Commodore Amiga @ Game City 2014
When 16 colors were state of the art. A look back to the first personal computers of Commodore, the C64 and Amiga 500.
Photo credit: Viki Secrets
Retro Gaming Corner @ Game City 2014
Hi, at this year's Game City, the largest video game convention in Vienna, I was glad to see my first personal computer, the C64 again :P
There was a special retro gaming corner, featuring the very first gaming consoles, and there was also a home computer area powered by Stefan Egger, founder of the computer collection vienna, a comprehensive collection of classic computers. I also did an in-depth interview with Stefan, which you can read here.
The C64 and even the later released much more powerful Amiga 500 were really limited compared to today's computers, but they were amazing and mind-blowing for their time.
The Commodore 64 in its more modern C64c design. The whole computer was embedded in the keyboard and featured 64 KB RAM, an 8-bit ~1 MHz CPU, 320 x 200 pixels 16 colors graphics, and the famous SID sound chip. The original C64 model was introduced in 1982.
The Commodore VC20 was the predecessor of the C64 and had the same keyboard as the original breadbox C64.
Stefan Egger, collector of classic computers.
The VC20 / C64 keyboard. From the side view you can see the graphics characters, which were input via the special branded Commdore C= key.
There are still new games and software developed for the C64 & co.
The Amiga 500 running Apidya. The Amiga 500 was much improved over the C64 and was Commodore's low-budget business/home line.
The Amiga 500 featured an integrated 3.5 inch floppy drive, 512 KB RAM, an ~7 MHz 16/32 bit CPU, improved graphics (32 colors from a 4096 colors pallete and in a special mode even all 4096 colors could be used simultaneously) and 4-channel 8-bit sound.
The legendary Competition Pro joystick.
Link from Zelda playing on an Atari ST :P
What was your first personal computer?
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elegantandrogyne on 2014-10-29 23:23
Yeah, those were the times... I remember playing Prince of Persia, Test Drive, North & South, Tetris, Sokoban and some other games back in the beginning of 1990s, on a PC XT (80286, don't know the other specs) with no disk drive. One 5.25" floppy was for OS (in this case, M$ DOS 3.1 or so) and the other was for software. A neighbour of ours had a C64, IIRC. The small floppies! :)
My friend living in the Netherlands has quite a collection of '80s computers. I think I've seen an Apple ][ or a Commodore there, but I'm not so sure.
Oh, by the way... I wonder if anyone played '88 Interplay's Wasteland at the event, now that the sequel finally came out (and I'm upgrading my system for it... GeForce 9800GTX is a bit too weak, moving to Radeon HD6850).
elegantandrogyne on 2014-10-29 23:33
Oh, BTW. Now, back to the future. A very popular micro-computer called Raspberry Pi sold in millions, and got a plenty of people into programming or electronics. And there's FUZE, a British box for Raspberry, which incorporates a keyboard, breadboard for electronics prototyping and so on... and it looks strangely simmilar to C64: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2013/04/13/rasberry-pi-fuze-enclosure-revives-1980s-micros/ :)
Viki Secrets on 2014-10-30 22:48
Oh yeah, it was really an amazing time. Still remember the days with my C64. Later a friend got an Amiga 500. But I stayed with my C64 and then switched directly to an IBM-compatible 386 PC with an 80 MB hard disk I think ... Miniaturization is also amazing. I am now writing this on my 10.6 inch Intel Core i5 tablet PC with a 64 GB SSD, which is a million times the RAM size of the C64 ;)