Beej
kottke.orgNot a joke: there is a new Commodore 64 coming out. “The glowing, translucent Commodore 64 isn’t a software emulator — it’s the first official C64 in over 30 years, with a few new tricks.” You can preorder now & cancel before shipping for a full refund. https://www.commodore.net/
Jef Poskanzer@kottke Wondering if it can run Unix. I do need a new desktop machine pretty soon...
Charlie Stross
Perrin42
Arcticulate@jef @cstross @kottke Don’t forget Contiki OS: https://hackaday.com/2023/06/01/commodore-64-web-server-brings-8-bit-into-the-future/
xinit ☕
Oof
Tommi Nieminen
Jordi
Andreas MuellerBut what if I don't have any of my original "games, cartridges, and peripherals"? Moon Patrol, Jumpman, Impossible Mission...
rexi
Vashti@kottke "Commodore has returned from a parallel timeline where tech stayed optimistic, inviting, and human. Where it served us, not enslaved us." ouch. Kind of homesick now.
@kottke Celebratory pony https://youtu.be/0gS14lMxSMQ
The Commodore Pony + Ramblings About Technology ;)
�
Hermannus Stegeman
Thorsten Rochelmeyer@kottke And they killed some of the most annoying bugs the internet now has:
Cassander@kottke Funny, I just watched the related announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2fGP59mJ5M
New Commodore 64 Ultimate: The Best-Selling Home Computer Ever Is Back
Evo “em-dash” TerraWell this is ri-gods-damned-diculous.
A brand new Commodore 64 computer coming out?
Yes. Yes, I want one. Don’t think I have any of my carts and such from when I was a teen, but I’m intrigued!
Don Burnside 🇺🇸
danjmcs@donburnside @evoterra @kottke @WarnerCrocker
From what I understand it'll be based on the boards that Gideon has been making for a few years now, mixed with other new bits, case, keyboard,. from other retro vendors. I have a couple of Giideons Ultimate 2/1541 carts to use with original hardware and they are fantastic, as are the reviews of his full system boards that are FPGA powered.
https://ultimate64.com/Ultimate64
From what I understand it'll be based on the boards that Gideon has been making for a few years now, mixed with other new bits, case, keyboard,. from other retro vendors. I have a couple of Giideons Ultimate 2/1541 carts to use with original hardware and they are fantastic, as are the reviews of his full system boards that are FPGA powered.
https://ultimate64.com/Ultimate64
@donburnside @evoterra @kottke @WarnerCrocker
It's a good time in the #Commodore #Retro world for sure. There's also an article about them in the first reboot of #ComputesGazette just out today and i was reading it this morning. So if you really want to nerd out, support that magazine reboot, in both paper and digital formats :)
https://www.computesgazette.com/subscribe-to-computes-gazette-stay-updated-on-the-latest-retro-trends/
It's a good time in the #Commodore #Retro world for sure. There's also an article about them in the first reboot of #ComputesGazette just out today and i was reading it this morning. So if you really want to nerd out, support that magazine reboot, in both paper and digital formats :)
https://www.computesgazette.com/subscribe-to-computes-gazette-stay-updated-on-the-latest-retro-trends/
Toni Aittoniemi@evoterra @kottke @WarnerCrocker Not to worry, the retro scene got you covered with .d64 disk images!
marimo
Possumantha@kottke I wonder if it has 64 gigs rather than 64k.
Carlos SolísThe interesting part is that the rerelease comes mostly from a retro enthusiast, Chris "Perifractic" Simpson, who went and downright purchased the rights to the #Commodore brand in order to do this (by mortgaging his house among other expenses, but whatever, it was worth it) youtube.com/watch?v=lN8r4LRcOX…
Can We Save The COMMODORE Brand? My Biggest Project Yet
My biggest hope is that he eventually can either relicense the "kernal" to an open-source license, or ship a compatible open-source firmware to replace it.
Irrsinn Hilft ⚾ 🏈 🏀 🏒@kottke
Ach... ich nehme einfach meinen alten.
Ach... ich nehme einfach meinen alten.
Pratik@kottke 8-bit computing is nothing more than a toy in 2025. A Raspberry Pi has more value and use than a C-64; unless one wants to store their documents on to cassette tapes!
Furbland's Very Cool Mastodon™
arclight@prtk @kottke 8-bit computers are understandable, tractable, and programmable - accessible - in ways that modern 32- and 64-bit systems are not. You don't use a C-64 to do work, you use it to engage with the machine, learn, and have fun. No screwing around installing an operating system, updating, patching and maintaining the machine. You flip the power switch and it comes on and is immediately ready to use - no login, no systemd, nothing between you and the machine.
Queen of Chaos (Anarschism)
Talin
Kevin RussellWhy order and cancel. Did they hurt you?
Ten Thousand WorldsHwat!?!? The new #Commodore OS is a #Linux Distro? And I can still use it write and run Basic programs? And apparently the most expensive model is ~US$500? And they offer a US$14 adapter so I can plug it into my TV?
Now I gotta figure out how I justify such a purchase to my SO.
axoln
--verbose
Paul Chernoff@kottke @WarnerCrocker I am wondering about the processor. My understanding is that the C128 bombed is that it could not run C64 games which depended on a bug in the C64’s 6592 processor. The C128 had a more advanced chip that did not have the bug and thus you had incompatibility. There was a C64 mode (did that use a 6502 chip?), and C128 mode, and a CPM mode.
If they are not using emulation in this new model, what powers it and how does it run old software?
Leeloo@paulc @kottke @WarnerCrocker
I never heard of a single (64) game that didn't work on the 128. One could still exist, I wrote a program (in basic even) that could detect if it was running on a 128, so it could be done.
The 128 bombed because it was expensive and ran 64 software so perfectly, that developers wrote software for the bigger 64 market and almost nothing took advantage of the 128s improvements, so buying one was a waste of money.
Heck, there was an office suite that took advantage of the autoboot feature on the 128, then switched to 64 mode and continued loading.
@leeloo @kottke @WarnerCrocker you got me looking. I’m not sure what I am remembering. I did see something in Wikipedia was a different issue and very few programs were affected.
A handful of C64 programs write to $D030 (53296), … This memory-mapped register, unused in the C64, determines the system clock rate. Since this register is fully functional in C64 mode, an inadvertent write can scramble the 40-column display …
@paulc @kottke @WarnerCrocker
Heh, that was exactly the trick I figured out to tell if my program was running on a 64 or 128. Switch to 2 MHz, run a small loop, check how long it took, switch back to 1MHz.
It didn't scramble the display, it switched it off (showed the border color) lile when loading from tape.
Oh, and no, the 128 did not have a 6502 or 6510 cpu, 64 mode used the 8502 main cpu. It did have two cpus, but the other cpu was a Z80 for CP/M.
@leeloo @kottke @WarnerCrocker I think the wiki article did mention a 6502 but only as a disk controller. I had forgotten that the main CPU was an 8502 which I guess was just a faster 6502.
I somewhat missed out on those specific days of computing. I was in Grad school in the early 80s so no money for a computer, and then bought a Mac in 1985 once I had a job. I had played with a Mac in 1984 and used and Apple /// for one course.
@leeloo @kottke @WarnerCrocker I will look for my book on the history of Commodore, which is a recommended read for people interested in the early years of personal computing.
@paulc @kottke @WarnerCrocker
That's (almost) correct, the Commodore floppy drives used a 6502 cpu. So I guess technically the 128D (the one with built in floppy drive) would have had three cpus.
Not a controller as we think of it, though, the computer had no floppy controller, the floppy drive had its own cpu. Which means if you had four floppy drives, you had four extra cpus - which is why a Commodore floppy drive was more expensive than the computer.
Technically, the floppy drive firmware did support controlling two drives with one cpu, but that was only used on the Commodore PET.
@paulc @kottke @WarnerCrocker According to their technical deets it's running on an FPGA that emulates the hardware. You could in principle write other processor specs for it; the equivalent Spectrum Next project emulates a Sinclair Spectrum but they've also released "personalities" for the Sinclair QL and BBC Master computers (the BBC Master approximately did for the BBC Model B what the C128 did for the C64).
Peter Linss@kottke tempted to buy one, but I still have my original C64, and my VIC-20 too.
Cuprohastes@kottke
The irony is that the format could also now hold a computer capable of running Blender on a 5k display, but it took Commodore to bring it back.
The irony is that the format could also now hold a computer capable of running Blender on a 5k display, but it took Commodore to bring it back.