TechStuff Plays with the Commodore 64

from me as always senior writer Jonathan Strickland. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. But I don't feel like going into it if you want to know the truth, good because we didn't want Oh that was a quote. Yes, that that does not that was not mine. That was

a quote. Um, yeah, it's a quote. And here's a hard thing to believe. It's a quote from a book I have never read, and it is a classic. But I was never it was never part of my curriculum growing up, and so one of these days I'm gonna have to fix that. Anyway, So today we're going to talk about an interesting piece of technology that was very influential early on in the era of personal computers. That's

the truth. And UM, of course we've we've talked on its sibling later or earlier earlier, earlier in our podcast history, UM and Jonathan really wanted to get into a bit of the history of the company today. So well, we'll talk about the history of this particular machine, but uh sort of in a the greater context of the company itself. And it starts with a guy who was born in Europe, Yeah,

Polish immigrant named Jack Tramiel. Uh. He actually had a very very traumatic early experience because he was he was one of the uh Jews who were rounded up by Germany and put into a concentration camp. Um. Now, fortunately he survived that ordeal. Eventually moved to North America, originally New York City, became part of the U. S. Army, and actually began to learn how to repair typewriters. What typewriter He was loving that, Okay, kids, back in the day,

typewriters were these devices that would print directly to paper. UM. So yeah, it was he was a typewriter repairman and uh he started to he found an opportunity to create a company h in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And so he moved to Toronto, and in nineteen fifty four he founded a company called the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company. And Uh, just so you know, I've got some other interesting things that happened in nineteen fifty four, just to give context

to what else is going on in the world. I just thought this would be kind of cool. I I kind of want to do this from here on out to kind of give context to historical events happened. So in nineteen fifty four, that was also the year the first nuclear powered submarine was unveiled. That was the USS Nautilus. That the hydrogen bomb was tested at Bikini Atoll, which just makes me think of Beanie and Cecil because they

had the island no Bikini at all. And then, uh, there's a According to True Knowledge, which is an artificial intelligence program created by William Tunstulpedo. April eleventh, nineteen fifty four, was officially the most boring day in the twentieth century because nothing of any real consequence happened that day. Uh. Brown versus Board of Education happened in nineteen fifty four that ended segregation in public schools in the United States.

The first issue ever of Sports Illustrated Magazine published that year Laura the Flies published that year. Actually, now that I think about it, I should have used that as the quote for the beginning of this podcast. Uh. Texas Instruments announced the development of the first transistor radio in nineteen fifty four, and Texas Instruments is going to play a part in this discussion as well. And one of the most pivotal events in nineteen fifty four, the very

first gud Zella movie premieres. So Uh. In nineteen fifty five,

the company officially incorporates and becomes Commodore Business Machines, Incorporated. Uh. Sorry, you were going to say, no, I was going to add that the the Commodore history that I've pulled up UM suggests that part of the reason that that Jack Tremille decided to get into business manufacturing his own equipment was because, um, the the machines, the typewriters that were coming in from overseas were much more inexpensive, and uh, you know, his his repair business was sort of he

realized that he wasn't going to have much of a future in that, so he decided to get in on on his own thing. Yeah, which was a smart deal for him. It worked out, Yeah, it worked out. In nineteen sixty two, the company was listed in New York Stock Exchange as Commodore International Limited. Uh. And then in the nineties seventies, Commodore began the transition to get into

the business of manufacturing calculators, including scientific calculators. And they were I think, like we've talked about some people who have manufactured calculators. Yeah, yeah, well they met with early success. But then Texas Instruments got into the game. And of course their thing was creating affordable calculators for for consumers. Plus they had to compete with Hewlett Packard of course they were they were looking more at high end business machines.

So Texas Instruments starts to hone in on this calculator business, and that's when the by the mid seventies, mid to late seventies, that's when the the concept of the personal computer as we consider them today, that's when it's really started to take hold. And so Tramuel thought, this is

really where it's at. We should get into this because the calculator business is starting to get a little too crowded, and they hired an engineer by the name of Chuck Pedal, who actually joined a division of Commodore called MS Technology Incorporated. So this is a subsidiary essentially a Commodore and MS

Technology is the company that created well, they manufactured semiconductors. Yes, and he Pedal created a processor chip which was sort of similar to a chip that Motorola had made previously, but it was called the six five zero X series. So six zero two being one of the most famous

and six five one zero being another. And we'll talk about those in a little bit as famous as you know chips get yeah, yeah, or at least gotten those days, right, So these are processors that were very, very influential early on. So nineteen seventies six, Commodore International Limited relocates to west Chester, Pennsylvania, a place I'm actually really familiar with. I've been to Westchester many many times. In nineteen seventy seven, Commodore then

unveiled the Personal Electronic Transactor or PET, the Commodore PET. Yeah, the Commodore PET was one of the well, that was the first computer the Commodore created, and they unveiled it at in nineteen seventy seven at CS in Chicago. Yeah, if you listen, to our CES podcast. You remember we talked about how you know, they experiment with different cities, including Chicago for a while. Well, the PET was really popular in education in schools, but it wasn't a It

wasn't a success in the home market at all. Had a very industrial looks made out of metal, and it was pretty expensive, but it did feature the MS six five zero two processor. Now, in nineteen eighty, Commodore announced the VIC twenty and I remember the VIC twenty very well. Yeah, it actually went on saye in one and originally the sales price was two dollars, which was incredible. I mean, it was undercutting all the other personal computers that were on the market at the time. By the way, in

today's dollars, that's about seven hundred and eight bucks. So this was the first PC to sell over a million units. It was the first really popular home PC. Yeah. Now, the the VIC twenty was sort of unusual in another way to UM because you know, by today's standards, it wouldn't be as unusual UM, but at this point it's a machine that didn't have its own monitor, UM, and it really didn't have a monitor that you got with it. You were really most people I knew that had VIC

twenties just took him up to a TV UM. But that was part of its appeal was it was for people who wanted to mess around with computers. And at that point, if you had a home computer, you were somebody who wanted to mess around with computers. UM. This wasn't something that you did because you wanted to log into bulletin boards or because you you know, uh needed the Internet for school or something like that. You didn't why would you want a computer in your house? You know,

because I like computers. I want to learn more about computers. So you know, this is this is an affordable way for people to get on in on the ground floor and fool around with computers. UM. Now, it wasn't exactly a powerful machine. Five kilobytes of Braham, yeah, and only three and a half kilobytes were available once you booted it up. The other one and a half that that was dedicated to the startup process and running the the the back end of the machine, So you only had

three and a half kilobytes of RAM to work with. UM. And it was cartridge based, but it also you could also get a cassette tape drive that we could connect to it. Um. And one of the advantages of hooking it up to your television was that if you have a color TV, you have a color monitor, whereas if you look at the other computers on the market at that time, they were monochromatic monitors. So that was a

big advantage. Now, these these advantages still if you look at the power of the VIC twenty, that was that was the biggest criticism as direct at the VIC twenty was that it was underpowered. So, uh, Commodore had a response to that, which brings us to the real subject of this podcast. In nine two, Commodore introduced the Commodore sixty four and they introduced it at C E s YEP. Now this, uh, both of these machines have essentially the

same form factor. UM. And if you look at it now go back and if you've never seen one, and you go back and look at photos of this, it looks sort of like it's just the keyboard. Um. It was sort of an all in one, but it wasn't like we think of it today. And in terms of you know, some of the machines that that come out that are all in one where they have the monitor with the computer in it. This was the keyboard with

the computer in it. Um. And uh, yeah, those keys were very clicky, but I mean absolutely solid machines, solid to the point of if you if you were to drop one on your foot, you might need medical attention. Well, Commodore believed in making these machines tough. Um. But yeah, I mean it's it's not exactly a glamour queen of a machine, but you know, but how do it work? And very versatile. Uh. It originally cost five hundred dollars, which in today's dollars one three d twenty six bucks.

And still at five that's still very affordable compared to the other personal computers, especially the Apple. To the two main competitors against Commodore at this time, we're really a tari An Apple Texas Instruments to a slightly lesser degree and Tandy to a much lesser degree. Um. But yeah, the five price point was very attractive. And the reason why it's called the sixty four is that had sixty four kilobytes of RAM. Commodore was always looking for those

fancy names. Yeah. Uh. The The design team included Robert Russell, Bob Jannis, and David ZIMBECKI. Um, they were the ones who kind of were the brains behind the original development, although there were other people who were also very heavily involved in creating this this computer. And I have the first paragraph of the user manual if you would like to hear it. Absolutely, let's go with that. Your new Commodore sixty four is the best home computer available today.

You can use your Commodore sixty four for everything from business applications to household paperwork to exciting games. The sixty four offers you lots of memory six yes, lots of color sixteen different colors, lots of sound, music and zund effects, and lots of fun and practical uses. You can use prepackaged software or you can write your own programs and easy to learn Basic. Well, their version of easy to learned Basic apparently wasn't easy to learn for everyone, because

I've seen some criticism leveled at it. However, UM, what what's funny is that this machine was It's not funny that this machine took off. UM. People had many many people owned a VIC twenty, a Commodore sixty four or both. UM and the power of this machine was not in its processing power or its speed, but it was in its ability to reach people with the idea of having a computer at home. And it did have some other

features that made it very attractive. Um, it had eight bit graphics, which put it on par with the the home video game systems that were coming out, so there was a an appeal to video game enthusiasts, and there were a lot of games that came out for the Common War sixty four that were that ended up being incredibly popular. Uh. And then there was the fact that it also allowed you to program in languages like Pascal, Logo, fourth and Fortran. One of the big things about the

Comparse sixty four. One of the things that was most attractive to a lot of users was the fact that it had a sound interface device sound chip or SID chip. Yes. Now, the SID chip was developed by Bob Yannis, who he mentioned earlier, and he actually would later on go on to found a synthesizer company, so he knew a thing

or two. He actually knew a lot about about sound design music, and he wanted to be able to create a device that could represent some a pretty broad array of sounds, and the Converse sixty four had a much more sophisticated sound system than almost any other device on the market at that time. So you still have people who are very much fans of the old Common War sixty four when it comes to creating music today. And

you can still find lots of sixty four out there. Um. There's a site that's dedicated to the C sixty four uh C sixty four dot com, which is pretty interesting if you like to play around with that. But UM, one of the I remember back when I was a kid and people had the Vick twenties and sixty four.

A lot of the magazines out there, UM, you know, the computing magazines liked to offer a program um in the back of the magazine, so you'd read about you know, it was sort of like the PC worlds of the day, but it was you know, magazines like Compute um had uh you read about peripherals and and cool things you could do with your computer, and then the back of the the thing it would tell you about how to program, and it would have a program in there that you

could enter in yourself. UM. And I think that was that was sort of a beautiful thing. A friend of mine and I uh sort of dabbled in that. Uh, you know, working on trying to to come up with uh or try to play some of the games that they had written in there. And it was really kind of cool because it gave you this perception that programming

something yourself it wasn't really all that hard. Um. You know, it's it's sort of daunting in a way to to pop in um DVD now or you know, download something from the internet and you play these games with these amazing graphics today and and sound you know, uh, surround sound and and uh you know, millions of colors, but you know, you have to get down to the hood, you to actually look at the code that that seems kind of and and you know, for some people it

can be really daunting, I think for most people, because I didn't want to make it sound like you know everyone that way. But back and back when the Cover sixty four launched, it was completely feasible for a single person to create a game from start to finish. Everything from the graphics to the sound, to the gameplay itself, the story, whatever you want to call it, all of that was completely feasible for one or maybe maybe a mall team of people like two or three to put

it all together. And of course today to create games that compete at at the standard level. It's entire divisions of companies that build games. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't still people out there who take it upon themselves to create a game all by themselves. And there's some really popular and compelling games out there. They're made by a single person. But that's the exception, not the rule,

as opposed to the other way around. Back in the Commodore sixty four premiered, and it was sort of a basic platform. That's kind of a pun but unintended, but it was. It was a platform for people to learn the foundations for computer programming, and so it was a very popular device, especially I mean, if you talk to people who are a well established computer scientists today, a lot of them have fond memories of the Commodore sixty four because that was the machine that got them into

computer science. And I had read too that one of the benefits, one of the detriments of the sixty four led to one of the uh real strengths of the sixty four, which was, um, it really didn't have a lot of uh didn't have a lot of memory. You didn't have a lot of room to play with code. So the people who learned a program learned to do that very efficiently because they didn't have a lot of room for error um, and a lot of room for

extraneous stuff in their code. Now. UM, I don't know if you knew this or not, but they they may. For a while, Commodore actually considered the possibility of doing something else before they released the sixty four. In fact, they heard an overture from some people at a budding brand new computer company. Um, but they turned him down. A couple of guys named Steve who had approached who had approached Commodore with the idea of, hey, wouldn't you

like to buy this computer design we have in mind? Um. And as it turns out, Commodore passed on the idea for the Apple too. Um what what is now? Apple could have been Commodore in a way. But in in doing so, we actually ended up with two great machines because we ended up with the sixty four and the Apple two, which ended up being competitors. Um. But it's kind of funny. I I had no idea. Now I knew about the ties with them with Atari, of course, um,

since they were at engineers. But yeah, and that's gonna get even more complicated in a minute to Uh. Yeah, the the and the sixty four used cartridges just like the VIC twenty did. Also could use cassettes, but it also had an optional floppy drive five and a quarter inch floppy drive five and a quarter inch discs still have some and yeah, I think I do too, but they're all for the Apple to ye two. But they

but the floppy disk. I think the drive cost a thousand dollars, so it was actually more expensive than the compute or itself. Uh. And it was an add on that you could get and plug into your Commodore sixty four to give it additional functionality. Yeah, and the cartridges could allow you to get better performance out of your Commodore sixty four. It wasn't just like a video game console where a cartridge game is on the cartridge itself.

In fact, the the addition of the floppy drive was kind of interesting because that introduced a new concept in computers, which was piracy, because you know, with cartridges, you had them hard coded on you know, the programs were hard coded on the cartridge itself. Yeah, you had a rom on this chip. There's no way that you could really manufacture one of your own. You could, but you'd have to know how to burn the chips, and it's it's not something that people have the hardware for. Yeah, you

couldn't really do it at home. Whereas whereas with disks, it was it suddenly became feasible to be able to copy programs from one disk to another, and that's when you started seeing things like copy protection being added on into disks, and then you started seeing things like people

figuring out how to get around copy protection. Well, that all kind of started with the Commodore sixty four, also in nineteen eight six, so a few years after it had debuted, you started to see a new operating system appear on Commodore sixty four called GEOS, which is Graphic Environment Operating System, so it was a graphic user interface.

Now keep in mind that the the mac OS, which was the first operating system to popular popularize the g U I in n four, it had been out for a couple of years, so it wasn't like Commodore sixty four was breaking new ground. They were kind of going the same direction that that Apple was going in at that time. And of course, before anyone writes in yes, We're aware Xerox Park had developed the the g U I years before. That's why he said popularize and home computers.

Those are two important parts of that discussion. Yeah, when you were using an Apple two or a Commodore sixty four VIC twenty UM, the Atari four eight hundred UM, the early IBM PCs, you know, we're we're talking a text based operating system primarily UM to get started with, and then you know things things changed in the mid eighties. But uh yeah, yeah, so we're not talking keyboard and mouse,

we're talking keyboard and keyboard keyboard. Yeah, the and and common Wood chose a pretty interesting way to market the sixty four. Not only was it a cheaper computer than all of its competitors, they decided to try and get

the sixty four into retail stores, not just electronics stores. Yes, so you can actually find a Commodore sixty four at like a toy store, yeah, or a major retailer, And so they were you know, the idea was try and get this device in front of as many average consumers as possible as opposed to throwing them in an elector ronic store where you really had more of a hobbyist kind of mentality, right, I mean, you don't. The average consumer just wasn't necessarily walking into an electronics store on

a fairly regular basis. So that helped really push the popularity of the common Wore sixty four. And in fact, according to almost every source I could find, Uh, there was a point in some part of the discussion of the Commover sixty four about it being the most popular

personal computer model ever. Yeah, that's kind of hard to quantify realistically, right, but but when you but if you do limit it to saying one computer model, then it makes it a little easier because then you're like, oh, all right, so you know, even though even though Max might be or or Windows based PCs are really incredibly popular, if you narrow it down to a single model, then then the game changes because there's so many different models

out there. But according to the Center for Computing History, between Commodore sold around seventeen million units. That's quite a few. That's a lot of a lot of computers, especially in an age when computers weren't on everybody's list of things to buy, right, and Commodore also took the approach of developing the components for its computers itself, which helped keep the price down. In fact, that's one of the reasons why the devices were priced where they were because they

had this we call it vertical integration. They had their own We've mentioned the semiconductor manufacturing plant. Well, that was the thing about Commodore was that it was developing these pieces itself, so it could keep the cost of manufacturing down, as opposed to purchasing chip sets from other companies, which would end up increasing the price of the units. Yeah.

For example, um, you talk about today's computers, somebody like ACER or HP or Apple, they buy processors from Intel or maybe a m D in some cases, but Commodore was building there's themselves, right, So I think I think the price for producing a Commodore sixty four was around a hundred thirty five dollars and then they were selling them, so it was a good profit margin for Commodore sixty four once they once they started to really get popular

in the market and the It's interesting what happened shortly after the premiere of the Commodore sixty four, because there was a lot of upheaval in the Commodore company itself. In nineteen three, practically the entire team that developed the Commodore sixty four, left Commodore and they started a new company called Peripheral Visions, and then that was renamed into in Sonic, which later on in the nineties was purchased by Creative Labs, which makes sound cards, and they're very

popular sound card manufacturers, and so they're still around. Yes, yes, and uh, you know, Bob Yannis was one of those people. Um, David's Zembecki was one of them. So yeah, there was a whole bunch of people who were instrumental in the development of the Commodore sixty four who by night three had decided they wanted to try and do their own thing. And in nineteen eighty four, the founder of the company, Tramiel,

he quits Commodore. So this is thirty years after he's founded this company originally, he quits and he founds a company called Trammel Technology. Um that same year, the Commodore company purchases another company called the Amiga Corporation. So the Mega Corporation was a startup company that was existing primarily unventure capital and was running out of cash. So Amiga

Corporation was in some serious trouble. When Commodore comes around, and says, all right, we're gonna purchase this company and incorporate their technology into our business. Meanwhile, Trammel Technology purchases another company called Atari. Now technically they only purchased one part of Atari, because at this point Atari was in serious trouble. Keep in mind, this is so this is after the video game Crash, which which decimated Atari. Actually

shouldn't use the word decimated. That has the whole one tenth thing. It really undermined ataries and so Travel Technology purchased Atari's consumer division. So now you've got Trammel Technology, headed by Jack Tramiel, who is the founder of Commodore, competing directly against Commodore, which is now purchased Amiga. By the way, the whole Amiga and Atari stories do not

have happy endings. Um. And we've talked about the fact that Atari's story in particular did not have a happy ending because that company was broken up into so many different pieces, all of which kind of met with If they met with success, it was very limited success. Now they they both were sort of in a position to do some pretty good things. I mean, the sixty four left, uh, Commodore was in a pretty good spot in the marketplace. Um. Yeah, they even talked to this this guy named Bill about

incorporating his version of Basic on their machines. Yeah, Gates, I feel like whatever happened to that guy? Well, he started marketing a kind of shoe called the Conquistador that they run pretty tight. Right, So, how many people out there remember those ads the Bill Gates Jerry Seinfeld ads raising my hand, Yeah, listeners, if you were not familiar

with them, you should go check them out. They were only on television for like a month and a half, and they were the strangest ads, and they weren't really advertising anything in particular. It was it was very Seinfeld ask It was the advertisement about nothing other than conquistadors,

and they run pretty tight. Yep. But but yeah, Commodore was in a in a good spot, and uh this the purchase of Amiga looked like it was going to be a good deal because UM Amiga was next generation technology and four thousand, ninety six colors um you know that a processor that could run it, you know, like hurts Omega hurts. I mean the introduced and they introduced the Amiga computer in nineteen eight five, so just the year after they had purchased the company. The first Amiga

computer hits store shelves. Yeah, the uh the mac what is now the Mac Classic, The original Macintosh hit hit store shelves in four actually, um and uh Atari and Commodore right on their heels. Commodore with the the Amiga and the ATR ST series, which was also running those Motorola processors. Now, again this is a departure because the the Amiga used the Motorola processor is its main processor,

so this is not an MS chip. And um, you know this is this is where people who are still Amiga fans these day, Um, you go, how did Commodore managed to mess this up? Well, we've talked about that in a podcast from long ago too. But this was sort of the beginning of the end for for Commodore because right off the success of the sixty four UM they introduced the Amiga series and they sort of went along for a while, but they also introduced the Commodore one.

Ah yes, they won twenty was a little larger than sixty four UM at least in and and it was probably uh, I guess probably a lot of people would consider it more attractive and had you know, it had a slightly more streamline design. Um and it used an MS chip, so it was that's going back to commodore z own chip set. Uh So, but the just didn't didn't really, it's moderately successful. Moderately successful. Yeah, it's no

one really remembers that. Compared to the sixty four. When you say Commodore, most people think, oh, Commodore sixty four. They don't think Commodore or the Amiga. Frankly, yeah, well yeah, Amiga fans love it sure like you. Um. But yeah. So the at that point they started meeting with more limited success and they started running into other issues and uh. Over the course of the next few years, what really

happened was IBM computers IBM either IBM clones. Eventually what we just called Windows based PCs started to really take over, and Commodore just could not compete because at this point you had instead of instead of having a single company you're competing against or like a major competitor, So Commodore and Apple, or even Commodore Apple and Atari, now you had dozens of competitors because the these the approach that everyone made with the IBM based PCs was that it

could be any manufacturer using those processors, and so you had all these different companies spring up that We're developing various kinds of computers, many of which were at a similar price level to Commdoors, and some of them had richer feature sets. So now you had Commodore competing against uh, well, like I said, dozens of companies, and it ultimately just could not keep up. And in fact, in nineteen Commodore declared bankruptcy. We went to Chapter eleven and filed for

bankruptcy protection. A company called s Com bought Commodore in n but that did not go so well. Yeah, and s Com had to declare bankruptcy in nineteen and was actually liquidated. Nine seven, a Dutch company called Tulip Computers in v bought the Commodore brand name, and since then the Commodore brand name has continued in limited use. Yeah. The the Amiga properties intellectual properties also, they got divested in the course of these feelings, and so UM Amiga

became a separate brand. UM. Actually Gateway purchased Amiga UM and it's sort of bounced around UM. Both of them, the brand names bounced around UM. The recent acquisition of both has reunited the Commodore and Amiga brand names. The machines they're making now are are basically windows machines, harkened back to the old form factors. Yeah, they they have one that that actually looks very much like the sixty four.

It's got a chassis that looks like the sixty four, but when you get down into the guts of it, it's not a sixty four. No, no, not not technically. But um, but it's kind of funny to see it happen. Um, but it's it's amazing they're looking back at it. How many programmers can say they got their start fiddling around

with the sixty four, that that their parents got them. Um. And some credit the success of the video game industry to the Commodore sixty four simply because so many programmers were born from the sixty four's ease of use as a as a programming machine and or or at least

it's availability at a reasonable price. Um, you know, and and it really sort of spawned the interest in programming and programming games specifically, um, you know, for so many people, and uh, you know, it's it's it's an amazing success story and sort of a not really a one hit wonder, but kind of almost because it was such a star for Commodore amid a very troubled future at that point for the company, So pretty amazing. Yeah, it was definitely

an interesting story. Uh. And and again, like I think back when Commodore sixty four was at the height of its pop pularity, it would have been really difficult to imagine Commodore ending up the way it did, right, Like, you just wouldn't imagine that company going away. But it's a good reminder to all of us that companies that seem to be really successful and unstoppable, that's not necessarily

always going to be the case. So it's a I think anyone getting into the computer industry or those who are already in it should keep these kind of stories in mind to try and avoid the pitfalls that other companies have stumbled into. So even companies like Apple, where you look at Apple and you think, wow, they've really got it together. They've got a great aesthetic, they've really

identified their market. They dominate in the market that they've identified. Um, you've got to keep in mind the stories from companies like Commodore to make sure that you know, you don't just take that for granted. And then next thing, you know, two or three years down the road, things start looking

pretty grim or or vice versa in Apple's case. UM, but well, even IBM has gotten out of making personal computers, even though they know Commodore sixty four helped popularize the idea of home computing, but IBM's decision to allow clones UM basically forced it out of the home computer business. They got rid of their their home computer line and let Lenovo take that UM and now they focus on business computing. But it's it's amazing how these things change.

And they would never have thought that the controversy in when it looked like HP was going to get on personal computers and then they reverse their decision. And then yeah, if you listen Cutthroat Business, Yeah, if you listen to our our multi part episode about HP, you know all about that. But yeah, that's one of those things you just cannot take it for granted. But I think that's a good discussion about the Commodore sixty four, a beloved

dinosaur in the personal computer history. And if you guys have never had a chance to to play with one, UM, I do recommend you you look it up. You know, look at some photos of it and get an idea of what we used to think of as a really sophisticated machine back in the day, because folks like Chris and myself were that's that's kind of what we we identified as a personal computer back when we were kids. Um, so take a look at that and then just um

go and hug your computer. All right. Well, that wraps up this discussion. So if you guys want to get in touch with us, you can drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. Our handle there is tech Stuff h s W. Or you can write an email at our brand new email address, tech Stuff at Discovery dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house Stuff Works I find Out has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you