Commodore 64

The Commodore 64, also known as C64, is an 8-bit home computer developed by Commodore International in January of 1982. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 developed its name from the 64 kilobytes of RAM it had. The C64 competed with Apple's Apple II, and had favorable sound and graphical specifications when compared to the said Apple II, at a price that was well below the US$1200 demanded by Apple.

During its life cycle of over 10 years, sales totaled somewhere between 12.5 and 17 million units, proving its position as the best selling personal computer model of its time, outselling both the IBM PC compatibles, Apple Inc. computers and Atari's 8-bit family of computers.

The C64 was the most successful computer of the time, partly due to the fact that it was sold in retail stores rather than electronic stores.

Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64, including games, development tools, office productivity and applications. C64 emulators were manufactured so anyone with a compatible video game console or a modern computer could use such software.

History
In January of 1981, MOS Technology, Commodore's integrated circuit design subsidiary, initiated a project to design and develop the graphic and audio chips for a next generation video game console. The chips were completed in November of 1981.

After the completion of the chips, named MOS Technology VIC-II (graphics) and MOS Technology SID (audio), Commodore began the project of a game console that would use the chips, which was called the Ultimax or Commodre MAX Machine, engineered by Yash Terakura from Commodore Japan. After a few manufacturings for the Japanese market, the project was ultimately cancelled.

Around the same time, Robert Russel (architect on the VIC-20) and Robert Yannes (engineer of the SID) were critical of the current line-up of Commodore products, which was a continuation of the Commodore PET line targeted towards business users. With the support of two people, they proposed to then Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel a true low-cost successor to the VIC-20. Tramiel dictated that the machine should have 64 kilobytes of RAM, which would be more expensive than DRAM (US$100). But the DRAM prices were falling, and would drop to an acceptable level before full production was released. Tramiel set a deadline of the first week of January 1982 in November, to coincide with the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show.

The product was then code-named VIC-40 as a sequel to the popular Commodore VIC-20. The prototypes, design and a few sample software products were complete before the show after working tirelessly through Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

The machine incorporated Commodore's BASIC 2.0 in ROM, which also served as the user interface shell and was immediately available after the startup and the READY. prompt.