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Zoë Blade's notebook

C64

Being born in the UK in 1981, my articles about home computers are biased towards that time and place. This is due to both my own personal experience, and also a conscious attempt to provide an alternative UK bias to the predominant US bias amongst English-speaking people my age reminiscing about home computers.

C64 tech specs

C64 (Photo: Evan Amos)
C64 (Photo: Evan Amos)

Commodore 64 palette
Commodore 64 palette

The C64 (short for Commodore 64) was a home computer released by Commodore in 1982. It was essentially the VIC 20's successor, and even used the exact same case and keyboard, just with a brown colour scheme.

In the UK, its popularity was second only to the ZX Spectrum. The C64 was a far more capable machine, especially for games, but its price put it out of reach for many. If you were a child in the 1980s or 1990s, the chances were you knew someone with one of these two machines.

While Commodore's marketing department was apparently trying to convince people it was a serious office machine, its engineers were instead making it ideal for games. Its VIC-II graphics chip featured an appealing colour palette (each colour was hand picked to look nice, rather than using the Boolean colour palette that was the norm at the time),[1] scrolling, and sprites, while its SID sound chip featured pulsewidth modulation, ring modulation, oscillator sync, and a multimode filter, putting many fully fledged synthesisers to shame — indeed, these engineers would later form Ensoniq in order to make professional samplers.

As with other home computers, while it had a large library of games, there was less serious software available.

For example, it had two professional German MIDI sequencers, SuperTrack and Pro-16, but even those were only used by a few professional musicians. It was the Atari ST with its built-in MIDI port that really got musicians into home computers as a serious alternative to dedicated hardware... with another pair of professional MIDI sequencers, by the same two German companies.

C64C

C64C tech specs

The C64C was a thinner, beige version of the C64 released four years later, after the next generation Amiga.

On a sidenote, a year or two after the C64C was released, German supermarkets such as Aldi sold the C64G, which combined the larger "breadbin" shape of the original C64 with the beige colour scheme of the C64C. This was reminiscent of the interim 1541C drive, which was a regular 1541 in the same beige colour scheme, before the release of the 1541-II.

Night Moves / Mind Benders

Released in late 1990, the £159 Night Moves / Mind Benders bundle included the C64C itself, the obligatory 1530 tape drive, two joysticks, and two compilations of games: Domark's Mind Benders included Confuzion, Snare, Split Personalities, and Trivial Pursuit; while Ocean's Night Moves included Midnight Resistance, Nightbreed, Shadow Warriors, and Sly Spy: Secret Agent.[3][2]

When they really wanted to sell off the last remaining stock, they threw in a third compilation, this time of utilities. Domark's Toolbox included The Image System, The Music System, the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit, and Typing Tutor, along with an audiotape explaining the basics of what a computer was, and showing off the kind of music you could make on Commodore's next-generation Amiga.

On a personal note, this was the bundle my parents gave me when my Plus/4 eventually broke. It was ridiculously good value.

Accessories

Peripherals

Software

MIDI sequencers

Technical notes

The C64's VIC-II chip was unique in letting the engineers pick an arbitrary 16 colours, rather than forcing them to be mathematically equidistant.[1]

References

  1. "Re: VIC-II colors" Robert "Bob" Yannes, Sep 1999
  2. "Argos spring/summer 1991 catalogue" Argos, 1991, p. 292
  3. "UK CES '90: Commodore Rocks Show" Stuart Wynne, Zzap!64, Nov 1990, pp. 7—8

Downloads

Documentation

Patents

Commodore: Amiga | C64 | Plus/4

Home computers: Amiga | Beige box | C64 | PICO-8 | Plus/4 | ST | Soviet ZX Spectrum clones | ZX Spectrum | ZX Spectrum 128

Commodore 64: 1530 | 1541 | 1581 | Pro-16