left.
** 8-pin DIN connector containing
composite video output, separate S-Video, Y/C outputs and sound input/output. This is a 262° horseshoe version of the plug, rather than the 270° circular version. Early C64 units (with motherboard Assy 326298) use a 5-pin DIN connector that carries composite video and luminance signals, but lacks a chroma signal.
** Commodore bus, Serial bus (proprietary serial version of IEEE-488, 6-pin DIN plug) for CBM printers and disk drives
** Commodore PET, PET-type Commodore Datassette 300 baud tape interface (edge connector with digital cassette motor/read/write/key-sense signals), Ground and +5V DC lines. The cassette motor is controlled by a +5V DC signal from the 6510 CPU. The 9V AC input is transformed into unregulated 6.36V DC
[ 100610 zimmers.net] which is used to actually power the cassette motor.
[ 100610 zimmers.net]
** User port (edge connector with Transistor-transistor logic, TTL-level signals, for modems and so on; byte-parallel signals which can be used to drive third-party parallel printers, among other things, 17 logic signals, 7 Ground and voltage pins, including 9V AC)
** 2 × screwless D-subminiature, DE9M game controller ports (Atari joystick port, compatible with Atari 2600 controllers), each supporting five digital inputs and two analog inputs. Available peripherals included digital joysticks, analog paddle (game controller), paddles, a light pen, the Commodore Commodore 1351, 1351 mouse, and graphics tablets such as the KoalaPad.
* Power supply:
** 5Volt, V Direct current, DC and 9V Alternating current, AC from an external "power brick", attached to a 7-pin female DIN-connector on the computer.
[ 090505 allpinouts.org]
The is used to supply power via a charge pump to the SID sound generator chip, provide via a rectifier to the cassette motor, a "0" pulse for every positive half wave to the time-of-day (TOD) input on the CIA chips, and directly to the user-port. Thus, as a minimum, a square wave is required. But a sine wave is preferred.
[ 090519 zimmers.net][ 090519 zimmers.net]
Memory map
Note that even if an I/O chip like the VIC-II only uses 64 positions in the memory address space, it will occupy 1,024 addresses because some address bits are left undecoded.
Peripherals
File:Commodore-64-1541-Floppy-Drive-01.jpg, Commodore 1541
The Commodore 1541 (also known as the CBM 1541 and VIC-1541) is a floppy disk drive which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore's most popular home computer. The best-known floppy disk drive for the C64, th ...
floppy drive
File:Commodore 1541 white.jpg, Commodore 1541C floppy drive
File:C64-IMG 5372.jpg, Commodore 1541-II floppy drive
File:Commodore-Datasette-C2N-Mk1-Front.jpg, Commodore 1530 Datasette
File:Commodore Matrixdrucker MPS-802 (weißen hintergrund).jpg, Commodore MPS-802 dot matrix printer
File:CommodoreVICModem.jpg, Commodore VIC-Modem
File:Commodore blockomaus.jpg, Commodore 1351 mouse
File:Commodore 1702 (made by JVC) front.jpg, Commodore 1702 video monitor
File:Commodore 1581 Disk Drive Front.jpg, Commodore 1581 3.5" double-sided floppy drive
Manufacturing cost
Vertical integration was the key to keeping Commodore 64 production costs low. At the introduction in 1982, the production cost was US$135 and the retail price US$595. In 1985, the retail price went down to US$149 (US$ today) and the production costs were believed to be somewhere between US$35–50 ( Commodore would not confirm this cost figure. Dougherty of the GEOS (16-bit operating system), Berkeley Softworks estimated the costs of the Commodore 64 parts based on his experience at Mattel and Imagic.
To lower costs, TTL chips were replaced with less expensive custom chips and ways to increase the Semiconductor device fabrication#Device test, yields on the sound and graphics chips were found. The video chip MOS Technology VIC-II#List of VIC-II versions, 6567 had the ceramic package replaced with plastic but heat dissipation demanded a redesign of the chip and the development of a plastic package that can dissipate heat as well as ceramic.
Clones
![C64 DTV](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/C64_DTV.jpg)
Clones are computers that imitate C64 functions. In the middle 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 handheld TV game, TV game based on the C64 with 30 video 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. By modifying the circuit board, it is possible to attach Commodore 1541, C1541 floppy disk drives, a second joystick, and PS/2 port, PS/2 keyboards to these units, which gives the DTV devices nearly all the capabilities of a full Commodore 64. The DTV hardware is also used in the mini-console ''Hummer'', sold at RadioShack in mid-2005.
In 2015, a Commodore 64 compatible motherboard was produced by Individual Computers. Dubbed the "C64 Reloaded", it is a modern redesign of the Commodore 64 motherboard revision 250466 with a few new features. The motherboard itself is designed to be placed in an empty C64 or C64C case already owned by the user. Produced in limited quantities, models of this Commodore 64 "clone" sport either machined or Zero insertion force, ZIF sockets in which the custom C64 chips would be placed. The board also contains jumper (computing), jumpers to accept different revisions of the VIC-II and SID chips, as well as the ability to jumper between the analogue video system modes PAL and NTSC. The motherboard contains several innovations, including selection via the RESTORE key of multiple KERNAL and character ROMs, built-in reset toggle on the power switch, and an S-video socket to replace the original RF modulator, TV modulator. The motherboard is powered by a DC-to-DC converter that uses a single power input of from a mains adapter to power the unit rather than the original and failure-prone Commodore 64 power supply brick.
Newer compatible hardware
As of 2008, C64 enthusiasts still develop new hardware, including Ethernet cards,
specially adapted hard disks and flash memory, flash card interfaces (sd2iec).
In 2022 a product called A-SID was introduced that turns the C-64 into a WAH effect.
Brand reuse
![Commodore 64 Web-it PC (modified)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Commodore_64_Web-it_PC_%28modified%29.jpg)
In 1998, the C64 brand was reused for the "Web.it Internet Computer",
a low-powered (even for the time) Internet appliance, Internet-oriented, all-in-one x86 PC running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1x, Windows 3.1. It uses a AMD Élan SC400 System on a chip, SoC with 16 MB of RAM, a 3.5" floppy disk drive 56k-
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
and PCMCIA. Despite its "Commodore 64" nameplate, the "C64 Web.it" is not directly compatible with the original (except via included Emulator, emulation software), nor does it share its appearance. PC clones branded as Commodore 64x, C64x sold by Commodore USA, LLC, a company licensing the Commodore trademark, began shipping in June 2011. The C64x has a case resembling the original C64 computer, but – as with the "Web.it" – it is based on a x86 architecture and is not compatible with the Commodore 64 on either hardware or software levels.
Virtual Console
Several Commodore 64 games were released on the Wii, Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console service in Europe and North America only. The games were unlisted from the service as of August 2013 for unknown reasons.
THEC64 and THEC64 Mini
![THEC64 Maxi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/THEC64_Maxi.jpg)
THEC64 Mini is an unofficial Linux-based console that emulates the Commodore 64, released in 2018 by UK-based Retro Games. The console takes the form of a decorative half-scale Commodore 64 with two USB and one HDMI port, plus a mini USB connection to power the system. The console's decorative keyboard is non-functional – the system is controlled via the included THEC64 joystick or a separate USB keyboard. It is possible to load new software ROMs into the console, which uses emulator x64 (as part of VICE) to run software, and has a built-in graphical operating system.
The full-size THEC64 was released in 2019 in Europe and Australia, and was scheduled for release in November 2020 in the North American market. The console and built-in keyboard are built to scale with the original Commodore 64, including a functional keyboard. Enhancements include VIC-20 emulation, four USB ports, and an upgraded joystick.
Neither product features any of Commodore's trademarks – the Commodore key on the original keyboard is replaced with a THEC64 key, and Retro Games can call neither product a "C64" – although the system ROMs are licensed from Cloanto Corporation. The consoles can be switched between "carousel mode" for accessing the built-in game library, and "classic mode" in which the machine operates similarly to a traditional Commodore 64. USB storage can be used to hold disk, cartridge and tape images for use with the machine.
Emulators
Commodore 64 emulators include the open-source software, open source VICE, Hoxs64,
and CCS64. An IPhone#App Store and third-party apps, iPhone app was also released with a compilation of C64 ports.
See also
* List of Commodore 64 games
* History of personal computers
* IDE64 – P-ATA interface cartridge for the C64
* SuperCPU – CPU upgrade for C64 and C128
Footnotes
References
Sources
*
* Bagnall, Brian (2005). ''On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore''. Variant Press. . See especially pp. 224–260.
* Tomczyk, Michael (1984). ''The Home Computer Wars: An Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel''. COMPUTE! Publications, Inc. .
* Jeffries, Ron.
A best buy for '83: Commodore 64. ''Creative Computing'', January 1983.
* Amiga Format News Special. "Commodore at CeBIT '94". ''
Amiga Format
''Amiga Format'' was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future plc. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling '' ACE'' to EMAP, Future split the dual-format ...
'', Issue 59, May 1994.
*
Computer Chronicles
''(The) Computer Chronicles'' is an American half-hour television series, which was broadcast from 1983 to 2002 on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television and which documented various issues from the rise of the personal computer from ...
;
Commodore 64 – Interview with Commodore president Max Toy, 1988.
* The C-64 Scene Database;
– Kjell Nordbø artist page (bio/release history) at CSDb.
*
**
External links
*
Commodore 64 history, manuals, and photos
C64-Wiki (wiki-based encyclopaedia)A History of Gaming Platforms: The Commodore 64from October 2007
Design case history: the Commodore 64 IEEE Spectrum, March 1985
Comparing different unit sales analyses
{{Authority control
6502-based home computers
American inventions
Commodore 64,
Products introduced in 1982