Commodore 64 Ultimate
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The Commodore 64 Ultimate is a new hardware-based Commodore 64 computer that has generated excitement among retro computing enthusiasts, with discussions around its features, pricing, and potential uses.
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Jeri Ellsworth's was actually an ASIC.
She made a "C-One" which was FPGA based, but this one is different, the C64Ultimate uses Gideon Zweijtzer's design in the AMD Xilinx.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffeaLbKHkw&t=206s
They could have put the Ethernet and other new stuff on the left side where there's plenty of room.
On the user port I managed to short 5V to GND instead :'(
I think that’s impressive, given the (likely) way lower production run.
This price reduction was the difference maker in allowing my family to (barely) afford to buy me a C64 in late 1983 (and this is what I learned to code on, first in MS BASIC, then in 6510 assembler).
The price for a C64 was thousands of East German Marks, at least half a year of salaries (the salary spread was low, so that's engineers or workers or managers).
An Amiga cost 25,000 Marks towards the end of the GDR, which was about two years of salaries (income was from below 1,000 Marks to ca. 1,500 for high earners, much more than that was unusual). This put 16 bit computing at home or school out of the hands of almost everyone, unless they had generous relatives in the West who sent them one. Even at work, the 8-bit PCs were still much more common (e.g. PC 1715 - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_1715), with a CP/M clone OS.
But at least they were all available. Our own CAOS (Cassette Aided Operating System- https://www.mpm-kc85.de/html/CAOS_42.htm) 8 bit systems based on Z80 clone CPUs, KC-85 (1/2/3/4) where not too shabby, for work and serious stuff at least the later -3 and even more so the -4 lines were superior to the C64, easier to program, and much more usable screen (https://www.mpm-kc85.de/).
The state was pretty hands-off. My own school's physics teacher started a computer club in the 1980s and he spent thousands of public school money on exclusively Western computers, from ZX spectrum (the very first one) to Atari 800 XL, C64, C128, with both cassette and disk drives. That must have cost a lot. Still surprises me that nobody asked him to buy East German, especially since in the 8-bit range our own systems would have been perfectly fine for the purpose.
The original $595 in 1983 would be about $1,997.57 today.
Similarly, $199 in 1983 would equal around $647.30 in 2025 dollars.
Adjusting for performance would be even more ludicrous. The computing power of about any modern smartphone would have cost billions, if not trillions, in 1983. Even this device is much faster than the original (48MHz in Turbo mode).
That would make that $2k about $100k, the price of 50 Commodore 64s at launch.
> A 4800 baud modem would be right out.
Not with a "Warp Speed" cartridge. It does write speeds on a stock C64/1541 up to 2900 Bytes per second. I'm pretty sure reading serial data faster than 2400bps is easily doable too.
https://www.obliterator918.com/the-warp-speed-cartridge-from...
I was there in the 300 bps days with a Novation Apple Cat II and I never heard of such a thing. How did that work? Did you have non-standard modems on both ends?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interface_bit_rates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ITU-T_V-series_recomme...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem#Dial-up
I also don't recall intermediate speeds. The modems at both ends would negotiate the highest standard speed they could. I must've owned a dozen dialup modems over the years starting with that Novation Apple Cat II (300 bps, 1200 bps half-duplex to another Apple Cat II) and just have no recollection of variable speeds like you're describing, and I spent a lot of time dialed into BBSes.
Maybe your modem just didn't support it. Or maybe it was one of the many mods people did to their modems.
I know that at least one of the modems I had (a combination of Commodore, Hayes, and Avatex modems) supported higher-than-usual baud rates out of the box. I can't say how exactly it worked, you just issued commands or the terminal program handled it.
To the very best of my knowledge, dial-up modems jumped from 300 bps to 1200 bps, and they exchanged data at whatever the highest speed they could negotiate. The Novation Apple Cat II modem was also pretty unique in that it supported 1200 bps half-duplex, but only to another Apple Cat II, and it also had the ability to detect and generate arbitrary tones. There were programs for it to play music and to use it as a voice modulator.
Which is all to say, I was pretty into this stuff.
So I'm really interested in any information about a modem that worked at intermediate speeds like 450 bps.
I searched textfiles.com but couldn't find anything there either.
FWIW, I had a very strong memory of a graphical BBS program that worked on the Apple II using hi-res mode and a dedicated client. I asked about it here over the years but was never able to find any confirmation it existed:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2036329
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882989
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23931096
I was questioning my memory that it existed, but then three years ago I tracked it down:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33256053
- https://www.reddit.com/r/apple2/comments/kpx9zl/hbbs/
So yeah, I totally understand the internet is missing a lot of pre-web history.
I have a lot of nostalgia from this time, but also remember it was all fun and games until my mom or one of my sisters picked up one of the phones (standard issue AT&T handsets) in the house, causing a rapid burst of line noise and usually a disconnection due to lack of error checking/correction at the hardware level.
Probably Compute!'s Gazette.
Figuring out where I messed up (or where they misprinted) in the hundreds of lines of code entered from some of these listings was my introduction to debugging :D
I miss good print magazines
https://www.computesgazette.com/
Maybe now I will have the chance to see a self-made Alfred E. Neuman!
My experience was differently though. Figuring out where the typos were is what I credit with my learning to code.
Anyone today who knows what "Commodore" means will be happy at seeing that!
https://github.com/VICE-Team/svn-mirror/tree/main/vice/src/r...
Is it theoretically possible? Maybe, there are high-res die photographs used for reverse engineering and improving simulator accuracy. But I doubt this is accurate enough to fab an exact replica.
http://visual6502.org/images/pages/MOS_6581_SID_die_shots.ht...
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/SID_replacement
I'd also prefer DisplayPort to HDMI, but that might have been chosen for cost, or for the home gaming / nostalgia play.
(In my case, it's not about nostalgia. I actually have been using a shared one in a hackerspace to play around with 6502 machine language and want my own.)
I also wonder whose fpga core they are using and if they licensed it or not.
>The Commodore 64 Ultimate from the only original Commodore® brand (est. 1958) is brand new hardware-based Commodore 64 technology. It features SID chip-reactive LEDs (case, keyboard, power light), the world's first transparent keyboard PCB, original and modern creators’ autographs etched in copper, and an updated FPGA that replicates the original C64 motherboard (not emulation). All customisable via a new, easy main menu. It’s a fully authentic new build from Commodore - who else?
I was hoping they would have authentic SID chips. The analog side of the SID is a large part of it's sound so it comes down to how well they can model that.