LXer: The C64 Has Returned
 

Published at LXer:

I was reading through some news on Google and came across this article on bild.de. The Commodore 64 is due to be rereleased with an Intel Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, a 500GB HDD, Intel chipset, and a bunch of other features. A peek at the Commodore website shows Ubuntu, Windows, OSX, Chrome, AROS, and Comodo OSs under the "OS" link at the top of the page.

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This thing's pretty cool — almost like a screenless laptop in a way. Although it only bears a vague resemblance to the original C64.

Definitely interesting :)

Looks a little like a C64 in overall shape, but that's about it. I'm curious who's actually making it -- Commodore is long gone isn't it?

Pretty cool! I want one just for nostalgia sake. Wonder what will be the cost...

http://www.commodoreusa.net/index.html

Here's a better look at it.

Mmmm, very nice! Great for space-saving. Please buy me one...pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase? Anybody????

Thanks for the link!

I'm not sure if I'd really want one of these things, though. After looking through the specs, I find (surprise surprise!) that the GPU is yet another Intel GMA POS. I'm sorry, I'm just biased against Intel graphics. It's becoming harder and harder to find a laptop with anything other than an Intel graphics chipset, and it annoys the hell out of me. When I was in high school a couple years back, the Macs all had GMA 950s (of course, default specs, best bargain, because they're purchasing units for the whole room/lab/whatever; I totally understand). Try to run Google Earth on those things, and you get maybe 15-20 FPS with the default graphics settings, maximized! Okay, so maybe I'm not accounting for Quartz Extreme compositing, or other abstraction factors, but that's still not a good sign. An equivalent machine with an ATI or NVIDIA GPU could probably leave that thing in the dust...maybe I'm just picky.

Okay, rant over now :redface:

EDIT: Something else I wanted to say: The original machine's like, older than me :rolleyes:, but I still find older computers fascinating for some reason. I used to mess around with a C64 emulator called CCS64 quite a bit. I'm pretty sure it's Windows-only, though. You might be able to run it under Wine, but I've never tried it, so I can't say for sure.

But anyways, that's kinda what drew me to this link. Not really "nostalgia" in the sense that I actually remember having an original Commodore 64, but it just reminded me of something I find fascinating anyway. :)

@ MRCode -- you're right, imho as well, the onboard video device leaves a lot to be desired. And, I'm not too sure if this thing realistically can have a video upgrade, though it DOES have a couple mini PCI-E slots, so theoretically one *could* put a video card in there.

Beside that, all in all, it's a pretty cool little machine -- I like the integrated lap-top-ish touchpad too. And, it appears there will be a decent selection of possible configuration options for it.

My first computer WAS a C-64-C, so the nostalgia is real for me :) -- 1.0 Mhz computing power, 4-voice sound chip, 16 colors iirc.. It was GREAT :D

NOTE: I wanna say this BEFORE the fact: If it had been April 1st when I first saw this ad for the new-coming C64, I'd have been really suspicious of it (April fools & all) but since it's BEFORE April 1, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. I really think this'd be a nifty little machine.

Any decent GPU card worth it's buck probably wouldn't fit in that tiny case, so you're right, it's probably a no-go. :(

Heh, I never really thought of that, but that's a good point, LOL. :) They do show the internals, though, so one would tend to think that would be pretty hard to fake (unless you've got mad Photoshop skills ;)).