The '64

This is a picture of a Commodore-64, more importantly it's a picture of my Commodore-64.

For those that don't know it's the most successful computer of all time - though the Raspberry Pi claims to have beaten it, but it doesn't count as there are multiple models...

The '64 was launched by Commodore in the early 80s replacing the earlier VIC-20 which it shares hardware compatibility with for most peripherals, but uses upgraded microprocessors and a lot more memory.

For it's day it was the most powerful computer available, and was considerably cheaper than may others leading to a dominant market position in most countries. In the UK the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a lot cheaper and put up serious competition. But overall the '64 outsold everything else and made Commodore a lot of money...

The '64 had a number of important processors: the 6510 which is a member of the 6502 family which powered the BBC A & B, Apple II, Oric, VIC-20, PET, various Ataris and the T-800 Terminator. Derivatives of the 6502 are still made today and the chip was influential in the creation of the ARM which powers just about every mobile phone, tablet and modern Apple computer on the planet..

As well as the venerable 6510 CPU (MPU in Commodore speak) it had the VIC-II graphics chip and the SID for sound. Both were considerably more powerful than anything else on the market and were even more powerful than Commodore expected as later games and demos went on to prove.

I'm on holiday so I thought it was time to open the boxes up and see if my '64 still worked, it's not been switched on for at least 20 years, possible more like 30 and the capacitors are notorious for going bad - so I was expecting a bad smell and a dead computer. Thankfully everything worked first time. I was able to get a TV to tune into the picture (I need a new cable for a clean picture though) and the floppy drive worked and all my old 5.25" floppy disk read okay...!

I played a few games and realised that I'm just as rubbish now as I was then.

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