Commodore Returns with New Gaming PCs

JamesO writes "Commodore is a name which will bring memories flooding back to many a gamer and it's been announced that the legendary brand is to return with a new range of high specification gaming PCs. The new Commodore PCs optimized for gaming will be launched at the CeBIT show in Germany on March 15 and attendees will be offered the chance to play the latest PC games using the purpose-built PCs."

Comments

Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[Timesprout]

nuff said.

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[Anonymous Coward]

sys64738

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[NeoBeans]

load "*", 8, 1

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[Anonymous Coward]

But will they replace the blue screen with the good old Guru Meditation?

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck does Lionel Ritchie have to do with Commodore computers? What am I missing/forgetting here?

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[MysteriousPreacher]

He designed the case of the Commodore PET and worked on the Commodore 16 ROM. He enjoyed his time at Commodore so much that, after being fire by Commodore for exposing himself to interns, he formed a band called The Commodores.

Re:Its about time Lionel Ritchie changed career

[McFadden]

What the fuck does Lionel Ritchie have to do with Commodore computers? What am I missing/forgetting here?

The Google?

Commadore 64(bit)

[drspliff]

Are these machines 64bit too?
It'd be nice bragging rights: I've got Linux/Windows running on a C64!

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[jimstapleton]

Dangit! I was gonna make that comment...

I would love to get my new new Core2 Duo Extreme Commadore 64!

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[oliderid]

you meant 64KB?

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[mlk]

You can get a Unix/Linux a-like for the C64. :)

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[sharkey]

I know a genuine Commadore 64 when I see one! And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[dave_mcmillen]

I hope it retains the feature that you can flick it on and it's ready to go in under a second. I miss those days. If I recall correctly, everything was just in ROM, including the ability to execute BASIC, right? With advances in flash RAM, maybe we'll get back there one day (except for the BASIC) . . .

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[SnapShot]

Those of use who had a later generation of Commodores remember a somewhat slower startup sequence:

1. Wait for splash screen with picture of KickStart disk
2. Insert Kickstart
3. Wait a bit...
4. Insert Workbench

Ahhh.... anyone else up for some sweet Amiga nostalgia?

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a comma-dore?

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[MysteriousPreacher]

Directory Opus, VirusX, PowerPacker, Hired Guns and AMOS. Ah, those were the days.

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it retains the feature that you can flick it on and it's ready to go in under a second. I miss those days. If I recall correctly, everything was just in ROM, including the ability to execute BASIC, right? With advances in flash RAM, maybe we'll get back there one day (except for the BASIC) . . .

I'm guessing you never had to load a game from tape. It often took over 20 minutes.

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[MeanderingMind]

A grammarian in love with punctuation.

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish now I hadn't used my last mod point before reading that comment. :P

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[ConceptJunkie]

Forget that, right here is a gen-you-wine Panaphonics. Look at all these features:

- Corrugated cardboard "Hyper-stiff" protective box for ensuring your set works as well at home as it did in the factory (Panaphonics is not responsible for punctures, gunshot holes, or tire marks. Water damaged boxes are not an indication of TV set condition.)

- Carrying handle (not recommended for people with back problems, heart conditions, pregnancy or inebriation)

- Pre-attached Power cord (supports state-of-the-art alternating current power in a full range of voltages from 110 to 120, includes a "mock" third prong for that elegant "grounded" look)

- "Rust-proof" plastic housing, guaranteed to withstand up to 10 million picopascals of pressure or a shock force of up to 20,000 nano-gravities, resistant to even undiluted dihydrogen monoxide solvents

- Cable-ready (set can be suspended by a cable for that futuristic "floating" look, mounting hardware not included)

- Submitted for certification to UL and the FCC

The Panaphonics television features the latest in monochromatic phosphor displays that includes our patented Variable Luminance Electron Scanning technology that can be controlled for both Brightness and Contrast with easy to use space-age plastic adjustment controls

Act now and we will throw in a Horizontal Roll Adjustment Potentiometer, for that extra stable picture. (Not available outside Taiwan)

(Wired remote sold separately, product is sold by weight, not volume, content may settle during shipping, UHF not included)

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[KDR_11k]

Even better if they replaced the Windows key with a Commodore key (or should that be alt?).

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[Magada]

Real Men wrote their games from scratch on the Commodore before playing, - in raw bytecode, using only the POKE instruction provided by the BASIC interpreter - no need for tapes. You youngsters had it easy.

Re:Commadore 64(bit)

[dynamo]

Really. How much more shame must the windows brand endure before we take it off our keyboards? It's not like the paint on the key is required to run windows.

Bit Early?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

It's a bit early for Slashdot to start posting lame April Fool's articles, right?

Re:Bit Early?

[rhyder128k]

Seems like the old ploy of slapping a respected old brand name on some unrelated kit. There is a company selling Acorn branded equipment in much the same manner:

http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1698.html

I won't consider one of these machines to be a true Commodore until they start to do things like:
Refuse to give the currently running Star Trek series a free machine as a prop forcing paramount to acquire a Mac instead.
Make a cut-down budget machine that is more expensive to manufacture than the regular machine (a600).

When I have some *guarantees* that they are running the business into the ground even though they have massive lead over their competitors, then I'll consider this to be a Commodore. And not before!

Re:Bit Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll know this is the real C= when all the engineers quit and they axe development of a really cool machine in favour of a slapped together piece of crap that even the Taiwanese wouldn't ship.

Yes I am still bitter about the A3000+, A4000 and the post-AGA chipsets, why do you ask? Medhi Ali can...go do something very rude to himself.

Re:Bit Early?

[rjpear]

"When I have some *guarantees* that they are running the business into the ground even though they have massive lead over their competitors, then I'll consider this to be a Commodore. And not before!" ...Couldn't have been said any better!!!

Re:Bit Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I could shit in a box and slap a guarantee on it for ya...I have spare time.

Re:Bit Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING WARNING former Commodore employee/engineer detected! Launch AMIGA berserk fanboi!

Re:Bit Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

You work for Sony? ;)

Re:Bit Early?

[Anonymous Coward]

i could put my head up a butchers ass... wait....

Re:Bit Early?

[obergfellja]

in refference to "2001: Space Odyssey" I can't do that Hal.

Re:Bit Early?

[gad_zuki!]

>Refuse to give the currently running Star Trek series a free machine as a prop forcing paramount to acquire a Mac instead.

Right! Billion-dollar tv studios shouldnt have to pay for anything. Companies should be giving them free stuff and raising the price on their products so consumers like me can pay for it! Genius!

Re:Bit Early?

[Puppet Master]

Nope... April Fools comes early this year because of the Y2DST bug :)

Atari was a better system

[xzvf]

My Atari 800 was way cooler than the C64

Re:Atari was a better system

[pipatron]

That's because no one ever bothered to turn it on.

Re:Atari was a better system

[Disoculated]

I owned just about every home computer of that era, and the 800 was definitely second best to the C64. It should have been, it was much older. A steel frame only counts for so much.

On the other hand, there really isn't anything in this article about what the new 'Commodore' gaming computers really are... and it sounds like just more leeching off of a dead name.

Re:Atari was a better system

[steveo777]

Hey! Mine still works you insensitive clod!

Re:Atari was a better system

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah coz u never used it! ;)

Re:Atari was a better system

[elrous0]

Proving once again the old physics adage: Everything's cold until it has a reason not to be.

-Eric

Re:Atari was a better system

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but do you have any use for it? Everyone on Slashdot has a Thing that works, but isn't used much. Maybe this is just another case of that.

Re:Atari was a better system

[Anonymous Coward]

The 800 _was_ superior:

Commodore 64 - could be used as a doorstop
Atari 800 - could be used to break down a door

Re:Atari was a better system

[Real1tyCzech]

ROFLMAO... This *is* slashdot. Unused "Things" abound.

Re:Atari was a better system

[SCPRedMage]

Everyone on Slashdot has a Thing that works, but isn't used much. I call mine "Playstation 3".

Re:Atari was a better system

[ncc74656]

My Atari 800 was way cooler than the C64

My Apple IIe pwns both of those. I use mine (present tense, not past) to make beer...can your computer do that? :-)

(And thus the 8-bit flame wars of old begin anew...)

Re:Atari was a better system

[whimmel]

I was taught that there is no such thing as "cold." There is only an absense of heat.

Re:Atari was a better system

[laffer1]

It works?

Re:Atari was a better system

[AmberBlackCat]

I call mine "husband".

Re:Atari was a better system

[Keebler71]

Not all are exclusive to the Atari 8-bit machines but some of my favorites...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Raiders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Cities_of_G old_(video_game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_III:_Exodus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma's_Revenge_( video_game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan:_Hall_of_Volta

Ironically

[Anonymous Coward]

Commodore's PC division was one reason for Commodore's downfall.

Re:Ironically

[ggeens]

I have a Commodore PC at home. It's just a standard 486 beige box[1] with a Commodore label on. I bought it second hand and used it as a firewall.

When one of my friends saw the label, he assumed it was some kind of joke. I had to explain that Commodore sold PCs before they went down.

[1] I think it was a Cyrix CPU.

Re:Ironically

[Dogtanian]

I have a Commodore PC at home. It's just a standard 486 beige box[1] with a Commodore label on. I bought it second hand and used it as a firewall. When one of my friends saw the label, he assumed it was some kind of joke. I had to explain that Commodore sold PCs before they went down. At least that was made (or at least sold) by the "real" Commodore, though, despite the company's crapness. "Commodore Gaming" are just a bunch of unrelated guys that bought the name... so what?

As another poster said, buy an old name, slap it on any old equipment; Commodore's brands have been exploited this way before. Things is, these tactics seem to get some attention from the press. Does the "new" Napster have any more relation to the original service (or its owners) than any other legal download service? No; but the press hyped up its "rebirth" as if it did. Or perhaps it was just an excuse to write some articles about the download market; whatever. At least new Napster was doing sort of the same thing as the original company.

Personally, I don't mind Infogrames using the Atari name, because the original company is long dead (and was latterly crap). What pisses me off is that- for no reason I can see other than a third-rate designer justifying his salary (FOAD)- they mucked about with the original "Fuji" logo. Yeah, I know, they just changed the middle bar; but the original's brilliance *was* that it was so simple, yet well-designed.

Re:Ironically

[Anonymous Coward]

Atari also made a PC in the late 1980s. It was a 386-based PC with the Atari logo on it. Atari was the company with the overall more advanced computer products between itself and Commodore. Don't forget Amiga was first an Atari subsidiary, and products were made using the Amiga's technology, like the Atari Lynx 16-bit hand-held gaming system. If you compare Atari's line of 8-bit computers alongside Commodore's 8-bits, the Atari wins. Lucasfilm Games Ltd. was also originally started at Atari, for the same reasons above, and made their first amazing games for the 8-bit Atari computers. The memories of "Rescue on Fractalus" will last me a lifetime. Amazing what they could do with the power of Atari's 8-bit computers. They were never made for Commodore 64, were they? I assume the standard C-64 could not handle the demanding requirements of Lucasfilm's games, such as the use of fractals, digitized voice synthesis and 256-color graphics palette. Thank you Atari of the early 80s.

Memory ?

[Rastignac]

As Commodore said a few years ago: " 64Ko ought to be enough for anybody. C64 rulez !".
I hope they'll stick more memory in their newest computer.

Re:Memory ?

[yellowalienbaby]

That wsn't commodre was it? I thought it was Bill with his 640K ? or have I just stated the obvious and missed the subtle joke?

just a hunch

[gEvil (beta)]

I have a feeling this is doomed to fail. Anyone who is old enough to remember when Commodore was a decent gaming platform has probably grown into the type of person who builds his own machines. And the Amiga users will just sit there reminiscing about the good old days...

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I can recall the days when I would make a few mod's to my system, and run a remote control airplane from my c-64. I think it was the best documented hardware ever. I had so much fun with it that it lead me to become a became a radio shack regular.

I loved my c-64

Re:just a hunch

[slim]

Anyone who is old enough to remember when Commodore was a decent gaming platform has probably grown into the type of person who builds his own machines. Many will have got bored of tweaking and now be happy to buy a prebuilt machine -- sacrificing power and flexibility for convenience.

You only need to be 30 to remember Commodore with fondness. Whether that fondness will be enough for the brand to sell fairly ordinary PCs is another matter.

Re:just a hunch

[rucs_hack]

I was going to argue with you.

However, I'm 40, and every machine I own (ten atm) is home built.

I guess you're right then.....

Re:just a hunch

[gEvil (beta)]

I wish I owned ten ATMs. I'd be able to buy just about anything I wanted...

Re:just a hunch

[Elemenope]

You only need to be 30 to remember Commodore with fondness.

Try 25. That's how old I am, and I remember my C64 as the first home PC my family had, till we upgraded to an 8088! I still remember it and its blue 'bootscreen' glow with fondness.

Re:just a hunch

[mlk]

I disagree. I don't want to piss about making a PC. I just want a powerful box that does what is says it does.

Re:just a hunch

[jimstapleton]

another 25er with fond C64 memories...

I remember when I had that and an Apple IIe... The poor fruit didn't get any attention...

Also, I build my own computers for the convinience... It's sad, but I find it easier to deal with the merchants and manufacturers of components when something goes wrong, than to deal with the tech support of most pre-builts. I get faster results too.

Re:just a hunch

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Many will have got bored of tweaking and now be happy to buy a prebuilt machine

You're right about that. There are so many different bus speeds, and CPU types, and memory types, and chipsets, and video cards, and so on and so on... Who wants to keep track of all that shit and build their own computer nowadays just to save $100? It used to be fun back in the day, but nowadays I just feel like, "Sheesh. Just give me something that works already so I can get back to re-drywalling my stupid living room..."

Re:just a hunch

[Nasarius]

I'm 21, and as my lame sig probably indicates, I played C64 games as a kid. And yeah, I've been building my own PCs since the early Athlons were around.

Re:just a hunch

[Hal_Porter]

I have a feeling this is doomed to fail. Anyone who is old enough to remember when Commodore was a decent gaming platform has probably grown into the type of person who builds his own machines. And the Amiga users will just sit there reminiscing about the good old days...

No, they hide in dark places from the Atari users, who've been workin' out since the 1980's. We have Ninja skills, nunchuck skills, firearms skills, benchpress skills.

ATARI POSSE! REPRESENT!

Re:just a hunch

[steveo777]

I'm 26 with very fond memories of being snowed in and playing Skyfox and a few others.

Re:just a hunch

[ADRenalyn]

I disagree.... anyone who is old enough to remember Commodore has probably been building their own PC's for many years, and the magic of assembling a working computer from various parts has lost any magic it once had.

Now, I'll spend a couple hundred extra dollars just so I don't have to go through the work of buying/ordering the parts and assembling the machine myself. Building a PC used to be fun, but it's a process that hasn't really changed much in years. Now, just let me pick the parts I want via an online order form, and ship it to me when it's done. That way all I have to do is format the drive and load my OS of choice.

Re:just a hunch

[rucs_hack]

Damn you, Captain Misconception...

Re:just a hunch

[Das Modell]

22 here. I played my brother's C-64 when I was little. Later on I bought an Amiga 500, though at that point it was starting to get phased out by the PC.

When I originally built my PC I hand picked everything, even the case, power supply and cooling fans (for the CPU and case). Since then I've had numerous technical issues and assorted headaches, and I'm not so enthusiastic about building stuff anymore. Still, I'm sure I'll once again hand pick every nut and bolt for my next build, though I'll probably have it assembled by the shop.

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

LOAD "SIG",8,1

Poser. Everyone know it was 'lO "SIG",8,1

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially with the service fees that the privately owned ATMs charge...

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
trs 80 owns you! in russia or something

Re:just a hunch

[armb]

> I wish I owned ten ATMs. I'd be able to buy just about anything I wanted...

Sadly it turns out that if you build your own ATM the banks expect you to fill it with money yourself.

Re:just a hunch

[117]

26 here also, don't really remember the games I used to play on C64 (although, was Dizzy on C64 or did that come later?), mainly because most of them used to fail after 45mins of loading the tape! I do, however, have extremely fond memories of waking my folks up at stupid-o-clock on a Sat/Sun morning to show them my latest "creation" which I'd spent hours typing the code up for by copying it out of a magazine.... those were the days! My fondest Commodore memories though are reserved for the Amiga, I had a 500+ and SWOS still remains my favourite game of all time, bar none.

Re:just a hunch

[King_TJ]

I know your post was modded "funny", but there's some truth behind it if you ask me! I'm 35, and have been into computers and hardware since I got my hands on my first Commodore VIC-20 and Timex Sinclair 1000.

But really, I feel like I've "outgrown" the era of getting all excited about the latest video card that does yet another 10FPS more than the last one, or the next small processor speed bump.

I still do a fair amount of gaming on my computers, but honestly, the new software hasn't justified the expense of better hardware in quite a while. (I can remember when Doom first came out, and it drove everyone I knew to move from a 386 to a 486 class CPU. It was THAT good. A similar thing happened with Quake. People forked over the $'s for a better video card, because it, alone, made it justifiable.)

In the last few years, it seems like things have advanced more incrementally. I've upgraded my video card every 2 years or so, around Xmas-time, and did a couple hard drive upgrades over the years -- but I'm still using an AGP based Athlon 64 motherboard and don't even use SATA hard drives yet. I've had the same 1GB of PC3200 RAM in it for quite a while too. The local computer store tells me I'm "way out of date" and should move to PCI Express, a new case and power supply, SATA, etc. etc. But I can still play Half Life 2 and FarCry just fine ... and nothing new is out that feels unplayable on this box yet

I could be wrong, but I *think* this will pretty much reflect the PC marketplace from here on out. It has "matured" now, so people won't feel like last Tuesday's new PC is already "outdated". You really CAN just buy a relatively high-end prebuilt system, and just use it for a few years. When it gets too outdated, sell it and start over. You're not any worse off, money-wise, than the guy who builds his own from scratch. Potentially better warranty coverage too.

Re:just a hunch

[GrumpySimon]

Since this is sounding like a support group of recovering addicts: Hi, I'm Simon, I'm 27, and I owned an Amiga. It affected me so much that I spent an afternoon recreating the good times in XHTML.

Re:just a hunch

[Avatar8]

Agreed on the sentiment, but not quite right on the price. :-)

I've been playing with computers since 1981 and working on them since 1984. I've built numerous systems over the past 10 years. Over the past year I've been configuring a gaming system and waiting until the money situation was right to order/build it.

I was amazed to discover that you can buy a pre-built (w/ three year warranty) for a bit cheaper than building it yourself now. The system I wanted to build (Core 2 Duo E6300, 2Gb RAM, dual 8800 GTS 320Mb in SLI) was going to cost about $2,000 to build. I just ordered it from www.cyberpowerpc.com for $1700.

We'll see if Commodore is blowing smoke, labeling generic PCs or coming out with something revolutionary. I'll take door #1, Monty.

Re:just a hunch

[pimpimpim]

As a student I had a pentium 100, (until 2001), since then I have a 1 Ghz machine. It does everything I want (although a bit slow on DVD movies, I bought a normal dvd-player to plug into my TV-card to solve that). As long as you don't play games, you don't miss it. I'd rather spend money on a good DSL connection.

Recently, I 'acquired' a virtual server, one tenth (max. 9 other users) of a 2 Ghz celeron somewhere in a rack in a colocation, for about 10 Euro/month, including a shitload of bandwith. It comes with an image of debian, automated backup, and a special root-login to save the machine in the case that you've messed everything up. Within an hour it can have a working install of debian again. It is great fun! I get to try all the nice things of linux remotely, without even having to buy a machine that can handle it. I think I might buy a laptop as a main pc in some time, but furthermore, why would I need to build PCs with a lot of painful effort (I really lost track on the CPU/rambus/etc coreduo core2duo whateverduo specifications) if I can have so much more fun with so much less money :)

Re:just a hunch

[LibertineR]

So, I've built a hundred machines, owned an Amiga 1000, 2000 and 500, still have my C-64 AND TAPE DRIVE, BITCH!

So........just what are you trying to say?

Re:just a hunch

[ganjadude]

even lower, try 21. I had my first C64 when i was 4 and i still have 3 of them along with a 128D i tinker with. when it comes to hobby, nothing beats the old hardware, anything new is too pretty and expensive, but i will not hesitate to gut one of my 64s to do some heavy modding

Re:just a hunch

[Omestes]

This is true. I pretty much had the same computer as I did from the days of double digit pentiums, but it just got upgraded to the point of being new roughly every socket revision, finally it started being a pain to upgrade, so I bought a Mac. Now after five years of not touching the inside of my computer I'm beginning to feel nostalgia (that and a strange hankering to add RAM without the use of strange tools, and a full day of work, or $1000 to Apple) for mucking about inside of computers again. Perhaps not as whole horse as I used to, but I'm pondering getting a hobby box again. I'm pretty sure its a cyclical trend, you over do it in your youth, give up, then realize that you made it into work, and accept it as a hobby.

To be more on topic, at 27, the C64 was my first entrance into computing. I loved that ratty beige keyboard, and the huge honking 300bd modem "card". Recently I was cleaning up clutter and rediscovered it, it really made me respect the leaps and bounds computers have made of the years, my floppy drive is not the size of a Volkswagen, and I don't need to place a full can of coke on top of my DVD drive to make it read properly.

Last time I booted it up, about five years ago, or so, it made me realize how much patience I've lost in the last 20 years. I put my floppy of SimCity, typed "load "sc",8,1" went and grabbed a cup of coffee, came back, typed "run", went out for a smoke, and came back and it was still loading. I used to be able to handle load times up to five minutes in stride, now we complain about games with load-times in the seconds. I notice this online too, I remember waiting for pages of ASCII (or better ANSI) to load up, a single line at a time on BBSs, and now I get impatient waiting 5 seconds for content.

How many kids learned to have a passion for computers from those heavy beige bricks? I remember the first time I mastered peek and poke, the pure glory of your first idiotic "goto 10" message.

I find this new Commodore to be silly, just like Infrogames being "Atari". Its just a name, lord, it doesn't really capture any of the glory in itself, being just a hollow marketing gimmick. Stop it, and let dead nostalgia lie.

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

"just to save $100? "

FYI: I get my boxes free from friends and businesses throwing them out. Ten minutes with a screwdriver inside usually fixes whatever small problems there may be. Pop an easy-to-install Linux distro on it, download a pile of emulators for NES/arcade/Sega/Windows, and load up the games.

I could almost start selling them. My point being, I've saved a heck of a lot more by now than $100. And yes, I do fondly remember Commodore, but this latest is not the company we are looking for.

Re:just a hunch

[MeanderingMind]

I'm about to be 23, and I remember the Commodore 64. I played Frogger on it and some painting program. It got replaced with an NES before I ever learned what your neat sig means. Alas.

Re:just a hunch

[steveo777]

I'm also guilty of getting up early and copying code into the console for hours to get flashing colors and shapes. We also had the tape media reader, but most of our games were on carts. I remember waiting for 30 minutes for Hangman to load, playing it for an hour with my brother and mom, then never seeing the tape player again because of how absurdly long it took for anything to load.

Re:just a hunch

[Kris_J]

I don't want to piss about making a PC.

Fair enough.

I just want a powerful box that does what is says it does.

Ah. That's why many of us that build our own PCs do it.

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Download the service manuals off the web, and look up the default passwords. Then you can 0wn all the ATMs you want.

Re:just a hunch

[Knara]

GEOS!

Also, re: that mysterious sig: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=574747

Re:just a hunch

[Knara]

If I have some time, I'll have to price that out. Seems pricey, though you did leave out more than a few details in the setup.

Though bleeding edge prices have gotten weird these days. I find it rather rewarding to get the "most previously recent" model , which while at retail will be slightly less than the bleeding edge, can be found for significantly less via a little hunting.

Re:just a hunch

[Knara]

How many kids learned to have a passion for computers from those heavy beige bricks? I remember the first time I mastered peek and poke, the pure glory of your first idiotic "goto 10" message.

I gotta say that even in college (I started my "real" CS degree almost 4 years behind where most people get into college), the number of people who had the same "passion" for computer geekery seemed to be rather smaller.

Though, this was during the dot-com boom, so perhaps that was a disproportionate cause of the population skewing.

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just waiting for... imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!

Re:just a hunch

[Avatar8]

I agree with staying "behind the curve," or as I see it, "best bang for the buck." Thus my choice of the E6600 instead of the 6700 or extremes; they jump quickly in price. My choice of graphics was a lengthy discussion with peers, reading reviews, etc. until I finally justified the price for the GPUs I selected.

Since you asked I'll give details:

Gamer Infinity Ultra SLI is the base system.

- Apevia 680W Beast power supply
- Core 2 Duo E6600
- Asus P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard
- 2GB Corsair RAM
- 2x nVidia 8800 GTS 320Mb video cards in SLI config
- no monitors because I have two Viewsonic 19" LCD gaming monitors
- 250Gb HD (even though I'll be replacing it w/ a Seagate perpendicular storage model)
- no optical drives because I already have a DVD-R and CD-RW
- on board sound
- already have speakers
- no OS (I have a current XP license)

I typically buy components from www.zipzoomfly.com and www.newegg.com with the occasional rebate deal on a HD from Frye's to give you an idea of my building resources.

Re:just a hunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohhhh...... nice!!
Can I reuse it somewhere on my website? Please??

(PS: the Guru hex should be uppercase :-P )

In separate news...

[squiggleslash]

...the new Cray MCX, an amazing new supercomputer with a 2GHz Core2Duo, 512Mb of RAM, and a 40GB hard disk, goes on sale tomorrow.

I fail to see the point in this product being branded Commodore. It's another PC.

Re:In separate news...

[newrisejohn]

Macs are just another PC - despite this people still froth at the mouth for them. Maybe Commodore is trying to build on whatever brand power is left. (I am a Mac user and used to be a C64/C128 user, fyi)

Re:In separate news...

[paganizer]

Cray is dead.
But it was sweet. the servers they were making in '93-'95 are only just now being outperformed.
I, personally, want a Cray Laptop. I used to joke about getting one with my friends, I've been thinking about taking my HP DV8230US and modding it to appear to be one for the next lan party.

Re:In separate news...

[mdwh2]

I fail to see the point in this product being branded Commodore. It's another PC.

You do realise that there have been Commodore PCs before - in that Commodore when it existed as a company made PCs?

There was a lot more to the Commodore brand than the Commodore 64, and all this is is reusing the brand. Is it pointless to use such a seemingly old brand? Well, it nonetheless seems to be getting them lots of extra publicity, which is really the whole point of using well known brandnames...

And as someone else pointed out, this isn't really any different to using the Macintosh brand for more than one platform (multiple CPU changes, and more notably, two entirely different operating systems). Apple did it because they knew that a "Mac" would have better chance than a new "NeXT".

Re:In separate news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cray is dead.

Netcraft confirms it!

Re:In separate news...

[mmkkbb]

The man may be dead but sgi failed to take down Cray with it. They still make clusters.

Re:In separate news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait and see, Commodore was all about cool hardware, I'll bet they've put in a PPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_processing_u nit) in this one along with monster graphics. The real cool thing would be if they've base-lined some kind of PC gaming API and ported it to linux as well.

Re:In separate news...

[squiggleslash]

You do realise that there have been Commodore PCs before - in that Commodore when it existed as a company made PCs?

Yes, I do. Indeed, I even made the same complaints at the time, 17 years ago.

You know, most of us end users go into modes where we apparently think we're better than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and explain where they're going wrong and what we would do in their place. And 90% of the time, we're wrong.

In the case of Commodore's management however, and all of us second guessing them, I think pretty much all of us were right, for once.

Re:In separate news...

[Lars T.]

I fail to see the point in this product being branded Commodore. It's another PC. Hey, it's closer than these.

Re:In separate news...

[An ominous Cow art]

Cray is dead.
But it was sweet. the servers they were making in '93-'95 are only just now being outperformed. R.I.P. Cray, maker of supercomputers which were so fast, they could execute an infinite loop in 1.71 seconds.

Re:In separate news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowhere does it say the product is going to be called "Commodore 64". People seem to forget that after the C64 decline CBM started building PCs in the late 80s as well. Of course it went down the drain with the rest of their products.

Re:In separate news...

[Jay Carlson]

...the new Cray MCX, an amazing new supercomputer with a 2GHz Core2Duo,
That's just not funny. From the Wikipedia article on NUMAlink:

NUMAlink is a high-speed low-latency switched fabric computer bus used as a shared memory computer cluster processor interconnection in Silicon Graphics computer systems. NUMAlink was developed by SGI for their Origin and Onyx systems. It was initially branded as "CrayLink" during SGIs brief acquisition of Cray Research.

OK, that's a little more legitimate, but it did feel a bit like Cray was joining Pierre Cardin's bit of branding hell.

20th Century PCs

[Otter Escaping North]

"25 years ago, Commodore launched the best selling personal computer of the late 20th Century, the C64"

-- Bala Keilman, CEO for Commodore Gaming.

There's a CEO with vision for you. Best PC of the late 20th century. Would've been best all time except for getting pwned by the mid-16th century's "Conquistador 200."

Re:20th Century PCs

[slim]

"25 years ago, Commodore launched the best selling personal computer of the late 20th Century, the C64"

-- Bala Keilman, CEO for Commodore Gaming.

There's a CEO with vision for you. Best PC of the late 20th century.

Best selling, fool!

Re:20th Century PCs

[elrous0]

"Conquistador 200."

Hey! Mine still works you insensitive clod!

-Eric

Re:20th Century PCs

[nomadic]

The joke's still really funny.

Re:20th Century PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, I have a dream, and in that dream, Mhedi Ali(sp maybe?) and friends are still running that show, from a lawn chair someplace in the bahamas where they took the old commode door's accounts receivable and ran it into the ground by not doing any real R&D after the Amiga 4000. But they sure lived high on the hog there for a while. I guess thats my way of saying I'll be checking to see who's on the board before I support this new enterprise with the same name.

Re:20th Century PCs

[SeaFox]

There's a CEO with vision for you. Best PC of the late 20th century. Would've been best all time except for getting pwned by the mid-16th century's "Conquistador 200."

Actually, I hear their folly was not expecting the Spanish Inquisition 5 to appear on the market when it did. Commodore claimed their marketshare loss was only a flesh wound, but...

Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Rob T Firefly]

I hate to be the cynical one this early in the morning, but it's worth noting that the Commodore brand name has been bought, sold, lost, found, and liquidated ridiculously often since its 1980s heyday. The current owners of the Commodore logo and brand name have about as much connection with the people who made the C64 and VIC20 as the current telephone companies have with Alexander Graham Bell.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Zarhan]

Yes, but it would still be kinda nice to own a Commodore (Athlon) 64.

I just wish that they'd use original C-64-like cases..

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[KKlaus]

Well said. But my mod points expired yesterday... and I finally find something I want to mod up. Aaah!

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[WS Tu]

Maybe some old-fashioned would like to buy computers looks like
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d /Commodore64.jpg or http://www.softwolves.pp.se/cbm/minaburkar/pics/cb m64-exterior.jpg
But I really not expect too much for such a company.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[mdwh2]

The current owners of the Commodore logo and brand name have about as much connection with the people who made the C64 and VIC20 as the current telephone companies have with Alexander Graham Bell.

Welcome to business. This is true with an awful lot of brandnames. They get bought and sold (e.g., in the UK, the cable company NTL recently renamed to Virgin Media, but it's still basically NTL and not Virgin). But then, even within the same company, over a period of decades you often won't have the same people working there anymore, so it's hard to see there's really a connection, plus of course, even whole companies can be bought and sold, not to mention made public, so often the "current owners" have nothing to do with the people who originally started it.

I suppose I can see why geeks would be more likely to prefer that brandnames were used on technical similarities rather than for reasons of marketing. Although then again, no one seems to care about reusing the Macintosh brand for different operating systems, or reusing brandnames like "Playstation" for completely different consoles - for some reason it only seems to be the Commodore (and perhaps also Amiga) brands which people complain about here.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[elrous0]

I suspect they'll basically just be selling the Commodore logo sticker slapped onto on a modern PC. Of course, anyone could just make a sticker themselves, slap in on their existing computer, and save a lot of money.

-Eric

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[mmkkbb]

Well, the Macintosh and PlayStation are both backward compatible with their predecessors. The SNES is a better example; to play NES games it needed a third party emulator which was more expensive than a NES.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Rob T Firefly]

I suppose I can see why geeks would be more likely to prefer that brandnames were used on technical similarities rather than for reasons of marketing. Although then again, no one seems to care about reusing the Macintosh brand for different operating systems, or reusing brandnames like "Playstation" for completely different consoles - for some reason it only seems to be the Commodore (and perhaps also Amiga) brands which people complain about here.

Still, some brand names remain a bit constant. If you happened to be hanging around Apple headquarters, you might bump into Steve Jobs or Woz. The current Apple grew directly from the guys who were building the IIc in the 1980s. You could conceivably still find Shigeru Miyamoto running around the Nintendo offices, and you'd know that you're at the birthplace of the NES you were so glued to way back when. Hate Microsoft all you like, but you can still point to Gates and Ballmer and know that these are a couple of the guys responsible for that ubiquitous MS-DOS stuff you used to play with.

Brand loyalty can be a funny and superficial thing, and I'm not usually a practitioner of it myself, but I still prefer to see it used by those who earned it rather than third parties who scoop up names that others built. As another commenter on this story wrote, it feels pretty much like the retail version of domain squatting.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Joe U]

I agree with you, I'm just wondering how far they'll carry the nostalgia.

Will the system have a built in C64 emulator? Will they just toss in some Commodore desktop logos and screen-savers?

I have no brand loyalty anymore for systems, I just got tired of building my own. If this is priced reasonably I'll buy it for the sticker.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[mdwh2]

Still, some brand names remain a bit constant. If you happened to be hanging around Apple headquarters, you might bump into Steve Jobs or Woz. The current Apple grew directly from the guys who were building the IIc in the 1980s. You could conceivably still find Shigeru Miyamoto running around the Nintendo offices, and you'd know that you're at the birthplace of the NES you were so glued to way back when. Hate Microsoft all you like, but you can still point to Gates and Ballmer and know that these are a couple of the guys responsible for that ubiquitous MS-DOS stuff you used to play with.

Sure, you can point to some companies where important guys are still around, but similarly there are other brands used where the original guys involved have long since left (Atari would be one example).

Brand loyalty can be a funny and superficial thing, and I'm not usually a practitioner of it myself, but I still prefer to see it used by those who earned it rather than third parties who scoop up names that others built.

As I do too - although there isn't just the case of brand loyalty, there's also brand awareness. Consider the free marketing they get with using this brand...

As another commenter on this story wrote, it feels pretty much like the retail version of domain squatting.

See my reply to that comment.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[mdwh2]

Well, the Macintosh and PlayStation are both backward compatible with their predecessors.

I'm sure these new Commodore PCs will be backward compatible with the PCs that the old Commodore company produced...

A point that people seem to be missing is that this is the "Commodore" brand, not the "Commodore 64" brand (although admittedly it's not helped by them referring to the C64 in their announcement).

But yes, even as far as C64 compatibility is concerned, the NES/SNES would be a good example - it's possible through emulation, just the same as with the Mac/Playstation, it's just that the emulation software doesn't come as standard (though C64 emulators are free, at least).

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Ed Avis]

As well as Commodore the 'Acorn' brand name has also been sold to PC clonebuilders.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[mwvdlee]

How about if they manage to fit some miniature system in an A1200-lookalike case?

But I fear your right; they'll just use the logo on generic hardware.

I'm hoping some rich geek is going to buy the entire Commodore brand and logo, and just bury it, where it can't be mollested any further.

FWIW, there's a C64 system-in-a-joystick out there with a number of games. It's actually quite cool and, AFAIK, it contains the hardware for a fully functioning C64. I'm dreaming they'll someday make a C64-compatible box with a few USB ports to connect flashmemory, keyboard, joysticks.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Dogtanian]

How about if they manage to fit some miniature system in an A1200-lookalike case? Might please a few Amiga diehards, but too far past C='s (and the Amiga's) commercial peak for commercial nostalgia exploitation; more people would have fond memories of the A500.

But if they really wanted to exploit the nostalgia market that way, they'd be best advised to slap something in a repro C64 case (classic "breadbox" version, of course). In fact, if they had the case, it would probably be trivial to stick a small form-factor PC in there, with some sort of emulator onboard; possibly using the C64 30-in-one chips.

Re:Nostalgic name, but that's it.

[Rob T Firefly]

But if they really wanted to exploit the nostalgia market that way, they'd be best advised to slap something in a repro C64 case (classic "breadbox" version, of course). In fact, if they had the case, it would probably be trivial to stick a small form-factor PC in there, with some sort of emulator onboard; possibly using the C64 30-in-one chips.

As usual, a hardcore geek has beaten the rest of the world to it.

Loading games

[nodrogluap]

To load the games, will you still need to do

LOAD "*",8,1
RUN... :-)

Re:Loading games

[jacerie]

That'd kick ass... at least it would be a small sign of stability.

Re:Loading games

[ShapeGSX]

No no no. All the cool games will run like this: LOAD "*",8,1 SYS 49152

Re:Loading games

[Experiment 626]

Programs loaded into the C64 with LOAD "*",8 loaded into the beginning of BASIC memory and had to be executed with RUN, but LOAD "*",8,1 loaded the program into a specific location in memory. This could be done for programs started up with SYS (execution jumps to a specific address in memory), as another reply mentions. The most popular use of ",1" however was to overwrite memory such that the address the system returned to after it finished loading would contain a run instruction, causing the program execute with no further intervention after the LOAD command. Or am I overanalyzing the joke and being pedantic?

Re:Loading games

[Miamicanes]

No, you'd press C= + RUNSTOP :-)

I paid $99 for Fastload the day it came out, and it was worth every penny... that program absolutely saved my sanity.

Re:Loading games

[ElephanTS]

Or am I overanalyzing the joke and being pedantic?

You betcha!

Re:Loading games

[Kythe]

Or am I overanalyzing the joke and being pedantic

Not at all :)

I wrote a few autoloading programs myself for the C64. They'd use the ",8,1" suffix and load into the stack area, which (fortunately) was located south of location "x0101", if I recall correctly. You could just make the first few tens of bytes "x01" so that the return from the LOAD subroutine would start executing your program immediately (usually a small machine language program at x0101 that would finish the loading process). It was probably a pretty common way to do things, but certainly handy.

Damn, brings back memories.

Re:Loading games

[rjpear]

Beautiful!!! Flashback...1984... The Commodore 1541 Drive Overheats and melts a Plastic Army Man who was perched on the drive protecting the VicModem... Luckily the 1541 Lives to fight another day.. The same cannot be said for the plastic Army man.. 'snif..

Re:Loading games

[sharkey]

...load into the stack area, which (fortunately) was located south of location "x0101"...

So THAT'S why SuperHuey kept crashing after I turned my desk to face the window. That put the stack west of "x0101"! Sure wish I'd known that at the time :(

Re:Loading games

[arivanov]

I am not a commodore expert, but IIRC 6502 and its successor 6510 had the concept of 0 page. A set of shortened (and faster) operands could use simplified conditional jump and arithmetics provided that all args were under 0x100. The basic "load next operand" routine which was invoked for anything (even displaying the command prompt) was written using zero page intructions for speed and resided in the zero page. Replacing this routine was a possibility for auto invocation. Hardly ever used on Apple where everything, but basic left this routine alone, but could have been quite usefull on the C64 (if it used it).

This routine could also be altered for all kinds of interesting stuff. Starting with practical jokes with the teacher which made fun of the "default" problems, questions and answers and going as far as adding a single read instruction to read the IO port for the speaker. That was hysterical. A nested loop sounded like motorcycle, plotting produced star war effects and most math various random farts. Total ROFL (got myself keelhauled by the headmaster for that one).

Re:Loading games

[kurbchekt]

Change that LOAD to wine and I'd be pretty friggin' excited.

Re:Loading games

[Avatar8]

I'm sure they've upgraded it to an ASCII, .bat driven menu by now. :-)

Thing I hated about the C64 disk load times: time. You could make two sandwiches and eat them while watching half a Cosby episode before a game would load. My TI-99 4/A tape drive was faster getting me into Tunnels of Doom.

Re:Loading games

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Clearly you did not have the ideal setup. Everyone cool knew that you had to cut the bottom two inches off of four #2 pencils and insert them into the bottom screw holes of the drive. The erasers absorbed shock and the pencils raised the drive up, creating a disk-on-stilts that allowed enough air to enter in the bottom to prevent overheating.

You brave soldier died in vain! Support our troops!

Re:Loading games

[STrinity]

Thing I hated about the C64 disk load times: time. You could make two sandwiches and eat them while watching half a Cosby episode before a game would load.

And the worst were Electronic Arts games -- you'd spend the entire morning watching the ECA logo change from blue to green to cyan to orange to yellow...

Re:Loading games

[Anonymous Coward]

You could make two sandwiches and eat them while watching half a Cosby episode

Why, you could also listen to a Misfits album 796.823495 times in that timeframe!

Re:Loading games

[Kythe]

Exactly. Now you know :)

Re:Loading games

[nuzak]

RUNSTOP+RESTORE to escape back to BASIC. And you really had to whack the RESTORE key hard. There were lots of theories as to why this was, but to this day I don't know why.

Re:Loading games

[nuzak]

> you'd spend the entire morning watching the ECA logo change from blue to green to cyan to orange to yellow...

Something like Fastload (from Fast Hack 'Em) tended to speed that up quite a bit. Epyx fastload turned it into a flicker and it was finished loading in seconds (assuming it worked and didn't lock up).

Re:Loading games

[CaseyB]

Damn straight, Fastload rocked. Of course, it would have been nice if the C64's disk IO hadn't been completely braindead to begin with.

Re:Loading games

[clacke]

Or am I overanalyzing the joke and being pedantic?

Yes. "Score: -1, Boring"

Re:Loading games

[El_Oscuro]

What would really rock is if they came pre installed with a C-64 emulator and as many of the old game roms they could get distribution rights for.

Don't RTFA

[PadRacerExtreme]

The whole thing is in the summary. Why bother linking to a blog with no real information in it?
<sigh>

Re:Don't RTFA

[NayDizz]

Perhaps the miniscule chance that all the /. traffic might result in a few ad-clicks?

apples and oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a slight difference between sticking a known logo on a mass manufactured hardware and actually designing innovative chips like C= did in the 80's.
There's a reason if someone still uses that technology today.
Today, even AmigaOS would be a top seller if only those bastar^H^Hkind folks who own the rights would open source it or actually do something with it, like porting the system to tablets and portable computers, instead of letting it die slowly.

Re:apples and oranges

[Dogtanian]

Today, even AmigaOS would be a top seller if only those bastar^H^Hkind folks who own the rights would open source it or actually do something with it, like porting the system to tablets and portable computers, instead of letting it die slowly. IMHO, AmigaOS (regardless of its status) would only sell to the diehard hobbyists still using their Amigas. From a mainstream point-of-view, the Amiga OS has been too long dead for any new version of it to have any advantage over a written-and-launched-from-scratch operating system. (See here for more discussion on that subject).

Just a name...

[Zeek40]

Judging by the number of times that Commodore has been liquidated and sold, I don't really see how new company releasing computers under an old (albeit famous) name which it bought the rights to is much news...

backward compatable

[Ogive17]

I just hope they are backward compatable.....

Re:backward compatable

[Garabito]

Most likely they're not, but it would be good for that company if they were. Those PCs would stand out, not like yet-another-generic-PC, they could sell many units solely on nostalgic users. With some PR work, they could generate some fuss about it, which could get the attention of the press and give them publicity.

And it doesn't even have to be hardware compatible, they could just include an emulator in BIOS or even just preload it in Windows.

Is it gonna be called

[$RANDOMLUSER]

the Vic 2.0?

Re:Is it gonna be called

[operagost]

** CBM BASIC V2 **
3583 MEGABYTES FREE

READY.

Re:Is it gonna be called

[An ominous Cow art]

A joke I used to make back in those days was, "If your system has to use scientific notation to express the amount of memory available, you're in good shape."

Re:Is it gonna be called

[Dogtanian]

Ooh... let's hope you weren't planning on loading any games from the tape deck.

If Wikipedia is correct that the tape deck was 300 baud, then that's 37.5 bytes per second, 135,000 bytes per hour.

3583 megabytes = 3.757 x 10^9 bytes, divided by 135,000 this means your program would take...

27,830 hours, or 1160 days, or 3.17 years to load a game that filled the computer's memory.

And let's put this in perspective; that's less than a single-layer DVD's worth. The equivalent of a full 8.5GB dual-layer DVD would take approx 7.7 years to multi-load, and 44,968 standard C90 cassettes to store.

Take these figures with a pinch of salt; also IIRC a lot of C64 games were auto-decompressed upon load which would have speeded up the raw figures quite a bit. But..... yeah. *cough*

Re:Is it gonna be called

[gregski]

From what I remember of the C64, 3.17yrs to load a game sounds about right.

Re:Is it gonna be called

[Anonymous Coward]

At least do it properly:

      **** COMMODORE PC BASIC V3 ****

  4194304K RAM SYSTEM 4294940671 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.

Re:Is it gonna be called

[operagost]

With a 1541 and no fastload, yes. Terrible flaw in the design. The 1540 designed for the VIC-20 (and even the tape drive, with a little assembly hack) could actually outperform the 1541 on the C=64.

liquidation

[gerrysteele]

I'm guessing that after liquidation the brand was sold off by the creditors. So this prob has as much to do with the original c64 et al as a jelly fish and a porn star.

They are just going to be PCs with a Commodore sticker on them. I'd say trying to comptete with Alienware etc.

Re:liquidation

[backwardMechanic]

as a jelly fish and a porn star

You saw that one too? What did you think of the plot?

Re:liquidation

[trongey]

as a jelly fish and a porn star

You saw that one too? What did you think of the plot?

Oh, yeah, right. Like anyone who's watched that flick paid any attention to the plot.

Re:liquidation

[mdwh2]

So this prob has as much to do with the original c64 et al as a jelly fish and a porn star.

I'd say it has as much to do with the original Commodore PCs (yes, they made PCs back then) as say, a modern Dell PC has to do with, I don't know, a Dell PC of 15 years ago?

Those Dell PCs are just PCs with a Dell sticker on!!

Re:liquidation

[Anonymous Coward]

as say, a modern Dell PC has to do with, I don't know, a Dell PC of 15 years ago?

Except dell wasn't sold off and the brand purchased by someone else. Someone else who prob wanted to sell gaming PCs except didn't have any market leverage?

Re:liquidation

[mdwh2]

Except dell wasn't sold off and the brand purchased by someone else. Someone else who prob wanted to sell gaming PCs except didn't have any market leverage?

True, but let's suppose that Dell were bought by another company, who then decided to release PCs using the well known Dell brandname. Would people think that was strange, and claim it wasn't really a Dell?

Why PC?

[mnmn]

PC is just regular, and this seems like the brand name has been pasted onto beige run-of-the-mill PCs.

I'd rather see (and purchase) a custom ARM9-based PC with ZetaOS or something with a very funky basic compiler/interpreter on which all programs use BASIC. ARM9 should also bring the price sufficiently down to make the product a success over regular PCs (I mean in the hobbyist market).

Re:Why PC?

[l0rd]

Sorry to be a Negative Nancy, but why?

I for one have fond memories when computers came with a basic compiler and you could do extremely cool (for then) things with them straight out of the box. You got fed up with a game? Write a crack. You didn't want to pay for some shareware? Write a crack. You wanted to see see what cool stuff your computer could do? Write a small demo.

However those days are (sadly) long gone. As todays computers are ridiculously cheap, it wouldn't make sense to buy a sperate one just because basic came as standard, when these days you can install linux and get everything you need. I mean common, who needs basic when you've got a superior language like C to play with?

Re:Why PC?

[LWATCDR]

Actually ARM has some new cars with FPUs and DSPs now http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM1020E.html. One has to wonder just how many ARM cores you could put on a single die at 90nm? Just think about an 8 or 16 core system with are good NVidia or ATI graphics chip running some flavor of Unix. You could use USB to connect drives and printers to it as well. Of course the ideal system would have sixty four sixty four bit cores and 64 gigs of memory :)
Back to reality that is one thing I do wonder about. Why didn't the OLPC project use an ARM or MIPs cpu instead of an X86. Both are better low power cpus than the X86.

Re:Why PC?

[the_greywolf]

That's a good idea. A better one would be an ARM9 notebook with 802.11b (or g or n) functionality and a 9-hour battery life.

Then, at least, I'd be able to get a reasonable notebook computer.

Re:Why PC?

[Dogtanian]

I'd rather see (and purchase) a custom ARM9-based PC with ZetaOS or something with a very funky basic compiler/interpreter on which all programs use BASIC. If your version of BASIC bore any resemblance to the unstructured implementations which appeared on most 8-bit computers, and particularly the crude POKE-reliant C64 implementation, I'd shoot you before you could damage another generation of programmers.

I'm not sure if that was a joke or not.

Sheesh.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Everybody's favorite computing zombie rises from the grave one more time.

I loved my C64 and my Amigas but, really, isn't this just the retail version of domain squatting?

Re:Sheesh.

[UziBeatle]

  Yeah. It's a big yawn really to any of us old enough to have owned a Vic 20 or later and really
insulting to boot. Commodore went tits up years ago and the name was purchased , if I recall correctly,
some bunch of 'furners'.

  Buying a PC like this based on some loyalty to a name brand would be like buying a 'Magnavox' or
'Zenith' TV today. All those old American based company's went by the wayside and the rights to the
names bought up by 'furner' outsourcers. Only a ignorant nit would buy based on those company names.
    Course the world is full of nits.

  Unless this zombie can prove they offer kick ass product and kick ass quality rating for a kick
ass low price they will just be some small nothing flopping around like brainless undead.

Re:Sheesh.

[mdwh2]

I loved my C64 and my Amigas but, really, isn't this just the retail version of domain squatting?

No, because unlike domain squatting, this company have a legal right to use the name Commodore (at least, I presume).

The domain name equivalent would be when a company buys a domain and trademark to use for their product, whether or not it's related to the original usage - but oh wait, that happens all the time in business.

TV output?

[tepples]

The original C=64 could output to a TV, and most games for the platform anticipated this. They also were optimized for joystick or joystick+partial keyboard control. But unfortunately, few games for Windows anticipate reading input from two USB gamepads and displaying output on a standard-definition TV. Does Commodore plan to revive the development of TV-friendly computer games?

Re:TV output?

[Rob T Firefly]

Does Commodore plan to revive the development of TV-friendly computer games?

In an era where the majority of console makers seem to be pushing towards HDTV over standard def, I'd doubt very much that the current Commodore company would be going the opposite way. However, if you're that into it, you could always get one of these.

Re:TV output?

[pizpot]

hmmm. I plug a PC into my widescreen sometimes. Let me say that 1360x768 @32" is really nice. A tv with a proper scaler is a must though. Shoot, with this one, I can watch youtube at 640x480 and zoom it full screen (not youtubes lame fullscreen full of artifacts)

No want old style tv's anymore!!!

That said, soon after I got a C64 I needed glasses. I purposely didn't go into Comp Sci because I thought all computers would give you 20 FPS headaches. Elite was a good game.

Re:TV output?

[elrous0]

you could always get one of these.

Yeah, good luck finding one. The company that made them apparently went out of business about 5 seconds after releasing the first batch. It's a shame too. I know a LOT of people who would have bought one if they had only heard about them (the greatest product in the world won't sell if no one knows about it). I'd still love to have one, but they're impossible to find unless you're willing to spend a fortune trying to win one on eBay.

-Eric

Re:TV output?

[Bobo_The_Boinger]

I bought 4 when a local KB Toys was going out of business and had them for $4 each. :) At least I think they are the same one, the games list looks the same anyway. I haven't had a chance to open any of them up, but figure for $4, may as well stock up.

Re:TV output?

[zlogic]

1) Nowadays some people have better monitors than TVs
2) You can use any number of computer mice, or a mouse + touchpad, or a joystick+mouse etc.
3) If you want a multiplayer game with >1 controller or simply play games on you TV, get a console.

Re:TV output?

[tepples]

If you want a multiplayer game with >1 controller or simply play games on you TV, get a console. Consoles have a lockout chip business model. Which platform is best for independent multiplayer games?

Re:TV output?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does Commodore plan to revive the development of TV-friendly computer games?"
Not Commodore, but ALL TV MAKERS. It's called HDTV and you can run most PCs in a native resolution on HDTVs.

Re:TV output?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you quit whining and write some games yourself?

Christ on a pogo stick. Do you want everything for free?

And for the record, the Atari Jaguar has been open to development since Hasbro released the encryption keys last millennium, so have at it

Re:TV output?

[tepples]

It's called HDTV and you can run most PCs in a native resolution on HDTVs. But what multiplayer games have a mode designed for a PC connected to an HDTV and four USB gamepads? If I developed one, would I be able to sell it?

Re:TV output?

[ACMENEWSLLC]

>>The original C=64 could output to a TV, and most games for the platform anticipated this. They also were optimized for joystick or joystick+partial keyboard control. But unfortunately, few games for Windows anticipate reading input from two USB gamepads and displaying output on a standard-definition TV. Does Commodore plan to revive the development of TV-friendly computer games?

My PC outputs fine to my 32" LCD TV. And my mouse sure works better than the 1350 http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/jmice.html .

Of course, when your joystick has 4 directions and one fire button, it's just not the same as todays complex controller with side winding and 20 action buttons.

But if all you want is to make ADWS and space to your non joystick enabled game, there are things such as this;
http://www.allworldsoft.com/software/14-077-total- game-control.htm

Re:TV output?

[kimvette]

There is no Paradroid or Elite.

In other news...

[broller]

Abraham Lincoln announced his candidacy for president this morning. Abraham "Honest Abe" Lincoln, a businessman from Chicago announced Tuesday before an invitation-only crowd of "four score and seven" supporters that he intended to "officially throw my stove-pipe hat into the ring." Mr. Lincoln, born Abraham Leibowitz, says that he changed his name last year, "because Leibowitz is hard for voters to spell." His opponents have said that Lincoln is merely trying to capitalize on the popularity of the sixteenth president's name. Lincoln asked that his supporters help to suppress this rumor, adding, "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

Awesome!

[DoofusOfDeath]

I can't wait to play Zork on a 64-bit Athlon 5200+!

And it that gets boring, I can play all of Raid over Bungling Bay in 27 millisecond!

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, NO! Hunt The Wumpus on the Half-Life2 engine.

Re:Awesome!

[MS-06FZ]

I can't wait to play Zork on a 64-bit Athlon 5200+! Then why don't you? I mean, seriously, unless you don't actually have an Athlon 5200+, what are you waiting for?

World Wide Web
There is a program called Frotz here.
There is a game called Zork here.
> USE FROTZ ON ZORK
You're not holding the Frotz.

World Wide Web
There is a program called Frotz here.
There is a game called Zork here.
> GET FROTZ
You now have Frotz.

World Wide Web
There is a game called Zork here.
> USE FROTZ ON ZORK
You're not holding the Zork.

World Wide Web
There is a game called Zork here.
> GET ZORK
You now have Zork.

World Wide Web
> USE FROTZ ON ZORK
With a flurry of disk activity and a whole lot of computation, Frotz goes to work. About three nanoseconds later, a prompt appears on-screen: You are standing "West of House". You have succeeded in running Zork!
Your score is 257 (total of 350 points), in 5 moves.
This gives you the rank of Grand Inquisitor.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Frotz is kinda lame. I prefer Gargoyle: http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/

Re:Awesome!

[MS-06FZ]

Frotz is basic - its main benefit IMO is that it provides the engine for playing Z-Machine games.
Gargoyle looks all kinds of cool, though. I always liked how IF games looked with proportional fonts, but Gargoyle looks extra nice.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Frotz is basic - its main benefit IMO is that it provides the engine for playing Z-Machine games. Gargoyle supports ALL major IF formats, Z-machine included. :)

C=64 emulation

[tepples]

I just hope they are backward compatable..... Google says there's more than one way to skin that cat.

Machines optimized for gaming...

[jez9999]

So they're running Linux, right?

Re:Machines optimized for gaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't sound like it. The specs mention something about DirectX..... sounds like blasphemy to me.

The Real Question is...

[Lifyre]

Where will they put the Cartridge connector?

Re:The Real Question is...

[countSudoku()]

It's going to be in the back, right next the the little empty patch of plastic that you can drill out and mount your home-soldered reset switch to! You'll have to pop out the cart to plug in your C64 serial port adapter though, so you can connect to your 300baud modem and then to the World Wide BBS. Quantum Link, here I come!!!

Already have one

[Zedrick]

I put a nice, thick Commodore sticker on my homebuilt 64-bit desktop.

It's just as much "Commodore" as these machines. Perhaps even more so, since I've also got a real C-1541 connected to it.

Re:Already have one

[BForrester]

You're not running a real C64 setup unless you knock the display down to 320 X 200 X 16 colours.

I've changed my own system to these specs, and WOW, does my system fly! I can't wait until "The Last Ninja: Forever" comes out so I can really show off its graphical dexterity.

Let me guess

[J05H]

The new machines will be ready in 2 weeks?

(that's for all you old Amiga fans)

Input is the other problem

[tepples]

In an era where the majority of console makers seem to be pushing towards HDTV over standard def, I'd doubt very much that the current Commodore company would be going the opposite way But even with games designed to operate at HDTV resolutions such as 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixels, the keyboard and mouse mentality and one-person-per-machine mentality remain. Why aren't more PC games designed for multiple USB gamepads plugged into a USB hub? Where's the PC answer to Smash Bros. or a Bomberman that has been updated for this decade?

Re:Input is the other problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't more PC games designed for multiple USB gamepads plugged into a USB hub?

Because you're the only one who cares? Jesus, it's like every other post you're either harping in this idiocy or shilling for of your tetris knockoffs (excuse me, "falling tetramino" games).

No one cares. Go back to your gamecube, fanboy.

Re:Input is the other problem

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

because it's a PC, like in Personal Computer.

let's face the truth people, C64s, Atari 800s, MSXs an all the other 8 bit computers of that time were little more than glorified consoles, thus the multi-plpayer options.

PCs and Macs OTOH, are meant for professional use by one person at a time. gaming came later to those platforms, almost an afterthought. when serious gaming came to PCs, multiplayer was added in the form of networked games.

if you still insist on multiplayer capability in front of your TV, buy a nintendo Wii and happy gaming

I remain dubious

[Notabadguy]

I want to see specs. Purpose-built machines are already flooding the market. Want a gaming machine? Try Alienware, Zeus-PC, Powernotebokes, Hyperion, one of the bunches of companies that already make custom built gaming machines. Unless Commodore has some ingenious plans for publishing proprietary content that can only be played on their custom PC....can you think of any reason why someone would want to buy one of their computers? ----- Thought begets heresy; Heresy begets Retribution.

Damn I just got rid of my 20 lb C64 floppy drive

[pete.com]

It figures.....

Again?...

[toszcze]

Some time ago Commodore have tried to come back into a IT business. They've failed. Now they try again - I don't know why.
"Making PCs isn't so difficult thing, right?... So maybe we will try?...".

So...

[TrappedByMyself]

I guess this means that someone is going to build over-priced PCs with Commodore stickers on them?

I would say that this is doomed to fail, except that I know there is a market of 30 something virgins with $$ to burn who are going to impress each other with their fancy new Commordore stickered over-priced PCs.

Thi will piss off commador enthusiasts

[geekoid]

and go into an already flooded market.

Good thinking.

How 'bout a modern C64 instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The selling point of Commodore machines back in the day was affordability. I remember a C64 being in stores for $200.

If Commodore had produced expensive high-end machines, nobody would remember them now. They'd have died a lot earlier.

I'd really like a nice small form factor machine today, but I certainly will not buy a high-end gaming machine. Nor do I think the world needs yet another high-end gaming manufacturer (Dell XPS, Alienware...)

It is rumored that ...

[DiscWolf]

the C64 will be the only machine capable of running Duke Nukem Forever.

When Commodore...

[smokin_juan]

When Commodore -

- returns to making computers that boots in one second -
- creates an OS that has programming languages built-in and ready to go -
- designs a machine that will fit in a backpack -
- invents a clock that keeps time without power -
- does something revolutionary -

that's when I'll buy another Commodore. I'll be damned if I let a group of people manipulate my nostalgia to sell me something as common as air.

Re:When Commodore...

[Bones3D_mac]

Actually, one thing I would like to see is almost exactly that... a very simplifed machine with it's own compact OS on-board, dedicated specifically to encourage the user to learn what exactly is going on under the hood without being intimidating. A machine that's inexpensive, portable and about as powerful as a high-end PDA.

The machine would include a few different programming languages (such as BASIC, JavaScript, Perl, etc...), topping off in power close to Flash. It would have limited networking capabilities allowing it to connect to the internet via WiFi/ethernet/dial-up, but connecting only to certain dedicated networks. These networks would then facilitate users to trade programs, handle program-to-program communications and offer services like message boards/chat the old-school BBS way. Users could even program their own BBS add-ons (like multi-user games/MUDs). However, the machine would not include a web browser (except maybe lynx), to help discourage reliance on graphic user interfaces to do everything for them. The machines would also be able to transfer files/programs to a traditional home PC, which could then be run within a virtual machine on the PC itself.

The point such a system, is to move as far away from the modern ways of doing everything, as well as eliminate the overhead of a complicated OS (linux, Windows, Mac OS X, etc...) from competing with the core purpose of the system itself... to encourage exploration and experimentation at the lowest level, while still taking advantage of some of the modern technologies we take for granted.

By having such a system, I think we would see a lot more people actually *using* their computers intelligently, rather than simply tolerating them as an everyday annoyance.

Aside from that, I'd personally like to see the older BBS days return once more... and I'm sure I'm not alone on this sentiment.

Re:When Commodore...

[zlogic]

How about a Linux box that
-instantly resumes from standby
-has gcc, perl and python built-in and ready-to-go
-is a laptop/ hacked Mac Mini
-coundn't think up anything here
-has Beryl/Compiz/multiple desktops/whatever-feature-that-isn't-present-in-wi ndows-or-macosx

Re:When Commodore...

[the_greywolf]

I feel exactly the same way you do.

And, actually, I've been looking for a new portable computer on which I can do programming, remote administration, and other basic work tasks without being tied to a desktop or tied to a wall after 5 hours. Like a 13" ARM notebook with a 9-hour battery life. Wouldn't that be just the thing?

Re:When Commodore...

[fishbowl]

>How about a Linux box that
>-instantly resumes from standby

Practical standby is the #1 reason I switched from a Linux laptop to a Macbook pro.
I realize that it's probably possible to make ACPI or whatever, work on a Linux notebook,
but it never really worked for me. It was this particular frustration that drove me to
find a solution -- and the first time I tried a Mac portable, there was no other serious
choice. Others seem to think of boot time or sleep/restart time as inconsequential, but
for me, suspend/resume latency made the difference between me actually using the device,
quite often.

Re:When Commodore...

[Bones3D_mac]

It would certainly make for a great, yet simple geek toy... assuming they could manufacture the systems for a decent price. ($299 to $349, maybe?)

The only other item I can think of that even comes close would be the Sharp Zaurus palmtops, but the things are just too small to actually use them for productive purposes. 12"+ is probably a far more ideal size. Also, since the system wouldn't be that dependent on graphics, the resolution could be kept to minimal levels... 640x480 or 800x600, to reduce costs. Graphics handling wouldn't have to be great either... just enough to handle a few sprites/vector shapes and text with basic anti-aliasing/alpha handling options.

If anyone at Radio Shack is listening, this could be a great little device to slap the well-known TRS-80 name onto!

Re:When Commodore...

[WinterSolstice]

I agree - it was the same here. OSX standby/sleep works better than Vista, XP, Fedora, and Ubuntu.

Not perfect, but better.

Ironically, about 50% of what I use a mac for Linux would do better :) OO.o, X11, ssh, perl, Vim, gcc, java.

Re:When Commodore...

[Frogbert]

Commodore didn't create the OS that ran on the C64. Microsoft did.

Re:When Commodore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they did. Microsoft wrote the first version of basic that Commodore used, and Commodore modified it afterwards (they had a perpetual licence, they could use it in as many models as they wanted, and make changes if required). Pissed MS off no end that the most common computer in the world had a MS based basic in it and they got big fat zero royalties. But that's just the built-in programming language, not the OS.
The kernal (or OS) was written by one or two Commodore engineers. And so was the DOS, which was on the diskette & hard drives themselves.

Amiga OS 4

[killeena]

Maybe they should make a system that is able to run Amiga OS 4

instant on?

[hudster]

Will these PCs turn on instantly the moment that I hit the power switch, just like my good ol' c64? I haven't had a PC since then that could boot that fast...

I just had to

[spudnic]

I just had to post to make sure my sig got into this discussion.

Disk Drive

[eLijahTheReticent]

My mom never bought me the 1541 disk drive. It would taken ages to load a game from the tape.

Re:Disk Drive

[STrinity]

My mom never bought me the 1541 disk drive. It would taken ages to load a game from the tape.

Tape. I had to hand code all my games in Basic, and if we lost power I had to start over. I just finished writing Impossible Mission last June -- you don't know how hard it is to get VIC to say "Another vee-see-tor. Stay a while. Stay for-ever," using just "poke" commands.

Is Nostalgia Enough?

[blueZhift]

I can understand that many may have fond memories associated with Commodore, but is that really enough of a market to sell these new machines? There are already a number of game optimized PC brands. What does Commodore bring to the table?

More like a tragedy

[rbanffy]

The IBM PC and its clones are responsible for the first mass extinction in the personal computer arena. Their proliferation spelled doom to a vast array of different and interesting architectures and resulted in the dullness of the current PC.

It's tragic the same brand used by excellent and original personal computers like the PET, VIC-20, C-64 and Amiga is now glued to x86 computers that still have some form of an ISA bus inside its chipset and whose processor still wakes up thinking it's an 8088 inside a IBM 5150 PC.

Re:More like a tragedy

[robathome]

It's tragic the same brand used by excellent and original personal computers like the PET, VIC-20, C-64 and Amiga is now glued to x86 computers that still have some form of an ISA bus inside its chipset and whose processor still wakes up thinking it's an 8088 inside a IBM 5150 PC.

Sorry to break this to you, but even back when Commodore was still really Commodore, still selling the Amiga, way back there in the late 80's, they were also selling x86 boxen.

My first PC clone was (ghod help me) a Commodore PCIII-20, an 8088 machine (I later replaced the iNTEL chip with an NEC V-20) with 640K of RAM and an MFM HD-controller off of which hung a Seagate ST-225. CGA/Hercules mono on the motherboard! W00T! My original BBS ran on that box until I could replace it with a home-built 80286 machine (at a whopping 12MHz) with 1MB on the mboard and an AST Advantage/2 card for disk cache and external modem ports.

So, that brand's been long-sullied, almost 20 years ago, with PC-clone "blandness". Showrooms used to market the 68K-based Amigas and the PCs right next to each other.

Re:More like a tragedy

[rbanffy]

I remember them.

The fact that Commodore did that (build and sell x86 boxes) to postpone its bankruptcy does not diminish this. It was sad then and it is sad now.

There was a time a company called Commodore distinguished itself from other computer makers, by designing and building great computers. I regret to tell you, but your PCIII-20 was not among them.

Re:More like a tragedy

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Commodore did that (build and sell x86 boxes) to postpone its bankruptcy does not diminish this.

Actually, that hastened its bankruptcy. Their x86 boxes were overpriced and underspecced and never sold well, and they poured money into them instead of the profit-making-at-the-time (!) Amiga division. In some alternate universe, if they had cancelled their terrible PC line, then it is quite plausible that evolved Amigas (and Amiga R&D at one stage had a literal decade's lead on anyone else, though that was squandered by 1995) would occupy something like the niche Macs now do. Of course, they'd have to have also not made a host of other spectacularly bad choices, but propping up their failing x86 PC line at the expense of the amiga line was a really major screw-up they made (it is even speculated that a backroom deal involving, yes, microsoft, was why CBM executives insisted on supporting their CBM PC instead of Amiga even in the face of clear evidence that was ass-backwards).

Re:More like a tragedy

[Dogtanian]

Were the "real" Commodore PCs actually built (or at least assembled) by them, or were they just someone else's PCs that C= slapped their name on?

Re:More like a tragedy

[rbanffy]

I stand by my words - they did it to avoid bankruptcy. The sad fact is they failed miserably and not doing it would, maybe, succeed in making Commodore a more profitable company.

Re:More like a tragedy

[robathome]

That's a good question - I don't remember. I'd think that they were CBM machines, not just a rebadged beige-box, because of two things. The BIOS was ©CBM, I do know that. Second, the proprietary Commodore mouse (IIRC, the same mouse as the Amiga). Of course, this being almost 20 years ago, my crusty fogey-nerd memory could be failing me.

Re:More like a tragedy

[robathome]

By no means was the PC20-III (bollixed the model# the first time 'round) a particularly stellar box - never claimed that it was. It was just a successor to my old caffe-brown C-64 (with a breakout box ribbon cable soldered to the modem port for the 1670, and a stereo-SID mod). Not nearly as expensive as a Compaq or IBM toaster, and better than the Leading Edge dreck that was targeted to the consumer market. However, it was still a PC-clone, but that's what I needed at the time. The Amiga, as swell a design as it might have been, was too expensive to be a gamer (like the C64/128) and too outside the mainstream to be a viable competitor to the PC or Mac. And for almost two decades now, the Amiga fanboys have been wistfully stroking themselves to fond memories of Guru Meditations to realize that it was an overly complex design that was a business nightmare for its creators. Too expensive to build, too expensive to sell, margins sliced to the bone to make them "affordable." Visionary, we can debate, but absolute crap business sense. The only mid-to-long-term good that came out of the Amiga project was Ensoniq. The ESQ-1, SQ-80 and VFX-SD did more to change the synth world than the Amiga did to revolutionize personal computing.

Re:More like a tragedy

[mdwh2]

The Amiga, as swell a design as it might have been, was too expensive to be a gamer (like the C64/128) and too outside the mainstream to be a viable competitor to the PC or Mac. And for almost two decades now, the Amiga fanboys have been wistfully stroking themselves to fond memories of Guru Meditations to realize that it was an overly complex design that was a business nightmare for its creators. Too expensive to build, too expensive to sell, margins sliced to the bone to make them "affordable." Visionary, we can debate, but absolute crap business sense.

Maybe in the US, but the Amiga sold well in Europe, becoming the mainstream home computer for a time. PCs and Macs sold more in raw numbers, but then the business market was much bigger than the home market back then (and Macs were only used in niche markets like DTP).

I'm not sure what you mean by "too expensive" - the high end models perhaps, but the low end models were far cheaper than PCs or Macs (which probably contributed to their popularity for home machines; it was Macs that were more overly expensive), and they were profitable. Commodore were bad at marketing, but I'm not sure that calling a platform that lasts 9 years - and then several years beyond that with no parent company - is "absolute crap business sense" in any meaningful sense.

In what sense was the design "overly complex"?

Re:More like a tragedy

[fireylord]

. . .and here i was thinking it was Commodore's strategic mistake in marketing the amiga primarily to the home user market instead of going after the business market that cost them the farm.

Re:More like a tragedy

[updog]

They were actually built by Commodore. I did a 6-month internship at Commodore's headquarters in West Chester, PA. I still have one of their 286 motherboards, and there's a Commodore name and logo silkscreened on the motherboard.

The thing I remember most about working there, interestingly, was the cigarette smoke. Everyone had these giant ash trays on their desk, and would chainsmoke like crazy as they worked. This was back in '92, but even at that time, I thought it was odd to be smoking at work. I'm sure glad things have changed - I didn't enjoy going home, reeking like stale smoke!!

Re:More like a tragedy

[Dogtanian]

My God, were they still *selling* the 286s in 1992?

I'm surprised they were still allowed to smoke at work even in '92 (probably because they weren't based in California or New York...)

Modder's Wet Dream

[wolff000]

I can see the awesome retro mods dancing through my head already. Ah if only they weren't going to cost a small fortune. I'm not basing price on anything other than most "gaming" PCs are overpriced. I would pick one up just to tear it apart and rebuild it. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. This does bring back some great memories of playing with Commodores when I was a kid. Boot up wait half an hour, load game wait half an hour, and then play till your eyes bleed.

Re:Modder's Wet Dream

[israel_zayas]

[quote]I can see the awesome retro mods dancing through my head already... [/quote]

Already done with a Mini-itx pc. Nice machine if it could get mass produced, but???

Wishfull thinking!

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/c64/

Re:Modder's Wet Dream

[wolff000]

I know but using actual Commodore components in a Commodore case makes the mod so much cooler. I guess I'm a bigger geek than I thought.

yes but...

[indy_Muad'Dib]

whens the VIC20 coming out?

radar rat race, retro gaming at its finest.

The Fraud that is Branding

[CharAznable]

Paying money for the right to slap a Commodore logo on a completely average PC does not a Commodore make. You would have to be an idiot to infer some sort of association with the legendary Commodore.
In any case, it's not a Commodore unless I can LOAD"$",8,1

2 cents

[DragonTHC]

a day late and a dollar short

Commodore made x86 machines in the 80s & 90s

[zsazsa]

In the 80s and 90s, Commodore made a number of 8088/8086, 286, and 386 desktops and laptops!

There's also the bizarre "Commodore 64" Internet Computer.

So this use of the Commodore brand isn't completely ridiculous, just a little bit ridiculous.

Branding! What jolly fun

[smchris]

Me, I'm waiting for the Harley PC and Jack Daniel's monitor

Got just one question.

[Chris Mattern]

Does it run M.U.L.E. or Archon? Nope? Well, then, don't think I'm interested.

Chris Mattern

Re:Got just one question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of those games are excellent. I also like Barbarian. I just need a joystick for my emulator.

Re:Got just one question.

[zifn4b]

Can't wait to read this on my new Commodore gaming PC:

"Mischievous glak elves broke into your storage shed and stole half your food."

Does it come with emulators

[davidwr]

If it's got the Commodore name on it I expect it to come with emulators for the C64 and other historical machines, and at least a couple cool games for each emulator.

"You've come a long way, baby."

I'll only buy it if this is how you start games...

[SalaciousPucker]

LOAD "*",8 ,1

Beats making pie plates

[Micklewhite]

I heard after Commodore was nearly bankrupt in 1989 they fell back on their dwindling stocks in a pie plate factory. Since then they managed to build up some equity. It was one of those touching stories where a bunch of comuter engineers had to learn how to make pie plates.. which from what I understand is putting a piece of sheet metal in a stamper and pushing a button. Needless to say they prevailed. It's good to see they're back. Though it begs the question if they're going to apply any of their pie plate knowledge to their new computers.. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Will Buy If

[Physician]

I will buy this if they make an optional C64 Disc Drive available and/or a way to plug in cartridges. If it's just slapping a Commodore sticker on a regular PC, then no.

C=

[koutkeu]

SYS 64738

They'll sell millions!

[riskeetee]

It's the only machine certified to run Duke Nukem Forever!

I keep saying this to people...shrink it to a PDA.

[NRAdude]

It would be great to have a suitcase full of legacy architectures with an abstraction to a modern data storage peripheral. This would allow programmers to learn the strengths on those prior architectures as well as impress them to write flexible code that should scale to all and maybe the new ones. Well, at-least it sounded like a good idea until the leading monopolist gives everyone the impression that their hardware and an emulator is the better solution. However, in it all, a diverse economy with an independent people is the cause behind all these different products. Intel has done some verry anti-competitive and outright tresspass to hold the market as it does, and the same is to Microsoft. So, if we scrap the idea of every prior hardware just shrunk into a hand-held console, then why not have them each integrated for a purpose such as Commodore-64 coffee-maker or a small DEC VAX pool-cleaner or the like. That would be somthing unusual.

Sweet!

[smackt4rd]

So is it going to take 20 min to load a game like the old C64?

All this talk about retro gaming and...

[j.sanchez1]

No one mentions the greatest game ever to grace the C64: Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Re:Commodore 64(bit)

[swerk]

Hell yeah I'd like a Commodore 64(bit)! :^)

If they're gonna use the Commodore name though, I hope they take it halfway seriously. There should be preinstalled an emulator and as much software as copyright issues allow, to play nice with those of us with nostalgia for the old Commodores.

More importantly though, it should come with a useful programming language whose learning curve isn't too steep. BASIC has become obsolete, but when I think Commodore, I think typing in code from the back of magazines. Python or something of that nature should be easily accessible right out of the box, letting users tinker and do their own thing on the machine. Writing Javascript in Notepad to be run in IE doesn't count; a computer should come with a way to write real programs, and a machine called Commodore would be the perfect place to start the trend.

sombody buy the name and let it rest!

[Danathar]

If I had the money I'd buy the name and give it to Jack Tramiel as a gift.

The name has no more value to just about anybody as far as profit is concerned. Maybe somebody could put together a (Buy Commodore) campaign. The goal being to get the trademark and the name and put it to rest. Once and for all.

Bok! Bok! Bok!

[jo42]

Nice to see they are still using the chickenhead logo...

Some Amiga users are proud

[Krishnoid]

At least this guy still is, and he moved over to the shiny white side years ago.

ZX Spectrum rules, C64 sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to join the tradicional annual Comp.Sys.Sinclair vs. Comp.Sys.CBM flamewar at your local USENET server...

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

boy, you sure do need some karma...

This isnt commodore

[nurb432]

Its just the trademarked name, slapped on 'yet another clone pc'.

Return of the zombie brand names

[AndroidCat]

Souless undead, returned from the grave to suck out people's brains and wallets.

Linux/UNIX on the C=64

[Terminus32]

It exists: it's called LUnix, seems pretty interesting!

Commodore Gaming Info

[Anonymous Coward]

For Commodore Gaming's website:

http://www.commodoregaming.com/

Note: At this point in time the above displays a countdown only.

Google search for Commodore Gaming's website:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acommod oregaming.com&btnG=Search&meta=

Note: click cached-links only or you get redirected to the countdown. If you then want to follow a link on the cached page, Google the link and click the cached link or you'll get the countdown.

For example, the following Google search yields a link to Commodore Gaming's "About Us" page...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acommod oregaming.com+About%2Bus.aspx&btnG=Search

For images of the Commodore Gaming Tower:

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=c ommodore+%22gaming+tower%22&btnG=Search

This is probably the best of those images...

http://www.pdatoday.com/images/uploads/CommodoreGa mingTower.jpg

Some Links...

[tanakan]

http://news.com.com/Is+Commodore+poised+for+a+come back/2100-1041_3-5998732.html

http://www.yeahronimo.com/

What processor will it use? A Rockwell?

[KatchooNJ]

Gee, I wonder if it still will use the Rockwell MOS 6502 microprocessor with 1MHz and 64k RAM! That would ROCK SO HARD! They could call it the Commodore 64. w00t!

heh

REDO FROM START?

[mindesign]

(Y/N)

obligatory :)

Beowulf Clusters?

[glittalogik]

Imagine that...

*ducks*

If you think that's bad...

[hallux-s]

... just try to figure out what the people now providing your telephone service, cable service, and cellphone service were called even two weeks ago.

"Xingular, the new AT&Bell-SouthWest, NexSprint, Virgin-Exxon-Chevron-Mobile Telephone Company"

~Hal

Every retro machine you can think of.

[blakespot]

My machines bring all the boys to the yard.

http://pix.blakespot.com/computers/

:-) blakespot

Re:I'll only buy it if this is how you start games

[Farmer Tim]

LOAD "*",8 ,1

You'll find it in the Start menu, but it's just a shortcut to Minesweeper.

Maybe Not

[umbrellasd]

My history was, C64->Apple IIe->Intellivision->Coleco->Mac SE->Nintendo->286->386->home built Pentium I, 2, 3, 4->home built...You know, I'd rather be having sex right now--oh snap, this is a much better way to make things at home!->iMac.

Re:Branding! What jolly fun

[Emetophobe]

I've been waiting for the Realdoll.com computer with specialized "input slots".

Gargoyle supports Z Machine, dur hey

[MS-06FZ]

Uh, yeah. I did read the webpage. Of course, Gargoyle has Z-Machine support... why...? Because it bundles the Frotz engine.

I was just saying that if you want to talk about Frotz, you're talking about a package that's primarily the engine. The UIs applied to the Frotz ports aren't quite an "afterthought" but nor are they the main focus of the project. Gargoyle is a project that is all about the UI - and it looks quite appealing. I'm just saying, give credit where it's due - Frotz gets the job done. Gargoyle just helps make it pretty.

(And as a side note - if you download Zork, then try to run its DAT file in Gargoyle, Gargoyle assumes it's an Advsys file and then says it's not valid... You need to rename the ZORK1.DAT to Zork1.z3 for it to work... They really ought to get some file magic going there...)

I'll bet half of you...

[tfiedler]

have never even seen the original commodore much less used one.. maybe one or two of you might have seen an Amiga but the rest of you are just lemurs, or lemmings or whatever me-too critter is popular these days.

Time is money friend...

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I agree with

"Many will have got bored of tweaking and now be happy to buy a prebuilt machine -- sacrificing power and flexibility for convenience."

Time = money, and While I do build my own systems, it's only because It gives me better performance / dollar. I am a little scarce on the later.

I don't even build machines for my side-clients anymore. (I used to all the time) If they want the BEST, and have no limit, then yeah, but most people who need to save $ just go to He!!.com/outlet and get whatever they need.

Most good gamers, (with the exception of one spoiled brat I recently ran into) would build their own machines.

Usually what I do with high class machine build requests is this: REFUSE & REDIRECT.

The only exception is if your a gamer, reside in South Western WA, are serious about having the best machine money can buy at that time, and are patient through the build process... Then I say maybe, just so I can work with cutting edge tech.

The reason is because
I only charge 10% over cost to build top of the line rigs. You get all hardware reciepts and a 1 Year labor warranty from me. OS will be included in the base price.

But even w/ a 10% profit (which equates to about ~10$/hr after Configuration time, build time, custom cabling, software install, burn-in, tweaking, , etc..) I just can't compete w/ the big guys on price anymore.

The customers who go this route are usually very rich, and doubly rare, and allways end up happy with their machine.

(I do about 1 customer / year who is truly serious and not just a looky loo)