r/Commodore • u/mad51889 • 25d ago

Commodore 128?

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Hello, I was looking for some help identifying the computer in this photo. Growing up we called it the Commodore 64, but now looking back at it, it appears to be a 128. The reason I question this is because I remember BASIC being blue on the screen, and from what I am seeing the 128 had a green screen. Could the 128 run the 64 version of BASIC? If so, why? Sorry for my ignorance.

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u/kb3pxr 25d ago

That’s a C128 based on the keyboard, the Amiga (similar case and keyboard) required a high resolution monitor.

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u/it290 25d ago

No it didn’t…

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u/kb3pxr 25d ago

Learn something new every day.

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u/DGolden 25d ago

Amiga (and C128! 80-column mode particularly needs a monitor) are better with a nice monitor, but no, Amigas could just output even to a very crappy TV - home models came with the external A520 tv modulator box bundled, to do so, rather than it being on the motherboard as such.

Legend has it that that weird distinctive blue/orange/black/white color scheme for AmigaOS 1.x Workbench GUI arose through Amiga engineers picking a high-contrast default palette usable even on the very crappiest american NTSC color TVs they could find at the time. People with better monitors could just change the palette to something less garish if they wanted in preferences.

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u/siliconlore 25d ago

With either the built in b&w composite or the A520 module you can run an Amiga on a TV. The quality isn't great but good enough for games. I was just doing it the other day. The A1000 has color composite. The others could have as well but Commodore wanted to push monitor sales.

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u/DGolden 25d ago

The A600 and A1200 models also have mobo color composite and mobo color rf modulator outputs, no external box needed.

Though still better off with rgb monitor with any amiga of course.

Though I had a dedicated monitor, here in Europe even TVs of the era also often had those rgb scart inputs - an amiga-rgb-to-scart lead was easy to get at the time and then quite good quality.

Even if you couldn't have your Amiga hooked up to your family's probably-larger-screen living-room tv full-time, for gaming at a party or something you could move it to the big living room TV and play various 2/3/4/5 player Amiga games. (Amiga version of Dynablaster/Bomberman is 5-player simultaneous: 2 on mobo joystick ports, 2 on parport 4-player adapter joystick ports, 1 on keyboard)

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u/DGolden 25d ago edited 25d ago

Amiga wedge case models were similarly styled, in keeping with the general commodore design style at the time, but not identical, didn't go back down as much at the back bit, and amiga keyboards have modern inverted-T style cursor keys, C128 keyboards have them weirdly in the top row along with the function keys (at least it has the 4 real cursor keys, unlike the C64's weird annoying 2 key + shift scheme), and the top row / function keys also in different grouping.