commodore 64 Archives - The Silicon Underground

Commodore Plus 4 and Commodore 16

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 11:00:03 +0000

Dan Bowman kindly pointed me to former Commodore engineer Bil Herd’s discussion of the ill-fated Commodore TED machines on Hackaday. Here in the States, few remember the TED specifically, but some people may remember that oddball Commodore Plus 4 that closeout

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How to use a Commodore 64

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:00:35 +0000

The Commodore 64 is rather unlike modern computers. It has a CPU and memory like a modern computer does, but the operating system and overall user experience is alien to someone used to computers that run Windows or Mac OS.

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Commodore 64 operating system

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 11:00:40 +0000

The Commodore 64 didn’t have an operating system in the traditional sense that we now think of one. It most certainly did have a method of interacting with the user and handling I/O, including disk files. But the way it

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Commodore 64 Z80 cartridge

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:00:32 +0000

One of the most popular add-ons for an Apple II added CP/M compatibility. So I guess it should be no surprise that Commodore tried the same thing. But the Commodore 64 CP/M operating system and the associate Commodore 64 Z80

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Commodore 256: The 8-bit that never was

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 11:00:51 +0000

In 1985, Commodore followed up on its best selling Commodore 64 with a model with twice as much memory. The design of the 128 offered the possibility of following up with a Commodore 256. It never happened. Instead, Commodore moved

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Computers in 1985: It was a very good year

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:00:15 +0000

In some ways, 1985 was a really pivotal year for computing. The industry was changing fast, but in 1985, many relics from the past were still present even as we had an eye for the future. Here’s a look back

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Commodore 64 models

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:00:43 +0000

Over the course of its 12 years on the market, Commodore released a number of Commodore 64 models. The computer’s capability changed very little over time, but the technology did. The world changed a lot between 1982 and 1994, and

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The Atari 2600 CPU: The MOS 6507

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 29 May 2017 11:00:40 +0000

The Atari 2600 CPU was a nondescript MOS 6507 chip. Neither Intel nor Motorola had a CPU chip in the early 1970s that could meet Atari’s price point. MOS Technology didn’t have one either, but they asked Atari what they

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Radio Shack computers

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 25 May 2017 11:00:13 +0000

Radio Shack released one of the first home computers, the TRS-80 Model I, in 1977. Between 1977 and 1979, it sold 100,000 units. Radio Shack sold them just as quickly as Tandy could make them. You can count Radio Shack and

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Epyx Fast Load cartridge

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 12 May 2017 11:00:34 +0000

The Epyx Fast Load cartridge, released in 1984, was the first commercially successful Commodore 64 fast load product. Commodore’s 1541 disk drive was much slower than competing disk drives, so fast load cartridges became popular. While the Epyx product was

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