How the Commodore REU Works

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[matthewray]

My uncle ran a computer store in the 80s and I just texted him to see if he knew how much REUs went for. He has always been a Commodore fan (he even has a tattoo of the logo). He said that he can try and track down a price sheet from back then but he's pretty sure they were MSRP for 299 but most shops would price them at MAP which was 199.

[freddaniali]

David, I bought mine from Best Products for $149.99. I do remember that the price had no catalog listing and when I asked them why they said that the price of dram was very volatile at the time. And, when they had to look it up it was listed with the jewelry department since it had to be where their program allowed them to easily modify the price.

[RacerX-]

Great Video. I can help with the price. The REU listed for $149 in the USA when it came out but I got mine on sale at Toys R Us for either $109 or $129. I do know that later on they were selling them for $99 and that is when we picked up a second unit for our BBS. I still own my 1764 and the PSU is still in use on my 64C.

[_Bit]

Several of the later Infocom games shipped with REU support which allowed pre-loading of data into RAM, greatly speeding up the time it took to process your turns.

[geekwithsocialskills]

The 32K EPROM socket can be used to add GEOS onboard to the REU for instant loading of the base GEOS application.

[dreadpiratesidebeard]

What is going on with YouTube? An 8 Bit Guy video should be over 100k easily after 12 hours. Especially a classic vintage tech piece like this! I didn't even get a notification despite choosing that setting.

[brendonburgin]

My mother entered my brother and I in a draw in New Zealand, he ended up winning 1st prize which was a commodore 16. Mum had stressed to both of us if one happened to win then the prize was for the two of us so we were stoked. We had that computer for approx 6 months when to our surprise Dad went and upgraded to the commodore 64 with the tape deck, floppy disk drive & dot matrix printer. Along with all that we got some games on cassette and cartridge, I remember really liking 'Who Dares Wins' on cassette and 'Lode Runner' on cartridge. We did eventually get some games on floppy disk and they loaded fairly quickly. We had a lot of fun with this setup as it kept us entertained for hours.

[milk-it]

The C64 was my first computer. I'm always blow away by how much good programmers could squeeze out of that thing! The quick dive into assembly instructions and clock cycles was really interesting. I'd love to see more of that.

[pixeldiscoveries]

Love these behind-the-scenes looks at old technology, bravo 8-bit guy!

[slimebuck]

i enjoy the production value of your videos. sound, video and editing is all 10 / 10.

[sailcat]

I like that you have actual good sound production levels. Love you show!

[electronerd]

I don't know why, but I absolutely love this channel's intro music

[mikeprice]

I love how they even recreated 8-bit Sonic 1s broken demo. That's true dedication to the source material.

[vadermasktruth]

I'm a 51 year old dude, probably your age also. I love going back and rewatching your older videos! Four, five, six years ago even. So much to learn & relearn, this is one of the great things to use YouTube for! Lots of negative things about YT, and although I love Rumble & Bitchute, YT still "works" the best with a plethora of information!

[danielstickney]

My experience with the 1764 REU was discovering that my RAM disk was not as slick an idea as I thought when my C64 crashed and I lost the term paper i was working on at 2:00 AM in the morning on the last day of the semester. The old and dying refrigerator drew enormous current when it kicked on and my landlord's brother-in-law wiring job wasn't up to the task of supplying it and the rest of the house. Fortunately I only lost the bibliography but man it was a pain. Save early and Save often has been my motto ever since.

[Joeybamillion]

I always love seeing your videos, I'm not the brightest person but I love learning what you have to offer. We are so spoiled of today's technology but I highly invested in all your videos. Keep them coming!!

[TheSulross]

Sonic the Hedgehog port to C64 was a real shot in the arm to 8-bit retro game development world as it so viscerally made very clear what the REU brings to the table - exciting

[HelloKittyFanMan.]

Yes, it's so interesting how there's now quite the cult following of the C64 that can finally afford to use these super accessories that we wish we could have had just as easily some 4 decades ago! And with people developing modern solutions for old machines, like being able to run flash storage on these computers, this is really a magical era for nostalgia, isn't it?

[kaseyboles]

I had one of those. I even had it all wired up with extra sockets and the glue logic (74series ftw) to make it a two megabyte reu, just at 15 I never came up with the money for the actual ram chips. There was also an update to software to properly use all that ram. This was more ram than pc-xt's of the time.

[hellocollegejason]

Always great to learn from a new video