Petteri Pyyny
1 Sep 2017 5:41
Most of the computer fans know - if not remember personally - the legendary Commodore 64 computer, best-selling single model computer of all times. However, very few people actually know that the c=64 also had a successor, Commodore 65 that never made it to the markets.
Commodore, noticing that during the era of 16-bit computers, their old cashcow, Commodore 64 was quickly losing its sales, set up a team to milk the last pennies out of the decade-old Commodore 64. They built a backwards compatible Commodore 65 that added features similar to Commodore's other computer line, Amiga.
C=65 had a built in 3.5" disk drive, high-resolution graphics and CPU at 3.54MHz (C=64 ran at 1MHz) with 128kB of memory (expandable to 1MB) - and most importantly, a C=64 mode, allowing the computer to run C=64's massive software and game selection.
Company managed to build appx. 50 - 200 prototype units, but nothing more. After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, its assets were liquidated and the prototypes were sold all across the world.
Now, there's one of those prototypes on sale at eBay. Currently the price is appx $3'300 (appx €3'000), but as there's 6 days left in auction, it is highly likely to reach much, much higher levels. In the past, Commodore 65 units have been sold within $15'000 - $20'000 range.
The unit on sale has one major nag: it is missing the VIC-III graphics chip, so the buyer needs to get the gfx chip from other sources in order to actually get the device working, too.
So, if you had your payday and somehow still don't own C=65 in your computer collection, this might be the right time to fix that.