My Commodore 128

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Well, this week has gone from extremely busy to dead, work wise. I have had a bunch of new clients, and some really wacky tech calls. I really hate it when people go out and spend a good amount of coin, getting a nice computer system running XP and then find out it only has 128 megs of ram. They get it home and all the windows updates come down and then they can't even start the machine. To me this is straight out fraud and both the sales person and the company that sold that machine should get a minimum of a million dollar fine, if not jail time. It's just criminal how people get away with selling shit to an uniformed public.

Just after my last blog, I received in my Commodore 128.
For those of you that do not know what the C128 is, it was CBM's last ditch attempt at an 8 bit computer before the Amiga came out. When the project was started, CBM had not acquired the Amiga, so for a brief moment, this was Commodore's most powerful machine.
The story behind the C128 is just as fascinating as any of the Commodore computers. It all realy started at the CES in 1984 when Bil Herd was getting flack over the C264 for no backward compatibility with the C64. So Bill made it his mission to build the next system with 100% backward compatibility with the C64 (no small feat).
Instead of making a C64 with more ram, and minimal upgrades (like the TRS 80 Color Computer 3) , Him and Dave Haynie decide to make it more. They not only wanted a full C64 mode, and an extended 128 mode, the also were looking at CP/M for business. Bill also new that CP/M was on its way out, but the machine was only suppose to be a bridge between the 8 bits and the new 16 Bit computers.

As he was trying to get the CP/M Cartridge to work, he had found out why the original C64 Cartridge did not really work. It was under powered. So he decided to put a Z80 CPU right in the 128 and late one night, he tore open his "doorstop" ( a Sinclar Computer) and by morning he had the SECOND Dual CPU computer ever made. The C128 boots off the Z80.
(update) Jan 27 2010
Bil actually called me and told me it wasn't JUST because of the power. I won't get into the whole story in detail, but it had also to do with the timing and clock signals of the Z-80, coupled with the brand of RAM they were using at the time. All of these issue, and the CP/M cart was a blatant copy of the Apple card, forced Bil to re-evaluate and just fix everything.

Also, Bil set out to "fix" the bugs in the original C64, but as he did, he noticed les and less of the software would work with the "improved" C64, as the programmers often to full advantage of the glitches in the system. He had no choice but to "put the glitches back in" he even had a wire titled as such.
Perhaps the biggest pain was there was a ton of people against him, and he only had a few months to make the computer. At the 1985 CES show, just as he and Dave were coming in to Vegas, they saw a bill board that said "Can be expanded to 512K of ram". He originally made it for 512 k, but his boss told him to take it out. Now, they had to put it back in! Well, he did!


The best thing is that the system sold way more units and for years after it was released (up until 1989), The sad thing is that barely anyone took advantage of the 128 mode that was not backwards compatible with the C64 for mode, and CP/M was really dead by launch.
Bil also designed a C128D (desktop) unit, and shared the same "design" case as the Amiga 1000, with a built in C1570 Floppy drive. Commodore chose not to release the Desktop unit untill years later, and that unit caught on and the public love it. The C128 Desktop unit remains one of the most desirable Commodore computers to this day.
MY UNIT

I have the regular "Flat" or wedge unit.
The box came in not too squished, and the contents were in fair condition.

Since I bought mine, the prices have crashed on Ebay. I probably paid the last high price at $45 for this unit, as better units with Disk drives can be had for around $25-$30 now. My did not come with a Power supply, nor any books or disks. When I bought mine, A nicely boxed unit with Disks and books were going for between $60 and $80, now not even half.

The Auction said this unit also came with a Commodore mouse:
Unfortunately, the mouse is an Amiga mouse, which can not be used with a 128 (you can tell by the plug, for an Amiga mouse has a bigger, longer plug with a metal band around it.

The "bad" thing about the wedge systems, is that they were sold as cheap as possible. The wedge system only came with 16K of video memory, (as apposed to 64K on the desktop) so in order to do any full graphics, you need to get the Video upgrade (about $29, I have one coming).
One cool feature is that Bil designed this with an "open" rom slot, so you can add anything to they sys rem in ROM. I am getting a "double" rom with GEOS and Basic 8 available on a switch.

One last "fun fact" on the system is the keyboard layout. Bil and Dave "borrowed" the layout from the VAX keyboard, which they had used all for development of all CBM computers. Once the C128 was done, they used them with custom software to design other commodore computers and chips.
I have all the Power and disks coming for it.
Next Time:
A look inside.