Dear Steve Jobs, keep your Apple flavored iFail. I want this:

[Symarip]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/16/the-commodore-name-licensed-again-for-a-line-of-keyboard-pcs/

Compact, economical, and robust for their day, they were ubiquitous throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately, the machine's glory days are long behind it, with little more than some gaming rigs and the tireless work of Ben Heck to keep the flag flying. But all that could change if Barry Altman has his way. As President and CEO of the newly minted Commodore USA, he's spent the better part of a year crawling through the arcane red tape necessary to get the rights to the Commodore name. And now? With any luck, later this year the company's monumental advertising campaign will have had its effect ("something like you've never seen in your life," as Altman described it to us on the phone this afternoon) and you'll be able to have your very own keyboard computer with the Commodore logo slapped on for good measure. Presumably based on the Cybernet ZPC-GX31, the exact configurations and pricing will all be spelled out soon enough. In the meantime, hit the source link to see for yourself. And please, guys -- make us a beige one, will ya?





I found this last night and it's all I can think about. It actually looks like C64! They'll score bonus geek points if they include a C64 emulator on board. Oh my god, I think I need to change my pants... Again. For you MacNerds, it looks like they're including the hardware architecture needed to boot up MacOS.

Seriously. Forget the ipad - I'd rather have this. The ipad's worthless. Even if it proves to be a new standard, it'll be years before they work out the bugs... Y'know, like running two programs at once (lolz).

[CBGLuthier]

1. The Commodore Amiga could multitask after booting from a floppy

Also displayed over 4,000 colors while Macs were 2 color B/W only.

Putting it still ahead of this one at a time overpriced latest greatest.

[Symarip]

2. Ctrl + S

I'm using this argument at a later time.

Thanks.

[HopeHoops]

12. And with hold-and-modify, you could get the best scans of ANY machine for years to come.

Okay, okay, granted the single largest use of that feature was for scanning porn, but still. Hold-and-modify wasn't even an intended feature. It was discovered after the Amiga 500 had been on the market for a few weeks. If you aren't familiar with it, it allowed you to make a transition to the next pixel by holding two of the three colors (RG&B) stable and changing the third color to any value.

People have trouble believing that it ran a multitasking operating system from a floppy (single-sided, mind you), but it did. I know the guts of that machine rather well. Last time I pulled them out (a couple years ago), my C=64, Apple II+, and Amiga 500 all worked just fine.

Trivia:

1) When the Amiga and Atari ST came out (both multitasking), Bill Gates dismissed multitasking on a desktop as something nobody would ever need on a home computer. No shock here, but M$ didn't have anything even approaching task switching at the time.

2) The Blitter chip in the Amiga is a major reason for its incredible performance. The 680x0 series used the bus on alternate clock cycles leaving the bus open to coprocessors on the other ones. The Blitter chip could signal the CPU to "chill out" so it could steel the bus for as long as it needed to use all of the clock cycles for memory operations. Now here's the fun part. M$ never ran on a machine with any kind of blitter chip but they adopted the Commodore prefix "BLT" for their copy operations.

3) Commodore was originally a business machines company (typewriters and such)

4) At one point in the mid 80's, there were more C=64 machines on the planet than all other personal computers combined.

5) At the key time in Commodore's decline, a point when it was essential to dispel the notion that they were a gaming company, they hired a new CEO named Max Toy.

[TZ]

3. But it doesn't look like a gadget from Star Trek!!!

You see, I actually think that is what Apple is counting on...The ipad looks like the data pads that the characters use in ST:TNG etc....
Kind of like the way flip phones look like the communicators from the original Star Trek series..
And before you call me a nerd, ST actually HAS had quite an influence on modern technology..
http://propbuzz.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-props-of-star-trek-influence-our.html

[Symarip]

4. Can we ever have a conversation where you don't bring up Star Trek?

I'm surprised you haven't found some sort of Star Trek validation in Ska or Rocksteady yet.

PS - there isn't one so don't bother looking.

[TZ]

6. Dude.

Believe it or not, I actually LEARN stuff at the ST conventions I've been to. And I'm not talking about learning how to hit each other with a toy sword, I mean science-y type stuff...but I'm sure thats a bit beyond you...:P

[Symarip]

8. If your little conventions had more of this I'd be more inclined to attend:

[TZ]

10. lol

Somewhere I think Dr. Strange is looking up "how to become a tattoo artist"....

[BeachBaby]

5. OMG - are you serious?

Well, now I KNOW I won't be buying one. :P

[rcrush]

7. This is better than the Ipad

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/the-itablet-an-ipad-alternative-that-multitasks-has-a-webcam-and-runs-windows-7-or-linux-2010025/

[TZ]

9. Oh hey, you might find this use of Apple products interesting...

http://paranormaldailynews.com/2010/03/16/a-ghost-a-ufo-and-an-apple-computer/
:rofl:

[SoxFan]

11. But...but...Apple is morally superior!

Apple looks like a young hipster dick! And everyone else is a frumpy 40 year old! You suck!

[Shining Jack]

13. Mmmm...C64...

I had a long love story with that machine.Used it for more than a decade and only put it away when I bought my 1st PC.I still have all my 5¼ inch floppies but I dumped the machine when I moved out of the parent's house.Now I regret it.With a joystick playing the role of a mouse I managed to do good looking images despite having only 16 colors to work with.I used a program called Koala Painter.

I tried C64 emulators a couple of years ago but never managed to make one work.