Between typewriters, calculators, and gaming systems like the Atari many might not known Jack Tramiel’s name, but he was a legend that produced some iconic products like the Commodore 64 back in the 80′s. Here’s a great quote by Martin Goldberg, a writer on the Atari brand:

Jack Tramiel was an immense influence in the consumer electronics and computing industries. A name once uttered in the same vein as Steve Jobs is today, his journey from concentration camp survivor to captain of industry is the stuff of legends.”

Jack’s love for technology and his aggressive business practices we can thank for driving down the price of personal computers during the 80′s, and made them what they are today. His legacy will continue forever. Tramiel is survived by his wife, three sons, and their families.

[via The Verge]

The Commodore Amiga mini takes on minimalist styling with a square aluminum housing with rounded corners. Inside, it packs a powerful Intel Core i7 3.5GHz (3.9GHz with Turbo Boost) quad-core processor, 16GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 GPU with its own 1GB of RAM, and a 1TB SATA hard drive. It also sports two WiFi antennae, Bluetooth, a slot-loading Blu-ray drive, and a slew of ports, including four USB 3.0, four USB 2.0, HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort.

The C64x continues the retro styling that Commodore fans celebrate, but now features Intel’s D2700 dual-core 2.13GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, NVIDIA’s GeForce GT520 GPU, and comes with a 1 or 3TB hard drive, among other upgraded specs. The VIC mini has the same specs, but is wrapped in the same aluminum housing as the Amiga, while the VIC-Slim does a modern take on the keyboard computer form factor and packs an Intel 2.13GHz dual-core D2700 processor with 2GB of RAM, and a 1TB SATA hard drive.

[via Engadget]

The first IBM trumped the 8-bit processors the competition was toting with its then-monstrous 16-bit processor. It utilized a 160k floppy disk drive, had a monochrome adapter for a graphics card, it’s display showed green on black, and ran PC-DOS. This system PC-DOS was later to be known as MS-DOS of course once Microsoft had it licensed to 3rd party vendors. Memory inside this first IBM PC was fabulous at 40K ROM, 64K RAM expandable to 256K with the cost of each 64K being $495 USD.

The total cost of a full IMB PC at launch was $3,005, and in the entirety of 1981, exactly 671,537 units were sold. All of this is according to Michael Miller’s 20th anniversary post on PCMag back in 2001. This $3,005 unit included memory of 64,000 bytes, a single diskette drive and its own display. You could also buy a bare-bones unit for home use attached to an audio tape cassette player and a television set would sell for approximately $1,565.

C.B. Rogers, Jr., IBM vice president and group executive, General Business Group said of the IMB PC at launch:

“This is the computer for just about everyone who has ever wanted a personal system at the office, on the university campus, or at home. We believe its performance, reliability, and ease of use make it the most advanced, affordable personal computer in the marketplace.”

What a blockbuster! What was your first computer? Mine was certainly the lovely Macintosh Color Classic, a fully color console/display in one unit, starting with 4 MB memory and having a sweet Motorola 16 MHz processor running System 7.1 – Mac OS 7.6.1. Of course I quickly got wise in those days as to what having a Mac VS having a PC really meant – artwork and design OR games. By the time Diablo II came out I couldn’t stand it anymore – PC it certainly was. Were there any IBM components in my first PC? I haven’t a clue. Did I look like the little guy in the photo above? You bet!

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“It looks just like the original Commodore 64, with even the old-style keyboard,” said Barry Altman, Commodore USA’s chief executive. “In fact, that keyboard was the biggest accomplishment of all, so far. The keys look like a piece of clay that you pushed a marble into — so it fits your fingertip.”

The price is exactly the same as the 1982 price: $595.

The original Commodore 64 had a whopping 64KB of memory. The new one has 4GB, which isn’t huge by today’s standards. I mean, you can get more than that on a tiny little SD card. But it isn’t as if this would be anyone’s primary computer.

Other specs:

• Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating system on disk ready to install (is it a floppy disk??)
• Commodore OS 1.0, along with emulation functionality and classic game package, will be mailed to purchasers when available.

And more from Barry: “We expected our audience to be the nostalgia crowd, and that’s true, a lot of people buying them owned an original Commodore 64 back in the ’80s,” Altman said. “But we’re also finding that there are young kids who are geek geniuses who have iPhones and iPads and things like that and they’re looking at this thing and they’re into it. They’ve actually been a big part of our customer base so far too. It’s been a surprise.”

Here are some of the original commercials for your viewing pleasure. There was a PC/Apple rivalry back then, too:

And this one is complete with girls on waterslides, super cool music, and even hand motions:

So what do you think? Do you want one? Are you keeping up with the Commodore?

[via LA Times]

Details of the new Commodore started to surface again this week. The company has decided to go retro in a big way and has given the new machine the same skin as the old 80′s computer and I love it. The thing looks like the 80′s computer on the surface, but underneath it’s all modern. The new Commodore is cheaper than the original that sold for nearly $600 back in the day, at least in some of its new iterations.

The official price ranges from $250 to $900. Inside the beast are an Intel D525 processor, Intel NM10 chipset and ION 2 Graphics. The machine gets up to 4GB of RAM, Realtek 6-ch audio, and it has dual SATA 2 ports inside for storage. You can see from the pics that the thing has a CD drive and a memory card reader along with all the outputs we expect from a modern computer on the back. The machine has a heck of a price range and I don’t note options that would drive the price up $650.

Commodore CEO Barry Altman says that the response to the machine has been “completely dramatic.” I am not surprised, there are hoards of geeks that were in grade school like me when this thing came out that couldn’t hope to afford the $600 price tag in the 80′s that can certainly plunk down the loot this thing demands today.

[via NYT]

The Commodore USA LLC company has announced that it has secured the rights to the Commodore name from Commodore Licensing B.V. and I will be the first to say that this is very confusing. Apparently, Commodore Licensing B.V. owns the rights to the computer we all recall from the 80′s. With the rights secured to the name, Commodore USA, LLC (confused yet?) will market a new keyboard all-in-one computer around the country.

The keyboard AIO are much more like the Commodore from my youth than those junk netbooks that were sold under the Commodore name back in 2008. The new machine will be an exact replica of those original Commodore machines with the beige chassis and all. Inside will be all modern hardware though. The hardware will include an Intel Atom 525 CPU with Ion 2 graphics, 4GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, HDMI, DVD drive with Blu-ray option, and 802.11n WiFi. The price for the new Commodore and availability are unknown.

Video demo after the cut

Apple’s concern was that it was relatively straightforward to add in basic support to the emulator, since the Manomio team had in fact left it in place but “locked”.  They hoped that, after a more favorable judgement by Apple at a later point, they would be able to retroactively activate it remotely.  However that was scuppered when users found they could enable it themselves.

“Due to the extreme publicity the app has received over the weekend and the fact that several users found a way to enable the basic back, Apple decided to remove the app from App Store until we have solved the issue.” Manomio statement

Manomio have submitted a new version but that needs to get through Apple’s internal processes.  So at the moment there’s no C64 app to be downloaded, which means if you were hoping for a few games of Dragons Den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck and Jack Attack then you’ll just have to wait a little longer.

[via Kotaku]

More photos and video of the C64 laptop after the cut

For storage, Ben replaced the floppy drive with a board that emulates it with an SD card.  That same board lets you hook up a basic Nokia phone display, to show memory use and other stats.  Underneath there’s a cartridge slot, and there are two speakers even though the C64 was (and still is) mono only.

This is apparently both Ben’s longest and shortest projects; the longest as he first tackled a C64 laptop back in 2006, and the shortest as once he decided to actually complete this mod it only took him a week and a half.  No word on what’s going to happen to the C64 laptop, whether it’s destined for eBay or a keeper.

[via Nowhere Else]

The Core i7 will be included in the company’s gaming rigs mostly. And though they have not announced any new models at this time, they have added the Core i7 to the list of possible build options when you’re ordering a computer.

Both the GX and XX models will gain the Core i7 option. The former includes a 1GB ATI Radeon graphics card and costs $3,399 and the latter includes the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition and dual 2GB Radeon graphics cards for $5,999. New processor or not, that’s still rather expensive.

The netbook will feature a 1.6GHz Via C7-M processor, an 80GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, a 1.6GHz Via C7-M processor and Bluetooth. It will also have a 10-inch display and will start at $610.

And though it’s only linked in name to the old Commodores, it will no doubt gain considerable attention because of it. Nostalgia wins many over and it may very well do it in this case. I mean, this one is an IBM inside, but for the Commodore name, a devoted few will shell out the cash.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Where were you when Atari announced their 800 model home computer? Or what about when the Commodore 64 burst onto the scene?

Regardless of the model, now you can see all your favorite ads from the very beginning days of computing right up through the 1980’s. Well, 101 of them, at least. Check out the full list. If you ever doubted that tech has come a long way, this should confirm it for you.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]

I remember having a Commodore 64, I never set it up because the one thing I didn’t have, a monitor, was the one thing I never got until I went and bough a Windows PC way back when Norton Commander was still useful, and 3.1 was the new hotness. Anyways, you can likely expect to see titles such as Sentinel, Head Over Heels, and Attack of the Mutant Camels coming to the VC soon.

Now for the downside, they are, at least in the beginning, only going to be available in Europe and will cost 500 Wii points, or about £3.50. Hopefully they’ll make their way over to the US sometime soon and hopefully for a similar price.

[via wiinintendo]

I know there are still many Commodore 64 fans out there, and one of them is Toni Westbrook; a guy that work on a project called Shredz64, that aim to create connectivity and interaction between Guitar Hero controller with C64. The project plans also include the game itself that runs on C64 using the retro 8-bit beep and blips to output the sound. So far Toni has gotten the controller to work with the C64 and the game development itself has been started earlier this year. Way to go Toni!

Guitar Hero For The Commodore 64 [via kotaku]

I understand why they released a like of gaming PCs, it makes sense really. They were huge back before my day in the gaming world, so it’s natural that they’d want to come back into the same market. But why MP3 players?

The Gravel In Pocket will be a WiFi-enabled PVP, while a smaller Gravel C200 will only be an MP3 player. No word on pricing, availability, or the logic behind these.

Commodore lends geek cred to MP3 players [via crave]

The gaming rigs that they have look like what I would expect from any other high-end system builder would have. They do have cool “C-kins” that you can put on your PC. It’s a paint job for your case, only they say that you can change your C-kin to fit your mood. They don’t, however, say how you will be able to change them. They describe the C-kin as a painting process, so I hope they don’t actually expect you to send in your whole PC for a new paint job. I don’t see a lot of people going for that.

No word yet on pricing, as the store isn’t actually open for business. You can browse all you like, but the store will officially open in mid-April.

Commodore Lifts the Curtain on Its Gaming PCs [via gizmodo]

Commodore is looking to make a comeback in the gaming business with a new line of gaming PCs. Judging from the reaction I’ve seen so far, they are poised to make a triumphant return. I think many people would love to own a Commodore gaming PC if only for nostalgia.

We don’t have a lot of details yet, but according to their website, we’ve got just about a week to wait.

Commodore aims to reemerge as a gaming PC brand [via crave]

Till Harbaum has posted documentation on how to create your own USB to C64 floppy drive adapter. Now you can finally pull all of the information off of those disks you’ve been keeping around all of these years.

This is not for the beginning modder, so be sure you’ve got plenty of time to work on this before diving in.

Commodore 64 Disk Drive Adapter For PCs [via ohgizmo]