Commodore History Part 4 - The Plus4, C16, and C116

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[thisisannoying]

The Commodore 16 was my first home computer. Its failure was good for me... I got the computer for $49 and the 1531 datasette for $19 on clearance at Target.

[guyh]

I still remember myself crying my eyes out when I got an C16 for my birthday instead of the C64.
That day the world ended for me.... I never got over it even lol

[stevengelatzku]

"Tramel didnt believe in Marketing. He believed in sales. "

... hell of a guy.

[elphive]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rewatched these documentaries. Fantastic work, and I’m still hyped for the Amiga documentary when that gets released, too.

[fakshen]

The C64 was a corner-stone to my childhood... after enough protesting about my gifted Timex Sinclair 1000. It was magical. Thank you to all the engineers who worked on it... sincerely.

[numbersto]

I wish we could see in an alternate reality how the computer world would be when Jack never left Commodore.

[nneeerrrd]

Weird Commodore logic: this gonna be a business machine, so we remove hw sprites and rich sound but *put 2 joysticks in it!*

[videooblivion]

The Plus/4 was popular in Finland and Sweden.

RIP Dave DiOrio

[pkaulf]

The Plus 4 was my first computer, and it's very dear to my heart. We used the crap out of it. Most of the games were disappointing, but I probably spent more time on it trying to program in Basic, using a lightpen to draw pictures, and messing around with the word processor. Later when we got a floppy drive and printer, I was able to save & print documents and so I started writing all my school work on it. I even digitised the account books for a local newsagents that my mum worked at. My dad was into amateur radio and even used the Plus 4 to access RTTY bulletin boards. It was excruciatingly slow, but interesting nonetheless.

[uwezimmermann]

I had the Plus4. My parents wouldn't buy me a computer before Aldi in Germany sold the complete package of Plus4 and 1551 for I don't know how cheap. It was a great computer - I really learned programming in both Basic and assembler.

The built-in word processor was unusable to be honest, so in the late 1980s I wrote my own text processor fully in assembler code. It supported my Epson 9-needle dot matrix printer's commands to switch between fonts and styles.

I also built a b/w scanner based on the printer's print head motion, an infrared reflex coupler and a variable voltage-level comparator. SInce the Plus/4 wasn't fast enough I would sample a full line from the scan head into a 2 kbit static ram which then was read out into memory before scanning the next row.

I really loved this machine!

[SuperNicktendo]

There's a Commodore 64 available in my area for $100. Never had an interest in them before I found 8bit guy.
**Update** I found a Commodore 64, 1541 Floppy and a Printer for 50 bucks. Pretty happy with it.

These history episodes are fantastic! Can't wait for part five.

[keselekbakiak]

"He liked to make an OK profit, but not an absurd profit"
Gaming company need to take example from jack tremmels!

[clays]

Great video as always! But a really sad ending right before it cuts out it seems like he was going to cry over his friend passing away. RIP Dave DiOrio.

[NetworkXIII]

Long ago, I purchased a surplus C=16 keyboard at our local Radio Shack. I plugged it into a “reject” VIC-20 motherboard that I got from All Electronics. This was probably the first computer that I had ever built up from spare parts.

Anyway, well done Dave, I enjoyed the video very much.

[Dukefazon]

Greetings from Hungary! :) A rare occasion I'm proud to be Hungarian.
Here's my Commodore History:
When I was a kid we had a Philips G7000, also known as Magnavox Odyssey in the US. Later somehow we got a ZX Spectrum but neither of them was really strong with games. Then I remember the faithful night when my uncle came to visit and brought a Commodore 64 to my parents. I was sent in a room because it was supposed to be a christmas gift but I heard them over speaking "this can help them with learning". We got it for christmas and the two very first games I saw were Donald Duck's Playground and Yogi Bear & Friends in the Greed Monster. Both looked awesome but more importantly that Yogi game sounded super awesome! Later I got to know many great classics on the C64, my favorite to this day is Creatures 2 - Torture Trouble. At first we only had a datasette and tapes but later my brother saved up to buy a floppy drive. Whoa, those were the days, playing Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders and such.

Later my brother sold the C64 for about $18 and used that money to buy a used Amiga500 for roughly about $70. Do I have to tell you? Mind mind was blown! The first game was Flashback and I still love it to this day. We had many great games like Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Bubba N Stix, Yo Joe, Ruff N Tumble just to name a few. Later my brother sold the Amiga to help it financially to get a PC with Intel Celeron Mendocino CPU, 32MBs of ram and 8MB of whatever video card... So the great Commodore era of our family ended there.

I have fond memories of the C64, the Amiga500 and the PC period, in Hungary we skipped the video game crash, we mostly skipped the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega consoles, we mostly had ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64's and Amigas. Today I'm a console gamer with many consoles and a huge library of games (from PS1 through Dreamcast and Wii to PS4) but I still go back to the good old days and play some Amiga games. Last year I bought an ugly-dirty A500 without a power supply risking it might not be a working unit, cleaned it up, bought several boxed original games. I love the Amiga!

Thank you for your time ;)

[skoroasn]

(22:51) Pac-Pac is my game. Thanks for sharing.

[ClicketyClack]

I love your Commodore videos. I have such great memories of figuring out BASIC on the C64 as a kid. Best machine ever made. :)

[bartdunbar]

This series is why I like YouTube, thorough, intelligent, interesting and very professional. Well done

[unacomn]

Man, the beard makes Bil look like he's aged 20 years in the past 5 years. Great to see this bit of Commodore history brought to light.

[lanatrzczka]

Really hope to see more of Bill Herd. Especially him talking about the C128. I remember reading a quote of some kind where it was announced "We have compatibility with the 64."