Slashdot Mirror
Commodore PET Smartphone Comes Loaded With C64 and Amiga Emulators
Mickeycaskill writes: Commodore is launching an Android-powered smartphone that lets 1980s gaming fans play their favourite retro titles. It runs a custom version of Android 5.0 Lollipop and lets you play both old Commodore 64 and Amiga games with its preinstalled VICE C64 and Uae4All2-SDL Amiga emulators. Configurations vary between 2GB and 3GB of RAM and 16GB or 32GB of storage, with a 5.5 inch display and 1.7GHz processor included in all versions. The Catch? It's only available in France, Germany, Italy and Poland to begin with, but other markets are set to follow.
The 80's called and want their mobile phones back.
Is there still a company called Commodore which owns this stuff? I assumed it was long since dead and gone.
Honestly, sell it as an app .. I'm sure you don't need a custom Android to emulate a frigging C64 on a modern smart phone.
At least, I sure as hell hope a 1.7 GHz "octa-core" processor is up to that task. I mean, we're talking 35+ year old technology for crying out loud.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
the screen is stupidly large. Guess it will work for gaming though.
*cough* Atari *cough*
Oh, man. I almost want one of these. I learned to code on a C-64 back in Jr. High and High School.
You kids get off my lawn.
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music
Does it run the Andromeda Strain Demo?
Android Police did some digging and (ignoring the fact that the Commodore name is currently owned by the creditors of Asiarim Corp - who created a new company called C= and have done nothing more than make a website for it back in 2013) it looks to be a carbon copy of the Orgtec WaPhone.
On the upside, it does have some Amiga emulators loaded onto the phone - but you can easily get them from Google Play yourself.
TL;DR? It's unlikely to be Commodore, its a heavily marked up skinned phone and uses the MediaTek MT6752 chip - so you should probably keep away.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I remember it as more like "Step 4. Wait 37 minutes for it to fail, Step 5. Try again."
I certainly do NOT miss loading stuff from cassette tape.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Commodore, as a company, has not existed for a very, very long time. This is simply the product of companies buying or licensing the trademarks. And no, it isn't meant as a business for the long term. It's simply cashing in on the trademark's nostalgic value while it still has some value.
As an aside, this isn't the first Commodore phone. If I recall correctly, they were selling office equipment before they were a computer manufacturer. One of their products was a rotary phone.
The Commodore PET was my old high school's hardware. Toward my senior year we even had CBMs with external floppy and hard drives. Woo hoo!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Perhaps this will prompt Apple to add an Apple II Emulator to iOS 9. Should then open up the Apple Store to all that great Apple II software.
3 GB of ram is 2 GB and 1,016 MB more RAM than I need for anything I run on my Amiga. (That's presuming 2 MB of CHIP RAM separate from the Fast RAM.)
Heck, with that much RAM I could multitask every title and application I ever had. *glances over at rack of 3.5" floppies in bookcase
From the article, "Commodore, best known for its Commodore 64 games console,..."
WTF.
We see something announced every year or so that will be released under some new regurgitation of the Commodore name. Remember those various Commodore or Amiga desktops that were going to run Intel i7 CPUs? We've seen plenty of other similar products as well. They never make it to mass market for various reasons. It might be time to let that name finally go away for real; we don't try to resurrect the Hudson or Packard car manufacturing names and we do just fine without them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Wouldn't be an Amiga emulator without them.
How could a PET phone not include a PET emulator?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This was a PET, the ,1,1 is irrelevant, relocating LOAD option was introduced in the VIC-20. There is a process to relocate programs from the VIC or 64 to the start of BASIC on the PET:
http://www.portcommodore.com/d...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I've been contracted to replace an older system. :)
The article refers to a "Commodore 64 games console." There's no such thing. The C64 was a fully user-programmable computer which also played games. The link in the article for "Commodore 64 games console" brings you to an article about a totally unrelated computer, the ZX Spectrum. Nerd rage engaged.
I used to have a Commodore Vic-Modem (300bps) that came with a rotary-dial phone that had the Commodore name printed on the front of it. The phone was actually made by Norhern Telecom, so it wasn't an actual Commodore-manufactured phone.
To use that modem you dialed the number on the telephone and then flipped a switch to engage the modem.
I just now found a picture of that setup here: http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics...
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Sorry, but I'm not interested. I'm a huge Commodore fanboy, but the logo isn't even in colour. If you're going to try to cash in on the trademark you bought, at least do it right.
I'll stick with running VICE and UAE on my openpandora, thanks. It has a keyboard, which makes it awesome at emulating computers with keyboards.
There's no point in Commodore releasing this "me-too" Android phone. Nobody is going to give two-flying rats, especially the people who remember what Commodore was before it fell into bankruptcy.
In the past year, the remaining enthusiasts have seen redesigned clone C64 motherboard (the Commodore "reloaded") and we've seen a successful kickstarter to mould new C64 cases - in new colours including transparent - which could be used to hold a C64 motherboard OR be used as a case for other computer projects (raspberry pis for example).
There are new storage devices for all the old kit that enthusiasts have made (the 1541U2, the Chameleon cartridge, SD2IEC), but Commodore had nothing to do with these at all.
This new "Commodore" who owns the rights has failed to do what other enthusiasts have had to pick up the mantle to do.... and none of these enthusiasts can use the Commodore logo because the new owners start getting all litigious. The new "Commodore" is just hoping to ride off the nostalgia that the original Commodore generated. Nothing more, nothing less.
If the new owners had half a brain, they'd be building raspberry pi-like devices and supporting the computer hobbiest segment of the market.
That's what Commodore was renowned for. Computers for the masses, and enough openness and simplicity so that the beginner could get down and dirty with machine language and the chips on the board.
Why the hell can't they just finish the C65 and give us something new to hack on? I'd spend money on that over an android phone.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The failed loading was basically due to the tape heads being misaligned.
And the woeful speed was also fixed by tape turbos... but again, took third parties to do it.
Also decent data compression wasn't widely used. Most of the data being saved was uncompressed.
With aligned heads, decent data compression, and fast tape turbos.... it became completely possibly to jam around 60 decent games onto a single C90 cassette. .... but by that time, the world had moved on.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
i'm not a fan of this particular endeavour. the brand is going to suffer as a result. ANYTHING with mediatek inside will not get its OS upgraded to another major version of android. mediatek is fickle like my wife during her period. one month they behave like a completely closed source company, only releasing binary version of android for manufacturers, the next month they sponsor XDA Devcon 14 and release source code for Android One devices, a month after that they once again completely ignore GPL.
in my experience, each chipset gets around 3 months of small updates, the few that got upgraded to lollipop were the ones released with kitkat when lollipop was already out and would otherwise have been unsellable. (and that's android 5.0 not 5.1)
apart from elephone and android one devices, there has never been a cyanogenmod for a mediatek device because there's simply no source to use. i fart in mediatek's general direction and shed a tear for commodore.
Commador PET phone? But they are only putting emulators on it for the C64 & the Amiga. What about the PET for crying out loud if you're going to call it a pet phone it needs to have a build in datacorda and a screen that weighs 7KG :D
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Since you get get these emulators for free or better ad free versions for $5, hardly seems worth buying a phone just for that feature. Other than that looks like any a countless number of other phones. If it had hardware keypad or gamepad then it might stand out from the noise.
Load "Phone",8,1
Loading Phone
Phone Ready
Run