Commodore Nostalgia

The Commodore VIC-20 - (Of which, I own one)

In the late 70's and early 80's Commodore devised a graphics and sound chip for the videogame market. Called the VIC-I, this chip provided a 16 colour display and basic sound synthesis. Commodore failed miserably to convince any videogame companies to lisence the chip for their own use. So, in an effort to recoup costs, they devised the VIC-20, which was basically this VIC-I chip connected to a 6502, some IO ports, a keyboard, 3.5K of RAM and some ROM chips. The VIC-20 was a strong selling machine and became very popular. A range of peripherals, including modems, ram packs, printers and diskdrives were released for it.

The Commodore 64 - (Of which, I own two)

The C64 was, undoubtedly (IMHO =) the best 8bit computer. Its BASIC was completely lame arsed crap, but it still kicked ass. It had colour games, hardware sprites, fantastic synthesised sound, and a proper keyboard. Its biggest selling point was its massive 64k of RAM, and it really did have the whole 64k. The ROM and IO could be banked out to gain access to the full RAM using a special port on the 6510 CPU. I had a Commodore 1541 disk drive for mine, a drive which was slower than some turbo-tape loaders, but there is a reason for this. The first few Commodore computers used the IEEE bus to connect to peripherals such as disk and printer. These cables were available from only one source: Belden cables. A couple of years into Commodore's computer career, Belden went out of stock on such cables. Jack Tramiel decided to use a different bus, and wanted to use a cable that anyone could manufacture. Starting with the VIC-20, the serial bus was born. It was intended to be just as fast as the IEEE 488 it replaced, but there was a problem. Technically, the idea was sound; the 6522 VIA chip in the VIC-20 and 1540 has a 'shift register' circuit that should happily collect 8 bits of data without any help from the CPU. At that time, it would signal that it had a byte to be collected, and the processor would do so, using an automatic handshake built into the 6522 to trigger the next incoming byte. Things worked similarily in the other direction. However, as all early PET/CBM freaks knew from playing music using the 6522 chip that there was something wrong with the 6522's shift register; it interfered with other functions. The rule was "turn off the music before doing anything else". The Commodore engineers, who only made the chip, didn't know this until they got into final checkout of the VIC-20. By this time, the VIC-20 board was in manufacture, and it was too late! A major software rewrite had to take place that changed the VIC-20 (and the 1540 disk drive) into a 'bit-catcher' rather than a 'byte-catcher'. It called for 8 times as much work on the CPU, and unlike the shift register plan, there was no timing/handshake slacktime. The whole tihng slowed down by a factor of 5 to 6 times. When they made the C64, the VIA chip had this bug fixed, but Commodore deemed backward compatibility with VIC-20 peripherals more important than speed, and the problem remained. The Commodore 64 also sported a cartridge port. There were only a few games released on cartridge (Navy Seals, and Terminator 2, for example), but the port was usually used to expand the C64's basic facilities. Commodore produced a machine code monitor cartridge called C64 MON, there was a BASIC expansion cartridge called Simon's BASIC, and of course, DATEL's king of hacker add-ons, the "Action Replay" was pioneered on the C64. In Commodores tradition of releasing tragically underpowered games consoles, they rather stupidly released the C64-GS. A C64 with no keyboard, and a cartridge slot in the top. The problem with this is that the other consoles on the market had far more games, better advertising, and better resolutions. The Commodore 64 enjoyed a long period as one of the best selling, and most active 8 bit platforms, something which has allowed it to still have something of a "scene" even now in 1999. Visit www.c64.org for more info on that.

The Commodore 264 Series

(Revised from Commodore World, Issue 9) As you should know, CBM stood for "Commodore Business Machines", and Commodore sold just that, Business Machines. When Commodore introduced computers to supplant their calculator and business furniture sales, they targeted the business sector. The result was the successful PET/CBM line of business computers. However, in the early 1980s, Commodore decided to target the emerging home computer market with the VIC-20, partly because that market looked promising and partly because Commodore needed to recoup losses on a specialised graphics/sound chip that they developed and unsuccessfully marketed to video game companies. This chip, the VIC-I, formed the heart of the VIC-20,giving the chip a second chance. Well, the VIC-20 surpassed Commodores sales expectations, and the C64 became one of the best selling home computers of the 1980s. Throughout this time, Commodore were focusing on the home market. So, in late 1984, Commodore remembered its business roots and unveiled a new line of business computers: the 264 series. Originally, two computers made up the 264 series: the Commodore 264 and the V364 (or CV364 or 364V, depending on which references are used). At the low end of the line, the 264 machine sported the following features: · The 7501 CPU, which could be clocked to 1.76mhz and was 6502/6510 compatible. · A new keyboard layout with 4 cursor keys in a diamond configuration · A charcoal grey case with white keys, grey function keys, and grey cursor keys · A sloping case that lost the breadbox look of the VIC-20 and C64 · An enhanced BASIC, version 3.5 · 64k of RAM, of which 60671 bytes were available to BASIC · Support for multiple programming languages · Built-in 6551 hardware UART for telecommunications · 40x25 charactor display via the Text Editing Device IC (TED) · Ability to display 16 colours with 8 luminances for each for a total of 121 colours (all shades of black are black) · Built in machine language monitor (TEDMon) · Support for parallel interface disk drive operation Magazines and other periodicals devoted much press to the Text Editing Device (TED) IC, which, like the VIC-I in the VIC-20, combined video and sound into one chip. The TED could desplay 40x25 text and 320x200 graphics, yet had no support for hardware sprites. The TED also combined 3 voice sound (2 sound generators and 1 noise generator). Some people referred to the 264 as the TED machine. At the top end of the line, Commodore planned to introduce the V364, which shared the same case styling as the 264 but was wider to accommodate a numeric keyboar. Internally, all the 264 features were present, with the addition of a built-in speech synthesizer. Before the machines were formally introduced, however, Commodore changed its plans. The V364 was dropped from the lineup, and the 264 was renamed the Plus/4, and marketed as the top tier machine. The newly renamed Plus/4 machine would be sold with four built-in productivity applications in ROM called the 3+1 integrated software suite. With the Plus/4 moving up, two new machines were introduced to fill the resulting gap, the C16 and the C116. Borrowing from the succesful VIC/C64 line, the Commodore 16 sported the same case and keyboard style of those earlier machines, although the keyboard mapping had changed to reflect the need for four cursor keys. The C116, although functionally identical to the C16, was housed in a smaller version of the Plus/4 case and had a "chicklet" keyboard. Although layed out like a "QWERTY" keybard, the keys were reminiscent of calculator keys, and the entire keyboard was much smaller than standard size. To reduce costs of these machines, the following features were either cut or changed from the original 264 (now Plus/4) specification: · All keys were grey, except keys on the C116, which were light grey. · The machines only contained 16K of RAM, of which only 12277 bytes were available for BASIC. · Neither machine contained a user port. · Neither machine contained a 6551 UART. · The 3+1 software suite was not included, nor was the ability to use different programming languages Both the Plus/4 and C16 machines were previewed in the November 1984 issue of RUN magazine. The version of Commodore BASIC present on the 264 series was very advanced. Commodore numbered this version 3.5,even though the command set included all the commands in the Commodore BASIC 4.0 (found on later models of the PET/CBM business line) except the commands DOPEN, DCLOSE, and RECORD. In addition, this version of BASIC included a rich set of graphics and sound commands previously only found in extensions to BASIC 2.0 and 4.0. Commands like RENUMBER, RESUME, TRAP, TRON and TROFF helped make debugging BASIC programs a less tedious task. Some of these commands made their first appearance in the home computer market on the 264 series. One main selling point of the new series was the integration of the productivity software into the computer. The 3+1 software, a play on the name of Lotus 1-2-3, a popular software package at the time, was one of the first examples of integrated software on a computer system. Four applications were included, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a graphics program and data management software. Although rudimentary by todays standards, these programs were usable for light work. Available only on the Plus/4, this woftware suite was entered from the main screen by hitting F1 and pressing the return key. Commodore played up the convenience of the built-in software and called the Plus/4 the Productivity Machine. Not only did Commodore introduce built-in integrated software with the 264 series, they also brought out a whole line of peripherals to support the machine. Among the introductions were: 2 disk drive models, joysticks, a datasette, and two printers. Each peripheral was charcoal grey to match the computers. Some peripherals, like the joysticks and datasettes, were introduced simply because Commodore had changed these connectors on the 264 series, and older models would not work. Other peripherals, like the 1551 disk drive, were indeed designed with the 264 series in mind. Commodore did re-release the 1541 disk drive in the new charcoal grey colour as the 1542, but they acknowledged that it was too slow and introduced the 1551. The 1551, although containing the same mechanism as the 1541/2, featured a new transfer method. The 1551, alernatively called the SFS-481 drive, did not use the serial bus, like older drives. Instead each drive came with a cable and interface that plugged into the expansion port. Two such 1551 drives could be connected in this way, and a cartridge could be plugged into the back of this interface. Instead of transferring 1 bit at a time on the serial bus, the 1551 transferred 3 bits at a time on this 3 bit parallel bus (called the TED CBM or TCBM bus), which sped up the transfer rate to 1600 Bps (bytes per second) versus 300-400 Bps for the serial bus. Along with the name change, the addition of the 3+1 software, the demise of the V364, and the introduction of the C16 and C116, Commodore changed the marketing plan. Commodore decided to market the series to both the business and educational markets, as well as VIC-20 and C64 owners who wanted more of a work machine. Alas, a number of technical and marketing problems plagued the 264 series. At the time of introduction, the Commodore VIC-20 had sold millions of machines, and the C64 was selling at a similar rate. Users were accustomed to the feeble BASIC 2.0 and the ability to port programs between the two machines with little effort. With the radical changes in the memory map of the 264 series, and the new version of BASIC, programmers found it harder to modify programs to work on the new machine. There were more software woes. Commodore was slow in ramping up the development of in-house software for the new series. This fact, coupled with a lack of third party software because of code migration problems, presented the new Plus/4, C16 and C116 owner with few choices for software. Meanwhile, thousands of programs were already in production for the C64 and VIC-20. At the time of introduction of the computers, a number of Commodore users were still using the Datasette as their primary storage device. For users wishing to use the Datasette on the new machines, the non-standard connector on the new machines meant either buying a new Datasette or purchasing a special adaptor for the existing unit. However, this was a small annoyance compared to the following problem. The tape formats on the new machines were incompatible with all other Commodore machines. Since the introduction of the PET2001, Commodore had maintained a single tape recording format on all its computers. Unintentionally or not, the 264 series routines transferred data to the Datasette half as fast. This made the Datasette unsuitable for transferring files between a Plus/4 or C16 and any other CBM machine, and the slower format made programs and data load at half the normal speed. This made an already slow storage medium exasperating. On the marketing front, Commodore became a victim of their own success. With the C64 taking its place as one of the most economical computers and an established games machine, many saw Commodore as the producer of game oriented machines. Commodores credibility as a business computer manufacturer was lost in the shuffle. As a result, few businesses gave the Plus/4 any serious consideration. Also, because of the success of the C64, most Commodore dealers and outlets were willing to devote much time and space to the unproven machines. A large number of dealers refused to carry the alternate language ROMs, stating that swapping ROMs was too time and effort consuming. Buyers, expecting to purchase the newest "game" computer from Commodore, were disappointed when the new machine failed to provide the graphics and sound effects already present on the Commodore 64. Users were greatly disappointed by the lack of hardware sprites, a feature used by many C64 games that helped speed up gameplay. These things, coupled with the hardware incompatibilities and the lack of software caused many to either not purchase or return the units. Those buyers who did look at the machine in a business setting were equally disappointed. Although IBM compatibility was not the hot topic it is today, the IBM PC and XT had started to appear in business settings. The IBM machine, as well as other business machines of the early to mid 1980s, had effectively standardized on an 80x24 or 80x25 charactor display. The 264 series 40 column display just wasn't wide enough. So, with all these problems working against the 264 series, production was short lived. During the late 1980s, the remaining stock was sold off to liquidators. Since there are actual 264 machines (labeled 264) on the market, it is believed Commodore erroneously liquidated the original prototype units as well. Before you write off the 264 series as just a minor note in Commodore history, let me assure you that these computers and peripherals helped shape the direction of future Commodore systems. BASIC 3.5, with some changes, became BASIC 7.0, as found in the C128. The 1551, although not a huge success in its own right, lent its DOS code to form the base for the 1571 and 1581 DOS versions. In these new products, the legacy of the 264 series proved more successful.