Commodore: 64/128

In 1977, Commodore began producing a series of eight bit home computers. Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 were the two most successful computers of Commodore’s eight bit series lineup.

Let’s put each one under the spotlight and find out what they had to offer to potential buyers.

Commodore 64: Apart from its original name, Commodore 64 was occasionally referred to as Vic 64 and CBM 64. Owing to its appearance, it was sometimes also called the “breadbox” and “bullnose”. Commodore 64 was such a huge success that it sold 17 million units, making it the best selling home computer of all time. Between 1983 and 1986, approximately 2 million units were sold each year! With a price tag of $595, Commodore bagged a lot of sales revenue from this system.

Technically, Commodore was a simple machine. It had a MOS 6510, 1 MHz processor and 64 KB of RAM onboard. Since it did not have its own display, it had to be connected to a TV to be used. Commodore 64 could also be connected to a cassette recorder for data storage.

Commodore 64 remained in production for 11 years. During this time at least 10,000 program titles were released. This included office applications such as word processing, development tools and of course games.

Commodore 128: Commodore 128, also called C128, CBM 128 and C=128, was released three years after its predecessor, recorder-setter C64. Even though commodore 64 was very successful, there were a few areas that needed to be worked on. Therefore C128 may be looked as an improved version of its antecedent.

C64 lacked a keypad that made it ineffective for use with some productivity tools. C128 came with a fully functional keypad that allowed more applications to be meticulously used.

C64 also lagged behind in word processing due to its very ordinary 40 columns display.

C128 came with a consolidated 80 column color RGBI display. (RGBI stands for Red-Green-Blue plus Intensity).

Interestingly, Commodore 128 had two CPU’s on board instead of one. One was MOS 8502, 2 MHz CPU and the other was a Zilog Z-80A running at 4 MHz. The two CPU gave the system a lot more speed.

Due to so much improvement, C128 was able to run a larger number of applications. Its compatibility with C64 meant that applications made for the predecessor could also be used by the successor. It is no wonder C128 is considered to be the best 8 bit vintage computer the world has ever seen; standing much taller than even the well known Atari 400 and 800 systems.

With numerous C64 and C128 emulators available on the internet, hardcore fans of Commodore, to date, continue using applications such as games which were made for these two old systems. As retrocomputing gains popularity, more people are looking to try out these older systems.