Just to share some of the back-story on the c65-support vs MEGA65-support of the MEGA65 rom. Firstly, I was happy to see Bit Shifter's name on the rom chip 🙂 I take it as a good sign that c65 owners got some benefit from Bit Shifter's efforts 😄 I remember a time in the past, a few years back, when the MEGA65 discord community was discussing whether to focus on maintaining c65 support or focusing more on making use of the mega65's own capabilities. I think I remember Bit Shifter being very keen to make use of the mega65's hardware capabilities so that the rom could benefit from them, in both the saving of rom space (make the rom code smaller) and performance. (Up until that point, he had preserved a sense of c65-backward compatibility). He had held back from adding MEGA65-specific logic for quite a while, until things built up towards that discord conversation. I think by that point, at least batch1 of the MEGA65 was out in the wild, so it meant a larger community could benefit from those mega65-specific enhancements. On our discord, there were opinions moving in both directions, my gut feeling is that c65 owners would have preferred we keep assuring c65-compatibility, though many of the mega65 development team didn't own c65's, and a larger community of mega65 owners was taking shape, and so the decision was made to support the larger community that was growing. That being said, the mega65-project and Bit Shifter, did push forward the state of the c65 rom further, and that is still a good thing for c65 owners, as the label on Bo's rom chip shows. Could things be improved for c65-users? Potentially, though I feel like c65 owners would be the ones putting on their developer hats, cherry-picking parts of the latest rom they can benefit from, while omitting MEGA65-specific logic. Should MEGA65-developers of software consider c65 backwards compatibility? I guess it'll be up to each individual developer. I sense most will cater for the bigger MEGA65 audience. On the other hand, if a C65 developer wants to build a program and share it with the MEGA65 community, there's a good chance their work can be enjoyed by the MEGA65 community.
The MEGA dev guys are all really great, and I'm so thankful for their help in getting a less-buggy rom. Also, yea, your analysis of the 'biggest audience' situation is right-on, though I would also add that to even have a Chance at making C65 compatible software, they would probably want to downgrade their rom to something more like mine, and who would want to do that?
When it comes to audience size or the pleasure of a fixed, well established and explored platform, the 65s will go on having a hard time against the 64.
I have an even more rare prototype in my barn. I built prototypes for Commodore. Tom Hilltine was the head of R&D. I was given an NEC computer, like the TRS100, and a Commodore 64 and was told to take the display out and hook it up to the 64. The graphics of the 64 was about double the graphics of the display, so I put in a joy stick to move the window around so you could see the whole display. You could play games on it if you were fast at moving the joystick. They used it for a boardroom display and then gave it back to me.
There are way more super rare commodore prototypes out there. Like the early prototype C64 board labeled "VIC-40", which was listed on ebay years ago, but "disappeared" afterwards and was never seen again. And also theres the only existing single sided PCB from Commodore, the C16 prototype board Bill Herd mentioned in his videos. As far as i know this piece is on display in a german museum.
@@retr0mak161 Those are good picks for rare finds! I'd just add on the C= V364 computer, and my personal favorite, the DX-64, which is the rarest of all because it has never even been seen except for a grainy photo in a magazine. :)
You gotta admit: I admire his lack of enthusiasm with the topless image. I *HATE* when demosceners use clearly sexual images like that. Even in 2023, there's a lot of children who are interested in coding and pulling off incredible tricks on computers (look at the Raspberry Pi), but then you got sleazy people who put THAT on there, much to the disgust and anger of parents. It takes away the fun of the experience of checking out the incredible capabilities that are possible on the limited hardware. And for David to express mild disgust at the image shows How thoughtful he is to his audience, both the young and the old.
There IS an official C65 PSU and it's more common than you think. They obviously made lots of them in preparation for the C65 but when it was canned the PSU was re-purposed for the CD32. For anyone who owns a CD32 check the bottom of the PSU and you will see a sticker that says "PSU C65" ^_^
@@bozimmerman Probably depends on your country. I'm in a PAL region. Mine is rectangular and about the same size as the C64C PSU but black and has the later Commodore stickers with the barcode saying it's a C65 PSU.
@@chocolatelightningPerhaps because grammar is integral and essential to any written or spoken language? Whilst people will often understand what is being said, a small error or change can make a vast difference to the meaning of a sentence. That is why we have rules and conventions in any language. That's also why such great efforts are made by educators to instill these rules in to pupils. Imagine if lawyers, doctors, engineers and such like were so imprecise.
@@robertsteel3563 I bet you write code! I used to code and used CamelCaseCapitalisation a lot. So it's easy to make that type of mistake when writing normally! :)
$20,000 to $80,000! Wow. Very nice of Mr. Zimmermann to let you review it and show it to all of us that would never have the opportunity to see this machine
The 1571-II was introduced in the German Forum64, and you can build them, as Commodore would have brought it on the market, it is based on the C128DCR 1571 with the MOS 5710 chipset, you can build a 1570-II, 1571-II or 1571-II+ depending on the equipment. I built one to fit the 1541-II case with PC drive Chinon F502, and it works great.
@@Stoney3K is based of the C128DCR 1571 chipset and a narrower case (from the 1541-II (case)) I use this as 2 Drive in one 1571 ROM and ROM from 1541-II. The ROM from the 1571-II is DOS 3.1 and supports only double density, a high density ROM not available
It even has a German labeling. Stating "Funkentstört", which translates as "fitted with noise supression". So it should not interfere with Radio or TV broadcasts or other devices that use radiocommunication. DBP is the Deutsche Bundespost, German Federal Post, which was responsible for such tests and certifications at that time. It was a public administration and privatised in 1995 and splitted into several companies like the Telekom, Deutsche Post and the Postbank.
Ah, good old privatization! Gutting public institutions and ruining the lives of the proletariat since the nazis! No, seriously. The term "privatization" was coined in response to the shenanigans involving the nazi government (not the holocaust).
Most C65's i know of where made in Germany, and the prototypes where sold in Europe from magazine ads after Commodore had died (i remember the ads even.)
@@SwedishEmpire1700 Some people got their machines by dumpster diving. I guess that's how the VC40 prototype (barely documented early C64 concept) ended up in private posession before disappearing completely again.
This takes me back to happy days when between my friends and I we owned C64’s, a plus 4, C128, Amiga 500, Amiga 500+ & Amiga 600 a some stage or another. Great days!
I get such a big, dumb smile when I see a new video from The 8-Bit Guy in my subscription feed. Thanks, David, for making such an excellent channel. I can't wait to watch this one!
"I did find this one demo that um... Did show off the 256 colour graphics capabilities, unforutnately it's a picture of a topless woman so...." Best sentence ever in a technical breakdown of an old computer. ...Also we know what teens in the know were doing with these things back in the day now! lol Love the videos, always look forward to the next!
Fun fact: back in I think 1994 I was on a trade fair here in Germany with my parents and they sold C65 prototypes for around 480 USD (adjusted to current value). I always think about that when seeing these are sold for more than 25k USD - of course I didn't get one then 😉
I see the similarities to the C128 but then this machine may have had the same issue like the C128 with the software library. Most developers would have stuck with the C64 since it had a much bigger base. In the end it never came out and the focus laid on the Amiga which was IMHO a good decision.
Agreed. I imagine that while cool, most devs would have just focused on the 64. Amiga was a good direction for Commodore. Too bad they couldn't continue after 94 but at least we have amazing computers from them to still enjoy
I wouldn't completely agree with that. I think a lot of the reason the C128 didn't get a lot of support is because it didn't really add much for developers to think of it as a different development platform. The C65 would have been a clear upgrade in terms of capability compared to the C128's lack thereof. It also didn't really come off as anything other than just a C64 with more ram and some weird video peripheral most people weren't going to use. People largely just saw it as a C64 with more ram. To shift the market into thinking it's something new, you just have to sell it as a new platform that *happens* to support the old software. Remember, the expectation was that the new computer would still support their old software. This is why the Amiga had a hard time taking off, it didn't have a software base to stand on, and thus had to start from scratch. This is also why the IBM PC/Compatibles had a huge leg up, they already had an established library of software that would still receive some amount of support going forward. The real problem for this machine is that it just came far too late with no enough additional capabilities to justify its existence. The SNES would likely have been far cheaper if all you wanted was a game machine, and it had comparable/better graphics with a much more sophisticated sound chip. Or if you wanted to game and do business, just get a PC.
I am still convinced that if the cheapest base model Amigas had the expandability of an Apple II then it would have stood at least some fighting chance against the IBM PC. Without that expandability it was still "just a micro".
You might be right about software support, but I'm not sure. Remember, the 128 mode was not much better than C64 mode. Just more RAM. The rest of the hardware was identical. When the A1200 came out, it was supported immediately. Because it was better. As programmers we are always looking for new stuff. Musicians would have loved the dual SID. And graphic designers would suddenly get more colors than on the Amiga. We do new stuff when it contributes to more fun. Using 128 mode was not contributing to more fun. Also, remember, the 128 was a more expensive big brother to the 64. The 65 would have replaced the 64, at the same price point.
Thank you, David. (And thanks to Bo). 👍 You've done a fine job documenting the history and innards of this legendary machine. Since there is not much information on the net.
Thanks for your review! To understand the thinking behind the C65 you have to know that Commodore chose a completely different approach: Instead of including a whole C64 in the computer like in the C128 and thus giving nearly 100% compatibility Commodore tried to establish the C64 as a platform instead. A platform which the C65 was built on. So the C65 was technically a computer based on the ideas and principles of the C64 (with VIC and SID although there a two SIDs and a newer VIC) and taken to the next level (and thus having Amiga-like features which was at the time a must). The C64 "mode" was not a built in C64 like in the C128 but a C64-like preset (like memory locations, CPU speed, resolution, etc.) on the C65. So when entering the C64-mode with "GO64" you get a C65 with a memory mapping of the C64. But you are still on a C65 with all its capabilities. You can access the additional colors, CPU speed, etc, within the C64 mode, if you want to. The C64 mode would have been more of a layer to easily port your existing software to the new computer and to enhance it there. Only the second goal was C64 compatibility (which was a primary goal on the C128). The MEGA team did a wonderful job of finishing the C65 and bringing this great idea into the next century. They corrected many mistakes Commodore made (like the C65 expansion port, which is not compatible to the C64, on the MEGA65 it is compatible) and adjusted some things to todays standards (like HDMI instead of RF - the purpose is the same: to connect the computer to a normal TV set and todays TV sets are on HDMI). Since the MEGA65 is FPGA-based you can run the MEGA as a 100% compabile C65 if you want to (just boot into a C65 core). However the MEGA65 (with a faster CPU, an even better VIC and 4 SIDs) is still fulfilling the promise of Commodore by making a computer which understands the C64 as the start of a platform which can be build upon. Actually a lot like todays PCs or yesterdays Apple II computers. It's a shame that they didn't do this back in 1985 instead of the C128.
I do like the design aesthetic of the Commodore computers, post-breadbin designs. Like the Commodore 64C and Amiga series. As an owner of both the C64C and Amiga A500 and A600, I clearly remember they were far less 'yellow' when they were newly released and have obviously all become more so with age.
The bromium compounds in the plastic, there as flame retardant, slowly decompose, turning a brown color. There are plenty videos on retrobrighting, using hydrogen peroxide and UV light, to restore the original color..
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 a process which isnt full proof and requires repeating. And in the inbetween, its getting more yellow. you know what he meant.
Very interesting, Dave. I'd always been of the assumption that only pre-production mock-ups or fan projects with 3D printed cases existed - well done on finding this beauty!
All of the C65 machines were rough prototypes. There was never a fully finalised, production ready design, so what you see is really just a possible taste of what might have been. A few tweaks and changes could have made the final product very different. The C65 was another of CBM's poor decisions, alongside the C16, Plus 4, the C64 "games system", the Amiga 600, CD32 and arguably even the C128.
@@glassvial oh right if i recall he tried the modern psu trick of using a paper clip to turn it on, but on older psu's there's 120v running through the switch..
while not related to the video, i love your closed captions ironically you're one of the few youtubers i don't need captions for! these old computers are so neat, i love seeing how to worked with what they had
I find it odd that the 64C was for sale longer than the breadbin C64, and yet the majority of 64s being sold in the second hand market is the breadbin model. if it really is that sales tapered off that much during the 64C then it leaves me to wonder how it was profitable to continue to sell them.
Interesting from a British perspective, I feel like the 64C was more popular in the UK than the breadbin model. So perhaps, there are just more USA resellers of the breadbin model, where it may have been more popular? I only ever saw one breadbin model in the UK amongst all my friends and family. Whereas the successor was far more ubiquitous.
Keep in mind, the 64C is a "cost reduced" model, meaning there are way fewer chips than the breadbin, and the mainboard itself is smaller, and Commodore manufactured its own chips and improved its fabrication processes over time. So even with reduced sales they could still make a profit at this late in the game.
@@LeftoverBeefcake cost reduced or crippled. the custom chip that replaced a few others is a bitch to repair. better to take all other chips and put them on a new old board and add a replacement PLA etc.
I'm really glad to see upload, David. I love the channel! The last few days have been difficult and your videos are always educational AND fun! I'm thinking about getting into the C64 and Amiga because of your videos. Hopefully I can find some at decent prices
Once you consider the cost of a each of those two systems, and with either original acessories (storage medium, crt monitor, 9-pin joysticks) or modern add-ons (floppy emulator, video adapter and maybe one of the more advanced cartridges like the Ultimate II+) It gets quite expensive. The you might consider instead getting a MiSTer FPGA that runs both a C64 and an Amiga 1200 core + many more computers, consoles and arcade machines. The Ultimate64 from Gedion's logic would be my choice if all I wanted was the perfect C64, but they are out of stock now. Software emulators might also be right for you. The C64 'VICE' emulator is really great and the Amiga has a few, like 'Amiga Forever' and 'WinUAE'.
@@superviewerThank you for the suggestions! I think those would be a good way to go for now at least. If I truly love the systems, I can always look to buy one or both later. A MiSTer might be just the ticket. Thank you!
I always think its cool when someone opens up a C65 and I can see my dad's name (BILL) on the motherboard. He's now retired, and calls me every once in a while when he has computer or networking questions.
Just about nothing makes me as happy as seeing a new 8 bit guy video appear on TH-cam. I swear to you - David could talk about anything from window cleaning products to playground equipment and I’d be hooked.
It’s funny how the mythology of the C65 compares to the reality of the prototypes. I guess a lot of people had a somewhat romanticized version of what the future of the immortal C64 would become. That’s the cool part of living in this time with so many options for DIYers to explore other possible 8-bit futures of their favourite 8bit computers.
Topless woman on C64 screen: THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMPUTING!! (I remember the two-color image of Playboy playmate Roberta Vasquez that circulated among C64 users, but you had to turn the screen on its side to see it correctly.)
7:38 This is why it would've been better to import a PAL market CRT TV, as all the better brands supported NTSC video at least in monochrome since at least the mid 90s, even if not advertised on the TV. And they also had SCART so RGB was supported out of the box.
Always a super clean and very informative video😀. Thanks again David! I just played Ghosts 'n Goblins on my 64 with the 1084 RGB monitor. Regards from the Netherlands.
Aah, I feel like the slowness of the graphics example was due to Commodore's choice of using bitplanes for the graphics modes used by BASIC's drawing routines. I guess they were aspiring to do graphics like the Amiga, but this added more load on the cpu. My gut feeling is, if you want to see the speed-win, avoid bitplanes, and stick with the old-school c64-bitmap-graphic modes instead. That path will have it's own challenges too, as the c65 rom's drawing routines are hard-coded to work with bitplanes only, so at the very least you'd have to write your own line-drawing routine in assembly and call it from basic. Perhaps with that sorted, you could then see the speed win the 3.5 MHz speed ought to provide :)
@@arivaldarivald3212 It's definitely advantageous to have a blitter, though the C65's dma controller feels more like "almost a blitter" :-) I don't believe it had any special mechanism to assist with drawing lines or blitting onto blitplanes. If it did, then yeah, could take the win there. One other potential win could be the C65's DAT, think it was trying to translate x,y coords into an address in that c64 8x8 char block space. Maybe that might have assisted, though I don't think the rom makes any use of DAT either. I believe the C65 Zed Yago demo made use of it?
@@bruwin it's written either "shiffer" or "shitter" enlarged on my screen so.. I guess I'll take your word for it. So is that supposed to be a totally custom ROM or what?
The image would actually be 50 frames per second, as it is progressive scan. With interlaced you get 50 fields per second, where pairs of two fields (even scanlines and odd scanlines) make up a frame. So interlaced PAL would be 50 fields per second, and 25 frames per second. Most computers, including the C64, however, do not output an interlaced signal, so they output 50 frames per second, they have no concept of even/odd fields.
loved the commodore history playlist and learned a LOT abt commodore i didnt know (i didnt know anything btw) 😂and i just now realized that u always use a different tune for the outro (which is all around great designed. i love it) anyway, i wanted to thank u very much for ur effort and research on all of this. peace yo, stay chillin
good video. Now I can see why The 8-Bit Guy hasnt covered the Amiga 500 as it wasnt that popular in the USA. Here in the UK, the Amiga 500 was very popular competing against the Atari 520 (and its versions). The Amiga 500 wa svery popular in Germany too. not so sure about France or Italy.
I had the A500 and an Atari ST, at different times. Growing up in the UK it is a shock to me that the Amiga wasn’t popular in the USA. It’s my favorite computer of all time.
While watching this video I was also thinking what an amazing time it was with so much innovation. All sorts of variations in CPU chips, clock rates, and support circuitry in those days. :) BTW, at 15:18 jumper J3 is seen with the silkscreen text of NTSC beside it. You could try adding a jumper to it and see if the video output switches to NTSC format. Those games that may require NTSC video could be retested.
Given his history with prototypes, best not tell him to monkey with any jumpers in case there's an issue. There's a reason he didn't know about the PAL thing, and that's because he didn't do the appropriate research before opening the case.
Unfortunately, innovation without direction is a recipe for disaster, and CBM were masters of that particular recipe. There were simp,y too many independent and badly thought out projects, many of which would either compete with their own existing products, like the C65, or simply had no real market to fill, like the Plus/4 and C16. CBM weren't the only ones doing it, and even today, big names in the industry are making the same mistakes. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM and Apple have all fumbled wildly and dropped the ball at some point in recent history.
In Europe it would have sold by truck loads in 1990. The C64 was still selling quite strong, at half price of the Amiga. The C65 was cheaper than the Amiga to produce. I think it would have become a huge hit, and probably I would have stayed on the 8 bit line instead of switching to the Amiga. If it had come out in 1987 or 88, even better, but that was not possible due to the limited resources Commodore had. 1990 would have been possible, because it was finally ready for production when it got cancelled.
By the truck load when up against the consoles? I doubt it. Even the low-end Amiga machines were effectively sunk by the emergence of a new generation of consoles, and things like the Sega Master System were quite capable of competing against an enhanced C64 like this. And although people may insist that buyers were using the C64 and Amiga for other things, the gaming market was where the volume was.
@@paul_boddie the technical capabilities of a system do not directly translate to sales numbers. When I say that the C64 was a big seller, together with the Amiga 500, in Scandinavia in 1990, it's not something I think. It's something I know because it was my youth, I lived there, I was active in the demo scene and I worked part time at a small computer store. We got the machines by the pallet. And yes, most people used them to play games. Free games. Pirating was huge. You could buy a NES or SNES and afford a few games, or buy a C64 or an Amiga, and have unlimited numbers. Also, new games kept coming to the C64 until 1991. If the C65 had replaced the C64 in 1990, at the same price point, it would have sold a lot.
@@MaxQ10001 I don't disbelieve you that machines like the C64 sold well enough into the 1990s. I mean, Amstrad were also still selling various 8-bit models in probably healthy numbers at the start of the 1990s as well, including the tape-based ZX Spectrum +2. But I would have to ask what kind of pricing the C64 had to be able to sell by the pallet, as well as what software was being offered. Big retailers don't shift machines by appealing to piracy: Amstrad were able to keep on selling older models precisely because there was a glut of low-cost games, not because someone had some mates with a bunch of cracked games. And getting a presence at big retailers was crucial. It doesn't matter how many machines small stores shift if the competition is shifting orders of magnitude more units through the big retailers. There is also the matter of whether the C65 would have been able to launch at the right price point, which is as a budget machine priced to replace the already discounted C64. Commodore tried to appeal to the emerging console market with the C64GS at £99 which was a failure. Interestingly, in the UK, Amstrad released its own GX4000 console at the same time and at the same price, alongside other machines that were compatible and that might have broadened the market for enhanced titles alongside existing ones. That didn't work out either. The C65 (like Amstrads refreshed CPC models) would have avoided the usability issues of the C64GS, but it might have been a challenge to get the pricing low enough by including a disk drive. The budget-level ZX Spectrum +3 only got as cheap as around £200. Then there would have needed to be a commercial incentive to release software on disk, including new software taking advantage of the new features, as opposed to random "warez" peddlers copying other people's older games. Otherwise, they might as well have just kept on selling the C64. And I am very much aware that the low-end Amiga models did pretty well across the whole of western Europe, making people in Europe believe that they were somehow also very popular in the US. In practice, the European part of Commodore was probably shoring up the whole company in the end. But Commodore was stuggling to maintain volumes as the 1990s progressed and clearly trying to find a viable business strategy, hence all the different products they released that were not successful. And a substantial reason for that competitive hardship was the emergence of the likes of Sega who were making substantial inroads by 1990. Although you had to buy cartridges, there were probably healthy second-hand/pre-owned and rental markets already established in various countries. I guess we just see things differently, but I just don't see how Commodore would have been able to make the numbers add up.
@@paul_boddie I have read that the chip cost of the C65 was about the same as the C64. It had a higher BOM due to the disk drive, but a C65 would have been cheaper than the C64 with a drive but a few quid more expensive than a C64 with datasette. The big problem for Commodore I guess was that the graphics could be better than on the Amiga. With the optimized 6502, using 40-50% less clock cycles, and running at a higher clock, and with the included blitter, and 512 color capacity, many games would have looked better on the C65. The 68000 spent many clock cycles on some operations. The whole company was so mismanaged, the C65 should have been out in 88, and the A1200 in 89-90. But I still believe the C65 in 90 would have extended the rope they used to end themselves with, at least with a few meters. The 64GS was a catastrophy. I think we sold 4-5, and returned the rest. On one of the cartridges we got in, one if the games required you to press a key on the keyboard to start the game. No one had even tried to play it on the GS before release. That is saying a lot on how much energy got into that project. Had the GS used the C65 chipset with more colors and a blitter, it would have been a good competition for Nintendo and Sega. The only thing the C64 had going for it at that time was price. Cheap computer, "free" games. But, yeah, games were still being made. Can't remember the titles, but we got in new titles on a regular basis in 89-90.
@@MaxQ10001 I would hope that they might have been able to optimise not only the cost of the system with the disk drive but also the way the disk drive worked. Watching videos showing the classic Commodore drives loading software, and recalling complaints from back in the day, the disk solution for the C64 was an absolute joke compared to other systems. But I think that to give Commodore enough room below the Amiga, if launching such a product as late as 1990, it would have to be aiming for £150 at most. (Note that Amstrad's systems which were a bit more expensive came with monitors.) Maybe that price might have made it viable simply as a cost-optimised C64, which was probably well cost-optimised already, but whose disk drive had not been similarly cost-optimised and refined. That leads to the issue of whether it would have been worth enhancing the system or just pressing on with the C64. If the chipset enhancements could have been incorporated effectively for free, with no expectation that anyone would use them, then I suppose the C64 could have been retired in favour of the C65. However, Commodore really needed to be cultivating new opportunities, and this would have needed developers to be actively involved in releasing new, enhanced titles, growing this as a new platform. There was little prospect of that happening by then since the big developers had been shifting focus for quite some time already. And selling lots of units on the basis of old game availability was all very well, but it would never have produced the volumes that such low-margin products need to in order to boost the company's bottom line significantly. I found it interesting that Mr Murray talks about the Apple IIGS as a comparable product when it arrived much earlier, as he notes, and has a 16-bit CPU, not the 8-bit CPU of this model. Admittedly, the IIGS was expensive, as Apple products were, but I think that any such follow-up to the C64 needed to arrive quite a bit earlier, as you suggest. At that point, there might have been a bit more developer interest. It is also interesting that you note the 68000 needing more cycles for some of its instructions to complete, and Mr Murray appears to be under the impression that a fast 6502 is competitive with the Amiga. Amusingly, Amiga enthusiasts were prone to complain about such observations when made by users of other 6502-based platforms, and justifiably so. However, they also made much of the illegitimacy of instructions-per-second ratings, how the Amiga was unfairly portrayed against things like the ARM, and so on, when all along the ratings were using industry standard VAX-comparable performance measurements and had nothing to do with the actual instructions.
I bought a Commodore 64 when they first came out. The price was a bit deceptive since you couldn't do much without purchasing all the periferals, so it wasn't really a bargain. People were saying what are they going to do with all that memory.
of course mega 65 games won't work on the commodore 65. because there wasn't a commodore 65 made fully into production they don't have anything to go on
The 4510 is still an 8bit 65c02 compatible cpu with some enhancements to increase speed. It also includes an integrated MMU and two CIA's. It is not 16-bit.
It seems like every source covering this thing just keeps parroting the "16 bit" line based on the assumption that a machine like this would have *had* to have been based on the 65816, ala the IIgs. Strictly speaking there are *traces* of 16 bit-ishness on this CPU compared to the plain 6502; unlike it the stack can be relocated anywhere in the 16 bit address space, and they added 16 bit relative jumps and 16 bit inc/dec/shift operations. But if this makes this CPU "16 bit" then we should also probably be calling the 8080 and Z80 16 bit CPUs.
@@PaleozoicPCs Well, the introduction of the B register and the possibility of relocating what had been only "zero page", plus stack relocation and a global stack larger than a single page, only really allow the CPU to make use of a single 16-bit address space. As you note, that probably only brings it into line with other 8-bit CPUs. Contrast that with something like the Z8000 where individual segments each occupied a 16-bit address space, and we see the difference between what is still in practice an 8-bit CPU (the 65CE02) and a classic 16-bit CPU (the Z8000). All the arguments over the years about whether something is 16-bit or not tend to drag products into that category unjustifiably. In reality, the 16-bit category is pretty narrow and things like the 68000 are architecturally 32-bit, even if they have reduced addressing capabilities and data bus widths, largely for cost reasons.
@@paul_boddie yeah… I mean, the “bit count” that gets assigned to a CPU can be pretty arbitrary and there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to making the call; it is data bus width, register layout, some combination of those things, whatever. If you go by register width you can make a pretty good case for even the Intel 8080 being *kinda* 16 bit; its accumulator is 8 bits but there are a subset of operations that let you use the HL register pair as a pseudo-accumulator, and it supports a fair number of 16 bit operations, etc. Intel called it “8-bit” because that’s what it’s data bus width was, its code is byte aligned instead of word aligned, etc… but there are “16 bit” CPUs (like the 8086) that tolerate byte alignment, and then of course with the 8088 you had the trend of CPUs that have an “architecture” wider than their physical bus, so that wasn’t considered definitive anymore… etc. So, sure, it’s not really an easy call unless you’re restricting yourself to truly “definitive” 16-bitters like the PDP-11, TMS9900, Z8000, and so on. But, really, as already pointed out, unless you go with address bus width there is basically no amount of wishful thinking that gets the 4510 into the “16 bit” category. The stack pointer is bigger, but the indexes and accumulator are all still 8-bit and its extremely limited set of 16 bit data operations are limited to memory words. It’s still way less “16 bit” than most other common “8-bit” cpus. Someone really needs to expunge this misconception from C65 lore. It definitely would have made sense to use a 65816 derivative, but that’s not what they did.
The PAL signal output and the "english keyboard" displayed on screen make me think this C65 was somewhat planned for an european release (since the C64 sold well there, especially in the United Kingdom and Germany)
I think the biggest issue on this, given it's a PAL system, would be lack of datasette port. I have over 100 games, all on cassette, and that's not an odd story. I live in a rural area and I knew guys in double figures at school who used a C64 with datasette, and one single person who used a floppy drive, and even then he didn't have many games because all the game stores only stocked 8-bit games on cassette, with floppy disk games being pretty much limited to Amiga and Atari ST. Given they were trying to seemingly sell it on a "get a better machine and play all your old games!" basis, it wouldn't've worked.
While that is partly true, I'm pretty sure that Europe had widely adopted floppy drives by 1990... Personally I certainly had, as my friends. But I also had a bunch of old cassettes as well. So yeah.
@@joojoojeejee6058 Nope. Even up to the end in 1992, the cast majority of C64 games in Boots or Dixons were cassette. They would only carry maybe 1 or 2 titles on floppy, whilst having entire racks dedicated to tape. If you wanted floppy games, the drive was so rare if you wanted more than just say, Ultima 4, you'd have to mail order them. The big issue was the floppy drive and system cost more than an Atari ST, and later the A600, so the only people left buying C64 games were people who couldn't afford such luxury as floppy drives.
@@fattomandeibu Ok, so maybe Finland was a bit different then. But many C64 owners certainly had floppy drives by the turn of the decade and floppy titles were readily available in stores. And there were 3rd party floppy drives available, which were significantly cheaper than original Commodore drives. Quite affortable. One such drive was "Oceanic OC-118N". It was basically half the price of a Commodore drive (or less).
@@joojoojeejee6058I would say in Britain the Commodore floppy's were never widely adopted and the cassette always remained the primary storage media. Probably a strong factor in this was the strong UK indie development market that was quite distinct to the US market and it was cheaper for the independent developers to manufacture cassettes than discs. The Amiga using floppies was quite novel.
It's absolutely wild to me that in 1990 someone was like "We should make a slightly improved version of a computer that launched in 1982" and a project like that could actually get greenlit. I know the stories of the later days of Commodore are legendary (i.e. the story of the disk drive thrown with great force into a sheetrock wall and left there for posterity) but it's wild to me that even after all these years I thought I'd heard it all, never having known they had a "C65" product in the works, let alone with actual prototypes in the wild. Those really were the wild west days of computing. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go back and marathon season 1 of "Halt And Catch Fire".
Yeah, it does kind of seem like: "Hey, none of these microcomputer projects are catching on like wildfire, like the C64 did. Maybe we just need.... _another microcomputer project_ to fix that. Just to be safe, let's base it off a 10-year-old design." ... Whut? I mean, sure, there are no bad ideas when brainstorming. But maybe that one was.
Commodore had the weirdest product line up of all time. Instead of iterating with better and better systems they were obsessed with just coming up with different combinations of the same parts to see if people would bite.
In 1990 the Commodore 64 was still selling reasonably well in Europe, I just looked in the 1990 Argos Catalogue and in the "Video Games" section they had the C64 Light Fantastic Pack complete with Cassette Deck, Light Gun, and ten Games for £159. Compare that to the NES at £95 which only came with one game. Two other things I notice are: i) Most of the other products on the page are those educational computers with a tiny LCD display and names like IQ Builder ii) They have the C64 User Manual prominently displayed implying that buying one will turn your child into an IT expert (which had actually been true in the 80s). I'm surprised that the Amiga wasn't in that Catalogue but I guess the price tag was just too high. I guess Commodore were toying with the idea of making a disc drive based computer that the average Argos customer could actually afford.
The c64 gs console has to be the oddest machine they released. No way of adding a keyboard or tape/disk drive and no enhancements whatsoever along with expensive cartridge games that were exactly the same as the cheap tape/disk versions and could be plugged into any c64. Iirc they sold so poorly that the unsold ones were stripped down and the motherboards used in regular c64c`s. I remember seeing one displayed next to megadrives, master systems and Amigas, it looked so outdated and cost more than the far superior master system. It only had about 10 games in its very short shelf life. Bizzare business decision, a consolised cartridge based Amiga would have made more sense.
@@MrDuncl Respect for the Argos catalogue reference! In the Autumn/Winter 1990/1991 catalogue, it seems to be the C64C versus the NES and the Atari 7800, but in the Spring/Summer 1990 catalogue, it is just the NES versus the Atari XE 4001 (which is, I guess, the XEGS). Things developed quite rapidly and in the Autumn/Winter 1991/1992 catalogue, there are the NES, Gameboy and Sega Master System II, all well under £100, up against the C64 minus that lightgun at £99. I think that Argos had long been sticking to the toy end of the computer market at that point. Back in 1983/1984, you can find the VIC-20 and TI-99/4A, and in 1984/1985 it was the Atari 600XL versus the ZX Spectrum, C64 (at £199), and Atari CX2600. But by 1985/1986 they had dropped computers, selling only the Atari 2600, and seem to have stuck to "electronic games" thereafter. You would probably have to look into pricing and availability of consoles at retailers like Currys and Dixons, but it is quite clear that the C64 and any successor would have to be at the budget end of the market and would be up against very strong competition from Nintendo and Sega. It is interesting that the 1991/1992 catalogue features the second generation Master System, with the first one having been around for a while. Argos probably realised that they had missed out first time around. Competing with the likes of Sega in that category would have been increasingly brutal for Commodore.
I remember pictures of that computer in the german "64'er" magazine. Reading through the specs i thought it would be a C=128 on steroids and i so wanted one. My final 128-DB Rig was nice, with 2 1581, an additional 1571, REU256 and tons of accessories. I did spend nights and nights on that thing programming hilariously useless stuff. If the C=65 would have been released i would still be coding useless stuff to this day 😀
@@bozimmerman Na, i actually scored all those devices when people moved to Amigas and IBMs. The SuperCPU and the CMD Harddrive where on my wishlist though. Most devices i got for cheap with little defects like broken solder joints.
If Commodore had released something like the C65 back in 85 instead of the Plus/4, C16 and C128, then I'm sure it would've been a huge success and most C64 owners would have bought one.
@@Okurka. The Amiga 1000 had a 3.5" floppy drive when it was released back in 1985. Also you could just hook up your old 1541 drive to the C65 and continue to use 5.25" disks.
the burning question is which computer is the best envisionment of a post C64 successor? c128 c65 X16 Putting aside that the X16 doesn't have any strict compatibility with the C64 it does deliver a better speced 8-bit machine in most regards. The one thing that did catch my eye about the C65 was dual stero SiD chips.
Please invest in plastic pry tools. There are plenty of strong non-marring options that are cheap. You're indenting the plastic with the metal screwdriver. You do this often with sticker removal too.
10:32 This is categorically false. Around 1990, I bought a 1581 disk drive. I have disks and disks of games on the 1581 disk format. Most of them are cracked and are single load files, but you can load them up with a disk speed enhancer, load them in a few seconds. A 50k game file loads in under 10 seconds. It is trivially easy to get them in this format because DOS and PC disk drives can write this format. Just create a 1581 disk image and then use the DOS program to write the disk out. Before you say "this wouldn't have worked in 1990" I again have to correct you. My disks and disks of C64 games on 3.5 disk were almost all made BITD on my C64 downloading games from a BBS in my area. The guy who ran it had a hard drive. I filled like 10 of these disks with these one file game cracks. So the game doesn't care if it's drive 8 or drive 11.
I do not intend this message in a bad or negative way but, I think you should interact with your comment section more. Even if it’s something simple like, hearting more comments or replying to more comments. Again I do not intend my message in a negative way but I just wanted to let you know and provide feedback! Anyways great video as always! 😊
I'll never feel anything but lovely nostalgia and sadness for how Commodore are no longer with us. I spent so many happy hours on the PET 2001, the VIC-20, C64 and Amiga, playing wonderful games. They should still be here, competing with Apple or similar. It's such a shame :(
@@Nikku4211 He set the bar himself. He could have acknowledged his mistakes, taken accountability and we'd have all moved on. Instead he released a video saying "oh, everyone just hates me no matter what I do and I really did nothing wrong anyways..." It really rubbed me the wrong way, even more-so than the original video. I've been unable to engage with his content in the same way since seeing that.
It's kind of a mystery to me - you don't make prototypes in that quantity, and I recall grapevine electronics was selling the C65 in their catalogue at fire sale prices.
@watcherzero5256 is correct. I just had yet another thought though. While the serial numbers still suggest 200 units or so, the fact remains that we all get different board revisions and rom revisions in those cases, and they are unrelated to the serial numbers. For example, my first C65 was a REV1.0 that was even more bodged than this one, but came with SN 000067. SO: I wonder now if the 200 cases were ordered in preparation for dev kits, but the computer not yet completed, so the old boards were randomly paired with cases by Grapevine during liquidation.
it is. regarding manufacturing, an 8-bit machine is less expensive because you need less pins on the chip and have less pins to route on the pcb. in the 80s/90s that was a huge cost difference. the stuck with an 8/16 bit cpu with an 8 bit data bus but being able to address 24bit - a similar address bus size like the 68000 cpu in the amiga.
I love that the 8-Bit Guy and the museum have the correct attitude on this. Regardless of the $20K to $80K valuation, it still needs to be out there, tested, taken apart and examined as part of the history. If it breaks by examination or use, that's better than it rusting away in a locked drawer because it's too expensive. An analogy is Stradivarius violins. Many of them are owned by museums or benefactors, and are lent out to the best violinists on the planet. The idea being it's better that the violins get used and heard, rather than decay into sawdust or whatever over time. Crazy to think that a prototype from 1990 is analogous to centuries-old masterpieces, but there we are.
GEOS should have been baked into the ROM 😅 That aside, Commodore's worst competitor was probably Commodore themselves with the Amiga. Apple seemed to be intent on making the GS the last 8 bit hurrah, cripple it and quickly move on to the Mac. Commodore seemed intent on warming over the 64 rather than pushing migration to the Amiga (tbh they should have bundled a decent C64 emulator with the Amiga, kind of like how Acorn did with the BBC Micro emulator for the their ARM designed Archimedes and later models).
Two totally different price points. The C64 was being sold as a "video game" (that is where Argos put it in their 1990 catalogue) with a large bundle of games at 1/3rd the price of an Amiga.
@@MrDuncl TBH the problem was by the early 90's the 8 bit era was fading out, with the likes of the 32bit Mega Drive and similar consoles gaining traction. The Amiga of course stood up well to the Mega Drive etc in terms of capabilities, but the likes of the CD32 and the A600 were to late to market IMHO. Apple made the cut in the 80s to transition away form 8bit but Commodore did not.
@@danielnesbitt9565 From the positioning in catalogues the C64 was competing against the NES which was also 8 bit. Games for consoles were always very expensive compared to tape or floppy, where you often got playable demos "free" taped to the front of computer magazines to draw you in. Apple made the transition to business. In 1990 all the managers at work had Macs to demonstrate their management superiority while us engineers had to make do with HP 286 Vectra's with 14" colour screens 🙂
@@MrDuncl I have seen those magazines when I was a kind in the 90s, thankfully I did not attempt to replicate the code I was given for the heavily modified hand me down Sinclair QL and the magazines with the BASIC games for that. The QL is another can of worms of course. The 286 was a competent CPU if DOS support was not an issue. OS/2 1.x is very stable and useable on a 286 with supported applications. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall with the 286 and the market, IBM should have done as well in hindsight.
I have to wonder if that was a factor in the PC clones taking over? One one hand, you have a choice between half a dozen incompatible machines from Commodore, Sinclair, Apple, etc. On the other, you have IBM and dozens of PC clone manufacturers, all making mutually-compatible machines (and even having the option to build one yourself!). If you're looking to get your feet wet with your first home computer in such an environment, a cheap PC clone seems like a good choice, as you'll probably be able to buy something that'll run its software later on. The sheer number of manufacturers makes losing support down the road seem pretty unlikely.
I think the main problem of Comodore was that they couldn't make there mind about target audience and product strategy. I think instead of the C64 and C128 they should have pushed the Amiga 500 from start as replacement.And then go full into the gaming and media creation business instead of trying to sell office software.
The problem is that the Amiga was like four times more expensive than the 64 at launch. Half the reason it failed to catch on, I think, was that Commodore's stupid pricing war with TI had priced _themselves_ out of the market. Who's gonna shell out a grand for a new computer when the one they already have was only a couple hundred and change? Especially if it means having to buy all new software on top of that. Doesn't even matter how much more capable it is.
I remember being surprised to hear of the C128's existence back in... probably 1985. I didn't know what was wrong with the Amiga. It would be a few more years before I understood what "expensive" means. :) But anyway, I'm sure C65 development didn't do much good for Commodore's profit margins.
@@elLooto Now you mention it, I remember that various companies mishandling of their product lines killed quite a number of interesting 80s computers. The Canon Cat ought to be legendary too. It's what the Apple Mac should have been, but it couldn't be more different.
Just to share some of the back-story on the c65-support vs MEGA65-support of the MEGA65 rom. Firstly, I was happy to see Bit Shifter's name on the rom chip 🙂 I take it as a good sign that c65 owners got some benefit from Bit Shifter's efforts 😄
I remember a time in the past, a few years back, when the MEGA65 discord community was discussing whether to focus on maintaining c65 support or focusing more on making use of the mega65's own capabilities.
I think I remember Bit Shifter being very keen to make use of the mega65's hardware capabilities so that the rom could benefit from them, in both the saving of rom space (make the rom code smaller) and performance. (Up until that point, he had preserved a sense of c65-backward compatibility).
He had held back from adding MEGA65-specific logic for quite a while, until things built up towards that discord conversation. I think by that point, at least batch1 of the MEGA65 was out in the wild, so it meant a larger community could benefit from those mega65-specific enhancements.
On our discord, there were opinions moving in both directions, my gut feeling is that c65 owners would have preferred we keep assuring c65-compatibility, though many of the mega65 development team didn't own c65's, and a larger community of mega65 owners was taking shape, and so the decision was made to support the larger community that was growing.
That being said, the mega65-project and Bit Shifter, did push forward the state of the c65 rom further, and that is still a good thing for c65 owners, as the label on Bo's rom chip shows.
Could things be improved for c65-users? Potentially, though I feel like c65 owners would be the ones putting on their developer hats, cherry-picking parts of the latest rom they can benefit from, while omitting MEGA65-specific logic.
Should MEGA65-developers of software consider c65 backwards compatibility? I guess it'll be up to each individual developer. I sense most will cater for the bigger MEGA65 audience. On the other hand, if a C65 developer wants to build a program and share it with the MEGA65 community, there's a good chance their work can be enjoyed by the MEGA65 community.
The MEGA dev guys are all really great, and I'm so thankful for their help in getting a less-buggy rom.
Also, yea, your analysis of the 'biggest audience' situation is right-on, though I would also add that to even have a Chance at making C65 compatible software, they would probably want to downgrade their rom to something more like mine, and who would want to do that?
@@bozimmermaninteresting 😊
"BitShifter"
I first misread the lable on that rom and it had me rolling on the floor 😀
"f" and "t" do kinda look similar...
it would have to be a very niche forum lol
When it comes to audience size or the pleasure of a fixed, well established and explored platform, the 65s will go on having a hard time against the 64.
That topless demo is making this more like 8-bit fans.
The commadore 65 name just sounds like those kids that thought super mario 65 would come out
Everyone knows 63 was peak Mario.
If TH-cam exists in the 1980s we’d have 12 year olds saying the Commodore 65 was the next big computer
I have an even more rare prototype in my barn. I built prototypes for Commodore. Tom Hilltine was the head of R&D. I was given an NEC computer, like the TRS100, and a Commodore 64 and was told to take the display out and hook it up to the 64. The graphics of the 64 was about double the graphics of the display, so I put in a joy stick to move the window around so you could see the whole display. You could play games on it if you were fast at moving the joystick. They used it for a boardroom display and then gave it back to me.
There are way more super rare commodore prototypes out there. Like the early prototype C64 board labeled "VIC-40", which was listed on ebay years ago, but "disappeared" afterwards and was never seen again. And also theres the only existing single sided PCB from Commodore, the C16 prototype board Bill Herd mentioned in his videos. As far as i know this piece is on display in a german museum.
@@retr0mak161 Those are good picks for rare finds! I'd just add on the C= V364 computer, and my personal favorite, the DX-64, which is the rarest of all because it has never even been seen except for a grainy photo in a magazine. :)
Woahhh! I'd love to see a video of em!
Prove it.
Are you talking to me? I still have the prototype in the barn.@@charleslarson5983
8:56 8-Bit Guy’s wife walks in: “DAVID WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Never thought there would be a day when I'd see a boobs on a Commodore.
"""research"""
You gotta admit: I admire his lack of enthusiasm with the topless image. I *HATE* when demosceners use clearly sexual images like that. Even in 2023, there's a lot of children who are interested in coding and pulling off incredible tricks on computers (look at the Raspberry Pi), but then you got sleazy people who put THAT on there, much to the disgust and anger of parents. It takes away the fun of the experience of checking out the incredible capabilities that are possible on the limited hardware. And for David to express mild disgust at the image shows How thoughtful he is to his audience, both the young and the old.
There IS an official C65 PSU and it's more common than you think. They obviously made lots of them in preparation for the C65 but when it was canned the PSU was re-purposed for the CD32. For anyone who owns a CD32 check the bottom of the PSU and you will see a sticker that says "PSU C65" ^_^
You must not mean the dark grey brick PS I got with my CD32s. What did yours look like?
@@bozimmerman Probably depends on your country. I'm in a PAL region. Mine is rectangular and about the same size as the C64C PSU but black and has the later Commodore stickers with the barcode saying it's a C65 PSU.
I'm Very glad that you are able to borrow this prototype, Well Done! Also, Thank you Bo Zimmerman, for lending David the Prototype!
Who is "David the Prototype"? 🤔 (In other words, why did you capitalize "prototype"?)
the message has been edited but now the "and" has not been capitiliesed also why do you care about grammer in a youtube comment??@@Psythik
@@Psythik You embarrassed me, but I am fine with it cause I did make that mistake!
@@chocolatelightningPerhaps because grammar is integral and essential to any written or spoken language? Whilst people will often understand what is being said, a small error or change can make a vast difference to the meaning of a sentence. That is why we have rules and conventions in any language. That's also why such great efforts are made by educators to instill these rules in to pupils. Imagine if lawyers, doctors, engineers and such like were so imprecise.
@@robertsteel3563 I bet you write code! I used to code and used CamelCaseCapitalisation a lot. So it's easy to make that type of mistake when writing normally! :)
$20,000 to $80,000! Wow. Very nice of Mr. Zimmermann to let you review it and show it to all of us that would never have the opportunity to see this machine
Isn't that the guy that runs a Commodore computer website?
@@RamsesTimeGameI think so
@@RamsesTimeGame Yeah, he's got all the various Commodore schematics and other documentation on his website.
Is Zimmerman a Jewish name?
@@MattyEngland Could be, Zimmermann is just the german word (lastname) for Carpenter.
The 1571-II was introduced in the German Forum64, and you can build them, as Commodore would have brought it on the market, it is based on the C128DCR 1571 with the MOS 5710 chipset, you can build a 1570-II, 1571-II or 1571-II+ depending on the equipment. I built one to fit the 1541-II case with PC drive Chinon F502, and it works great.
What's the difference? The 1571-II supports double density floppies, or even high density?
@@Stoney3K is based of the C128DCR 1571 chipset and a narrower case (from the 1541-II (case)) I use this as 2 Drive in one 1571 ROM and ROM from 1541-II. The ROM from the 1571-II is DOS 3.1 and supports only double density, a high density ROM not available
It even has a German labeling. Stating "Funkentstört", which translates as "fitted with noise supression". So it should not interfere with Radio or TV broadcasts or other devices that use radiocommunication. DBP is the Deutsche Bundespost, German Federal Post, which was responsible for such tests and certifications at that time. It was a public administration and privatised in 1995 and splitted into several companies like the Telekom, Deutsche Post and the Postbank.
Ah, good old privatization! Gutting public institutions and ruining the lives of the proletariat since the nazis!
No, seriously. The term "privatization" was coined in response to the shenanigans involving the nazi government (not the holocaust).
Most C65's i know of where made in Germany, and the prototypes where sold in Europe from magazine ads after Commodore had died (i remember the ads even.)
@@SwedishEmpire1700 Some people got their machines by dumpster diving. I guess that's how the VC40 prototype (barely documented early C64 concept) ended up in private posession before disappearing completely again.
I love the German language. Funkentstört is just an amazing word.
This takes me back to happy days when between my friends and I we owned C64’s, a plus 4, C128, Amiga 500, Amiga 500+ & Amiga 600 a some stage or another. Great days!
I get such a big, dumb smile when I see a new video from The 8-Bit Guy in my subscription feed. Thanks, David, for making such an excellent channel. I can't wait to watch this one!
"I did find this one demo that um... Did show off the 256 colour graphics capabilities, unforutnately it's a picture of a topless woman so...."
Best sentence ever in a technical breakdown of an old computer.
...Also we know what teens in the know were doing with these things back in the day now! lol
Love the videos, always look forward to the next!
They were rubbing one out at 25fps
Kudos for actually opening the unit up for us all to see! I would never have dared tinker with a machine this expensive :)
Fun fact: back in I think 1994 I was on a trade fair here in Germany with my parents and they sold C65 prototypes for around 480 USD (adjusted to current value). I always think about that when seeing these are sold for more than 25k USD - of course I didn't get one then 😉
I see the similarities to the C128 but then this machine may have had the same issue like the C128 with the software library. Most developers would have stuck with the C64 since it had a much bigger base.
In the end it never came out and the focus laid on the Amiga which was IMHO a good decision.
Agreed. I imagine that while cool, most devs would have just focused on the 64. Amiga was a good direction for Commodore. Too bad they couldn't continue after 94 but at least we have amazing computers from them to still enjoy
I wouldn't completely agree with that. I think a lot of the reason the C128 didn't get a lot of support is because it didn't really add much for developers to think of it as a different development platform. The C65 would have been a clear upgrade in terms of capability compared to the C128's lack thereof. It also didn't really come off as anything other than just a C64 with more ram and some weird video peripheral most people weren't going to use. People largely just saw it as a C64 with more ram.
To shift the market into thinking it's something new, you just have to sell it as a new platform that *happens* to support the old software. Remember, the expectation was that the new computer would still support their old software. This is why the Amiga had a hard time taking off, it didn't have a software base to stand on, and thus had to start from scratch. This is also why the IBM PC/Compatibles had a huge leg up, they already had an established library of software that would still receive some amount of support going forward.
The real problem for this machine is that it just came far too late with no enough additional capabilities to justify its existence. The SNES would likely have been far cheaper if all you wanted was a game machine, and it had comparable/better graphics with a much more sophisticated sound chip. Or if you wanted to game and do business, just get a PC.
I am still convinced that if the cheapest base model Amigas had the expandability of an Apple II then it would have stood at least some fighting chance against the IBM PC. Without that expandability it was still "just a micro".
You might be right about software support, but I'm not sure. Remember, the 128 mode was not much better than C64 mode. Just more RAM. The rest of the hardware was identical. When the A1200 came out, it was supported immediately. Because it was better. As programmers we are always looking for new stuff. Musicians would have loved the dual SID. And graphic designers would suddenly get more colors than on the Amiga.
We do new stuff when it contributes to more fun. Using 128 mode was not contributing to more fun.
Also, remember, the 128 was a more expensive big brother to the 64. The 65 would have replaced the 64, at the same price point.
@@railsrust Excellent points here. I didn't consider these.
love all those bodge wires, including lifted pins of a chip. That's bodging at professional level.
Good thing he didn't put a paperclip in it
Found this video randomly while searching for the Commodore playlist. It is 1 A.M.; aka a fine time to watch a new video!
It’s unlisted
I am fully aware of that, most likely a preview for the Patreons (Which I am not, unfortunately).
Thank you, David. (And thanks to Bo). 👍
You've done a fine job documenting the history and innards of this legendary machine. Since there is not much information on the net.
Her name is Regina and the picture is just a partial image of the February 1988 Hustler centerfold. You're welcome.
Thanks for your review! To understand the thinking behind the C65 you have to know that Commodore chose a completely different approach: Instead of including a whole C64 in the computer like in the C128 and thus giving nearly 100% compatibility Commodore tried to establish the C64 as a platform instead. A platform which the C65 was built on. So the C65 was technically a computer based on the ideas and principles of the C64 (with VIC and SID although there a two SIDs and a newer VIC) and taken to the next level (and thus having Amiga-like features which was at the time a must).
The C64 "mode" was not a built in C64 like in the C128 but a C64-like preset (like memory locations, CPU speed, resolution, etc.) on the C65. So when entering the C64-mode with "GO64" you get a C65 with a memory mapping of the C64. But you are still on a C65 with all its capabilities. You can access the additional colors, CPU speed, etc, within the C64 mode, if you want to. The C64 mode would have been more of a layer to easily port your existing software to the new computer and to enhance it there. Only the second goal was C64 compatibility (which was a primary goal on the C128).
The MEGA team did a wonderful job of finishing the C65 and bringing this great idea into the next century. They corrected many mistakes Commodore made (like the C65 expansion port, which is not compatible to the C64, on the MEGA65 it is compatible) and adjusted some things to todays standards (like HDMI instead of RF - the purpose is the same: to connect the computer to a normal TV set and todays TV sets are on HDMI).
Since the MEGA65 is FPGA-based you can run the MEGA as a 100% compabile C65 if you want to (just boot into a C65 core). However the MEGA65 (with a faster CPU, an even better VIC and 4 SIDs) is still fulfilling the promise of Commodore by making a computer which understands the C64 as the start of a platform which can be build upon. Actually a lot like todays PCs or yesterdays Apple II computers. It's a shame that they didn't do this back in 1985 instead of the C128.
I do like the design aesthetic of the Commodore computers, post-breadbin designs. Like the Commodore 64C and Amiga series. As an owner of both the C64C and Amiga A500 and A600, I clearly remember they were far less 'yellow' when they were newly released and have obviously all become more so with age.
The bromium compounds in the plastic, there as flame retardant, slowly decompose, turning a brown color. There are plenty videos on retrobrighting, using hydrogen peroxide and UV light, to restore the original color..
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 a process which isnt full proof and requires repeating. And in the inbetween, its getting more yellow. you know what he meant.
Very interesting, Dave. I'd always been of the assumption that only pre-production mock-ups or fan projects with 3D printed cases existed - well done on finding this beauty!
All of the C65 machines were rough prototypes. There was never a fully finalised, production ready design, so what you see is really just a possible taste of what might have been. A few tweaks and changes could have made the final product very different. The C65 was another of CBM's poor decisions, alongside the C16, Plus 4, the C64 "games system", the Amiga 600, CD32 and arguably even the C128.
3D printing was unheard of in the 1990s. The injection moulds for that case would have been expensive so it is a shame they never got used.
hi 8-bit guy! just passing to say that your videos keep a big smile in my face after a long technical course. love your videos from brazil!
I'm really impressed how thorough you are, also not intimidated by taking apart a $20 to $80,000 prototype.
Only $20? That's cheap.
At least he didn't smoke this one like those IBM prototypes.
@@glassvialwas like one wasn’t it?
@@glassvial oh right if i recall he tried the modern psu trick of using a paper clip to turn it on, but on older psu's there's 120v running through the switch..
Taking a few screws out isn't a big deal. He's also taken hundreds of machines with similar plastic housing apart.
while not related to the video, i love your closed captions
ironically you're one of the few youtubers i don't need captions for!
these old computers are so neat, i love seeing how to worked with what they had
I find it odd that the 64C was for sale longer than the breadbin C64, and yet the majority of 64s being sold in the second hand market is the breadbin model. if it really is that sales tapered off that much during the 64C then it leaves me to wonder how it was profitable to continue to sell them.
People who bought the 64C did not care for their machines in the same way that the older, more expensive units were.
Interesting from a British perspective, I feel like the 64C was more popular in the UK than the breadbin model. So perhaps, there are just more USA resellers of the breadbin model, where it may have been more popular? I only ever saw one breadbin model in the UK amongst all my friends and family. Whereas the successor was far more ubiquitous.
Keep in mind, the 64C is a "cost reduced" model, meaning there are way fewer chips than the breadbin, and the mainboard itself is smaller, and Commodore manufactured its own chips and improved its fabrication processes over time. So even with reduced sales they could still make a profit at this late in the game.
@@LeftoverBeefcake cost reduced or crippled. the custom chip that replaced a few others is a bitch to repair. better to take all other chips and put them on a new old board and add a replacement PLA etc.
I think many people immediately associate the breadbin model with the Commodore
He was looking at a picture of a topless woman for “research purposes” and wasn’t even lying 😂
Yep I used to read Playboy myself for the article. Yes indeed, the articles.
I'm really glad to see upload, David. I love the channel! The last few days have been difficult and your videos are always educational AND fun! I'm thinking about getting into the C64 and Amiga because of your videos. Hopefully I can find some at decent prices
Once you consider the cost of a each of those two systems, and with either original acessories (storage medium, crt monitor, 9-pin joysticks) or modern add-ons (floppy emulator, video adapter and maybe one of the more advanced cartridges like the Ultimate II+) It gets quite expensive. The you might consider instead getting a MiSTer FPGA that runs both a C64 and an Amiga 1200 core + many more computers, consoles and arcade machines. The Ultimate64 from Gedion's logic would be my choice if all I wanted was the perfect C64, but they are out of stock now. Software emulators might also be right for you. The C64 'VICE' emulator is really great and the Amiga has a few, like 'Amiga Forever' and 'WinUAE'.
@@superviewerThank you for the suggestions! I think those would be a good way to go for now at least. If I truly love the systems, I can always look to buy one or both later. A MiSTer might be just the ticket. Thank you!
I always think its cool when someone opens up a C65 and I can see my dad's name (BILL) on the motherboard. He's now retired, and calls me every once in a while when he has computer or networking questions.
Incredible video! Thank you for showing off these pieces of history in such detail!
Just about nothing makes me as happy as seeing a new 8 bit guy video appear on TH-cam. I swear to you - David could talk about anything from window cleaning products to playground equipment and I’d be hooked.
Loved this, I hope to see more videos about prototype systems in the future!
I'm so glad you've reviewed the original, I've been waiting for someone doing it for a long time. Great job! :)
Thank you Sir. An excellent video (as usual) documenting this rare piece of hardware for posterity, and thanks to Bo as well. /Brett
Never seen one of those 1565 disk drives before, its super cute!
It’s funny how the mythology of the C65 compares to the reality of the prototypes. I guess a lot of people had a somewhat romanticized version of what the future of the immortal C64 would become. That’s the cool part of living in this time with so many options for DIYers to explore other possible 8-bit futures of their favourite 8bit computers.
Topless woman on C64 screen: THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMPUTING!! (I remember the two-color image of Playboy playmate Roberta Vasquez that circulated among C64 users, but you had to turn the screen on its side to see it correctly.)
I'm so happy to see another history video from @The 8-Bit Guy!
“There isn’t any demos!” David turn seriously to the camera, “but here is a port of Petscii Robots !”
Oh no! I was making a joke and at 10:51 wow!!! You got me! Nice!!
7:38 This is why it would've been better to import a PAL market CRT TV, as all the better brands supported NTSC video at least in monochrome since at least the mid 90s, even if not advertised on the TV.
And they also had SCART so RGB was supported out of the box.
The Amiga 500 was an amazing machine at the time and could even (I’m told) run Mac OS. I still have my A500 and will probably need to restore it soon.
Perfect timing! World of Commodore show is happening this weekend in Mississauga Ontario! What are the odds inwoll get to see one of these in person?
Always a super clean and very informative video😀. Thanks again David! I just played Ghosts 'n Goblins on my 64 with the 1084 RGB monitor. Regards from the Netherlands.
Super clean.. other than that 256 colour demo lol
@@adventureoflinkmk2 :pppp
Aah, I feel like the slowness of the graphics example was due to Commodore's choice of using bitplanes for the graphics modes used by BASIC's drawing routines. I guess they were aspiring to do graphics like the Amiga, but this added more load on the cpu. My gut feeling is, if you want to see the speed-win, avoid bitplanes, and stick with the old-school c64-bitmap-graphic modes instead. That path will have it's own challenges too, as the c65 rom's drawing routines are hard-coded to work with bitplanes only, so at the very least you'd have to write your own line-drawing routine in assembly and call it from basic. Perhaps with that sorted, you could then see the speed win the 3.5 MHz speed ought to provide :)
Well, the C65 have a blitter, so the line drawing should be accelerated. My guess early ROM version didn't support that.
@@arivaldarivald3212 It's definitely advantageous to have a blitter, though the C65's dma controller feels more like "almost a blitter" :-) I don't believe it had any special mechanism to assist with drawing lines or blitting onto blitplanes. If it did, then yeah, could take the win there. One other potential win could be the C65's DAT, think it was trying to translate x,y coords into an address in that c64 8x8 char block space. Maybe that might have assisted, though I don't think the rom makes any use of DAT either. I believe the C65 Zed Yago demo made use of it?
I highly suspect this is why Commodore labeled the prototype ROM as "BitShitter"
@@Drmcclung Bit Shifter is a person in the 65 community. That isn't a Commodore label.
@@bruwin it's written either "shiffer" or "shitter" enlarged on my screen so.. I guess I'll take your word for it. So is that supposed to be a totally custom ROM or what?
Always enjoy your stuff, thank you.
Holding a Commodore 65 can be a miracle.
8:55 click here to this the most replayed part of the video! 😂
The image would actually be 50 frames per second, as it is progressive scan. With interlaced you get 50 fields per second, where pairs of two fields (even scanlines and odd scanlines) make up a frame. So interlaced PAL would be 50 fields per second, and 25 frames per second. Most computers, including the C64, however, do not output an interlaced signal, so they output 50 frames per second, they have no concept of even/odd fields.
loved the commodore history playlist and learned a LOT abt commodore i didnt know (i didnt know anything btw) 😂and i just now realized that u always use a different tune for the outro (which is all around great designed. i love it)
anyway, i wanted to thank u very much for ur effort and research on all of this. peace yo, stay chillin
Lovely video, like all your bits on Commodore’s history! 👍
good video.
Now I can see why The 8-Bit Guy hasnt covered the Amiga 500 as it wasnt that popular in the USA.
Here in the UK, the Amiga 500 was very popular competing against the Atari 520 (and its versions).
The Amiga 500 wa svery popular in Germany too. not so sure about France or Italy.
I had the A500 and an Atari ST, at different times. Growing up in the UK it is a shock to me that the Amiga wasn’t popular in the USA. It’s my favorite computer of all time.
My Amiga came from Kuwait 😅
The Mac store 2 hours away also had Amiga, that place was heaven.
@@busyjt By the time the 500 came out, it was too little, too late. Cheap PC compatibles were beginning to spread like wildfire in the U.S.
While watching this video I was also thinking what an amazing time it was with so much innovation. All sorts of variations in CPU chips, clock rates, and support circuitry in those days. :) BTW, at 15:18 jumper J3 is seen with the silkscreen text of NTSC beside it. You could try adding a jumper to it and see if the video output switches to NTSC format. Those games that may require NTSC video could be retested.
Given his history with prototypes, best not tell him to monkey with any jumpers in case there's an issue. There's a reason he didn't know about the PAL thing, and that's because he didn't do the appropriate research before opening the case.
@@bruwin Being prototypes, C65s are incompatible with _each other,_ so where exactly could he have found accurate documentation for one specific C65?
Unfortunately, innovation without direction is a recipe for disaster, and CBM were masters of that particular recipe. There were simp,y too many independent and badly thought out projects, many of which would either compete with their own existing products, like the C65, or simply had no real market to fill, like the Plus/4 and C16. CBM weren't the only ones doing it, and even today, big names in the industry are making the same mistakes. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ARM and Apple have all fumbled wildly and dropped the ball at some point in recent history.
Thank you, David, for another interesting and informative episode.
Great video as always. I've always been curious about the C65!
In Europe it would have sold by truck loads in 1990. The C64 was still selling quite strong, at half price of the Amiga. The C65 was cheaper than the Amiga to produce. I think it would have become a huge hit, and probably I would have stayed on the 8 bit line instead of switching to the Amiga.
If it had come out in 1987 or 88, even better, but that was not possible due to the limited resources Commodore had. 1990 would have been possible, because it was finally ready for production when it got cancelled.
By the truck load when up against the consoles? I doubt it. Even the low-end Amiga machines were effectively sunk by the emergence of a new generation of consoles, and things like the Sega Master System were quite capable of competing against an enhanced C64 like this. And although people may insist that buyers were using the C64 and Amiga for other things, the gaming market was where the volume was.
@@paul_boddie the technical capabilities of a system do not directly translate to sales numbers. When I say that the C64 was a big seller, together with the Amiga 500, in Scandinavia in 1990, it's not something I think. It's something I know because it was my youth, I lived there, I was active in the demo scene and I worked part time at a small computer store. We got the machines by the pallet.
And yes, most people used them to play games. Free games. Pirating was huge. You could buy a NES or SNES and afford a few games, or buy a C64 or an Amiga, and have unlimited numbers. Also, new games kept coming to the C64 until 1991.
If the C65 had replaced the C64 in 1990, at the same price point, it would have sold a lot.
@@MaxQ10001 I don't disbelieve you that machines like the C64 sold well enough into the 1990s. I mean, Amstrad were also still selling various 8-bit models in probably healthy numbers at the start of the 1990s as well, including the tape-based ZX Spectrum +2. But I would have to ask what kind of pricing the C64 had to be able to sell by the pallet, as well as what software was being offered.
Big retailers don't shift machines by appealing to piracy: Amstrad were able to keep on selling older models precisely because there was a glut of low-cost games, not because someone had some mates with a bunch of cracked games. And getting a presence at big retailers was crucial. It doesn't matter how many machines small stores shift if the competition is shifting orders of magnitude more units through the big retailers.
There is also the matter of whether the C65 would have been able to launch at the right price point, which is as a budget machine priced to replace the already discounted C64. Commodore tried to appeal to the emerging console market with the C64GS at £99 which was a failure. Interestingly, in the UK, Amstrad released its own GX4000 console at the same time and at the same price, alongside other machines that were compatible and that might have broadened the market for enhanced titles alongside existing ones. That didn't work out either.
The C65 (like Amstrads refreshed CPC models) would have avoided the usability issues of the C64GS, but it might have been a challenge to get the pricing low enough by including a disk drive. The budget-level ZX Spectrum +3 only got as cheap as around £200. Then there would have needed to be a commercial incentive to release software on disk, including new software taking advantage of the new features, as opposed to random "warez" peddlers copying other people's older games. Otherwise, they might as well have just kept on selling the C64.
And I am very much aware that the low-end Amiga models did pretty well across the whole of western Europe, making people in Europe believe that they were somehow also very popular in the US. In practice, the European part of Commodore was probably shoring up the whole company in the end. But Commodore was stuggling to maintain volumes as the 1990s progressed and clearly trying to find a viable business strategy, hence all the different products they released that were not successful.
And a substantial reason for that competitive hardship was the emergence of the likes of Sega who were making substantial inroads by 1990. Although you had to buy cartridges, there were probably healthy second-hand/pre-owned and rental markets already established in various countries.
I guess we just see things differently, but I just don't see how Commodore would have been able to make the numbers add up.
@@paul_boddie I have read that the chip cost of the C65 was about the same as the C64. It had a higher BOM due to the disk drive, but a C65 would have been cheaper than the C64 with a drive but a few quid more expensive than a C64 with datasette. The big problem for Commodore I guess was that the graphics could be better than on the Amiga. With the optimized 6502, using 40-50% less clock cycles, and running at a higher clock, and with the included blitter, and 512 color capacity, many games would have looked better on the C65. The 68000 spent many clock cycles on some operations.
The whole company was so mismanaged, the C65 should have been out in 88, and the A1200 in 89-90.
But I still believe the C65 in 90 would have extended the rope they used to end themselves with, at least with a few meters.
The 64GS was a catastrophy. I think we sold 4-5, and returned the rest. On one of the cartridges we got in, one if the games required you to press a key on the keyboard to start the game. No one had even tried to play it on the GS before release. That is saying a lot on how much energy got into that project.
Had the GS used the C65 chipset with more colors and a blitter, it would have been a good competition for Nintendo and Sega. The only thing the C64 had going for it at that time was price. Cheap computer, "free" games.
But, yeah, games were still being made. Can't remember the titles, but we got in new titles on a regular basis in 89-90.
@@MaxQ10001 I would hope that they might have been able to optimise not only the cost of the system with the disk drive but also the way the disk drive worked. Watching videos showing the classic Commodore drives loading software, and recalling complaints from back in the day, the disk solution for the C64 was an absolute joke compared to other systems.
But I think that to give Commodore enough room below the Amiga, if launching such a product as late as 1990, it would have to be aiming for £150 at most. (Note that Amstrad's systems which were a bit more expensive came with monitors.) Maybe that price might have made it viable simply as a cost-optimised C64, which was probably well cost-optimised already, but whose disk drive had not been similarly cost-optimised and refined.
That leads to the issue of whether it would have been worth enhancing the system or just pressing on with the C64. If the chipset enhancements could have been incorporated effectively for free, with no expectation that anyone would use them, then I suppose the C64 could have been retired in favour of the C65.
However, Commodore really needed to be cultivating new opportunities, and this would have needed developers to be actively involved in releasing new, enhanced titles, growing this as a new platform. There was little prospect of that happening by then since the big developers had been shifting focus for quite some time already. And selling lots of units on the basis of old game availability was all very well, but it would never have produced the volumes that such low-margin products need to in order to boost the company's bottom line significantly.
I found it interesting that Mr Murray talks about the Apple IIGS as a comparable product when it arrived much earlier, as he notes, and has a 16-bit CPU, not the 8-bit CPU of this model. Admittedly, the IIGS was expensive, as Apple products were, but I think that any such follow-up to the C64 needed to arrive quite a bit earlier, as you suggest. At that point, there might have been a bit more developer interest.
It is also interesting that you note the 68000 needing more cycles for some of its instructions to complete, and Mr Murray appears to be under the impression that a fast 6502 is competitive with the Amiga. Amusingly, Amiga enthusiasts were prone to complain about such observations when made by users of other 6502-based platforms, and justifiably so. However, they also made much of the illegitimacy of instructions-per-second ratings, how the Amiga was unfairly portrayed against things like the ARM, and so on, when all along the ratings were using industry standard VAX-comparable performance measurements and had nothing to do with the actual instructions.
Kinda sad that C65 couldn't see the day of light.
That was a mighty fine, 256 colors if I may say so myself. I can only imagine the three or four colors that were underneath the stars. 😮
thanks for sharing this video with us.
this is really the first time i have seen a C65 .. and it worked !
Shame they didn't go for four more generations, then we'd have got the C69 🤣
I bought a Commodore 64 when they first came out. The price was a bit deceptive since you couldn't do much without purchasing all the periferals, so it wasn't really a bargain. People were saying what are they going to do with all that memory.
Always delighted to see a new video David.
Thank you for sharing this! I've read a lot about the C65 but never seen someone power one up. 🙂
of course mega 65 games won't work on the commodore 65. because there wasn't a commodore 65 made fully into production they don't have anything to go on
Yea, can't argue with that: which board rev, or even rom rev would you even start with?
The 4510 is still an 8bit 65c02 compatible cpu with some enhancements to increase speed. It also includes an integrated MMU and two CIA's. It is not 16-bit.
It seems like every source covering this thing just keeps parroting the "16 bit" line based on the assumption that a machine like this would have *had* to have been based on the 65816, ala the IIgs.
Strictly speaking there are *traces* of 16 bit-ishness on this CPU compared to the plain 6502; unlike it the stack can be relocated anywhere in the 16 bit address space, and they added 16 bit relative jumps and 16 bit inc/dec/shift operations. But if this makes this CPU "16 bit" then we should also probably be calling the 8080 and Z80 16 bit CPUs.
@@PaleozoicPCs Well, the introduction of the B register and the possibility of relocating what had been only "zero page", plus stack relocation and a global stack larger than a single page, only really allow the CPU to make use of a single 16-bit address space. As you note, that probably only brings it into line with other 8-bit CPUs.
Contrast that with something like the Z8000 where individual segments each occupied a 16-bit address space, and we see the difference between what is still in practice an 8-bit CPU (the 65CE02) and a classic 16-bit CPU (the Z8000). All the arguments over the years about whether something is 16-bit or not tend to drag products into that category unjustifiably. In reality, the 16-bit category is pretty narrow and things like the 68000 are architecturally 32-bit, even if they have reduced addressing capabilities and data bus widths, largely for cost reasons.
@@paul_boddie yeah… I mean, the “bit count” that gets assigned to a CPU can be pretty arbitrary and there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to making the call; it is data bus width, register layout, some combination of those things, whatever. If you go by register width you can make a pretty good case for even the Intel 8080 being *kinda* 16 bit; its accumulator is 8 bits but there are a subset of operations that let you use the HL register pair as a pseudo-accumulator, and it supports a fair number of 16 bit operations, etc. Intel called it “8-bit” because that’s what it’s data bus width was, its code is byte aligned instead of word aligned, etc… but there are “16 bit” CPUs (like the 8086) that tolerate byte alignment, and then of course with the 8088 you had the trend of CPUs that have an “architecture” wider than their physical bus, so that wasn’t considered definitive anymore… etc. So, sure, it’s not really an easy call unless you’re restricting yourself to truly “definitive” 16-bitters like the PDP-11, TMS9900, Z8000, and so on.
But, really, as already pointed out, unless you go with address bus width there is basically no amount of wishful thinking that gets the 4510 into the “16 bit” category. The stack pointer is bigger, but the indexes and accumulator are all still 8-bit and its extremely limited set of 16 bit data operations are limited to memory words. It’s still way less “16 bit” than most other common “8-bit” cpus. Someone really needs to expunge this misconception from C65 lore. It definitely would have made sense to use a 65816 derivative, but that’s not what they did.
Interesting - I had & still got an Amiga A500 - looks similar inside with the heat shield & the Ram expander compartment!!! 🙂🤔🚂🚂🚂
Luckily this rare prototype didn't use security screws so David Murray didn't molest it using a Dremel.
The PAL signal output and the "english keyboard" displayed on screen make me think this C65 was somewhat planned for an european release (since the C64 sold well there, especially in the United Kingdom and Germany)
Commodore ruled Scandinavia too
I think the biggest issue on this, given it's a PAL system, would be lack of datasette port.
I have over 100 games, all on cassette, and that's not an odd story. I live in a rural area and I knew guys in double figures at school who used a C64 with datasette, and one single person who used a floppy drive, and even then he didn't have many games because all the game stores only stocked 8-bit games on cassette, with floppy disk games being pretty much limited to Amiga and Atari ST. Given they were trying to seemingly sell it on a "get a better machine and play all your old games!" basis, it wouldn't've worked.
While that is partly true, I'm pretty sure that Europe had widely adopted floppy drives by 1990... Personally I certainly had, as my friends. But I also had a bunch of old cassettes as well. So yeah.
@@joojoojeejee6058 Nope. Even up to the end in 1992, the cast majority of C64 games in Boots or Dixons were cassette. They would only carry maybe 1 or 2 titles on floppy, whilst having entire racks dedicated to tape. If you wanted floppy games, the drive was so rare if you wanted more than just say, Ultima 4, you'd have to mail order them.
The big issue was the floppy drive and system cost more than an Atari ST, and later the A600, so the only people left buying C64 games were people who couldn't afford such luxury as floppy drives.
@@fattomandeibu Ok, so maybe Finland was a bit different then. But many C64 owners certainly had floppy drives by the turn of the decade and floppy titles were readily available in stores. And there were 3rd party floppy drives available, which were significantly cheaper than original Commodore drives. Quite affortable. One such drive was "Oceanic OC-118N". It was basically half the price of a Commodore drive (or less).
@@joojoojeejee6058I would say in Britain the Commodore floppy's were never widely adopted and the cassette always remained the primary storage media. Probably a strong factor in this was the strong UK indie development market that was quite distinct to the US market and it was cheaper for the independent developers to manufacture cassettes than discs. The Amiga using floppies was quite novel.
Another great video, keep up the good work 👏
Another interesting review! Thanks for uploading!
It's absolutely wild to me that in 1990 someone was like "We should make a slightly improved version of a computer that launched in 1982" and a project like that could actually get greenlit. I know the stories of the later days of Commodore are legendary (i.e. the story of the disk drive thrown with great force into a sheetrock wall and left there for posterity) but it's wild to me that even after all these years I thought I'd heard it all, never having known they had a "C65" product in the works, let alone with actual prototypes in the wild. Those really were the wild west days of computing. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go back and marathon season 1 of "Halt And Catch Fire".
Yeah, it does kind of seem like: "Hey, none of these microcomputer projects are catching on like wildfire, like the C64 did. Maybe we just need.... _another microcomputer project_ to fix that. Just to be safe, let's base it off a 10-year-old design."
... Whut? I mean, sure, there are no bad ideas when brainstorming. But maybe that one was.
Commodore had the weirdest product line up of all time. Instead of iterating with better and better systems they were obsessed with just coming up with different combinations of the same parts to see if people would bite.
In 1990 the Commodore 64 was still selling reasonably well in Europe, I just looked in the 1990 Argos Catalogue and in the "Video Games" section they had the C64 Light Fantastic Pack complete with Cassette Deck, Light Gun, and ten Games for £159. Compare that to the NES at £95 which only came with one game. Two other things I notice are:
i) Most of the other products on the page are those educational computers with a tiny LCD display and names like IQ Builder
ii) They have the C64 User Manual prominently displayed implying that buying one will turn your child into an IT expert (which had actually been true in the 80s).
I'm surprised that the Amiga wasn't in that Catalogue but I guess the price tag was just too high. I guess Commodore were toying with the idea of making a disc drive based computer that the average Argos customer could actually afford.
The c64 gs console has to be the oddest machine they released. No way of adding a keyboard or tape/disk drive and no enhancements whatsoever along with expensive cartridge games that were exactly the same as the cheap tape/disk versions and could be plugged into any c64. Iirc they sold so poorly that the unsold ones were stripped down and the motherboards used in regular c64c`s.
I remember seeing one displayed next to megadrives, master systems and Amigas, it looked so outdated and cost more than the far superior master system. It only had about 10 games in its very short shelf life.
Bizzare business decision, a consolised cartridge based Amiga would have made more sense.
@@MrDuncl Respect for the Argos catalogue reference! In the Autumn/Winter 1990/1991 catalogue, it seems to be the C64C versus the NES and the Atari 7800, but in the Spring/Summer 1990 catalogue, it is just the NES versus the Atari XE 4001 (which is, I guess, the XEGS). Things developed quite rapidly and in the Autumn/Winter 1991/1992 catalogue, there are the NES, Gameboy and Sega Master System II, all well under £100, up against the C64 minus that lightgun at £99.
I think that Argos had long been sticking to the toy end of the computer market at that point. Back in 1983/1984, you can find the VIC-20 and TI-99/4A, and in 1984/1985 it was the Atari 600XL versus the ZX Spectrum, C64 (at £199), and Atari CX2600. But by 1985/1986 they had dropped computers, selling only the Atari 2600, and seem to have stuck to "electronic games" thereafter.
You would probably have to look into pricing and availability of consoles at retailers like Currys and Dixons, but it is quite clear that the C64 and any successor would have to be at the budget end of the market and would be up against very strong competition from Nintendo and Sega. It is interesting that the 1991/1992 catalogue features the second generation Master System, with the first one having been around for a while. Argos probably realised that they had missed out first time around. Competing with the likes of Sega in that category would have been increasingly brutal for Commodore.
I remember pictures of that computer in the german "64'er" magazine.
Reading through the specs i thought it would be a C=128 on steroids and i so wanted one.
My final 128-DB Rig was nice, with 2 1581, an additional 1571, REU256 and tons of accessories. I did spend nights and nights on that thing programming hilariously useless stuff.
If the C=65 would have been released i would still be coding useless stuff to this day 😀
Wow, you were a power user! Did you ever get any CMD gear?
@@bozimmerman Na, i actually scored all those devices when people moved to Amigas and IBMs.
The SuperCPU and the CMD Harddrive where on my wishlist though. Most devices i got for cheap with little defects like broken solder joints.
@@DasIllu Well, your system still sounds really awesome. I am a big 128D fan. :)
The basic ver 10 is IMHO worth own episode.
If Commodore had released something like the C65 back in 85 instead of the Plus/4, C16 and C128, then I'm sure it would've been a huge success and most C64 owners would have bought one.
Obviously yes, because the C128 was pretty popular as is, even tough it was basically just a gloried C64.
3.5" floppies were still too expensive in 1985.
@@Okurka. The Amiga 1000 had a 3.5" floppy drive when it was released back in 1985. Also you could just hook up your old 1541 drive to the C65 and continue to use 5.25" disks.
Teenage me would have loved to buy a C65... this is the computer I was waiting to upgrade to from my C64.
@@TheStuffMade The Amiga 1000 cost U$1285 in 1985, people who could afford it also could afford 3.5" floppies.
the burning question is which computer is the best envisionment of a post C64 successor?
c128
c65
X16
Putting aside that the X16 doesn't have any strict compatibility with the C64 it does deliver a better speced 8-bit machine in most regards. The one thing that did catch my eye about the C65 was dual stero SiD chips.
3:14 omg that was so satisfying they way you slowly slid it in to PERFECLY fit against the keyboard
I read about the C65 in the Commodore magazines at the time and I was so looking forward to it.
Please invest in plastic pry tools. There are plenty of strong non-marring options that are cheap. You're indenting the plastic with the metal screwdriver. You do this often with sticker removal too.
I cannot believe he still uses a metal pocket screwdriver to take things apart. This looks so wildly unprofessional.
Why you don't like the MSX Standard?
Because he is an American, duh!
@@KhalidYousif87 he uses square alligators to measure things 😂
@@lauternate22 I thought that he was a Texan, not a Floridan! 😂😂
David, I paused watching the Larry Sanders Show (also from the 90s, like the C65) to watch this new video. Huge fan of your content. 😊
Thank you for that fascinating insight into what could have been 😊
10:32 This is categorically false. Around 1990, I bought a 1581 disk drive. I have disks and disks of games on the 1581 disk format. Most of them are cracked and are single load files, but you can load them up with a disk speed enhancer, load them in a few seconds. A 50k game file loads in under 10 seconds. It is trivially easy to get them in this format because DOS and PC disk drives can write this format. Just create a 1581 disk image and then use the DOS program to write the disk out.
Before you say "this wouldn't have worked in 1990" I again have to correct you. My disks and disks of C64 games on 3.5 disk were almost all made BITD on my C64 downloading games from a BBS in my area. The guy who ran it had a hard drive. I filled like 10 of these disks with these one file game cracks. So the game doesn't care if it's drive 8 or drive 11.
I do not intend this message in a bad or negative way but, I think you should interact with your comment section more. Even if it’s something simple like, hearting more comments or replying to more comments. Again I do not intend my message in a negative way but I just wanted to let you know and provide feedback! Anyways great video as always! 😊
Thanks for thew overview. Interesting to see all this.
I'll never feel anything but lovely nostalgia and sadness for how Commodore are no longer with us. I spent so many happy hours on the PET 2001, the VIC-20, C64 and Amiga, playing wonderful games. They should still be here, competing with Apple or similar. It's such a shame :(
Spoiler: No prototypes were harmed in the making of this video 😋
That was my first thought! Oh no!!!! 8-Bit guy is touching it! lol
I hate that this is the bar set from the previous time 8-Bit Guy handled a prototype.
@@Nikku4211 He set the bar himself. He could have acknowledged his mistakes, taken accountability and we'd have all moved on. Instead he released a video saying "oh, everyone just hates me no matter what I do and I really did nothing wrong anyways..." It really rubbed me the wrong way, even more-so than the original video. I've been unable to engage with his content in the same way since seeing that.
I bet he signed a contract to not molest this prototype.
@@Okurka.More like: You break it with a paperclip ... you pay $80k
It's kind of a mystery to me - you don't make prototypes in that quantity, and I recall grapevine electronics was selling the C65 in their catalogue at fire sale prices.
Developer kits, you send one to all the main developers so they can begin writing software for it.
@watcherzero5256 is correct. I just had yet another thought though. While the serial numbers still suggest 200 units or so, the fact remains that we all get different board revisions and rom revisions in those cases, and they are unrelated to the serial numbers. For example, my first C65 was a REV1.0 that was even more bodged than this one, but came with SN 000067.
SO: I wonder now if the 200 cases were ordered in preparation for dev kits, but the computer not yet completed, so the old boards were randomly paired with cases by Grapevine during liquidation.
I've only heard (and seen a pic or two) of one of these... :) NEAT.
Thanks for the pinout for CGA vs C65 Analog RGB. I wish for more of thse in the future
Interesting - I had no idea the C65 existed. It looks like a cross between a C64 and an Amiga 500!
it is. regarding manufacturing, an 8-bit machine is less expensive because you need less pins on the chip and have less pins to route on the pcb. in the 80s/90s that was a huge cost difference.
the stuck with an 8/16 bit cpu with an 8 bit data bus but being able to address 24bit - a similar address bus size like the 68000 cpu in the amiga.
I love that the 8-Bit Guy and the museum have the correct attitude on this. Regardless of the $20K to $80K valuation, it still needs to be out there, tested, taken apart and examined as part of the history. If it breaks by examination or use, that's better than it rusting away in a locked drawer because it's too expensive. An analogy is Stradivarius violins. Many of them are owned by museums or benefactors, and are lent out to the best violinists on the planet. The idea being it's better that the violins get used and heard, rather than decay into sawdust or whatever over time.
Crazy to think that a prototype from 1990 is analogous to centuries-old masterpieces, but there we are.
No Paperclips were harmed in the making of this video
Keep up the great work! 😀
GEOS should have been baked into the ROM 😅 That aside, Commodore's worst competitor was probably Commodore themselves with the Amiga. Apple seemed to be intent on making the GS the last 8 bit hurrah, cripple it and quickly move on to the Mac. Commodore seemed intent on warming over the 64 rather than pushing migration to the Amiga (tbh they should have bundled a decent C64 emulator with the Amiga, kind of like how Acorn did with the BBC Micro emulator for the their ARM designed Archimedes and later models).
Two totally different price points. The C64 was being sold as a "video game" (that is where Argos put it in their 1990 catalogue) with a large bundle of games at 1/3rd the price of an Amiga.
@@MrDuncl TBH the problem was by the early 90's the 8 bit era was fading out, with the likes of the 32bit Mega Drive and similar consoles gaining traction. The Amiga of course stood up well to the Mega Drive etc in terms of capabilities, but the likes of the CD32 and the A600 were to late to market IMHO. Apple made the cut in the 80s to transition away form 8bit but Commodore did not.
@@danielnesbitt9565 From the positioning in catalogues the C64 was competing against the NES which was also 8 bit. Games for consoles were always very expensive compared to tape or floppy, where you often got playable demos "free" taped to the front of computer magazines to draw you in.
Apple made the transition to business. In 1990 all the managers at work had Macs to demonstrate their management superiority while us engineers had to make do with HP 286 Vectra's with 14" colour screens 🙂
@@MrDuncl I have seen those magazines when I was a kind in the 90s, thankfully I did not attempt to replicate the code I was given for the heavily modified hand me down Sinclair QL and the magazines with the BASIC games for that. The QL is another can of worms of course.
The 286 was a competent CPU if DOS support was not an issue. OS/2 1.x is very stable and useable on a 286 with supported applications. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall with the 286 and the market, IBM should have done as well in hindsight.
All these computers would have been so confusing to a new computer shopper back then.
Everything was more confusing. There was nowhere to enter search terms for info :)
I have to wonder if that was a factor in the PC clones taking over? One one hand, you have a choice between half a dozen incompatible machines from Commodore, Sinclair, Apple, etc. On the other, you have IBM and dozens of PC clone manufacturers, all making mutually-compatible machines (and even having the option to build one yourself!). If you're looking to get your feet wet with your first home computer in such an environment, a cheap PC clone seems like a good choice, as you'll probably be able to buy something that'll run its software later on. The sheer number of manufacturers makes losing support down the road seem pretty unlikely.
@@jsmythib There were dozens of different computer magazines released monthly.
People actually had to learn shit and retain it back in the day. Not just look it up.
'back in the day' you needed to gap points and find a jar to catch fireflies. That was about it :)@@azzajohnson2123
I always look forward to Mondays because that means a new 8 bit guy video :D
He releases videos once a month.
@@Okurka.well yeah I meant one Monday per month
I had a commodore 64 when i was young, Always loved playing games on it. I had most games on Tape
I think the main problem of Comodore was that they couldn't make there mind about target audience and product strategy. I think instead of the C64 and C128 they should have pushed the Amiga 500 from start as replacement.And then go full into the gaming and media creation business instead of trying to sell office software.
The problem is that the Amiga was like four times more expensive than the 64 at launch. Half the reason it failed to catch on, I think, was that Commodore's stupid pricing war with TI had priced _themselves_ out of the market. Who's gonna shell out a grand for a new computer when the one they already have was only a couple hundred and change? Especially if it means having to buy all new software on top of that. Doesn't even matter how much more capable it is.
@@stevethepocket He was talking about 500, not 1000.
I remember being surprised to hear of the C128's existence back in... probably 1985. I didn't know what was wrong with the Amiga. It would be a few more years before I understood what "expensive" means. :) But anyway, I'm sure C65 development didn't do much good for Commodore's profit margins.
Commodores mishandling of its product lines is legendary at this point.
@@elLooto Now you mention it, I remember that various companies mishandling of their product lines killed quite a number of interesting 80s computers. The Canon Cat ought to be legendary too. It's what the Apple Mac should have been, but it couldn't be more different.