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Commodore USA prices up revived C64, VICs

Not the games machine its father was

It's official: the new Commodore 64 - well, new innards, old casing - is a nettop.

Commodore USA, the latest in a long line of CBM revialist movements over the years since the original company went bust, has revealed the machine will be based around a 1.83GHz Intel Atom D525 with 2-4GB of 800MHz DDR 2 memory.

Commodore USA C64

Yes, the D525 is dual-core, but it's not the Core i-something that many folk were hoping for. It does at least use Nvidia's Ion 2 chipset platform, so it should perform as well as a nettop can perform.

But, alas, it's not the games machine its namesake was.

Prices range from $250 (£153) for a barebones - casing, keyboard and mobo - to $895 (£548) for a fully specced model with 1TB of storage, 8GB of memory, built-on 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and a Blu-ray drive.

There's $51-183 (£31-112) postage to the UK on top of that, depending on how quickly you want your C64 shipped.

Commodore USA VIC-Pro
Commodore USA VIC-Pro

The VIC-Pro...

For a speedier CPU, you'll need the newly renamed VIC-Pro - formerly the Commodore Phoenix - which has a choice of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs, all with integrated graphics. Prices run from $495 to $1195 (£303-732).

Or there's the new VIC-Slim, which has essentially the same spec as the C64, but comes in a new casing that, like the VIC-Pro, is more Amiga than VIC-20 so has far less nostalgia value.

Commodore USA VIC-Slim

...and the VIC-Slim, neither a spit for the VIC-20

More details on all these models at the Commodore USA website. ®

External HDD

If I had one of these, I'd SO want to put an external HDD into the shell of a datasette cassette player. That would look sweet :-)

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Sir

Well, sling a 64-bit O/S on it and your half way there!

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Re: C=64

The moronic thing is that, had they just produced a very cheap PCB with a micro-controller running a dedicated emulation of the original C=64 (sort of like those 10-in-1 games bundled in a joystick looking device that plug into your TV), and house it in that molded retro case, they could have sold it for $50 bucks a piece and made a killing in the retro-collectors market.

But no, they have to turn it into a "modern" PC with crap components, limiting its appeal to just the "look" of the box.

This reminds of whenever Hollywood re-makes a classic old movie, they can't leave it the hell alone, and need to "actualize" it to include such modern day staples as terrorists, teenage sex, hip-hop, and of course, the Internet.

-dZ.

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@Ian

So, what you are saying is, that if you're tired of showing off the same old devices everyone else is using, the new C=64 allows you to go retro and be different, just like everybody else.

-dZ.

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Space saving

Space saving is all well and good, but I would imagine that thing will be a b1tch to type on! If you wanted proper space saving, it makes a lot more sense to pack it into the monitor instead and to use any keyboard you like.

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