The first public hint that Commodore was working on a new successor to the Commodore 64 was in a
1989 issue of Compute's Gazette. Here they talk a little about how Apple had come out with the
IIgs a few years earlier, and wondered if Commodore might have something similar.
"The latest rumor says Yes. We've heard reports from several sources of new machine
from Commodore - a 64GS if you will." And then they went on to talk a bit about
the rumored hardware capabilities. Apparently not everyone at Commodore
was onboard, with the engineers calling this the son of a Plus/4. Nevertheless, Nintendo
and other game consoles had eaten a big hole in Commodore's market and the 64 was not selling
anywhere near the volume it used to. The Amiga had never really taken hold of the market the way the
64 did during its heyday. And so I think they were looking for something low-cost to replace the C64.
Let's take a look at the Commodore timeline a bit to see where this slots in exactly.
Commodore had quite a few products here, and I'm not even showing all of the variations or
the PC clones. But I think it's important to also realize this timeline shows the time of
introduction. But keep in mind the C64 was still being sold. The first 4 years it was the breadbin,
and then the 64c continued to be sold until Commodore's ultimate demise in 1994.
So apparently this new project was being developed around 1990. And the thing is,
there's no doubt about it, it would have directly competed with the Amiga 500 most likely stealing
sales away from that. As well as the 600, which was probably already on the drawing board by
this time. Maybe even the CD-TV. As all of these were meant to be low cost computers for consumers.
So that's my guess as the most probable reason this product was never finished. Nevertheless,
I have a Commodore 65 prototype here and it's amazing how close
to production it appears to have been. Most collectors believe there are less
than 200 of these in existence, and probably even less than that which are
actually functional. Every now and then one of these will come up for sale on ebay, and
they usually sell for between $20,000 and $80,000. This particular machine comes from Bo Zimmerman's
collection. I picked it up from him last time I was driving through Austin. And,
I'll be returning it after finishing this video. I want to start off by talking a bit about the
exterior design language. Here it is compared to a 64c. You can see it definitely shares a
lot in common with this and perhaps even moreso with the 128. However, notice there are no ports
on the right side, most likely because the disk drive mechanism is in the way.
The keyboard sits slightly lower than the 64c, and the keys themselves are also lower profile, more
similar to what is on the 128, actually. On the left side, you'll find the typical joystick ports,
power switch, reset, and power input. I should also mention the badge here.
Apparently no C65 units had a badge. But Bo installed a custom badge on his which has the
typical Commodore design language. But there's no guarantee the badge would have looked like this.
And here's the rear with most of the ports, but we'll circle back to these in a moment.
First I want to talk a little more about the power port. Like the C64, it is a DIN style connector,
but it's not actually the same layout. It turns out it uses the same power brick as
the 1581 disk drive. So yeah, for the 1581 and 1541-II, Commodore used an external power
brick. And so that's what the C65 came with. Speaking of disk drives, I also have here
the companion disk drive, known as the 1565. The color is slightly less yellow,
which suggests Bo's C65 may have yellowed a bit over the years. This is a cute little disk drive.
There are a few things I'd like to point out. First of all, look at the power port. It's the
same power port as the computer. In fact, this is the power brick I got with the drive. Notice it
says it works with the 1541-II, 1571-II, and 1581. Except I've never heard of a 1571-II.
Sounds like Commodore was planing to make a 1571 drive with an external power brick at some point.
OK, now let's talk about these rear ports. Let's start by talking about this tiny little disk
drive port. So it's not the standard Commodore IEC port. In fact, here's the cable that was
supplied. It looks kind of like an off-the-shelf mini-DIN cable. However, it does have a cable
label on it, which says CBM 1521, and that it's 10 feet. So anyway, that just plugs in here. So
on the back of the drive, it's pretty obvious that they originally had a larger port here. Probably
a regular sized DIN. But I can't quite tell if this plastic was filled in after the fact,
or if this was just a quick and dirty change to the plastic mold, and thus manufacturered this
way. Anyway, our cable connects up here like so. Well. what if you wanted to use a standard
Commodore IEC drive, well it has a port for that way over here. Just like previous systems,
it is simply labeled as "serial." And so you can plug in your regular disk drives like so.
It's worth pointing out that the internal drive is always drive 8. And if you hvae the external
drive, then it is drive 9. And then if you have any IEC disk drives, those have to be configured
as drive 10 or above. We'll circle back around to this later, as we need to talk more about this.
But for the moment, back to our ports discussion. So, this little section here is audio/video.
You do get a standard Commodore DIN style video connector. This is the same kind used on the C64,
Plus/4, and VIC-20. And it just breaks out into the usual RCA style connectors. Oddly enough,
it still includes an RF modulator. I'm sort of surprised for a more high end
product like this. Next over is an RGB video port and standard stereo RCA jacks for audio.
But let's talk about that RGB port. This is sort of an oddball port. It looks very much
like the same kind of RGBI port you'd find on a Commodore 128, or on any IBM CGA compatible
computer. However, it's not wired the same. This is an analog RGB output,
and thus electrically it is more like what you'd find on the Amiga or an Apple IIgs. Exactly why
they chose this design, I really have no idea. So, at this point I thought it was time to
connect up a monitor so I could power this thing on. I figured I'd start with my Commodore 1084,
and just run with the standard seperated chroma/luma connection since I don't have
a proper RGB cable. Well, I powered it on and it does work, but it appeared in black and white. So,
my first thought was that this computer must not support the seperate chroma/luma
style video signal. I suspected I could fall back to composite video, if need be.
But, I also realized it might be pretty quick and easy to connect it to my RGB modded television. So
I made a little custom cable like so. I was able to hack this together in just a few minutes. Well,
unfortuntaely, it didn't quite work. I got a picture, and it was in color, but
it was still rolling. So I figured there must be something different in how the sync signals work.
Of course, I was totally wrong about all of this. It was actually something far more fundamentally
wrong. And I should have picked up on it sooner. But the way I figured it out was
when I started trying to record video, even the black and white video from the 1084 monitor. it
looked good in person, but my camera would not sync with the picture on the screen. And then
it hit me exactly what was wrong. The lack of color, the wrong frame-rate. This unit
was outputting PAL video and I'm trying to use NTSC monitors. So, as you can see,
once I adjusted my camera to 25 frames per second, it looks rock solid, albeit in black and white.
Fortunately the Commodore 1084 is very happy to display 25 frames per second, but my north
American version still won't decode a PAL color signal. My poor Samsung TV is not at all happy
with 25 frames per second, and just goes bonkers. So after doing a bit of research, one of the
things I found out is most if not all of the c65 prototypes that are out there in the wild
are all PAL units. Apparently Bo Zimmerman neglected to tell me this, but to be fair
he's been running this thing on an RGB monitor for years, so it probably just slipped his mind.
So, I realized the only way to get color and 25 frames per second was going to be to use
my 1084 in RGB mode. So I hacked together this little temporary solution into an Amiga video
cable. And sure enough, I powered it on and got color! And no surprise, the picture is very sharp,
much like you would expect from an Amiga running in RGB mode. And this is actually
80 column text you're looking at. Of course, I can't help the moire effect being produced by my
camera. So you'll just have to take my word for it, that the picture looks really nice!
Okay, so now that I have it up and running, one of the problems is there just not really
a lot of software to show. One problem is is that one c65 isn't necessarily even compatible
with another c65 because all the prototypes out there have like these different ROM versions and
so certain demos only even work on certain ROM versions. I did find this one demo that
did show off the 256 color Graphics capabilities, unfortunately it's a picture of a topless woman so
I've kind of censored it out here a little bit for you because it's not normally the kind of
thing that I would show on my channel. But, it is quite literally the only demo that I could get to
come up showing any kind of 256 color graphics. Well, I figured if there wasn't any software to
show, then I could make my own. Remember that little kaleidoscope demo I designed
on multiple different computers as a comparison of BASIC speed? Well,
I figured I could load in the Commodore 128 version of that on here. And it does load and
I can list the program. It won't run of course because the graphics commands have been changed.
It actually took me quite a while to figure out how the commands work, as you can see I have
it here almost working. But I eventually figured it out. And the thing is, I'm pretty disappointed.
It looks like it's running about twice as fast as the Commodore 128 version,
and I really was expecting it to be faster than that. After all, this computer is supposed to
run at 3.5 mhz. Even if I jumper the commander X16 down to 4mhz, which should be in the same
ballpark, it's a night and day difference. So, I'm going to chalk this up to most likely just
a slow implementation of BASIC on this computer. Of course, it isn't like there isn't ANY software
that runs on it. After all, it is supposed to be backwards compatible with the Commodore 64.
In fact, you can use the familiar Go64 command to put it into C64 mode. And there we go. I know
it doesn't look it on camera, but it's sort of unnatural seeing the C64 boot screen so
sharp and clear due to the RGB video interface. It's almost like I'm looking at an emulator.
of course, this brings us back to the problem I mentioned earlier. little to no C64 software
exists on 3 and half inch disks. And even if I connect an external drive,
most C64 software won't load from anything other than device 8. So this really limits what C64
software you'd be able to run, especially if this had been released in 1990 and they were expecting
people to use their off-the-shelf C64 software. Fortunately, I can make my own disks. And so I
copied the C64 version of Petscii Robots over to a 3 and a half inch floppy. And I know this will
work because there is no copy protection on this game. Another reason I wanted to start with this
game, besides to toot my own horn, is because if anything doesn't work or seems to be incompatible,
I will most likely be able to narrow down exactly what is wrong and maybe
even devise a workaround. So here goes. Ok, well, it sort of works. The music
sounds terrible. But after listening to it a bit, I think the filter caps on the SID chip may have
gone bad. So this may not be a compatibiltiy thing. So i started the game and disabled the
game music. Interestingly enough, all of the sound effects sounded totally normal. In fact,
everything from this point seemed perfectly normal for the game. So I'd say if it weren't
for the SID music, it would be a 100% success. So, I used my 1581 to copy over some more games.
By the way the internal drive reads the same format as the 1581, I guess I should
have mentioned that. Anyway, what I've copied over are a handful of cracked, single-file
games. These sort of files shouldn't pose any problem for the disk format or drive number.
By the way, I discovered I could press F1 in order to switch to 40 column mode. Anyway,
switching over to C64 mode, the first game I tried was Gianna Sisters. And behold,
it works. And I mean, it works pretty much perfectly. Even the sound was mostly clear.
The next game I tried was Panther. I did need to turn off the turbo load in the loader menu,
though. This game played almost correctly. There seemed to be some sort of glitch with
the bottom info panel. But I also realized there is a possibility this game is meant
for NTSC and maybe because I'm running on a PAL system, this could simply be a result of
that. I don't have an easy way to tell. So it may or may not be the C65's fault.
next, I tried Qbert. And it seemed to work perfectly. No complaints there. And then I
tried Ghosts and Goblins. This also seemed to work mostly. There is a slight glitch on the text area
at the bottom, much like Panther. So again, could be a PAL NTSC thing. And the last of these games,
I tried Spy Hunter. Again, kind of the same glitch at the split screen area.
But other than that, seemed to work fine. OK, so I wanted to try one more experiment.
A few years back, Magervalp created Ultima 4 Gold, which is cracked and fits the whole
game on a 1581 disk. So I gave it a try. Unfortunately, it does get stuck at this
screen here. So then I thought, let's plug in the real 1581 drive and configure it as device
10 and see if it works. And unfortunately, no, it doesn't. But it was worth a try.
So yeah, I think the c64 compatibility is not nearly as bad as what I thought it was
based on some stuff that I had read in the past. And, I think the majority of the problem is the
disk drive situation. Now, it is possible had the machine come out and been successful that
software companies would have course created special versions of their c64 games that would
have been on a 1581 or c65 compatible three and a half inch disks, but you know who knows.
So, the next thing we need to do is take this thing apart so we can have
a look at the inside and see what we might learn. Here's the serial number,
number 47. So if you ever see this up on ebay, chances are somebody robbed Bo's Commodore Museum.
I think it's really odd that a prototype unit would have a warranty seal on it in
the first place. But whatever. Anyway, it appears that is the only screw you
need to remove to take this apart. There are just two snaps over here you have to move.
And it just occurred to me, I should probably take out the RAM expander. It's a trap door system just
like the Amiga 500. There might be a screw or something under here, so better safe than
sorry. and it just slides right out, just like the Amiga. So this is an official C65 RAM expander. If
my math is right, I think this is adding in 1 MB of RAM. I should mention that on power up, it was
saying no expansion RAM was found, but Bo tells me this is due to an incompatible ROM version.
OK, let's take this top cover off. It appears the keyboard is connected with a ribbon cable.
So I'll need to carefully remove that. At least this one has an unlock so it is zero
insertion force. And now the RF shield will need to come off. I'm just going to lay it to the side
so I don't have to unplug that disk drive cable, which does not appear to have an unlock feature.
OK, and so here's the motherboard. It really doesn't resemble any motherboard from the 8-bit
era. But I guess this is technically a 16 bit computer, so that makes sense. here are those
two SID chips and I suspect one of the nearby caps may be bad, but there's nothing obvious.
One intersting thing I want to point out is that the board is called the C64 DX. I've
seen some other documentation referring to it as such. I guess they changed the
name to C65 at the last minute. Anyway, here's the onboard 128K
of RAM. This is the 4510 CPU, which is a 16-bit CPU that is backwards compatible
with the 6502 series and runs at 3.5 Mhz. This should be every bit as fast, if not faster,
than the 7 Mhz 68000 chip found in the Amiga due to the different way in which 6502 chips work.
And here's the 4567 video chip, otherwise known as the VIC-III. This chip,
while it works differently, is comparible in features to what is found in the Amiga.
And believe it or not, this chip here is a DMA controller and Blitter. Again,
adding more Amiga like capabilities. And here we have dual SID chips, which is a nice touch!
That would give 6 voices in stereo. Here's our 128K of ROM. And finally,
the floppy drive controller. I think this could have been a really
great system had it come out a few years earlier, maybe instead of the Amiga. But the problem is,
the the comparison that one engineer made to the plus4 is not necessarily wrong. Because, what you
have here is a computer that's almost as good as the Amiga, maybe even better in certain aspects,
and yet it's not compatible with the Amiga. Now, granted the price would have played a big role in
that. For example, if the machine had come out at like half the price of an Amiga 500, well then I
think it would have been a success. But, also the more I think about it the c64 compatibility aspect
of this machine is somewhat of a double-edged sword especially because it doesn't work 100%
correctly. And with the disk drive situation and all that, so I think what would have happened is
it would have probably led to a lot of really bad reviews in the Press. Because, they would have
gotten the machine, tried their c64 software and realized that they couldn't run it even
if the machine technically could and so that also raises the question of how well would the software
Market have supported the native C65 capabilities. Well, if the computer had been released a couple
of years earlier, then it would have probably seen similar support to the Apple IIgs. But,
I think by 1990 it was becoming obvious that the world of IBM clones was where all of the
software support was going. So maybe that had some effect on the decision to can this product.
So, what about the Mega65? I'm sure people are going to ask about it. Well,
I don't know a lot about the system. I had been promised several times over the years that they
would send me a unit to review, but I never got one. But from what I can tell, the Mega65 does
look a lot like the Commodore 65 prototype. And it is somewhat based on the C65 operating
system. But ultimately, the Mega65 is a lot more powerful. And one of the things Bo Zimmerman told
me is how disappointed he was that all of the Mega65 specific games that have come out won't
actually run on a real C65. So, unforunately, for the various owners of these rare machines,
about the only software they'll ever be able to run will probably be C64 stuff in C64 mode.
Well guys, that's it for this episode. As always, thanks for watching!