[CSDb] - User Forums - C64 is back again..

I would never buy it: what's the sense of having a modern PC in a C64-stile enclosure? It *might* be worth it if the new Commodore OS provides some interesting stuff, but, come on, it's a normal PC, nothing more. Emus run also on any other PC. Could be a good idea to have everything in the keyboard to save space and still use a regular monitor.

While I think it could have some success a new C64 with special I/O ports, like user port and expansion port. In fact during C64 golden days there was plenty of literature about using these and it was rather easy and cheap to build your circuit and play with it by POKEing or driving it via assembler. Today parallel ports are not even available as options on most modern hardware and USB is not so easy and cheap to play with.

So a modern PC, which can be used also as a micro-controller, where you can easily take full control over the machine, with a data bus and address bus made available, could be interesting for several hobbists I think. On the C64 you just set $01 to $35, change a few IRQ vectors for example, and you gain full control over its hardware. Not same thing with modern PCs.

Furthermore, in eletronic applications by using expansion or user ports, the C64 can really be a real-time machine. PCs are fast but with standard OSs are far from being real time. You cannot just connect a IRQ hardware pin that can make your processor jump to your routine with garanteed response time of less than 10 micro seconds. A PC usually has higher response time due to the fact that standard OSs cannot be disabled so easily and keep serving several tasks.

Electronic projects on the C64 could be very cheap and easy also because the clock was 1MHz and let the user almost forget about interferences common to higher frequency clocks.

2011-04-12 08:41

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086

"what's the sense of having a modern PC in a C64-stile enclosure?"

what's the sense in using 25 year old HW? :) I'd find it nice to surf the interwebs or create a new demo in a cross asm on a c64 look alike pc.

2011-04-12 09:47

ready.

Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 441

ok, it might be nice, but I don't die for it. After all I don't think it's worth it. Let's put it this way: if I was given the new C64 as a gift, I would use it, but surely never buy it.

Anyhow, I wish them good luck and hope lots of people will actually buy it, at least it will be a good reason to start an interesting conversation :)

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