Tag Archives: ebay

Commodore 64 (1982)

Commodore 64

About a year ago I bought this Commodore 64 from eBay US. I got it cheap because the seller didn’t advertise the fact that it was a “silver label”, and there were 4 pictures of the (not so good-looking) box before seeing an actual photograph of the computer. So I was the only person who bid on the item! It’s a bit yellowed on the right side and a most of the hooks are missing on the back, but otherwise it is in good working condition. Continue reading

Commodore VICMODEM (1982)

Commodore VICMODEM

It’s quite impossible to collect all the peripherals that were produced for the Commodore computers, but a few of them are worth searching for because they mark a milestone in the history of home computing. The VICMODEM is one of those peripherals: it’s been the first modem to cost under 100$ and the first to sold over a million units, contributing to the diffusion of online services and BBSes outside laboratories, universities, big Companies and military agencies. Continue reading

Commodore Amiga 1000 (1985)

Commodore Amiga 1000

Today, July 23rd 2014, the Amiga turns 29: it was presented in 1985. That year my parents bought a Commodore 128, while my first Amiga, model 500, arrived in 1988. As always I won’t discuss the technical details of this revolutionary computer, but I will pay my tribute with a set of photographs. Continue reading

Commodore 4040 dual drive floppy disk (1980)

Commodore 4040 - Front

This is one of the floppy drive models marketed by Commodore for its business line of computers. Before turning it on I made a thorough cleaning, but when I tested it, it didn’t work properly. For example, the command to list the content of a floppy disk showed the wrong characters and after a few attempts nothing was displayed at all. I started to try all the socketed ICs on other drives to search for the fault, but they were all working; then I re-connected the drive to a PET and it functioned perfectly. Probably a few IC pins were oxidized. Continue reading

Commodore VIC 20 (1981)

Commodore VIC 20

Sometimes computers come unexpectedly from friends, relatives or unknown people that contact me on the site: a surprise and a discovery. Other times I actively dig the web – sites, classifieds, forums, auctions – to look for a particular piece I’d like to have. This VIC 20 belongs to the second category: I was searching for the very first model of this computer – also known as the “PET style keyboard” VIC 20 – and the most difficult task wasn’t finding it, but finding it at the right price.

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