Nostalgia

In 1981 CBM (Commodore Business machines) introduced the Commodore 64. It was an exciting time because for the first time computers were brought home for "reasonable" prices. They were even very competitive to the professional IBM computers, and even brought more additional features like a synthesizer chip and for that time amazing color graphics. I remember how I got all my money together to buy this miracle of modern technology.

I went on my bicycle to the nearest shop (30 km) and became the proud owner of a Commodore 64. It's even funny to think of the fact that there was no internet, and that for anything you needed on software or any other kind of peripheral that was needed I had to travel distances.

Most programms were sold on ROM cartridges, cassette tapes and later on 5.24" floppies, the other possibility was to programm yourself in Basic or to type over listings in magazines. After a few years I was getting into the army as a pro, and I needed to have something that was portable. I remember that the SX-64 was released in 1984 and it consisted of a 5" color screen and a built in 5,25" drive (named 1541). Portable was hardly a name for it, you could better call it luggable. In the beginning the price was sky high, I remember a mere 3999 guilders. It was this price that made it not much of a succes. But I was still very impressed.

Hardly to believe these days that those dinosaures of the computer age could stir so much excitement compared to for exampel the Macbook Air. In 1985 prices went suddenly really down and it was available for 1699 guilders, that would be about half in euro's, about 800 euro's. Anyway I went to Rotterdam by train (overcome another distance of 100 km to get to the long wanted gadget). And by the time I returned home I was the proud owner of the SX-64. To give you an idea I added some pictures. Next time I am going to write a bit on some amazing programms that were released and were the messengers of things that would change the computer use forever. 

The technical sheet: (batteries not included, it only worked on AC power)

Commodore SX-64 "Executive"

Introduced: January 1983 Released: January 1984 Weight: 23 pounds Price: US $995. CPU: MOS 6510, 1MHz Audio: 3 channels RAM: 64K Display: built-in 5" color screen 40 X 25 text 320 X 200, 16 colors max Storage: internal 170K floppy drive external floppy drive Ports: S-video, composite video 2 joysticks, cartridge port serial and 'user' ports OS: Commodore BASIC in ROM