Commodore History Part 3 - The Commodore 64 (complete)
The 8-Bit Guy・2 minutes read
The Commodore VIC-20 evolved into the Commodore Max and eventually the successful Commodore 64, dominating the market in 1984 with superior graphics and sound capabilities, despite drawbacks like slow disk drive access and BASIC limitations. The platform experienced a revival with modernized versions like the Commodore 64 DTV and C64 Mini, with efforts ongoing to build a new Commodore 64 using modern parts.
Insights
- Upgrades to the VIC chip resulted in the creation of separate sound and video chips, the VIC-2 and SID, enhancing the graphics and sound capabilities of the Commodore Max and later the Commodore 64.
- The Commodore 64, despite facing competition from advanced machines, maintained its market dominance due to affordability, extensive software library, and continuous innovations like the Commodore 64c, GEOS, and modem support, ensuring its relevance and popularity.
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Recent questions
What were the upgrades in the Commodore Max?
The new video chip offered higher resolution, bit mapped graphics modes, 8 hardware sprites, 16 colors, Raster Interrupts, smooth scrolling, and D-RAM refresh. The new sound chip had 3 voices, each independently programmable, with 4 waveforms, a programmable ADSR envelope, 8 octave range, filters, a random number generator, and two analog to digital converters.