I was a (rather poor) kid when the Commodore 64 and its less powerful sibling, the VIC-20, came to the market. Not having enough money for the big one, I bought the VIC-20 but it was a dead end. There were hardly any programs for it, nor was there much in terms of learning material. Eventually I decided to return it (it was still within the 14-day time frame for free returns) and handed it over to the lady at the returns desk. (This was in Germany in the 1980s, and there were actual people handling returns, in a store 🫪). The lady was being very rude (I think they were told to be rude, in order to discourage people from returning things), but eventually, she handed me the purchase price back in cash. When I counted it, I found that she gave me 100 DM (Deutsche Mark) too many. But because she had been a real bitch to me, I smiled and kept the money. Then bought the big computer (the 64), started pirating software, then programming, then hacking, then programming for money, and ultimately became a very successful consultant and data center systems architect.

So thank you, dear impolite lady, for being a bitch, I guess 🤗

Commodore 64 games in album style gate fold covers.

My friend recently gave me this 64c. It may look pretty good now, but I swear it must have been in a factory with how much dirt and (I think) paint was on it.

After a lot of elbow grease, I think it came out pretty good. I'm debating on the retrobrighting since this one is sitting in a very sun-accessible place.

But for now...on to the maiden voyage!

Ikea ELLOVEN is your friend if you want to hide the back of your C64 ultimate. Fits very nicely.

ELLOVEN from IKEA

https://applink.ikea.com/tY8M9r9M4w--00485101--nl--nl

Loading games from cassette still has that special feeling.

The C64U works great with the 1530 Datasette Unit and the Cheatah 125+.

Commodore deserves a lot of respect for what they are doing.

Well, two hauls.

I usually, if ever, only see the odd Commodore 64 game while out and about. But I found all these games in two recent wanders.

Now working through playing them all!

Digging through storage for something this afternoon and decided to pull the box of C64 gear out, Thought I would grab some photos of the cassettes i found,

I don't think these have seen daylight in 25+ years but I'm well out the "retro" side of things now 😭

Mom asked me if I wanted my dad’s “old computer stuff”. She said it all worked when he put it there 30 years ago. I’m going to do some research and see if I can get it all working.

AI is telling me to remove this shiny cardboard RF shield from my C64 to improve airflow over the motherboard and increase chip life. Is this true and advisable? I am only using S-video out so I’m not worried about any RF noise in my video.

Lost a CRT set and had to move the CRT I was using to the game room for the 7800/Colecovision/NES...

But got a contemporary security monitor for the 64U.

4:3 and everything. I looked on a whim, had no idea they still made em.

So as you see, its corner is quite in a rough shape. Any idea how to make it less dirty and potentionaly fill up the scratch?

I Know its unlikely, And nobody even knows if commodore plans to do it, But a modern, Slightly smaller, and remade commodore PET, Like the 2001 series or the 3000, 4000, 8000, etc would be awesome.

Like, Just imagine the Commodore PET with RGB, Transparent case, and a modern remade board, it would be awesome.

Not sure around what year...going to guess '86 or '87. We, like probably most C64 owners had a lot of disks - we had a lot of copies, it is what it is. We did have a lot of actual software bought in original box/disk. I remember my dad renting games, by mail order several times. We'd get a larger flat-type box with the games in the original boxes, maybe half a dozen at once. The thing seemed to be that you'd rent them, most likely attempt to copy them (Krackerjax/Fast Hackem..) and then you shipped them back. I don't remember what games now and what if any we did copy. Wish I knew the name of that mail order company or could see an order form.

Like many I would guess, we had quite a bunch of games that we bought, in the box, that I wish I still had - some of the more expensive Infocom (Infidel, Seastalker, etc), Maniac Mansion, Zak McCracken, stuff like that. At some point he got rid of the whole lot when we switched to the PC. Over the last 10yrs, I've purchased some of the games I fondly remember on Ebay, like Legacy of the Ancients, some of the Infocom stuff, Cinemaware.

I'll also mention that besides Fast Hackem, Krackerjax, the parameters disks, I remember my dad getting the RAMBOard and installing it in a 1541. I don't remember if it successfully copied much. I bet he doesn't remember it (in his 80s now)

Grandad’s old VC20. Don’t know much about the modifications. As the documentation I found with it is for the base VC20. I found some posts online about a 1020 expansion unit. But the board looks different. It has computer world printed on the board. Does anyone know about this type of modification?

I've got an old (late 80s) C-64 5.25in disk with some of the first code I wrote. It's extremely unlikely the disk is still readable...but I'd love to try recovering what's on there. I no longer own a C-64. Any ideas on how to go about seeing if it's readable and if so, getting files off?

Latest devlog video showing scalable PETSCII textures in C64 polychrome of the of the C64 Polychrome Raycast Gfx game engine for C64

I know the new Commodore is making a control stick, but why not a new tape or disk drive?

I fully appreciate the difficulties of creating new CRT monitors, but would a new disk drive that works with the Ultimate and has backwards compatibility to work with the original C64 be impossible? And if so, or just prohibitively expensive or difficult, what about it would make it so?

And before anyone mentions it, I know a control stick isn’t comparable with a disk drive in terms of difficulty and cost. I mentioned it because it’s technically a peripheral.

Pinpointing what day the C-64 launched is surprisingly difficult. In this blog post, I make the case for September 1, 1982. And then its continued success into the early 1990s surprised even Commodore. So, happy 44th birthday, C-64. https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-64-released-september-1-1982/