Commodore 64 Ultimate

https://www.commodore.net/product-page/commodore-64-ultimate-basic-beige-batch1

by guerrilla • 9 months ago

142 86 9 months ago

commodore.net

postexitus3• 9 months ago

Is this using Jeri Ellsworth's implementation of Commodore 64 in FPGA?

dijit• 9 months ago

No, it's based on the AMD Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA.

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.

postexitus3• 9 months ago

Ah - but Jeri is still in the team. That makes me happy: https://www.commodore.net/team/

drivers993• 9 months ago

"The motherboard is a heavily modified version of Gideon Zweijtzer's original design." [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffeaLbKHkw&t=206s

drivers993• 9 months ago

Ordered a founder's edition in August. Looks like I might get it this year (originally estimated October). Retro Recipes x Commodore posted a video update about the manufacturing process recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffeaLbKHkw

(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.)

reaperducer3• 9 months ago

They kept the cassette port, but got rid of the User port? The User port is where all the good stuff goes.

They could have put the Ethernet and other new stuff on the left side where there's plenty of room.

drivers993• 9 months ago

Not sure why, they have header pins for the user port and then an adapter if you want to use things that require the original edge connector. I'm guessing (although I'm not sure what those other chips on the adapter do) you could also connect directly to the header for new stuff. https://www.commodore.net/product-page/u64-userport-adapter

sys_64738• 9 months ago

Was it the user port or cartridge port where we'd ground the reset line with a paperclip to reset the C64? I can't remember.

rzzzt2• 9 months ago

They both have one: https://archive.org/details/commodore-64-manual-en-1982/page...

On the user port I managed to short 5V to GND instead :'(

ryandrake• 9 months ago

With a username like that, you should know the answer!

Someone2• 9 months ago

$299 is about half the price, not corrected for inflation, of the original, which started at $595 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64).

I think that’s impressive, given the (likely) way lower production run.

georgemcbay3• 9 months ago

While this is true (and the price for the new device is still extremely reasonable) by 1983 you could buy a C64 for $199 (in the US anyway).

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).

nosianu2• 9 months ago

In East Germany, the GDR, you could buy C64 and C128 from private sellers advertising in the classified ads section of the major electronics magazine in the GDR. They usually received those devices from relatives in West Germany.

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.

kwanbix• 9 months ago

Why not adjust for inflation?

The original $595 in 1983 would be about $1,997.57 today.

Similarly, $199 in 1983 would equal around $647.30 in 2025 dollars.

Someone2• 9 months ago

Adjusting for inflation over such long time periods in electronics is, IMO, not useful because of the wildly different cost curves of labor and capital. You expect average prices to go up, but electronics to get cheaper over time.

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.

LanceJones• 9 months ago

I'm excited for Christian (Peri) and team... but also kinda bummed that the RR channel has gone on a bit of a hiatus (understandable). Wishing everyone success with this amazing new chapter...

mondainx• 9 months ago

I miss the days of BBS'ing on my 300 baud modem, boosted to 420-ish. Things were so much simpler. I'm thinking this might make a good xmas present for myself! :)

IT4MD• 9 months ago

100% with you. I miss those times.. High-5 to a fellow 300bauder!

leptons3• 9 months ago

I built my own 300bps modem as a teenager, to connect to my C64. Tech was a lot more fun back in the day. It was exciting every year to see the speed of modems go up, and up, and up. 300 bps, 1200bps, and then when I got a 2400bps modem the C64 built-in serial code was too slow, I couldn't transfer files because there were so many dropped bits. So I wrote my own serial port code in assembly language and hacked it into my favorite terminal software (CCGMS) and that fixed the problem. I think by the time I got a 9600 baud modem I probably had an Amiga.

js23• 9 months ago

boosted to 420-ish

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?

reaperducer3• 9 months ago

If you had a pretty clean line, you could do 450 baud. Some BBSes had separate numbers for this speed. Sometimes it just worked with regular 300 lines.

georgemcbay3• 9 months ago

I miss the days of BBS'ing on my 300 baud modem, boosted to 420-ish. Things were so much simpler.

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.

xen2xen1• 9 months ago

And if that happened, you might not get back on. The line might be busy, you might have run out of time or logins for the day..

tclancy3• 9 months ago

Maybe I can finally debug that cool-looking boxing game I typed in by hand from a magazine. To this day, I am sort of surprised I wound up a coder given that was my initial experience with programming.

nonethewiser• 9 months ago

I didn't really know about this until recently when I listened to a DHH / Lex Fridman podcast. The podcast started out with him retelling a very similar experience. I wasn't familiar with DHH either and found myself disagreeing with a lot of his takes (JS > TS ... really?) but it was a really interesting conversation none-the-less.

georgemcbay3• 9 months ago

I typed in by hand from a magazine.

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

fm2606• 9 months ago

I loved Compute!'s Gazette.

I miss good print magazines

tclancy3• 9 months ago

100% that. And my Irish Catholic cynicism told me it was just as likely the person who wrote the article messed up the code as me so I went back to playing games.

linsomniac• 9 months ago

Pages and pages of numbers to type in...

codazoda• 9 months ago

I had the Tandy TRS-80 CoCo, but same…

My experience was differently though. Figuring out where the typos were is what I credit with my learning to code.

pflenker• 9 months ago

MAD magazine once printed a listing with some non obvious errors in it, introducing my 10 year old self to the concept of a bug.

Maybe now I will have the chance to see a self-made Alfred E. Neuman!

dole• 9 months ago

I wound up typing that entire listing at least three times before I gave up and never saw the errata. Definitely worth the satisfaction of youtubing or googling the output decades after.

jadbox• 9 months ago

Does not come with joy controllers and they are $40/ea.

kbelder• 9 months ago

Aren't they the standard Atari-style, with the RS-232 style ports? It should be cheap to get ahold of some compatible joysticks. I would hope they kept all the ports the same...

noelwelsh2• 9 months ago

"Your childhood just leveled up" as a tagline is pretty revealing. I'm not sure where the company goes after they have mined all the nostalgia. I like the statement "[t]his isn’t tech that controls you. It invites you to play, learn, and create" but I'm struggling to think of how that converts into a long-term product line. I wish them success though. More diversity would be nice!

guerrilla4• 9 months ago

Why do they need to? Can't that just be it? Why does everything need to grow forever? We all die. That doesn't mean it was necessarily a bad idea to live.

noelwelsh2• 9 months ago

They don't need to, but it does seem to be the plan: "every penny goes into manufacturing first, and then to the mission to reboot Commodore itself"

Razengan• 9 months ago

You're reading too much into something innocent that just tries to join with the fans.

Anyone today who knows what "Commodore" means will be happy at seeing that!

AlecSchueler• 9 months ago

It can become part of new childhoods. I was actually born after the Commodore era but my first thought on seeing this was how great it would be to share with my daughter.

_spduchamp2• 9 months ago

Is it feasible to fabricate new MOS 6581 chips?

guerrilla4• 9 months ago

Pretty sure there are a bunch of different types of clones on eBay.

_spduchamp2• 9 months ago

I thought all these were all simulations and not replicas of silicon. I'm talking about something that keeps all the interference flaws and weirdness of the analog synth intact, and every chip being just a little bit unique, like the original.

jandrese3• 9 months ago

Maybe not, but there are clones of every single chip in a C64 available for sale now. Getting a perfect replacement is tricky because the originals were far from perfect, the sound you got out would vary between batches and many of the older chips have partially degraded in different ways.

https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/SID_replacement

pverheggen2• 9 months ago

Fabricating a custom chip costs several million dollars, which is kind of a non-starter for such a niche product.

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...

sandlbn• 9 months ago

It’s the same as the Ultimate 64 Elite II from Gideon, which is great. It got me back into C64 coding https://github.com/sandlbn/whisper64 , now in C.

Aldipower2• 9 months ago

I am making music with original C64s. I am excited about this one to get maybe a more noise free experience. Let's see. I've ordered in July.

codezero• 9 months ago

Pretty neat but I don’t love the price. I got a real working C64 for $100, and a turbo chameleon that can bring all the fpga benefits and connectivity for less.

I also wonder whose fpga core they are using and if they licensed it or not.

kybernetyk• 9 months ago

I hope the keyboard is a USB keyboard so I can use it as input for my linux box :)

Aldipower2• 9 months ago

I have the 8BitDo C64 retro keyboard. It even is wireless, but also has USB. It is a charm.

christkv• 9 months ago

I might get one, I have the C64 Max and the kids are having a lot of fun on it with their friends playing Bruce Lee 1 and 2 as well as Archon. I'm also really really interested in http://www.apollo-core.com/gfx/A6000.jpg the amiga was my first programming machine and having a mostly useful computer that is compatible would be awesome.

greendestiny_re• 9 months ago

That means no more screwing around with the cassette heads.

afro88• 9 months ago

Isn't this just an emulator or rebadged something-or-other?
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.

jacobgorm• 9 months ago

I really wanted to buy an official Commodore T-shirt, and all the designer had to do was put the chicken lips logo on a white background, but whoever was in charge decided to instead get creative and come up with a range of very bad designs that have zero resemblance with anything ever produced by Commodore.

ForgetItJake2• 9 months ago

Whoever owns the IP now seems to be going for this weird cyberpunk look.

selfhoster11• 9 months ago

The guy in question has a contact link or email. I'd reach out and just ask.

ForgetItJake2• 9 months ago

Pleasantly surprised to see it's not just a Raspberry Pi in a keyboard shell.

n0um3n42• 9 months ago

I'm ordering one for each finger I have. This is my childhood like many here.

jeberle2• 9 months ago

I would find the product more compelling in a puck form factor (sans kbd). I can't imagine missing the extra key labels. That would make it significantly smaller, more robust, & less expensive.

I'd also prefer DisplayPort to HDMI, but that might have been chosen for cost, or for the home gaming / nostalgia play.

actionfromafar• 9 months ago

Isn't HDMI the one with the license fee?

jeberle2• 9 months ago

Ah, you're right: $10K/yr + $0.15/unit. I was thinking more of a BOM part that already did HDMI, making it a no-brainer. Just speculating.

qingcharles• 9 months ago

It claims 99% compat. Anyone know what the holdouts are?

Commodore 64 Ultimate

Related Stories