- I think the keyboard labeling makes it pretty clear that it's AI.
- You might prefer my archive then:
- I still have my BeBox … plus a prototype case. When the boxes were first shipped to some developers, the case design had yet to be finalized. When the final case arrived, you swapped the motherboard and cards from the prototype to the new case.
- Can't see myself parting with my own 133MHz, no.
- Almost makes me wish I hadn't sold mine at VCF!
- All of these companies wanted to make a profit off developer tools, which is why they charged that much -- there were so few developers compared to end-users. But viable platforms need applications! The only way to get them is to get developers on board, so you want to publish the tools as cheaply as you possibly can.
I think SGI's hardware was exclusive enough to limit their audience anyway, but everyone else, including Apple, really screwed themselves with this.
This is something Steve Jobs fixed at Apple in 1997 by eliminating per-division tracking of profit/loss. When the VPs are freed from profit motive for their direct divisional output, they become responsible for the profit of the entire company. It's worked pretty well.
- Huh, I never knew about the copyright discrepancy in Italy. I just researched it since pirated software was available at every corner convenience store in many mainland European countries in the 80s and 90s and I always wondered why. I would stock up on every vacation, at first piling up cassettes for home computers, then later multi-cart console games.
Here's what GPT said: "The key shift was the EC Council Directive of 14 May 1991 (91/250/EEC) on the legal protection of computer programs. This forced member states to explicitly protect software as literary works under copyright. Implementation varied (Italy did it in 1992, Spain in 1993, etc.), but by the mid-1990s the patchwork was gone."
- Just a data point to magnify how out of reach a computer was in this era. $18000 in 1975 would be $107,000 in 2025.
- My favorite was the "Real Reality" spoof by Never a few years later for Mekka&Symposium. They re-made it entirely with shaky VHS home cameras and papercraft models... Extremely creative, for a time when video editing was still very much not in reach for most people
- Anyone around here knowing why the remaining chapters were not released in the past nine years since the first batch showed up?
- And the slogan is now being used by Cloudflare, who acquired the rights to the expired trasdemark in 2019.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/does-repurposing-of-sun-microsyste...
- The novelty is in putting this all together into a whole complete system that I can take home and have it work with the TV I own now. Just like in the 1980s when so many C64s were carted home and plugged into tube tvs of all shapes and sizes. Not everyone wants to build a computer from a kit sourced from multiple vendors. I can bolt, screw, snap, plug but am listed as a fire hazard with a soldering iron.
- I don't feel like there's much novel here-- as in, you could have built one of these in 2022.
The motherboard is a rebadged Ultimate 64 in white: https://ultimate64.com/Ultimate-64-Elite-MK2
Transparent breadbin cases have been out for a WHILE: https://www.retrofuzion.com/products/breadbin-case-set
It's got a mechanical keyboard, which could be a MechBoard64: https://www.retrofuzion.com/products/mechboard-64-fully-back...
The keycaps are slightly novel, in that they have a C= logo on the Commodore key. The guy from CBMSTUFF ran a multi-year project to produce new keycaps. For licensing reasons, his didn't have the C= logo on the Commodore key, but it's reasonable to think that they have taken advantage of his considerable work refining and producing the keys and provided a path to legally using the C= logo. Having one new key printed shouldn't take so much work as he put into getting all the legends correct on the others. https://www.cbmstuff.com/index.php?route=product/category...
Shrug
- for anyone else who might wonder, the tech specs are at the bottom of the store pages:
https://www.commodore.net/product-page/commodore-64-ultimate...
CPU emulation is FPGA-based, seems like it can accept original SID chips if you have them (?) or use an FPGA version, and the keyboard uses Gateron mechanical switches. Seems pretty good for the price, if tariffs don’t fuck you over. I wonder if they’re overestimating the number they’ll sell, though.
- There was a Swedish Commodore magazine that did all of their DTP in Publishing Partner Master on Amiga... for a couple of years, until they silently switched to Macs. :)
- The high-level manager who chewed him out is almost certainly https://www.youtube.com/@CKHaun -- who was indeed a very distinct character. My interactions with C.K. were never that fraught.
- I miss Publish It from that list. It was impossibly good on the Apple //e
- > Quark, a desktop publishing behemoth of the ’90s that is still very active today
I dunno man. I guess it still exists, but Quark self-immolated at least in part by failing to port to Mac OS X early on. The rumor was they had outsourced their engineering team to India around the time Mac OS X was announced, which was very clearly not the right time for a new set of developers to take over an existing sourcebase.
- And you're super welcome here!
- Yes/no. Because I edited the post to fix the date it automatically takes edit rights away from the original poster (i.e. you). This is done by the standard code and is a feature to prevent edit wars between the moderators (i.e. me) and users. I'll restore your rights!
- wow!. sorry guys. happy to fix. Did I lose my edit privelages becaues of the date?
- The main difference was that 48K basic you had to find the keyboard key with the keyword on it and press that to get the word. Some keys had 6 different functions. It was like learning the 2000 Jōyō Kanji.
With 128 basic, blessed that it is, you could just type like a real human. If you want to print, type PRINT. It taught me how to type really badly and really quickly.
- Another Atari project from Poland. What’s in the water over there. Fantastic.
- I dunno. I think commercial value for Commodore is what you make of it.
- I know it’s fashionable to hate on BillG these days, but the guy was an excellent software engineer and a shrewd (if at times unethical) business man. The two greatest achievements of his, imho, were mentioned and they made me smile: 8080/Altair BASIC and the Model 100 software system. Just outstanding.
- I get what is being said, but some like Perifractic owning Commodore gives me more hope. I just hope he exercises good judgement on who and what can use the trademark.
- Possibly my most favourite story about Bill and lines of code as a metric of productivity
- These documentation repositories are always welcome. As time goes by we lose more and more, especially items from the gold and silver ages that were mostly on paper that are tossed as luminaries age out of the system.
- Read that and some other articles on the same site and it presents a lot of opinions as facts which is sad, since this detracts from some interspersed valid or interesting points that are there.
- My theory: The article mentioned an earlier prototype used 384×256, a 3:2 ratio. 512×342 is the even height that gives closest to a 3:2 ratio with a pixel width of 512.