In the late 1970’s and early-mid 1980’s, one of the dominant players in the world of home computing was Commodore Business Machines. The most famous and widely used was the Commodore 64, which is to this day the record holder for number of units sold of a single computer model. But there were many others which are not as widely known. Here is a brief run-down of the Commodore 8-bit product line:
KIM-1. The KIM-1 was one of the first 6502-based computers
available. Consisting of a circuitboard with a little
hexadecimal display and keypad (power supply extra), it was
made by a company called MOS, which Commodore bought, and
based the rest of their 8-bit product line on it.
PET. The original PET computer had a “chicklet” keyboard,
resembling a telephone’s keypad more than a typewriter’s, and
a built-in cassette drive. Later models moved to a more
typeable keyboard and an external cassette drive. The PET had
a built-in green-on-black monitor, and came in versions from
8KB to 32KB.
VIC-20. Commodore’s first home computer. Designed to work
with a TV set, it had 8 colors and a 22 (yes, 22) by 23
character display, and a whopping 5KB of RAM. While a disk
drive was available, it was too expensive for most users, who
opted for a tape drive and/or game cartridges instead. Called
the VC-20 in Germany, because “vic” sounds like the German
equivalent of the “F-word”.
64. The breakaway success that put Commodore on the map,
and gave the Apple ][e a run for its money. 64KB of RAM was
enough to get some serious applications and games written.
The disk drive came down a little in price and became pretty
ubiquitous. Tons of games were available, and widely
pirated. Its display could do 40×25 characters, or 320×200
pixels, in 16 colors, and it had pretty good sound for the day.
SX-64. A Commodore 64, floppy drive, and tiny color
monitor in a “luggable” case. Very cute, but not very
practical.
128. This was the follow-up to the 64, but Commodore’s
marketing department really flubbed it. The 128 doubled the
available RAM, though you have to do some fancy tricks to get
the processor to be able to access it. It also doubled the
speed (to 2 MHz) and the screen resolution (640×200), but
those modes are incompatible with 64 software, so were rarely
used. It did however have a 64 compatibility mode, so it
could run 99% of 64 software. It also came with a second
processor: a Z80 chip, and through some very strange hardware
and firmware tricks, enabled you to run CP/M software. The
trouble is, CP/M was obsolete by the time the 128 came out, so
it was a case of too little too late for Commodore’s attempt
at getting into the business arena.
128-D. A desktop box with detached keyboard and built-in
floppy drive, containing a 128. Part of Commodore’s weak
attempt at the business market.
Plus/4 and 16. These were supposed to be a second
generation replacement for the 64, but were crippled by the
fact that they were incompatible with it. They had 128
colors, but lacked some of the features of the 64 which made
it such a great game machine. The Plus/4 came with some
productivity software in ROM, and the 16 only had 16KB of RAM,
and had rather different shaped cases, but otherwise they were
very similar to each other.
Check out My Commodore History – a memoir describing my childhood exposure to these great machines.
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