Whats the deal with this new trend of Commodore 64 enthusiasm?

[EasyGoing1]

I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ... this seemingly growing cult fanaticism to bring back the Commodore 64. I mean one company is even selling kits for $1,000 where you can build your own???

My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in 1982 and I cannot tell you how happy I was to get rid of it when I upgraded to a 128, then an Amiga, then into PCs, and now my 2019 MBP which literally has 500,000 times more RAM than my C=64 had ... and there isn't a single cell in my body that would even remotely be interested in seeing the C=64 again much less actually use one. I mean initially, I had to store my programs on cassette tape until the 1541 disk drive came out ... and computers were NOT fast back then ... I had to WAIT AND WAIT to load games or do bit-level disk copying ... it was a nightmare.

I'm sure these modern renditions cheat somehow and use solid-state storage so technically these enthusiasts are most likely not getting the full experience because I'm sure if they were, the whole thing would lose its luster rather quickly.

The only thing I can think to compare it to would be back when I was a teenager, I had a fascination for the '55, '56, and '57 Chevy Bel-Air cars. My dad owned a '57 for a few years before selling it to a cousin long before I was born, and to him, it was just a car that he had and got rid of. To me, it was a symbol of Americana when cars had grace and style that simply doesn't exist anymore in that classic way so I had a different perspective than he had on the matter ... is that kinda similar to this new penchant for the revival of the C=64? Because honestly, I don't get it ... they're absolute junk to me and as far as I was concerned and still am ... GOOD RIDDANCE!

[EasyGoing1]

One other comment that some may appreciate ... when I was 16, I found on Compuserve (using my $300 - 300 BAUD MODEM), an ASCII schematic that showed how to add a second SID chip to a Commodore 128 to give it TRUE STEREO sound as each chip could be assigned to one speaker. And there was software along with MIDI music that I could download that took advantage of the second chip, so I got the parts and soldered everything in and had the pleasure of hearing my C=128 play true stereo music. But that was probably the highlight of my Commodore days ... that and Exodus Ultima III


GOD I STILL REMEMBER the reset command for that C=64

SYS64738

[Bud]

Let people do what they enjoy. Reasons can be different. There are people who goes hunting using muzzleloaders. So what?

[SiliconWizard]

It's not quite new. This interest has been there for years already. Vintage computing in general has a solid "fan" base. And while I'm no "fan", I admit this often piques my interest.

But I've indeed noted a recent interest peak for the C64.
The answer to your question: you gave it yourself. In your first sentence. "I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ..."

It's always difficult to identify the initial spark of a trend, but what makes it exist and grow is obvious here. Youtube and social media. Once videos about some topic become popular, a lot of youtubers will want to make videos about the same topic. And bam, this gets viral. As you yourself said, if it weren't for all the videos and projects "all over the Internet", the C64 would likely still have fans but they would essentially remain silent and nobody out of their circles would care. So welcome to the 21st century?

[T3sl4co1l]

Name doesn't check out.

Tim

[Tomorokoshi]

Computers like the Commodore 64, Apple ][, Radio Shack Model 100, etc. are interesting for a few reasons:

- A lot were made, they are available for a reasonable price, and all the technical data is available
- Online forums like this allow for questions to be answered in reasonable times
- It's possible to just about understand most everything about it, down to the registers and memory locations, unlike Windows 10 computers
- The limited memory and connectivity makes it possible to explore and find the limits

I'm not doing much with any of those now but I do have some very slow projects involving them. I need to fix them first.

I have a very different project going on right now, which is interesting only because I am limiting myself to a specific set of vintage parts.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Well, that was interesting.

[vk6zgo]

I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ... this seemingly growing cult fanaticism to bring back the Commodore 64. I mean one company is even selling kits for $1,000 where you can build your own???

My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in 1982 and I cannot tell you how happy I was to get rid of it when I upgraded to a 128, then an Amiga, then into PCs, and now my 2019 MBP which literally has 500,000 times more RAM than my C=64 had ... and there isn't a single cell in my body that would even remotely be interested in seeing the C=64 again much less actually use one. I mean initially, I had to store my programs on cassette tape until the 1541 disk drive came out ... and computers were NOT fast back then ... I had to WAIT AND WAIT to load games or do bit-level disk copying ... it was a nightmare.

I'm sure these modern renditions cheat somehow and use solid-state storage so technically these enthusiasts are most likely not getting the full experience because I'm sure if they were, the whole thing would lose its luster rather quickly.

The only thing I can think to compare it to would be back when I was a teenager, I had a fascination for the '55, '56, and '57 Chevy Bel-Air cars. My dad owned a '57 for a few years before selling it to a cousin long before I was born, and to him, it was just a car that he had and got rid of. To me, it was a symbol of Americana when cars had grace and style that simply doesn't exist anymore in that classic way so I had a different perspective than he had on the matter ... is that kinda similar to this new penchant for the revival of the C=64? Because honestly, I don't get it ... they're absolute junk to me and as far as I was concerned and still am ... GOOD RIDDANCE!

You managed to load games from a datasette?
With our one, it was pretty much "hit & miss"-------about 15% hit & 85% miss!

I even bought a second datasette because I thought the original might be faulty----no joy!

Sitting there, waiting for the bloody thing to load, while it displayed multicoloured lines on the screen, which usually, either went to a noisy mess, or just sat there for what felt like hours.

Meanwhile, the kids, who had been wildly enthusiastic about the latest game, had given up & gone to do something else.
It was not till the same games came out in cartridge form, that they could just "go to the computer" & play "Frogger", or whatever.

The floppy disk drives were out of our reach financially when we bought the C64, & by the time they weren't, I had lost interest, so using the cartridges, it became just a "games machine".

[Circlotron]

Old stuff like 8 bit computers, vinyl records and vintage cars are just fine if you are only playing around with them and have modern up to date stuff to go back to when you are finished. But if you grew up in an era when that was all there was then you know they could be a pain in the butt and you were just hanging for something better to come along. It’s like going for a camping trip in the wilds. Some people actually look forward to living in a tent with not much in the way of conveniences for a week or two, because they know that they will eventually be returning to their nice comfortable home. But tell them they now have to live in a tent permanently and see what they say!

[Rasz]

I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ... this seemingly growing cult fanaticism to bring back the Commodore 64. I mean one company is even selling kits for $1,000 where you can build your own???

Have you seen prices of vintage Porsches? Even the poor spec ones like Carrera CS https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1988-porsche-911-club-sport/
$150K for a cheapest model 911 at the time. Its main selling point being stuff not fitted at all, or replaced with VW Beetle parts to lower the price. "but its rare so totally worth it".


Or the prices on late 80 video games? Its all nostalgia driven. People with those specific memories are old and wealthy now. Not to mention 2020 invisible inflation, just take a look at ridiculous stock prices (TSLA, etc).

My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in 1982 and I cannot tell you how happy I was to get rid of it when I upgraded to a 128

Upgrade in what sense? 128 was not an upgrade, it was a C64 with some useless garbage parts glued in at twice the cost and none of the improvements where it counted.

The only thing I can think to compare it to would be back when I was a teenager, I had a fascination for the '55, '56, and '57 Chevy Bel-Air cars. My dad owned a '57 for a few years before selling it to a cousin long before I was born, and to him, it was just a car that he had and got rid of. To me, it was a symbol of Americana when cars had grace and style that simply doesn't exist anymore in that classic way so I had a different perspective than he had on the matter ... is that kinda similar to this new penchant for the revival of the C=64? Because honestly, I don't get it ... they're absolute junk to me and as far as I was concerned and still am ... GOOD RIDDANCE!

Dont even try driving a 930 (911 Turbo). Loud, switches in random stupid places, cheap creaking plastics, tiny boot with rag instead of boot liner. No power until 4000 rpm, then it kicks in and immediately reaches redline forcing a gear shift. Cant accelerate in corners, understeer until sudden snap oversteer. Porsche treated it as a dead end design expecting total switch to FF platform, almost 15 years with one small upgrade to a 70s car.

Current price: over $100K, double from 2010.

Now look at Electric Train sets, or vintage Radios, once expensive, now garbage nobody wants. People enthusiastic about them died off.

[james_s]

What new trend? The C64 has never really stopped being popular. They made millions of them, they are iconic, a whole generation of engineers and software developers cut their teeth on the C64 and similar machines. The C64 was one of the more popular retro computers even 20+ years ago. It's perfectly natural for people to get nostalgic about the things they had as kids as they get older, some people are more nostalgic than others. You were happy to get rid of your C64 back in the day, just like countless other people were happy to get rid of their McIntosh tube amplifiers and other vintage HiFi gear to replace it with new solid state equipment. Then what is old becomes new again, and as the amount of it out there diminishes the value and enthusiasm for what remains increases. Classic cars are another example, when I was a kid in the 80s you could hardly give away 60s-70s muscle cars, they were just old cars, bulky cantankerous gas guzzlers that nobody really wanted. Then after most had long since gone to the crusher for a while anyway restored examples were fetching crazy prices and they are still prized collectibles.

[EasyGoing1]

It's not quite new. This interest has been there for years already. Vintage computing in general has a solid "fan" base. And while I'm no "fan", I admit this often piques my interest.

But I've indeed noted a recent interest peak for the C64.
The answer to your question: you gave it yourself. In your first sentence. "I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ..."

It's always difficult to identify the initial spark of a trend, but what makes it exist and grow is obvious here. Youtube and social media. Once videos about some topic become popular, a lot of youtubers will want to make videos about the same topic. And bam, this gets viral. As you yourself said, if it weren't for all the videos and projects "all over the Internet", the C64 would likely still have fans but they would essentially remain silent and nobody out of their circles would care. So welcome to the 21st century?

I can't imagine someone spending a whole lot of time actually using one. They have nothing to offer compared to modern tech. 8 bit games might be fun for a few minutes, till they realize that they have an XBox one sitting next to that Commodore with Call of Duty just itching to be fired up!  lol

[EasyGoing1]

Name doesn't check out.

Tim

Which name would you be referring to?

[EasyGoing1]

- It's possible to just about understand most everything about it, down to the registers and memory locations, unlike Windows 10 computers

Now THAT makes more sense to me ... an educational tool where it's still simple enough that most people who are technical-minded could comprehend it...

Still, though ... $4 gets you a Raspberry Pi Pico with a dual core 32 bit CPU. It could probably run multiple C=64 emulators simultaneously and maybe with thread sharing in each core and still run circles around that old tech. Might be fun to get a Pico running with 4 emulators operating independently of each other but all running at the same time ... then again ... that sounds like a headache to me. lol

I'm not sure I would even consider trying to make a C=64 into a light switch.

And modern pcs aren't that difficult to understand ... they just need to be understood as machines that have a crap load of different technologies each serving a specific need. I gave up trying to understand every aspect of a PC years ago. The knowledge didn't add any value to my work life and it simply changes too fast for anyone to be able to reasonably keep up with unless their full time job is rooted in, around and about PC hardware day in and day out.

[EasyGoing1]

You managed to load games from a datasette?

When the C=64 became the VIC-20 successor, they still had a lot of games on cassette. I occasionally used a cassette game here and there, but I was more interested in learning how to program, so I would store my programs onto tape. I was an audio enthusiast, so I had some high-quality chrome-doped cassette tapes and they were pretty reliable if I'm remembering correctly. I was also a stickler about keeping the heads and rollers clean and I even degaussed the heads from time to time - although that was probably over-kill.

I got my C=64 about six months before they released the 1541 floppy drive, but even that thing was slow as molasses. I owned a notch tool so that I could notch the other side of the disk, then purchase double density floppys and be able to flip them over and use both sides.

I even figured out how to read and write data directly to the sectors of the floppy when I had a C=128 with the 1571 drives. When I was 16 I used the disk sectors as raw data storage ... like a crude database. I use to store the data from my McDonalds check stubs straight to the sectors of the floppy drives. And I'm not sure why I did that other than I don't believe there was any kind of disk operating system outside of CP/M when that 128 was in Commodore mode, there was no way to use basic and read and write directly to a file, so I think reading and writing directly to the sectors on the floppy was the only way I could actually store information to keep it non-volatile. I vaguely recall having to format the information a specific way because of how bytes were structured on each sector. It did work though I remember clearly that it worked well.

Meanwhile, the kids, who had been wildly enthusiastic about the latest game, had given up & gone to do something else.
It was not till the same games came out in cartridge form, that they could just "go to the computer" & play "Frogger", or whatever.

The floppy disk drives were out of our reach financially when we bought the C64, & by the time they weren't, I had lost interest, so using the cartridges, it became just a "games machine".

Yeah the Commodore certainly set itself apart as a more advanced gaming platform than what we could get from ... say an Atari or a Coleco Vision or what have you. Having the keyboard and floppy storage in addition to joy sticks ... it opened up gaming ability that sealed consoles could never do.

But I wasn't really into games except for one or two. I was into understanding how to pirate games and I spent a lot of time on BBS's and even Compuserve once in a while either quasi-socializing or learning about anything I could get my eyeballs onto as far as modern tech was concerned. I just craved knowledge and practical application of the technology in every day life.

[EasyGoing1]

Have you seen prices of vintage Porsches? Even the poor spec ones like Carrera CS https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1988-porsche-911-club-sport/
$150K for a cheapest model 911 at the time. Its main selling point being stuff not fitted at all, or replaced with VW Beetle parts to lower the price. "but its rare so totally worth it".

Or the prices on late 80 video games? Its all nostalgia driven. People with those specific memories are old and wealthy now. Not to mention 2020 invisible inflation, just take a look at ridiculous stock prices (TSLA, etc).

Exotic cars have traditionally been the exception to the norm where it comes to depreciation over time. If an exotic car has been well taken care of, at a minimum, the original owner can usually get back exactly what they paid for it, regardless of how many years they've owned it. Certainly that never happens with a Honda Accord ... it loses 20% the second you drive it off the lot.

Upgrade in what sense? 128 was not an upgrade, it was a C64 with some useless garbage parts glued in at twice the cost and none of the improvements where it counted.

HEY, it had TWICE as much RAM, and I could run GEOS on it! Also, the 1571 floppy drives were less than half as tall as the 1541 and they were a hell of a lot quieter. To me, THAT was an upgrade! I believe the 128 even had better graphics specs than the C=64 did but I'm not 100% on that.

Also, I can't remember now if it was the 128 or the Amiga that could boot into CP/M mode ... I wanna say that was the Amiga but there again, I'm not 100% on that.

Dont even try driving a 930 (911 Turbo). Loud, switches in random stupid places, cheap creaking plastics, tiny boot with rag instead of boot liner. No power until 4000 rpm, then it kicks in and immediately reaches redline forcing a gear shift. Cant accelerate in corners, understeer until sudden snap oversteer. Porsche treated it as a dead end design expecting total switch to FF platform, almost 15 years with one small upgrade to a 70s car.

It's funny ... as a teenager, the car I coveted the most was the 1986 Lamborghini Countach, which I think was around $250,000 at the time (so close to a million in today's dollars I'm sure). And back in 2003 I bought my first 350Z right off the lot. But it wasn't until about 8 years later when I was watching some program about Jay Lenno's exotic car collection and they were featuring his 1986 Countach and as they went down the specs of that car (horsepower, top speed, 0-60 etc.) they were almost identical to my 350Z which I only paid $32k for less than 20 years after the Countach was first engineered. I got a kick out of that.

Now look at Electric Train sets, or vintage Radios, once expensive, now garbage nobody wants. People enthusiastic about them died off.

I have my fathers electric train set that he had as a kid back in the 1950's... I never thought to look into what it would be worth. It hasn't been used since the early 1970s and it's in excellent condition.

[tszaboo]

It's not quite new. This interest has been there for years already. Vintage computing in general has a solid "fan" base. And while I'm no "fan", I admit this often piques my interest.

But I've indeed noted a recent interest peak for the C64.
The answer to your question: you gave it yourself. In your first sentence. "I've seen the videos ... I see bits and pieces of it in various nooks and crannies all over the Internet ..."

It's always difficult to identify the initial spark of a trend, but what makes it exist and grow is obvious here. Youtube and social media. Once videos about some topic become popular, a lot of youtubers will want to make videos about the same topic. And bam, this gets viral. As you yourself said, if it weren't for all the videos and projects "all over the Internet", the C64 would likely still have fans but they would essentially remain silent and nobody out of their circles would care. So welcome to the 21st century?

I can't imagine someone spending a whole lot of time actually using one. They have nothing to offer compared to modern tech. 8 bit games might be fun for a few minutes, till they realize that they have an XBox one sitting next to that Commodore with Call of Duty just itching to be fired up!  lol

Yeah, but you turn on the C64 and it said:
38911 bytes free READY.
If you turn on an Xbox that was't used for 2 weeks, you get a dozen updates, popups, logins, friend requests, deals on the store. Its all just noise. The C64, you turn it on, and it's ready. There are no notifications, no second program running in the background. Its the product of simpler times.
It is also the first computer that I've ever programmed. There were others, but this was the first one. And I only had to type to program it, there were no downloading compilers or anything.
I could program the C64 when I was 12, and I couldn't do the same with the 286.

And trust me, most people use the new-retro C64 few times when they get it, then it just sits there for a decade.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I'm the absolute worst of the 64 retro users, a "period correct" user.

I have a 1764 REU boosted to 512K, two 1581s, a bunch of other drives like the SFD-1001 and 2031, and Super Snapshot, IEEE interface, 1351 mouse and a 1080 monitor.

I guess the exception I make to being period correct is the necessary use of a video upscaler if you don't have a monitor, given how heavy and rare these things are now.

I have most of the things I coveted as a kid. Things that were mythical or just plain out of reach back then. Maybe I'll be on the next episode of Hoarders, I don't know.

[Circlotron]

I'm the absolute worst of the 64 retro users, a "period correct" user.

I have a 1764 REU boosted to 512K, two 1581s, a bunch of other drives life the SFD-1001 and 2031, and Super Snapshot, IEEE interface, 1351 mouse and a 1080 monitor.

Sounds like a Model T Ford engine with a DOHC 16-valve conversion back in the day.
https://external-preview.redd.it/kW-EECWIhuzHYDGxkVIDnikMPsV6Lo7CZaXRee1WjKk.jpg?auto=webp&s=ccd361ac5c70431627f86355a98624c2467d1bff

[Alex Eisenhut]

Heh heh, if we stay in car metaphors, I wanted a 20MHz SuperCPU which would be this

https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/1/700/0/uploads/posts/2016/12/08487c028c96b44da41d3c9f74cb00e2.jpg

in car terms.

[james_s]

I can't imagine someone spending a whole lot of time actually using one. They have nothing to offer compared to modern tech. 8 bit games might be fun for a few minutes, till they realize that they have an XBox one sitting next to that Commodore with Call of Duty just itching to be fired up!  lol

It's pretty clear you're just not interested in retro computing and don't get the appeal, and probably like me and football you never will get it. Doesn't seem like there's much point in discussing it, it's something quite a few people are into and enjoy, if you don't that's fine, leave the vintage stuff for someone who is interested in it.

Personally I think emulators are rather boring, it's not the same, I like playing with real hardware and I'd rather play some classic games from the 80s-90s than COD on an Xbox any day. I pretty much stopped gaming soon after I became an adult, the only games I still play are the stuff I was playing when I was a kid up through being a teenager in the 90s. Newer stuff just doesn't grab me at all, total snooze fest, I tend to marvel at the graphics for about 5 minutes and then I'm done and I'll go play one of my early 80s arcade cabinets. If you enjoy it that's fine, play the stuff you like and don't worry about what other people like.

[Rasz]

Exotic cars have traditionally been the exception to the norm where it comes to depreciation over time. If an exotic car has been well taken care of, at a minimum, the original owner can usually get back exactly what they paid for it, regardless of how many years they've owned it. Certainly that never happens with a Honda Accord ... it loses 20% the second you drive it off the lot.

Old Civics and Integras trade around their original MSRP. Is Fiat 500 Gardiniera an exotic? Those are 15-20K Euro right now for a car you will spend 10 minutes in once a year for memes. Investment market is totally screwed, even real estate stopped being safe, people with money collect whatever now while Fed printers go BRrrrr.

HEY, it had TWICE as much RAM, and I could run GEOS on it!

GEOS and maybe two floppy copy programs being the only things that actually used that ram, and Geos wasnt really something anyone really wanted to use beyond 'hey thats neat' phase. Doing things in GEOS was a study in patience.

I believe the 128 even had better graphics specs than the C=64 did but I'm not 100% on that.

C128 had two independent graphics chips, the "new" 80 column one scrounged from a waste bin of another failed Commodore project and only able to work with RGBI (CGA) monitors. No sprites, text mode only. Once you count the cost of CGA monitor and FDD you already paid more than brand new Amiga/ST, or used XT.
Biggest scam was C128D, two graphic chips and 3 build in CPUs for the low low price of Amiga 500/ST. Some Commodore employee even said C128D cost more to manufacture than Amiga 500. Insanity.

Also, I can't remember now if it was the 128 or the Amiga that could boot into CP/M mode ... I wanna say that was the Amiga but there again, I'm not 100% on that.

Dead operating system from the 70ties. Why would you want to do that on a home computer?

C128 sounded and was marketed as C64 with 2x improvements, when in reality it was a basket case of old parts Commodore wanted to get rid of. Failed graphic chip here, obsolete Z80 processor there, sprinkle some old ram, double the price.

[EasyGoing1]

Yeah, but you turn on the C64 and it said:
38911 bytes free READY.
If you turn on an Xbox that was't used for 2 weeks, you get a dozen updates, popups, logins, friend requests, deals on the store. Its all just noise. The C64, you turn it on, and it's ready. There are no notifications, no second program running in the background. Its the product of simpler times.
It is also the first computer that I've ever programmed. There were others, but this was the first one. And I only had to type to program it, there were no downloading compilers or anything.
I could program the C64 when I was 12, and I couldn't do the same with the 286.

I also programmed my C=64. It was my first computer EVER and it taught me many things ... and perhaps the most important things it taught me was about the nature of computer technology at its core, and also that the C=64 was just the beginning, and that when it comes to computers being fundamentally connected to our lives, it was going to be many years before they became the kind of tool that non-technical people would end up NEEDING in their every day lives ... and that only happened once interconnecting them became trivial and inexpensive. Because sure, your Xbox shoves a lot of stuff in your face ... but without that interconnection to other people, there is no way we would have games like Call of Duty which are the games that DOMINATE the gaming market. Because the truth is ... what makes a technology a success or a failure, is whether or not it connects us to other people. If you really think about it, that is pretty much universally true with anything in life that ends up completely changing the way we live.

I still say that the transistor was the one invention (or discovery depending on how you look at it) that changed the human race in such a phenomenal way, that no other technology invention has even come close to that claim. Where it has re-defined how people exist. I've been to third-world countries where remote village tribal communities rely on a transistor radio for information that they then use to make decisions about what will happen that day. Weather predictions and what not ... Only the transistor - as new technology goes - literally touched the lives of every human being on the planet regardless if those people live in high rise buildings or grass huts ... that one invention altered the way people live universally and no other technology has done that.

And trust me, most people use the new-retro C64 few times when they get it, then it just sits there for a decade.

OH I believe that ... which is why I'm kind of tongue in cheek mocking the fad... I suppose it only takes someone experiencing a C=64 before they very quickly say, "OK that was neat and all ... but I need to actually do something useful and this old bucket of rusted bolts isn't gonna help me do anything that I need to do today" ... a realization I came to in the 80's ... but only after using the technology for as long as I had to anyways.

I'm sure it would be the same with a restored '57 Chevy Bel Air ... after driving one for a few blocks and having to deal with so much play in the steering ... not having power steering ... or air conditioning ... or even dealing with a carburetor (EWE) and the hell those things use to bring on us ... it might be neat for a few days, but for daily use ... give me back my modern car and that old thing can just sit there and look pretty. :-)

[EasyGoing1]

Personally I think emulators are rather boring, it's not the same, I like playing with real hardware and I'd rather play some classic games from the 80s-90s than COD on an Xbox any day. I pretty much stopped gaming soon after I became an adult, the only games I still play are the stuff I was playing when I was a kid up through being a teenager in the 90s. Newer stuff just doesn't grab me at all, total snooze fest, I tend to marvel at the graphics for about 5 minutes and then I'm done and I'll go play one of my early 80s arcade cabinets. If you enjoy it that's fine, play the stuff you like and don't worry about what other people like.

OH, I'm ALL ABOUT live and let live ... I was just trying to understand what the appeal is with this fad ... and I got some answers in here that I had not previously considered.

I adopted the opinion right after I graduated high school that "If you aren't learning, you're dying" - and from that ... epiphany if you will ... and onward, I've always made an effort to not do what seems to be our natural tendency which is to stay in what is familiar to us. The human brain relies heavily on what we know as the preferred way to exist vs. constantly changing and adapting to what we don't know. That of course has tremendous value to us as a survival mechanism, but it can hinder growth when we don't branch out and continue to learn new things and then adapt to implementing the unfamiliar into our lives.  Because whatever that new thing is, someone, somewhere invested a lot of time and thought into making that new thing and bringing it to the rest of us ... so I always assume that there is something of value in that new and unfamiliar thing and that it would be in my best interest to find out what that is. So for that reason, I do love modern gaming. I was and really still am not a "gamer" as gamers go ... but I can spend an afternoon or evening ... or even a whole weekend striving to get better at Call of Duty if for no other reason ... so that I can have some bragging rights and show some youngsters that they don't own that space exclusively ... although I will admit ... the gaming platforms have gotten so incredibly fast and responsive that people with fast reflexes can and do dominate that space. But COD has gotten quite good at figuring out how to match players who are similarly skilled so that when you might have one or sessions where you just get clobbered, that never remains the trend because their software algorithms have finally evolved to level the playing field almost straight across the board.

[EasyGoing1]

Old Civics and Integras trade around their original MSRP. Is Fiat 500 Gardiniera an exotic? Those are 15-20K Euro right now for a car you will spend 10 minutes in once a year for memes. Investment market is totally screwed, even real estate stopped being safe, people with money collect whatever now while Fed printers go BRrrrr.

Well, that's disappointing to know.

GEOS and maybe two floppy copy programs being the only things that actually used that ram, and Geos wasnt really something anyone really wanted to use beyond 'hey thats neat' phase. Doing things in GEOS was a study in patience.

What I remember was that I could type in a word processor (of sorts) and the font on the screen looked like the font that was printed on my Panasonic dot matrix printer. And to ME, that was amazing because before I had my Commodore, I used a typewriter ... and not a fancy electric one either ... it had a carriage return handle on it that I had to pull in order to get to the next line on the page.

I'll never forget the time when I took the head apart on that dot matrix printer because I wanted to know how it worked. What I didn't know when I did that, was that there was some special machining that went into the assembly of those heads ... that printer never worked again and it took me months to save up for a new one.  lol

GEOS also introduced me to spreadsheets ... which I had no knowledge of nor experience with before then. Also graphical file browsing on the floppy ... I can't remember though if drag and drop was part of GEOS ... I'm thinking probably not but then again Apple did have drag and drop back then I think when the first Machintosh was introduced so maybe it did.

Remember Aldus Pagemaker? Boy they owned the market in their space for several years in the mid to late 80s.

C128 had two independent graphics chips, the "new" 80 column one scrounged from a waste bin of another failed Commodore project and only able to work with RGBI (CGA) monitors. No sprites, text mode only. Once you count the cost of CGA monitor and FDD you already paid more than brand new Amiga/ST, or used XT.
Biggest scam was C128D, two graphic chips and 3 build in CPUs for the low low price of Amiga 500/ST. Some Commodore employee even said C128D cost more to manufacture than Amiga 500. Insanity.

Well, as I mentioned in another response, I did download a schematic from Compuserve one time that was literally made with ASCII characters (think ASCII art, only with a schematic), and it showed me how to add a second SID chip to my C=128 so that I could have true stereo sound (three voices in the left speaker and three in the right). A local Commodore shop was able to order the SID chip for me and I got other parts like capacitors and I can't remember what else from Radio shack, and one night I ripped that thing apart and I think I either piggybacked the SID chip onto the main one or I glued it down somewhere and used bus wire to solder the connections of the added chip to the existing one. That was 1986 and I was 16 years old so the details escape me, but I do remember starting around 9pm and not finishing until around 3am. There were programs that you could download from Compuserve and even some BBSes that could take advantage of the second chip, but the only way I used it was with these true stereo MIDI files that people posted to Compuserve ... movie theme music and popular hit songs that someone converted into 6 voice midi format with a synthesizer no doubt and I could load those music files into a special player and sit back and hear true stereo sound from my 128. The theme music to Beverly Hills Cop for example started out with the keyboards playing that melody and between the left and the right channel, there was about a 15 millisecond offset with an echo so that the sound bounced between the speakers and added depth to it and the MIDI file re-produced that perfectly. I was impressed with it and loved that I was able to make the computer do something that it was never designed to do and certainly something that few people would even bother doing.

Dead operating system from the 70ties. Why would you want to do that on a home computer?

C128 sounded and was marketed as C64 with 2x improvements, when in reality it was a basket case of old parts Commodore wanted to get rid of. Failed graphic chip here, obsolete Z80 processor there, sprinkle some old ram, double the price.

CP/M was my first exposure to a DOS style operating system. I do remember spending a lot of time trying to find something useful to do with it, but ultimately giving up. I didn't get my first PC until I was 22 years old and I traded my Amiga with attached 20 meg hard drive for the PC because obviously by 1993, the trend towards PCs was in full force so I knew I needed to get on that bandwagon. By the time I was 25 I was already a network engineer and I've had a good career ever since.