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The Return of the Commodore?
PseudoSapien writes "A Dutch consumer media company is hoping it can tap the power of the VIC 20, the PET and the Commodore 64 to launch a new wave of products, including a home media center device and a portable GPS (Global Positioning System) unit and media player. They're talking about Resurrecting Commodore." From the article: "Commodore is far from the first company to try to revive a once-popular tech brand. The Amiga, Commodore's onetime PC brand, has had its own decades-long history as fans tried to preserve both the computer's operating system and brand despite the lack of strong corporate backing."
I remember the comodore PET I used back in high school. No HD. No Floppy. No color screen. 64KB of memory (?). Basic. Tape drive (you could use the same tapes that would play in your care stereo). Wow!
Who will guard the guards?
Atari was bought out by French game publisher Infogrames a few years back, which uses the Atari name purely because people have a history with it. There's no Atari left in Atari.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
if you want real power you need a spectrum with a massive 128k of memory and a top of the range built in tape drive
At least they sell a C64: http://hardware.commodoreworld.com/default.aspx?i= 3&s=category&c=30 .
It's a joystick which includes a builtin C64 and connects directly to the TV!
Go here: http://www.viceteam.org/
Then here: http://www.c64.com/
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Here in Argentina, there are Commodore brand clone PCs since over two years ago (and pretty cheap they are), take a look Here, so, wtf is this news?
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
RTFA.
They're not rebuilding Commodore computers, this new company has simply bought the naming rights so they can trade as Commodore and leverage the brand name recognition.
Just to let you know, there's still a vivid commodore demoscene (evolved from intros), producing enormous creative output. some links: http://scene.org/ - repository for all demoscene stuff; the bigger parties like breakpoint and assembly have c64/amiga compo categories http://scene.org/file.php?id=289244 - unbelievable amiga demo from 2004
Yes and No...
Infogrames did many of the best games on Atari platform.
Saying that no Atari is in current Atari games is a little bit false. All the recent games Infogrames' Atari published are probably the best ones.
What I mean is that they may have bought the name, but they are preserving a history of great games, which was the purpose of the original Atari.
Do you remember when Atari was a japanese firm? Before it was bought by Sam Tramiel? It's about the same now. Preserving the spirit of great games.
Atari hardware is dead, yes, but spirit is still here.
(note: I still have my Atari 800, 130XE, ST, Mega STE, Falcon)
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Atari was never a Japanese company. It was started by Nolan Bushnell in California. It was sold to Warner Communications. Then it was sold to the Tramiels.
But it's not back as a 'full' or 'real' computer. It's back as a microcontroller. In either its Atmel AVR or Microchip PIC format.
What has brought it back is the integration of all the minimum memory resources and I/O into the chip itself. That, and the reduction of cost for the 8-bit 'system' from nearly a thousand dollars twenty years ago to about ten dollars today (for CPU, minimal LCD display, and floppy storage.)
Gates-style BASIC is rarely used on new AVRs and PICs, but it is available for the PIC in the BASIC Stamp device.
Eight Bitters are not used as stand-alone home computers but as controllers that intelligently interact and manipulate other machines and sensors. But the -feeling- of raw control; and the wonder of being able to create or reconfigure the operation of a machine through typing instuctions that determine what the machine will do; this feeling remains the same as it was twenty years ago. It's just much cheaper now.
It's also much easier. Both Atmel and Microchip freely distribute high quality development tools for their devices on the web for Windows PCs. And the memory itself is far more easier to use. No more expensive ultra-violet light EPROM erasers. The program is stored in internal Flash that can be rewritten tens of thousands of times. No more $10000 in-circuit-emulators to figure out what the chip is doing when it stops working. With modern JTAG interfaces, every chip has an ICE built in. Even the most complex program can be debugged with a $39 (or less home brew) JTAG-ICE and the factory-supplied free development system programs.
My favorites are the Tiny AVRs. These are eight pin DIP chips that sell for about $1 each. They program through the PC parallel port. They have multi-channel 10-bit Analog-to-Digital convertors built in. (Try finding a 10-bit dedicated ADC chip for $1!) They run at 20 MIPS (about 20 times faster than the Commodore 64) with internal system clock generators, no crystals needed, and the speed can be fine tuned. And they have a flexible, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn instruction set.
There are even rock-bottom level Tiny AVRs (like the Tiny11) that sell for forty cents each. I use one to play a MIDI tone module with a cheap surplus PS2 PC keyboard. It reads the serial logic signals sent out from each keypress and release and transforms them into MIDI Note On/Off messages. Not bad from a 40 cent CPU.
And a 20MIPS CPU for $1 can replace a whole board of TTL chips. Sure so can a GAL or PLD for the same price. But the AVR can switch into power-down mode when not being used and burn only microAmps of current. It uses only about 10 milliAmps at full 20MIPS speed and a third of that when running at, yes, 1.8 volts! Try that with a GAL, good luck Chuck!
Plus there are lots of people on the specialized web sites from whom to get advice when you get completely stuck on something that makes no sense. Another thing that wasn't around for Eight bitters twenty years ago.
The 8-bit world is alive and dazzling well. It's just very quiet and no longer gets any media coverage as being the 'future' in the way that it was covered by the media in the Commodore and Atari years. It's still rockin'.
This news hit the C64 scene HARD a while ago. The first they did is announce that everyone playing C64 games on emulators was stealing from them since they now owned the name and demanded that they stop. The second thing was to announce an official C64 emulator and that they would sell the old games for it.
I would think their first step should not be to alienate every single interested person in the world. Last I heard, they were completely unrepentant. The Commodore name is going to be a huge money-sink for these people if they don't VERY quickly smarten up and ask their customers what they want.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM