back to article Commodore 64 revivalist posts prototype PC pics

Commodore USA's way-behind-schedule re-incarnation of the original Commodore 64 - it was supposed to ship in June 2010 - is moving ever closer to reality. The company has posted piccies of its attempt to fit a modern PC's internals into a 64 casing, described as a prototype. "This is not the plastic, color or finish that the …

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  1. Arnold Lieberman

    Too late

    Alrady done here: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/c64/

  2. Anomalous Cowturd
    Joke

    Passive cooling?

    It's probably not the 3GHz quad core they were talking about last year then..

    And look at the size of that cooling vent on top of the case!

  3. ElReg!comments!Pierre
    Coat

    Will it be on time...

    ... for the release of Duke Nukem Forever?

    1. Gulfie
      Thumb Up

      Probably...

      ... but you'll need the plug-in RAM pack to make it run.

  4. James Le Cuirot
    Thumb Down

    Forget this

    Anyone can stick a PC in a shoebox. Show us something interesting like the Amiga X1000.

  5. William Boyle

    Waaaay-back machine in action

    Boy, does this bring back memories, such as when my wife and I (much younger then) were visiting her aunt and uncle in Oregon, and I spent a Sunday afternoon with him writing a tape drive operating system (in BASIC) for his C64, in the kitchen! It gave him a (text-based) UI that allowed him to select his applications, and command-line options, to run in order to manage his sheep farm.

  6. Buzzword
    WTF?

    Just one question.....

    Why bother?

    1. Colin Miller

      Why?

      If you have to ask, then you are not a computer-geek, and I can not explain. If you are a computer-geek then then no explanation is necessary; you will understand.

      1. Kay Burley ate my hamster
        Flame

        Only one reason

        To make money out of people who think a fitting tribute to a truly innovative machine is to shoehorn a low power PC into a mock-up of the great machine its self.

        I'd rather spend an evening tinkering with the original, relearning long lost skills, but then I do consider myself a computer geek.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Don't support ! Its a Con

    They bought the name now, the US based pc shop is trying to go global with their nostalgia branded pc's/phone and tablets, claiming they are supporting the Commodore and Amiga communties, yet they are attempting block European based non-x86 hardware, stealing images from amiga fan sites and no paying for copyrighted material, they are just added value con merchants,

    Basically small fry puffin its chest out and milking the cash cow.

  8. Horridbloke
    Jobs Horns

    Hello Clarice.

    This reminds me of the bit in Silence Of The Lambs where Hannibal Lecter escapes while wearing somebody else's face on top of his own. Truly horrible.

    (Yes, I saw the note about the prototype quality and finish. It's still horrible. Plus there appears to be a ****ing fan in the back of it)

  9. ArmanX
    Unhappy

    Anyone could put a nano-ITX motherboard into a plastic box.

    This isn't deserving of the C64 name. It is no more groundbreaking than if I made a coat rack out of a board and five hooks I bought from a hardware store, and put an Ikea logo on it.

    Commodore 64 is dead. It was beautiful while it lived, but it's gone now. So quit digging up its bones and wiggling its jawbone while yelling, "No, really, look, I'm not dead!"

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Coat

      But, no...

      It's not dead; it's just resting.

  10. Chrome

    PS/2 ports

    for that truly retro feel

    1. Les Matthew

      @Chrome

      You do know that most modern desktop motherboards currently on sale still have PS/2 ports on them?

      1. Code Monkey

        Nobody types so quickly that PS/2's a bottleneck

        And once in a while even proper geeks attempt to configure the BIOS with their fancy wireless job and wish they hadn't thrown out that PS/2 museum piece.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          @ Code monkey

          PS/2 is better in other ways too, it supports n-key roll-over where USB supports only 6.

          A 'proper geek' would not have any of that wireless rubbish anyway. We have huge beige curly cabled PS/2 battleships that sound like a parkinson's sufferer with a football rattle.

  11. lurker

    Fond memories, but..

    Much as I loved my 64, the first computer I owned, the point was that commodore were innovating, not just sticking a regular PC inside a beige case. You can already buy plug computers, so there's no achievement here.

    If it was dirt cheap I suppose I might buy one and stick linux on it for giggles.

  12. There's a bee in my bot net

    For that real nostalgia

    you could just bring the real C64 down from the loft and then wonder why you bothered when you remember would have to relearn the memory map to do anything interesting with peek and poke...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Slow News Day

    Every now and again we get treated to a "Return of the C64" story.

    Same with the motoring press with their "Return of the Capri" stories.

    They've tried with the web.it, games-in-a-joystick, and even Commodore gaming PCs.

    It pains me to say, but the brand has long gone and the C64 is but a rose-tinted nostalgic memory for those of us who had one and remember waiting 15 minutes on a psychadelic load sequence to play a poor attempt at an arcade conversion of Enduro Racer.

    Thems the days.

  14. Richard Jukes

    heh

    Truly retro would be Serial Ports. PS/2 is not legacy! Its bloody useful! And as somone has said, why bother? I can put an ITX board in anything. Nothing to see here, unless ofc your a wannabe geek chic geek, who has never coded a line of code in their life, but ofc they have an Apple Laptop, Apple iPod, Apple Touch, Apple Apple etc.

  15. Mike Flugennock
    Badgers

    yeah, it looks real cool, but...

    ...it's not really a C64. It _looks_ a lot like an old C64, but it's just new guts built into a replica C64 case. I mean, I'm sure it'd be easy for Apple to rework a MacBook's guts to fit inside a IIc case, and it'd look like a IIc, but it wouldn't really be one.

    It's kinda like all these nostalgia-driven pseudo-replica cars out now. The new series of VW Beetle looks kinda like the old Beetle, the new series of Ford Mustang looks kinda like an old '70 "Boss" Mustang, the new series of Plymouth Barracuda looks kinda like an old '72 'Cuda, and the new series of Chevrolet Camaro looks kinda like a '69 "SS" Camaro, but they aren't, really.

    M'eh.

  16. a.4
    Heart

    optical drive?

    surely it would have been closer to the original spec to have all drives external ... use USB3?

    and give people the option of purchasing low density FDD as well, hell, fab up HD, Zip, minidisc (for the music nerds) and even a cassette drive for that 'wait half an hour for 32k to load' experience.

    will still get one

    ... so very lonely

  17. Jim Carter
    Thumb Down

    That is horrible.

    Reminds me of Michael Myers. Sod this shite. It'll be easier to bung the innards of a laptop in an original C64 Shell and have something saleable, but I wouldn't want to do that to such a thing of beauty in the first place.

    Let it die a graceful death.

  18. King Jack
    Thumb Down

    Stupid cow milking

    Why on earth would anyone want a desktop computer stuffed into a bulky keyboard? Imagine all the wires hanging out of it in use. Just buy/build a PC with a wireless keyboard and run an emulator.

    I owned a 64 and this is nothing like it. Please I urge fans not to continue giving companies who rent the name Commodore any cash. The c64 is dead, let it RIP.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Whoa! Check out that carpet!

    That is the same carpet that came with my trailer home too!

  20. Neoc

    Yes but...

    ...will it blend?

    ..er... I mean; will it come with a C64 emulator loaded into firmware? (so that you can either boot up to normal PC or hit a boot sequence and load the emulator instead)

  21. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Grenade

    How about....

    sub $200 price tag

    easily opened for expandability (ram, HDD).

    1gb ram (cheap stick with a couple of free slots, at least allow an expansion of 4gigs).

    Small HDD - keep this cheap so that if we like it we can swap it out.

    Tegra + Linux (with drivers etc) - hey, bear with me, consider the target audience here, people who had C64s....Some of these guys no doubt still remember 65xx opcodes...

    = win?

    (I hadn't realized these guys hadn't shipped their product yet, maybe we can yet change their minds).

  22. CynicalOptimist
    Thumb Down

    Ben Heck

    Not to be confused with Glen Beck.

    This guy puts current and past tech in custom made boxes.. e.g. xbox 360 gubbins in a replica Atari case.

    http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-28953/l/episode-14-see-ben-build-an-atari-xbox-360

    He releases a new episode of his show every fortnight and the results of his projects are impressive. What's taking C64 USA so long?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Poor hack

    This was already proven and reproven to be a pathetic attempt at a marketing scheme. Their creative, innovative, or whatever adjective they want to stick on it is only a cheap Chinese machine that's already on the market with a Commodore sticker on it.

    Delayed, my ass. They're trying to push bogus product, and hopefully get some suckers to buy the idea. I guess there's always some idiot who will part with their hard earned cash. If nothing else, Apple proves that constantly.

    A couple years ago, when I first saw this, you could already buy them, either from these fools with the Commodore sticker on it, or for less than half the price from other vendors. I didn't even bother to look for pricing information on their site this time, it's already clear it's a scam.

    Look around for "Cybernet ZPC-9100" (What they were showing a year ago) and "Cybernet ZPC-GX31" (What they're showing on their site now). That mangled pile of plastic in the article? Who knows what that was suppose to be, other than a piss-poor hack job.

  24. TheOtherHobbbes
    FAIL

    This makes as much sense

    as putting an old ZX Spectrum in a server rack.

  25. David Lawrence
    Coat

    Great Idea!!

    I love this so much I am thinking of marketing my own versions! Yes!! I think I have an old ZX80 case lying around...ah here it is.... now let's see if I can cram a small PC Motherboard into it... great. Next product..... an old Dragon 64 case with.... yes you guessed it - a small PC motherboard in it. Super. I still have an old Oric-1 round here somehwere.....

    For my next trick - an Breville Snack & Sandwich Maker with a small PC motherboard in it! Finally, a Goblin Teasmade with a small PC motherboard in it......no wait! Come back! These things are really really innovative you know......

    (My coat is the white canvas one with the brown leather straps and the long arms that go round the back.....)

  26. Paul Hayes 1

    pointless...

    if you wanted a PC that looks like a C64 you'd be better off going on ebay and buying a "spares or repairs" original C64 and putting your own micro-itx board into that. Google search for "keyrah" to see how to get the original C64 keyboard working :)

    I'm actually currently part way through doing similar with an Amiga A600 case and a netbook motherboard (as micro-itx wont fit in it).

    I imagine even if this thing ever does become a reality it'll be massively over priced for what you get and less well made than the plastics of the original c64.

    Also, who actually wants a PC in that form-factor? What possible use would it have? People looking for a bit of nostalgia certainly aren't going to buy enough of these to make it a worthwhile product.

    If this was in Dragon's Den looking for investment I'm sure the resounding answer would be "I'm out".

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Coffee/keyboard

      Hey, man, you forgot...

      ...the Blackberry stuffed into a Sinclair ZX case.

  27. Mark .

    Re: Just one question.....

    Well by that logic, why bother with any PC?

    Yes this might not be anything more than a PC in a different kind of case, but that also means it's no worse than any other kind of PC in an unusual case. Do you moan about Apple too, for stuffing PCs into their "Macintosh" cases? Or all the "shuttle" and custom PC variants out there too?

    ArmanX:

    Well by that logic, the Mac is dead, and Apple should stop putting PCs into their boxes.

    I can see your point if you'd like to see newly manufactured Commodore 64s, identical to the original. But I don't see how the fact that we haven't got that, is an argument *against* someone else doing this. Maybe some people would love to get their hands on some original Macintoshes, but that's not a reason to moan against Apple's line of PC hardware today.

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