AMAZING New OS for the 40-year-old Commodore 64! C64 OS Review 

The dev took the toothpaste tube, used it up, squeezed everything out of it then managed to get even more out! Absolutely astonishing work

This is an absolutely amazing piece of software. The fact that you can play music and move a window at the same time on this 40 years old computer is nuts. Really some people have talent :)

What a great thing to know that almost 40 years later, someone is still developing on these platforms ... THANKS for sharing !!!

For me, this is almost tear inducing. I grew up using the C64, and it is still one of the most "home" feelings I'll ever have. Some of the games are still among my favorites of all time, as is the physical technology itself. It reminds me of long ago, when things were less messy, my family was still around, and the world seemed bright and overall good. But then again, the 80s in general seem that way, even looking back now, for all of their faults. Thanks so much for reviewing this -- I know I'm just a random person on the internet, but I hope you can get some positive vibes at least from the thanks. :)

Actually seeing a printed manual after many years made me feel very nostalgic. I miss the old big boxes with manuals and sometimes extras like maps and stickers.

It's amazing how much of the limitations of early hardware came down to storage rather than the CPU.

Hats off to Gregory Nacu on this very impressive accomplishment! Excellent run-through and review in this video.

Can you imagine how things would have turned out if the C64 had this as its OS in the 80s? Such an amazing idea.

I just had to check this out, it caught my eye in the sidebar, 40 years ago my buddy had a C64 with no tape drive or floppy drive, we spent a half a day typing in a BASIC program, he or I tripped over the power cord and lost all our work and that was pretty much it for my interest in a C64! Cool and crazy that somebody is writing a new OS for it! I think Terry Davis is in heaven smiling down at this development!

This is as groundbreaking as GEOS was back in the day. Seemingly unlimited potential on a 40-year-old platform. I can't wait to see this evolve. There may be some lessons here for modern system programmers in using resources...

Actually OS9 for the Color Computer 3 is a full multi-user, multi-tasking OS that is still being developed and updated today, and the original version goes back to the original coco and that was before the c64 I believe...

a clea labour of love - having written my own text-based screen os back in the day (emulator for clipper in dos, back in the day using turbo pascal), you can see the time and effort taken to manage the wimp interface and make it fully functional for the running apps. Really impressive

This OS incorporates ideas and functions that we could only have dreamed of back in the eighties. Mind-blowing!

All I can say is wow.... The C64 was my first experience with computers and even being online with quantumlink. It's so awesome to see new software that is so advance for this system.

Absolutely magical. How on earth does someone code such a thing with so little resources and leave enough for apps to run on it?

40 Golden Years on and we are still Keeping up with the Commodore !

It's amazing that after all these years so many old systems are still very much alive.

I've been an occasional reader of Greg Naçu's blog pages talking about his design decisions and other challenges. This is an amazing achievement, right up there with Adam Dunkel's Contiki. There just isn't enough space on the VIC-II text screen to show very much. And with UI gadgets and other elements like borders and title bars all around, it's compromised even more. GEOS, for all its glacial (pre-global warming) speed, managed to use bitmap graphics to circumvent that limitation. Even just an 80×25 screen would make a world of difference. The simulated 80 columns of Contiki's second release also come to mind. I know-I _know..._ that using a bitmap screen is a big memory hog. A text screen takes 1000 bytes (not even 1K!) and a bitmap screen takes 8 times as much, and twice _that_ if you're using double-buffering. That isn't even getting into things like color maps and sprite pointers. Greg's managed to get 5 screens in there, switchable, and he's still only 62.5% of the memory footprint of just _one_ bitmap. So, obviously, he's made some deliberate choices. He's favoring speed and compactness over information density. Plus a bitmap screen has the problem of attribute clash, so a text screen is actually more practical for color. Not that a text screen doesn't have its own color limitations, but at least the color isn't going to be split up in ways that break across the middle of a UI element.

I ran the original GEOS graphical interface operating system on my C64 years ago. Interesting new operating system

I remember watching a few of his earlier update videos. Even early on what he was able to accomplish was absolutely mindblowing. I'm really happy to see it has reached the 1.0 milestone!

What a wonderful thing. I can see this opening up so many possibilities and enjoyment. The C64 never stops growing. 😊

The light blue area in the memory layout is the zeropage ($0000-$00ff), stack ($0100-$01FF) and most likely the used screen area (default goes from $0400-$07E8)

It needs to be on a cartridge of its own where you can plug the SD card into the cartridge. It will boot instantly running from RMOM. The cartridge can load data so much faster, and the cartridge can directly DMA into the 64.

Always cool seeing new stuff released for our old toys, cudos for the developper! J.R. must be gratefull playing with you🙂

Even the Atari 8-bits got new OSs and incredible upgrades. Stereo Pokey, 1MB Ultimate, Video Board XE, etcetcetc. It would be nice to see more people talk about them.

My first computer was the C64. When it came out. I progressed to Amigas and then Video Toaster scene. I am amazed at the development this magnificent programmer developed. Amazing.

imagine travelling back in time 40 years and showing to c64 users.

Appreciate you showing everything in realtime. That is kind of important in reviews of software like this to give potential users a good look at what to expect. Thumbs up!

Seeing this reminds me of what it would be like to replace an Idiot Phone with an original Palm Pilot. Yes, I have one that still works.

It boggles my mind how much some of these talented people are managing to strangle out of this old hardware, it's incredible.

It's a great achievement using some very limited technology. One thing I'd suggest adding. C128 support. 80 column support would be a huge improvement, especially since this is all text based. More memory, possible to add ROM support (ala GEOS 128) for fast loading the OS via ROM U36. You could even support... dual monitors!

I only ever owned the VIC-20 but seeing what can be done with the C64 today is pretty amazing.

The fact it’s already this fast with just the fastloader is just amazing

This is incredible!!! I would buy a brand new C64 packaged with this OS. I’m a novice user but I love the idea of a modern OS on old hardware.

It loaded the calculator faster than my core i7 windows 10 PC off a samsung SSD.

In 1986, I wrote a windowing system for the IBM PC (4.77 MHz 8088) with a floppy disk drive. In initial design decision was to use TEXT MODE so the amount of data would be reasonable. Windows were overlapping and could be dragged etc. Turned out to be very fast, even on the original hardware! It was easy for a program to use: creating a window gave it a pointer to a virtual screen of that dimension, and it could manipulate the character and attribute ram in that array as if it were the screen memory. The library would copy from those virtual screens to produce the overlapping windows in the real screen. Due to the limitations of the CGA and general speed, it minimized copying and intelligently picked out just the regions to copy, that showed (not covered by other windows). This proved to be a good engineering decision even on later hardware, as the CPU got faster the interface to the video RAM was stuck in the past and became dog slow in comparison. Because of this, some programs ported to use my library even in a trivial way (one big window) ran much faster! It could manipulate the virtual video memory array in its casual inefficient way, and upon triggering an update the library would minimally copy that to the real video RAM, copying each changed character only once. Note that it always used 16-bit writes to the video RAM, which (on then-current cards) used a protocol newer than the original 8-bit bus, so not only did it transfer twice as much but it used fewer cycles. So, the program updates _only characters_ , writing 8-bit values to non-concecutive addresses. My update copy copies 16-bit values, even though the adjacent 8 bits (the attribute, or color) was not changed. This alone made it faster than the original program was when it wrote directly to video RAM. I later updated it to C++ and wrote a fancy multi-windowed text editor that I used for many years. It wasn't until the mid '90's that I was given a machine at work that had a graphics card that was capable enough to make a GUI-based editor smooth (responsive and fast updating) enough. That was a 70MHz Pentium IIRC, but the big difference I believe was the switch to the PCI bus, and "minimum standard" cards that had some built-in line-drawing, box-drawing, and blitting. But I still have fond memories of doing things in CPU code only, one byte at a time.

Great review. I have never owned a C64, and probably never will, but it pleases me to see that someone has devoted an incredible amount of time and effort to produce a new OS for it.

40 years on and the bread bin has a new OS and this looks damn good with a good few things to do on it as well, love it. This was a great video as always and a nice surprise being a Tuesday so until the next one you guys take care and have a great week. Oh an puppyfractic the 2nd was so the star of the video ☺️☺️

Wow, I have a old c64 computer in a box. I am curious about relearning the platform and now with this it moves higher on my list of to do. Thanks, great video.

I don't intend this negatively but those glasses made me immediately think, Walter from The Big Lebowski. Really cool to see the new OS. Thanks!

Great stuff, for great once hw, now i never owned, but i always am mesmerized what ppl can do with old hw and new sw for that hw. Here in the videos is the proof of what im talking about. Its just amazing i think. Sure its slow, but if this was real time, i mean, its ok i think, sure its not fast as with linux or windows or mac, but doesnt matter. It can do all sorta things and if updated regularly it could become really great piece of sw in the future. Just blows my mind that after 40yrs still this can happen in retro circles, this great piece of sw. Needs updating, adding functions and retro enthusiast mostly will love this to bits. I just love watching this old stuff. My friend owned C64, played games only, probably my first introduction to gaming, boot from cassette, slow as hell, but yeah, still fun back in those days. So this is like wtf moment for me. Anyway i think it has potential not only as a show piece but a really useful piece of sw.

Well, a very interesting episode. I can see some potential there, and having the file manager for working with the SD card is handy. It does need a bit more work there to make things seamless and smooth, but fascinating to finally see it in action. I don't know if I would use it every day, but I can see me trying it.

I would actually use this os as the main use for my c64 it’s about time for an update had my same machine since 1984

Love the interpretation of some of the features we all are use to, in a simple and yet responsive interface. I used Geos over the 1541 ... to me is more like a gimic thing ... really slow. As magnificent as it is for such a machine like the 64, this os is more down to the Earth, give the 64 good speed in terms of today's usability "standards"

Awesome to see it in action! Greg has done a fantastic job! 👏

His next challenge is to do a Vic20 version. Just how much OS can you stuff into 3583 bytes? 3583 bytes. How do I remember that after so many years? Can't remember my mobile number, but can remember the Vic20 had 3583 bytes free.

The tie fighter looks like. Moving back and forth through the months of a calendar.

I love to see this - so many great memories! I'm glad that there is still a considerable following for the computers that shaped our early experiences.

GEOS was so slow, this is very snappy. Some ram expansion, this may just be the normal use. Love it.

I remember using my C64 back in the late 80s. What a fantastic time it was 🙂

So excited to see new stuff for the 64 and we were long overdue for a new OS. Great review, Christian!

Could you imagine mailing this to your self back in time? Oh wow.

Nice to see these kinds of developments, even after 40 years. I won't be using this operating system though, I don't need it. But this weekend I did order "Vision Basic" for my C64. Also a new development, a completely new Basic with a lot of potential.

Was wondering how you write apps. for the OS that can run in the desktop. You at least showed how you run a conventional app. from the desktop. That is nice. I used to wonder about that with GEOS. Seeing how 64OS operates reminds me of how the IIGS was set up. I remember it had an optional GUI you could boot up. It seemed like you could run full-screen apps. out of it. I don't know, since I only saw a friend use it. He used a command-line interface on it a lot.

in the 80s a friend of mine had a modified C64 with speeddos and exos. crazy machine. copied a disk in 17 seconds. don't know how much those mods costs in the mid 80s

I never had a C64. My machine for the last 40 years has been the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, but I found this fascinating and entertaining. Brilliant work by the author 👍🏻

How beautiful & how clever! I’m sat watching & I’m quite tearful! My first computer was a C64 all those decades ago - I’m sure it’s still in my parents loft somewhere - I must take a look!!

We are truly spoilt with modern machines, this doesn't seem all that until you consider what it is actually doing and what it's running on... It's a total marvel that it runs so well and it seems quite intuitive as well. Fair review too

@RetroRecipes Great review! @13:37 Look forward to the (future coming) deep dive into the C64OS wi-fi feature is explored-just sent Greg Nano a tweet about that.

Totally gobsmacked here. Can't believe doing all that on the C64. Can you imagine how this would have impacted the life of the platform if this had been possible then?

That looks great. Amazing considering the difference in time from the machine to the software 😘

Nice review!! Thanks for letting us know about this!!

Thats very impressive. I'm doffing my cap in Gregory's general direction

Great review of a very interesting product. It's amazing to see what's still being done for our beloved C64 40 years later. Plus, as someone who recently switched to Windows 10 and isn't all that in love with it yet, I'm hoping that one day we may see C64 OS developed for modern PC's. I'm all for Julia Roberts' knees being added to v2.0 myself.

Outstanding! Very, very interesting subject. As well as one of your most enjoyable episode ever. Thank you very much! Keep up the great work and engaging content! Wishing you and the whole crew, the best of everything!

Just got my copy shipped. Am so excited for this and thankyou so much for the video.

Dog looks like he's having commodore loading screen flashbacks

This is digital voodoo. I love it! 😊 Perhaps a future version might come bundled on a cart with an SD card slot built in (a la Ultimate). A C128 variant of this that utilises 80 columns would be pretty cool too.

Incredible! No other words to describe.

This video made me so nostalgic. U made me feel again as a kid on c64 i was. Thank you!

Very nice review. The 5 desktop feature is very nice for productivity, one for email / correspondence, one for music, one for gaming, etc. Truly impressive OS and probably the only such product we'll see for hardware that is 40 years old. Would have been nice if this OS could use the border area for time / date, notifications maybe?

It's amazing to see what given 40 years of computer experience what the C64 would have been capable of in the 1980's. OK well it would have had to have had a hard drive to really do this.

Very impressive! Thanks for showing and sharing 😄👍

I remember getting the Byte magazine I believe, and in it there was code to program your own games, and then after days of typing in 1's and 0's, you hoped to God that your tape saved the games correctly. Fun times.

This is so awesome. Now I know what I'll add to my birthday wishlist.... This and Eye of the Beholder which will be released in October for the C64...

Great review and interesting as usual Perifractic. I want to add to "somewhat of a first", the Voyager space probe got a software overhaul in 1990 and an update earlier this year. But for us mortals down here it's certainly a welcomed first! Perifractic's next episode: Kitesla gets sent to space after being moded with a C64 running this new software while you control it via an old 1200 baud modem connected to your iphone. Somehow I know you'll make it work! 😉😂

Love it. I wonder if they'll do an updated C128 version. I'd like to see how the extra C128 features could be used!

That is so cool! Great job on the overview video, really enjoyed it.

Wonderful bit of programming... Would love to see how it performs under the turbo mode of the REU!

I think the 1541 Ultimate II+ has one *severely* undermarketed feature: the Hyperspeed kernal. It should be both much faster than JiffyDOS and capable of storing large file sets like C64OS.

Genuinely super impressive bit of software, very cool!

When I got my _Final Cartridge III_ around 1988, I was looking forward to doing everything via mouse in the GUI like the big boys on their 16 bit machines. It only took me a few weeks to default back to the BASIC 2.0 interface (with added quick key support for all essential commands) because it was simply *_faster_* to use and overall, more convenient for me.

My first experience with a computer was @ 12 years old and on a C64 and games, programming, BBS systems all felt like magic. At 16 I moved onto x86 systems and networking, LANTASTIC, etc... which was magical again and Ive been in IT for 35+ years now. I watched this last night and to see the development that went into a 40 year old system and all the amazing stuff that the programmer made the C64 do once again just amazed me and I went to bed thinking... Wow, that was magical to see. Thanks for putting together this video and to the programmer(s) who put that kind of work into a system so many people love and enjoy 40 years later.

I think this is incredible and for some functions, yeah, I could use this as a daily driver system. If I can add network capability and being able to read and write to remote text files, simple email and I know already that I can do IRC for real time chat, I would love to do that. Thinking about it... if I could get telnet working reasonably well, I could log into my server and access various chat services in terminal. I would like to use this and see how far I can take it. :)

This is great, kudos to these developers!!!

As a bit of a purist geek and a show-off, there is a certain joy in knowing the archaic computer incantations that few others, these days, would know. Most of the time I don't engage in complicated or protracted operations with such simple devices. An updated OS seems like a bit of a cheat. I felt the same when Windows 1.0 and Control Panel interfaces came out. That all being said, I would use this sort of GUI for simplifying disk and file operations if I was in a hurry and had a lot to manage.

Sort of a "Big Lebowski" vibe going with those glasses.... love the OS and video. Thanks for giving us the demo!

It's very cool. The ultimate would be a Rasberry Pi inside a working c64 case (with a c64'ish graphical interface) that could send commands to the c64 So you could load a program from the Pi as if it was a Linux desktop program but instead it would reset the VIC, load the program and switch video signal to the c64 instead. Something like that atleast. The ultimate 2in1 solution.

This is incredible! I've been loosely following the C64 OS development for a while and I didn't think it would be as fully featured as it is shown to be here. I'll be buying this and hopefully we see more app development for it to increase productivity.

A very interesting video. It was nice to see the system in action, which I've heard about before. 🤩

WOW !!! I feel like I am a happy 5 years old again of 1980's with a Pacman on DOS PC

New C64 OS > Windows 11

C64 OS is incredible work. Great review.

Great Review! Thanks a lot for this 👍🤩

This has changed my life! I've had my C64 since 1985 and this is revolutionary. BTW, your transatlantic accent makes the video even more appealing.

Really nice product. Would be interesting to know how to program apps for this. Does it have any OS routines you can use from your own apps, is there some memory management/protection etc?

I think an REU and an accelerator would really change the disposition of this OS. :D

I bought it commodore in 2001. Even That time c64 was kind of relict and Specially now. games I played where on the tapes . Non forgettable experience, only for elite.

Great presentation! 👍Thanks for sharing this with us 🙂

Chris, please try it on the Ultimate64 with JiffyDOS kernal ROM and Turbo mode active at full 48MHz speed. with the same SD2IEC of course.