Commodore

History of the Commodore C64: A Pixelated Revolution with a Touch of Madness

Imagine 1982. Mullet haircuts, synthpop blasting from cassettes, and in American garages, a legend is born. Enter the Commodore 64, or C64 – the computer that made 8-bit pixels sexier than disco at Studio 54. But how did it all start? Hop into the time machine, because the Commodore story is a wild ride!

Beginnings: From Calculators to a Computer Empire

Commodore International, founded in 1954 by Jack Tramiel – a Holocaust survivor with a knack for business – started with typewriters and calculators. Yes, calculators! In the ‘70s, those were high-tech, like Elon Musk selling smartphones with antennas. But Jack, with his motto “computers for the masses, not the classes,” knew the future wasn’t about tax calculations but an electronic revolution. In 1977, Commodore released the PET – a computer that looked like a cash register with a keyboard and won geeks’ hearts. But that was just a warm-up.

Birth of the C64: Small Computer, Big Dreams

In 1981, the VIC-20, an affordable computer for everyone, hit the scene, but its successor, the C64, was set to steal the show. In January 1982 at CES, Commodore unveiled the C64 – for $595, you got 64 KB of RAM (insane!), a MOS 6510 processor (1 MHz, faster than a retired turtle), and graphics that made the Atari 2600 cry in a corner. The SID chip? A musical wizard – 3 sound channels, a synthesizer that sounded like Kraftwerk in a basement. Jokingly: the C64 was like a DeLorean among computers – modest on the outside, but with a flux capacitor for pixels and music under the hood.

Golden Years: C64 Rules the Block

The C64 hit stores in August 1982 and… boom! It sold 12.5–17 million units (nobody knows exactly, because Commodore counted like me after three beers). Why? It was cheap (price dropped to $200), versatile (games, programming, demoscene!), and had a game library bigger than the meat queues in communist Poland. From Manic Miner to Elite – the C64 was a console, a computer, and a buddy for late-night BASIC coding. The 1541 floppy drive? Slower than a snail on vacation, but everyone loved it, even if loading took longer than a photocopier queue.

Demoscene and Culture: Pixels with Soul

The C64 wasn’t just hardware – it was a culture. The demoscene, the art of squeezing jaw-dropping graphics from 64 KB, thrived thanks to crackers and coders. Groups like Fairlight and Triad created demos that looked like they came from NASA, not a garage. A joke? Picture this: you’re coding in assembly to make sprites breakdance while your buddy waits for a cassette to load. It was hardcore, but oh so satisfying!

Decline and Fall: Even Stars Fade

By the ‘90s, PCs and the Amiga (from Commodore!) started stealing the spotlight. The C64, though still beloved, became a retro relic. Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 – Jack Tramiel had left earlier, and the company fell into chaos like a game without checkpoints. But the C64 didn’t die! The demoscene, emulators like VICE, and replicas like the Pi1541 keep it alive. Even today, fans solder their own PCBs to play Boulder Dash on original hardware.

Legacy: C64 Forever

The C64 is more than a computer – it’s a time capsule. It taught millions of kids to code (POKE 53280,0, remember?), gave the world the demoscene, and showed that cheap hardware could change the world. Jokingly: if your smartphone has 8 GB of RAM and you still miss 64 KB, the C64 brainwashed you. And that’s a good thing! Thanks to RetroBit and other enthusiasts, you can revive that magic today – without dust or drive grinding. C64 forever, because pixels never age!