Commodore 64 Primed For a Comeback In June

angry tapir writes "The Commodore 64 is getting a makeover, with a new design and some of the latest computing technologies, as the brand gets primed for a comeback. The revamped computer will be available through the Commodore USA online store, which is set to open June 1. The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel's 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities."

Comments

Clear Hoax

[1karmik1]

Look. at. the. site. It's a chinese 3rd rate gadget imitator wet dream. There is a pseudo-configuration page vaguely mimicking Dell's one with no functionality. No logo. No design. and GOD that heinous thing in the pictures looks CLUNKY and CHEAP. This is a hoax. /. have seen several in the past years tied to the good old C64. I'm very surprised it made the front page :(

Re:Clear Hoax

[postbigbang]

Sustaining six connections per minute is all a C64 can do. No wonder it's slashdotted.

Re:Clear Hoax

[hob42]

Wouldn't say it's a hoax... This keyboard PC has been on the market for years. This company sells it as the ZPC (for Zero-footprint PC).

Frankly, I wondered why it took so long for someone to decide to rebadge one as a Commodore. It was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it.

Re:Clear Hoax

[rayd75]

I suspect that you had no first-hand experience with the 64, or that you experience was well after its heyday. When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well. Remember, we are talking about a machine that occupied store shelves unchanged (save for cosmetic and cost reductions) for over a decade. By the time home users of any machine were considering hard drives, the C64's day was long-since over. At launch, its graphics were among the top available and its sound capabilities blew absolutely everything in the consumer market out of the water. Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.

Re:Clear Hoax

[idontgno]

It really is rather pathetic -- they're looking for people to only purchase this slapped together crap for nostalgia's sake.

In that case, other than the nostalgia angle, I think they've captured the fundamental essence of Commodore marketing perfectly.

-- idontgno, a still-frustrated-after-all-these-years Amiga partisan

Re:Clear Hoax

[NiceGeek]

Oh christ..did we run in to a rip in the fabric of space/time? We're having a C64/AppleII/Atari 400/800 flamewar?

Re:Clear Hoax

[JWSmythe]

Don't get too impressed with yourself. You missed the obvious part. Look at the filename.

    http://www.commodoreusa.net/i//zpc9100_full.jpg

    It's over 3 years old, and has nothing to do with Commodore, except someone set up a crappy site with the name on it to get the Commodore fans all wound up.

    A 2007 article about the ZPC9100

    Or the real manufacturer site

    I'm not surprised it was shot with an expensive camera, the *REAL* manufacturer had those done by a professional, I'm sure.

    Any of the rest of the crap in the summary or on their site can be assumed to be absolute BS. But hey, for those interested I have a 16 core 4THz machine with 32TB RAM that's the size of a matchhead. It runs off of a patented method for gathering and storing static electricity from the air, and interfaces to all external devices (display, HID, etc) wirelessly. I'll start selling them for $1,950,000. If I sell one I can move to a nice island. If I sell 1000 I'll buy the island. Err, I mean, ummm, we'll reinvest in the company to make our products even better. :)

64-bit?!

[Anonymous Coward]

with Intel's 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities

Then it's not a Commodore 64, it's just a modern product trying to cash in on the famous name.

Re:64-bit?!

[bjourne]

Whew! Thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding for us. I mean, I don't think I was alone in thinking that a computer with an Intel 64-bit quad-core cpu was a Commodore 64. Internet needs more people like you to stop people from trying to cash in on famous names from spreading their disinformation!

Re:64-bit?!

[RulerOf]

Bonus points to the first person that can rip an mp3/flac from an old cassette and get the program to load.

Has anyone ever done that? Come to think of it, since MP3 discards audio outside of human hearing ranges, would it even work? I suppose that since (usually by limiting to 9600bps or so) you can get a fax machine to work on a VoIP line, this could work as well though.

That'd be really neat/useless, feeding MP3 files to a c64 emulator to load applications. :D

Re:64-bit?!

[ehrichweiss]

Have you forgotten that cassette tapes only recorded *within* human hearing ranges?

A Commodore In Name Only

[rsmith-mac]

TFA says it's an Intel x86 based machine running Windows. The only thing Commodore about this thing is that it's built in to an oversized PC-style keyboard, and even that's a stretch. This is a Commodore in name only.

I already have one

[dmgxmichael]

Seriously! I pulled the sticker off my old Commodore 64 this morning and put it on my computer. Now it too is a commodore 64!

Not really a comeback

[zr-rifle]

... but a rebranding that - put simply - insults the name of the good old '64.

Seriously: what does this have to do with the old 8bit microcomputer?

• Can I peek or poke the memory?
• Can I play Turrican and Hawkeye on it?
• Does it have a SID?
• Does it even read my old datassettes?

• And yes... it does run Linux, sadly...
  
  Those wishing to a Commodore 64 should look elsewhere (or Ellsworth - haha, lame I know...)

A computer of rank!

[xerent_sweden]

Looks like the new commodore is a computer of rank, as it's been through major revisions in general. I wonder what kernel it will incorporalte.

Upgrades?

[wjousts]

From the commodoreusa website:

There’s nothing like it. At just 17.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer.

So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit. All the upgrade inconvenience of a laptop with none of the advantages.

Re:Upgrades?

[dingen]

So, in other words, it's a desktop that will be a colossal PITA upgrade and will probably use non-standard parts to get everything to fit.

Hmm... now that you put it that way, it kinda does resemble the original C64 after all.

Are they using original C64s...

[AC-x]

... to host their website?

The C64, an eulogy

[zr-rifle]

Since it will be some time before I get to see the good old C64 mentioned on the Slashdot first page, I'd like to say that Jack Tramiel is the unsung hero of the personal computer, even more than Steve Jobs in this regard. He advocated a computer 'for the classes, not for the masses'. By driving down the retail price and selling the C64 in toy stores and Walmart, he created a broader market and introduced a lot of low-to-middle class kids, who could not afford the Apple II or the Macintosh, to the joys of computing.

By sparking the low-cost microcomputer revolution of the eighties, he prepared a whole generation to the modern digital age.

Jack Tramiel's Wikipedia entry.

Re:The C64, an eulogy

[Delusion_]

Jack Tramiel may be an unsung hero of the personal computer, but he also had the dubious distinction of playing key roles in the destruction of two of the most important computer companies of the era, Commodore and later, Atari.

Tramiel - and more importantly, his engineers - is often left out in the modern retelling of the personal computer story, which is often presented as if everything that wasn't Intel, Microsoft, and Apple was some sort of bizarre tangental experiment that really didn't matter. Sadly, his management style was typical of the small-minded businessman, who treated his company as a fief and a playground for his personal grudges.

I often wonder how the Amiga would have fared long-term if a more competently-managed company than Commodore had bought it.

Re:Riding the back of nostalgia.

[plague3106]

And this is why your generation sucks at programming.

Nope, not a commodore

[damn_registrars]

If it doesn't boot to BASIC, and require

load "*",8,1

to start software, it isn't commodore 64. Case closed.

Re:Pick your OS flavor?

[natehoy]

Lawyers.

Re:Riding the back of nostalgia.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I see no reason for this particular outfit to succeed(keyboard computers are a niche, the C64 name isn't worth paying any extra for, Asus's oddball EEEboard will be out real soon now, etc.); but, the product itself has been around for some years now, which suggests that it is still making money, albeit in a niche.

Unless the latest outfit wearing a mask made from Commodore's flayed face is simply stealing clip art, what they are selling is a simple rebadge of Cybernet's "ZPC". Those things have been around at least since the P4 was the face of "intel inside" possibly earlier. Unless Cybernet is an ass about small quantities or something, there is absolutely no reason to order from some fly-by-night rebadge house; but the product is real enough, and presumably has enough of a niche(probably space constrained POS applications and similar) to justify the engineering costs of shoving a laptop motherboard into a keyboard housing for the past few generations of x86 hardware.

Re:Riding the back of nostalgia.

[TheCycoONE]

Your post makes me sad on two levels; first that at 25 I'm no longer part of the younger generation (nearly everyone my age has seen/used a C64 at least in their early grades of primary school); and secondly because there are poor people out there who have never had a chance to use one.

Limited pfft: POKE, PEEK, and 64k is all anyone will ever need.

What it really is

[bickerdyke]

Casemod.

nothing more, nothing less. a Wintel-PC with funny hat.

This is simply a Cybernet ZPC-GX31 system

[HonestButCurious]

Circa March 2008:
http://www.cybernetman.com/en/products/zero-footprint-pc/zpc-gx31.cfm
They even reused the stock footage.
Should cost at least $700, according to Gizmodo Australia:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/03/cybernet_zpcgx31_a_pc_in_a_keyboardsized_case-2/

Re:Riding the back of nostalgia.

[Linker3000]

Yeah, but us C64 programmers could, like, totally suck in only 39K of RAM - this generation needs at least 512MB just to load up suckage.dll

It claims OS X support?

[benwiggy]

If you go to the company's website, on the link in the article, they claim it will run OS X. Interesting to see how quickly Apple's lawyers move in for the kill

Oh, and I submitted this story to Slashdot a week ago. Tsk.

Not hoax, but rebranding of existing product.

[Ch_Omega]

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the exact same product as the Zero Footprint PC, exept, maybe they put a Commodore C= Sticker on it, and market it as a new Commodore 64.

Seriously, compare these two pictures: Zero Footprint PC and "new" Commodore 64. Looks similar?