Commodore64 today

Once in a while, the old Commodore homecomputer pops up in the modern world of 2014. And once again Thunder.Bird, the founder of the Commodore C64 Club Berlin sits in front of his beloved computer. Every odd weekend of July and August 2014, he promoted the beloved computer in the Computer Spiele Museum in Berlin. You may have visited him and played the old classic games like Giana Sisters, listened to 8-bit music and had a smalltalk about the old times.

The Commodore C64 „Breadbin“ is the first affordable homecomputer in 1982. It was the first one with colour graphics in high resolution, 3-channel synthesizer music, a real keyboard, cozy design and the lowest price. It was sold over 15 Million times between 1982 and 1994, the year Commodore went bankrupt.

C64 Set-Up im CSM Berlin (c)Thunder.Bird
C64 Set-Up at CSM Berlin (c)Thunder.Bird

Whats the normal athmosphere in a museum, do you think? Its quiet, forbidden to touch or photograph anything and you will be watched. But not the weekends, when Malte Schulze has his C64 Set connected and powered there. Then, the athmosphere is a bit like a party weekend, where old friends meet to have a drink or two and to have fun.

Party weekends with the old C64 are held every then and when since ~1989 until now, with no sign of an end. All friends of old computers meet there, from Friday to Sunday, to play the classics, but also to code new games and programs. The average age of a so-called Nerd is around 32 years. He isn’t shy and doesn’t look ugly, like some people may think about a computer Nerd. Those symposia are visited very well: The biggest C64-only meeting counts around 350 visitors!

What can one do with an old computer like the C64 today? Well the answer is that easy: Everything (and more) like with a modern Personal Computer. Of course the graphic capabilities are low. Consider a mobile phone. It has better graphics. But the games are more or less equal to modern mobile phone games. And the gameplay is much more addictive on the C64. There are people, that wrote their doctor work on the C64. Desktop Publishing also is possible as well as networking over the Internet. There even isn’t any virus, that could harm the C64, because no hacker wants to kill his darlings. And there is no excuse, not to set up the C64 again today, because it takes less space than a desktop PC, it consumes a tenth of the power of a PC. The C64 doesn’t even need a special monitor. A normal TV set will do. And there are existing over a million of games, all without the need of online-registering or any spy-action over the internet 😉