The Popularity of the Commodore 64 Computer

For those of you who remember the Commodore 64 computer, it’s been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time with anywhere between 12.5 and 17 million units sold. This includes three different Kernal ROM versions, a few motherboard versions and two different cases throughout its lifetime.

The Commodore 64 was released in January 192 by Commodore Intonational and was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Although it wasn’t advertised until August of that year for $595, or $1,596 in today’s dollars. The computer came out just after the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, and was name after its 64 kilobytes of RAM. It handled multicolor sprites and included a custom chip for waveform generation, allowing it to create higher quality visuals and audio compared to other systems.

The Computer of the 80s: Commodore 64

The Commodore 64, or C64, dominated the low-end of the computer market throughout the 80s owning up to 30-40% of the market share. It even outsold Apple computers, IBM PCs and even Atari 8-bit family of computers. The son of Commodore’s founder, Sam Tramiel, explained in an interview, “When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years.”

Overall, the Commodore 64 was the most popular computer around the world with the exception of the UK with competition from the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum and Japan with competition from many computers including the NEC PC-8801, Sharp X1, Fujitsu FM-7 and MSX.

Why the Commodore 64 was Popular

The Commodore 64 was popular for various reasons, including the following:

• Sold in retail stores in addition to electronics and computer hobbyist stores
• Brought a new technology to middle-class households through creative and affordable mass production
• Numerous software titles were created for the C64, including video games, office productivity apps and developmental tools
• Popularized the computer demoscene

Did you know that in 2011, 17 years after it was taken off the market, 87% of the public still recognized the brand?! Apparently it was a big deal!

Quality Software

In 1982, the C64’s sound and graphics capabilities were only matched by the Atari 8-bit family, far surpassing the Atari VCS and Apple II. It also is popular for starting the computer subculture called the demoscene, a software solely focused on producing demos, or smaller versions of computer programs. But although its competitors caught up, C64 still remained strong against video game systems like the NES and Sega Master System.

But due to lower income and competition from the Sinclair Spectrum in the United Kingdom, just about all of the British C64 software has cassette tapes.

As for online gaming, the first graphical character-based interactive game was Club Caribe, also known as Habitat, which was released in 1988. Club Caribe was created by LucasArts for Q-Link customers for C64 computers. Users were able to interact with each other, exchange items and chat. While the concept was basic, the online avatars and combination of graphics and chat was considered revolutionary, despite the need to support modem data transfer rates as low as 300 bits each second.

Commodore 64 Games

Popular video games commonly played on the Commodore 64 include:

• Bubble Bobble
• Mayhem in Monster Land
• Turrican
• Impossible Mission
• Paradroid
• Wizball
• Project Firestart
• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Did you play any of these back in the day?

Hardware

The Commodore 64 uses an 8-bit MOS Technology 6510 microprocessor. It also had the DE-9 joystick Atari joystick port from the VIC-20 so any Atari game could be played on the C64. It’s also possible to use Sega game pads on a C64, although it’s not recommended since the different signal they generate can damage the CIA chip.

The graphics chip, also known as VIC-II, contained 16 colors, eight hardware sprites per scanline, scrolling abilities and two bitmap graphics modes.

The standard text mode contained 40 columns, similar to most Commodore PET models. It has a resolution of 320×200 pixels which consists of 40×25 grid of 8×8 character blocks. The C64 also has 255 predefined character blocks called PETSCII. But the character set can also be copied into RAM and customized by a programmer.

Hardware Revisions

Instead of focusing on product testing, Sam Tramiel was focused on cutting costs, which resulted in several defects. Many of the developers like Epyx complained, saying it didn’t come close to quality. The Commodore 64 went through two major resigns, including switching positions of the VIC-II, SID and PLA Chips.

Commodore 64 Clones

Clones were considered computers that imitated C64 functions. In 2004, PC manufacturer Tulip Computers BV, which were also owners of the Commodore brand since 1997, announced the introduction of the C64 Direct-to-TV, which was a joystick-based TV game based on the C64 with 30 video games built into the ROM. It was designed by Jeri Ellsworth, a self taught computer designer who had earlier designed the modern C-One C64 implementation.

Emulators

The Commodore 64 emulators include the following:

• Open source VICE
• Hoxs64
• CCS64
• iPhone app

What Do You Remember from the Commodore 64?

Did you own a Commodore 64 computer? If so, what did you use it for? Gaming? Chats? Probably not Microsoft Word…I would love to hear about any personal experiences you had with this revolutionary technology!