I brought my Commodore 16 with me from my parents house in Toronto two years ago. The automated carry-on baggage scanner flagged my bag and the security officer didn't know what he was looking at on the screen. He saw a bunch of cassettes and a keyboard, and asked if I had some kind of musical instrument in the bag. He went through the bomb-material swabbing routine but was genuinely interested in the computer too!
Space Chase! Thanks for having my game in the video, Robin! I know it‘s… weird… to play but I just had to explore the system and do a game for the system after I was given a B500 (yes, one of the very early units) for free in 2016. BTW Michal Pleban has re-engineered the 8088 card and is close to finishing it!
This is Michal showing his 8088 card. He‘s an amazingly capable guy. He has also developed a VGA card that is fully compatible with the system. Even Space Chase runs on it! 8088 card in action: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-u4O8dIvz3WI.html VGA card in action: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dMFniMYHjXE.html
The bell signaling the proximity of 80th column and the 00 key in the numeric pad are a true legacy from the mechanical era machines (typewriter and calculator with paper rolls)
I think it make sense anyway: Jack Tramiel in his first years in USA worked with mechanichal typewriters (selling, repairing etc.). Maybe it was his idea to make this new electronic device, computer, similar (in some aspects) to machinery that he knew. All in all VIC, C64 and others in external view resemble a futuristic plastic-made typewriter :)
@@nickryan3417 Thank goodness for that. But yeah, it was probably a feature both to signal the ease of transition to a new user as well as highlight that this was a Serious Business Machine.
Non-repeat 00 button is a MUST for cash-registry or bank type operations which employ non-caring idiots! So many fewer errors from 00 buttons than having 0 or 000 where 00 is needed. Today we still use both 0 and 00 buttons on the numpad keyboards in our warehouse forklifts at my current job, and they are a blessing!
That's what these days would be lambasted for being "skeuomorphic" (pseudointellectual psychobabble for "humanly familiar attributes which we must eradicate all memory of as soon as possible").
@@maxxdahl6062 A couple years before I bought mine, I saw a guy hawking them at Las Vegas COMDEX. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMDEX His kiosk wasn't exactly swamped by curious crowds, and that was likely a bad sign for the machine.
I never even realised this existed. The jump from 1 to 2 Mhz is quite a significant one. So many games on the C64 (well, the Ultimate64 really) run so much smoother at 2 Mhz.
I wonder if the C64's production cost would have been increased at all with a 2MHz 6510 instead of the historical 1MHz. It already dealt with VIC cycle stealing, so would there have been any significant difference? I mean, I was thinking the VIC20 tape load/save code would need to be modified, but they must have had the 2MHz version of the code just lying around for the B128-80. With a 2MHz CPU, the C64 could have gotten a little more processing done during horizontal blank and significantly more processing done during vertical blank... basically like the Atari 8-bits but with a fractionally faster CPU.
Well, back in the day, I had a C64. But when the power supply died, I came close to buying a replacement power supply. Though, interesting from the same company where I could have gotten the replacement, had advertised the B128. I guess, at the time, I wasn't too much impress in such a system for the money being charged. Though, eventually wound up getting a C128 instead, a year later. Yes, the C128 normally ran at 1 Mhz, yet had the ability to toggle to 2 Mhz, but the 40 column mode would blank out with the increase speed. Yeah, looking back B128 was a nice system but the C128 had backward compatibility with C64.
@@IsaacKuo If the VIC-II could have been used at 2 MHz, they surely would have run the P128 at 2 MHz instead of 1 MHz. (The P128 was basically a B128 with a VIC-II instead of a 6845 and a couple of joystick ports added.)
That's amazing! I've been exploring Commodore universe since I was a teenager (and I'm not a teenager since early 1990's) and I've never heard anything about this machine. Fascinating! Thanks for this fantastic film!
Fantastic video -- I love the B128 getting some love! More comments for you: 1. You need 256k roms to get the computer to recognize the extra 128k. 2. That boot delay is *definitely* a memory check. If you think it takes a long time now, just wait until you update it to the 256k roms. 3. More killer games: I did get Attack of the PETSCII Robots running under the PET emulator for the CBM2. :)
I've found it surprisingly easy to convince Commodore to send me engineering info and internal notes in the first half of the 80s (as a 14 year old, wanting to know details about how the IEEE-488 cartridge (for the c64) hardware worked, it took one phone call to get a big envelope with schematics, code for, and notes on the firmware and registers), not so much later on during the 'Amiga years'. (sadly the documentation got lost, together with the cartridge)
Beautiful condition! Beautiful case design! "The case design was rumoured to have been designed by Porsche. While true that Commodore went to Porsche initially and a case was designed, it would have been prohibitively expensive to produce. Instead, armed with the original PET design they turned to a Boston design firm. Ira Velinski was the man that ended up designing the case, which later won an international award. The case designs were one of the few computer cases Commodore ever patented."
Impressed with the build quality. I can remember when "Protecto Enterprises" was liquidating these machines in the U.S. I was tempted to get one, but I went for the SX-64 with an SFD-1001 external floppy instead.
I remember being a 5 year old kid and seeing one of these advertised in a Canadian Tire catalogue right next to a breadbin Commodore 64. This computer intrigued me. I've yet to see one in person. Commodore sure made a lot of nice computers.
It is very nice you made a movie about an unknown Commodore computer. The fact that it is unknowns is not that strange, the computer has some short commings. You perfectly showed what was wrong, very interesting though.
In the 80s, Commodore keyboards were floating around for little money among the local C64 users, it may well have been this one. I got one and used some key caps to highlight some of the keys on my C64, where they still sit today making it special.
I know for a while there were a lot of Commodore 16 keyboards in surplus. Radio Shack even started selling them! That'd be really cool if you got a B128 keyboard; I think it's a really nice design.
I have the CTRL-, CBM-, SPACE- CLR/HOME-, and INS/DEL-keys on my C64, and they look exactly like those of the B128 in your video. Sadly I can't find the rest of the keyboard anymore; but I am quite sure it also had a number pad and four cursor keys. It never occurred to me that it says "INS" and not "INST" in all these decades until I watched your video. ;-)
Awesome vid, saw a lot of computer magazine ads back in the day when they were on fire sale, always wondered what they were like... Now I want one of course!
I was always curious about these machines; would always see black-and-white halftone adverts for it in Compute's Gazette and other Commodore-friendly publications. Thank you so much for this video!
This is a great video! Your friend is wrong about "RUN STOP" being one word though. They're two different functions. Remember, STOP interrupts a program, but when you press SHIFT + RUN STOP on a VIC or C64, it says "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE", then after loading the program from tape it RUNS the program automatically.
He seems to be open to providing source for people seriously interested in porting the game. That is how the Apple II version came to be. Could be a pretty cool project for someone familiar with this machine, considering that this is kind of a souped up PET with the extra memory and SID chip.
Hi Montie! It's not necessary. It will run under the PET Emulator for the CBM-II machines, though you need Steve Grey's version with the easy 40 column config. It's more troublesome in the high-profile models, but works on them also.
Whoa, this is like a Commodore from another dimension. I've never seen any of the rounded Pet successors. They're pretty stylish and weirdly retro, even for their time.
Thanks so much for this video, Robin. This is one of those mysterious Commodores very few of us have had a chance to experience. Have to keep my eyes out, although I'm sure they are very hard to find. I'll check out the user's group to see what other software is available and may play with it in emulation.
I knew little about Commodore's PET/CBM series other than they preceded the VIC-20 and 64 and saw liquidation ads for the B128. Then after Commodore went out of business I learned more about its history and all the models its produced. I have to say I like the curved design of the B128 and wish a modder could make a 128D case in the style of the B128.
O wow, I might need to turn in my 8-bit geek card, since I've never heard of that beautiful thing before. Thanks for the review! Also, Max Hall (the Space Chase composer) is the guy with the amazing 6581 chip tattoo.
I've been using Commodore stuff my entire life and there are still computers I will probably never touch. TRAP will make life so much easier for C64 BASIC programming.
5:30 Protecto, eh? This ad is where I bought my B-128 system. And, I do mean that's the exact ad. Good grief, $895 was a good chunk of change for someone with my income in 1984! I couldn't pass it up though, and I did get my money's worth out of it. The only component of the system that still works is the computer itself... hypothetically. It was working when I last had it set up, before I bought my first Amiga in the early 1990s. The dual floppy drive was a heafty, two-arm beast. I even joined up with C-BUG. Wow, this video is really nostalgic for me!
Great to hear from someone who bought one of these! C-BUG certainly seemed like a force, driven by some very determined people. I was certainly curious when I saw those Protecto ads back in 1984 or whatever, but was happy enough as an 11 or 12 year old I had managed to get the $200 together to buy a C64, and made due with my black & white TV and datasette.
@@8_Bit Well, I've got a few years on you, haven't kicked the bucket yet and turn 68 in a month. I was married when I got my first C64, and she held onto the purse strings pretty tightly. So, I didn't have anything but a portable B&W TV for a monitor until years later...same story with regard to disk drives. Sounds like we had the same C64 setup in the early 80s in spite of our age difference. My wife attempted to murder the C64 when she found it with case open and CUT the ribbon cable! Believe it or not, I (somehow) managed to solder the cable and get it working again. That pissed her off so much she slammed it into a brick wall, which finished it off. In the same fit of rage she took a hammer to my Timex-Sinclair 1000. Nice lady. P.S. I now have a mint in box TS1000, and recently acquired a The C64 Maxi. :-)
Now HERE is a machine I never expected to see live, as it were. And to find there was even a pretty decent Sinistar-esque made for it as well! Excellent video, thank you for covering it!
I had a "Profitext" Cartridge for my CBM 610. The 7xx are the ones including the Monitor and Disc drives, the 6xx are the ones as you show in the Video.
Thing I learned today watching this video: the "CE" button on calculators means "clear entry". I've always seen the "CE" and "C" buttons, but never could remember which one cleared the last number and which cleared the total. Now I know! LOL
Another nice thing about that numeric pad layout is the inclusion of a question mark key on it. This makes a lot of sense for a computer running BASIC, as you can use it to enter PRINT statements that print out the results of numeric calculations using only the numeric pad. I've never seen any other computer that included this, though.
You do have 256k of ram in your machine. There's a separate basic ROM for the CBM 256-80 that will use these extra banks of ram for the array and string split as you suggested.
Well Apple of the modern era lol! I've felt Apple has slowly been going downhill in many ways after the Apple II GS, and ever since Steve Woz left the company.
0:25 It has a halfway serious keyboard, with Escape and Tab keys, though has the π key and graphics characters. Were business computers still using the VT-100 cursor-key layout at that time? 0:48 Includes an 8088 processor?! 1:20 Now it can only "accommodate" a second processor… 1:41 Commodore would have already developed the SID chip and would have lots lying around. Why not toss it in there? Though does this thing run 8032 software? Does it also support CB2 sound? 2:43 Or the "!/1" key. 3:09 They could have shown they mean serious business by having a big, wrap-around Return key and relegated π to something like Commodore-?. 4:43 High voltage? There's no CRT in there! 4:52 No User Port? 5:11 It seems strange that it's rated for 117 VAC. Is there any power grid in the world that nominally delivers that voltage? My own outlets vary between 117 and 123 over the day, but they're nominally 120. 6:54 Is it outputting regular NTSC Black & White video? 7:37 You'd think they'd put the internal RAM in banks 0 and 1 like on the C128. 8:18 It would make sense to split arrays and strings apart. Scalar variables aren't going to take much space even in the most complex BASIC program. Though, I guess you get either 2 banks or 4+. A good 4-bank layout might be 1=program, 2=scalars & string-array descriptors, 3=string values, 4=numeric arrays 8:45 I take it that Shift-Commodore doesn't do that here. 10:06 If they're going to have a margin bell, it should only be active during text input. 11:52 At least it didn't go into an infinite recursion. 12:58 Error message 19 appears to be the startup message, complete with screen-clear character. 13:39 It seems sloppy that the register labels don't line up with the register values. 14:54 The old RTFM maneuver! 16:30 So it has no bitmap graphics or programmable characters? 19:06 Plus the customary 1.8432-MHz UART clock crystal = 16 clock cycles per 115,200 baud. 19:33 I guess there'll be no 8032 CB2-compatible sound without a VIA chip. Did it run 8032 programs at all? Are the zero-pages compatible? Video-chip I/O space? Is there a BASIC Bank that can emulate the 8032? If not, then this would have been an early Plus/4 misadventure. You'd think Commodore would have learned early not to make incompatible followups after a hit system. 20:46 The guitar intro makes me want to sing, "I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you, I know you were right, believing for so long".
I think the first inverted-T keyboard wasn't shipped until 1982 or maybe 1983 by DEC, and then IBM started copying it around 1984/1985. It took a few years to really catch on. I think the B256 was supposed to ship with the 8088 built-in, but I've never seen one of those. I think I have a few other "117 VAC" devices in my collection. Maybe it's a weird Ontario thing? Thanks, "margin bell" is the phrase I was looking for. Yes, it's strange that it's active while PRINTing but that was probably easiest to implement. And yes, no bitmap or programmable characters. I believe it's the same 6545 that some PETs use. As far as I know, it's only BASIC-compatible with the 8032 and the memory map is quite different due to the bank switching weirdness. There's a lot more to explore on this machine sometime.
* With high voltage the sticker means the 117v going into the power supply, compared against the 5v/12v "low-voltage" of the circuit board. * Regarding the "NTSC output" question, I don't think so, I think it will work like the later PETs, which did 80 Column x 25 Lines, 60 Hz, at 20Khz sync freq (which was also inverted) instead of 15Khz for NTSC, so you'd need to make an adapter to get an NTSC signal. * about the "Includes an 8088 processor?!", as Robin stated when looking inside the machine, you could add an optional 8088 or Z80 CPU board to the machine to run MS-DOS or CP/M applications. I guess the ad on that page promotes a system configuration that includes the 8088 board by default for the quoted price. * regarding the inclusion of the SID chip, besides gaining sound output support, they might also have put it in as an existing, quick/easy solution to add the non-sound features of the SID chip, mainly the two 8-bit DACs (for paddle/JS/mouse or other uses) and the SID's HW random number generator... but, i'm just speculating here...
I found another one of the instances of 117 VAC I was thinking of: on the bottom of my main VIC-20, on the "Made in U.S.A." badge! In the Wikipedia article about "Mains Electricity" it says: "After World War II the standard voltage in the U.S. became 117 V, but many areas lagged behind even into the 1960s. In 1967 the nominal voltage rose to 120 V, but conversion of appliances was slow." So I guess the power supply guys at Commodore were really old school?
@@HPPalmtopTube I suspect it is putting out an NTSC signal as otherwise you'd need a custom monitor for it. (This was not an issue with the PETs, where the monitor was built in, but would be a pain for a system designed to be used with an external monitor.) The Protectco adverts appear to be showing a non-CBM monitor. And of course if Robin had had to capture such non-standard video, I'm sure he would have mentioned it!
4:05 I do love curves 4:25 Oh, power supply inside. Probably helping to keep it running nice and toasty. 5:25 Seems like a job for the German tank problem algorithm 6:35 Aaannnnddd down the rabbit hole I go 8:33 Interesting technical solution. If it's anything like the implementation on the C128, then it is also VERY slow. Not sure if I can think of another way to design that using 1982 technology though, so kudos for trying 10:34 Ohhh, Atari BASIC has this too. Very useful. 14:57 YES! Another sound clip to replace my terminal bell! 19:25 That board could use a bath
Yeah, it does run pretty warm; fortunately the power supply is up above the motherboard and somewhat well vented, so there's a nice hand-warmer up above the Commodore name-plate.
What a treasure! (Good job I don't have one. If I did I'd take it on as my holy duty to spend the restof my life playing around with it like understanding every bit and writing the games and demos.)
Thanks for the mention and also including the link to my site. Actually, my surname is pronounced as in "Diner" and not "Dinner" - don't worry, I'm used to it as lots of people get it wrong - ha ha! Also, I suspect that, although you have 256K fitted, the ROM is just the one for the 128K machines so it's not only not allocating the extra RAM there for variable storage, it probably isn't allowing the FRE command to recognise it - I'd have to check the ROM code to make sure of that, though. I noticed another interesting difference between the one you have and the one I had - my IEEE port was marked User Port on the back - so I suspect yours is a later model.
That is actually a pretty interesting looking system with a really nice looking CPU. I remember seeing ads for these back in the day and not thinking much of them. Nice case design. Edit: Looked it up, it was "Protecto Enterprizes" ads I saw.
I had one of these in 1993, it cost me $1.00 US at a police auction. It was pretty powerful in its time. If it had better graphics with color then it would have been an awesome game machine. I lost it and about 40 other 80s machines in a house fire a few years later. I wish I still had my B128.
I still have my Vic20, my C=64 and my Amiga 3000 (and I still believe I’ll open a box and find my missing C=128). I thought I knew my C= history, but clearly not, as I’d never heard of this machine!
The machine you have hands on is pretty but that BX256-80 in the marketing materials at 0:50 is just lovely. Retro-futurist soap bar curves but still very "serious business". I'd challenge any tech-head to walk past without having to touch it. Proper sexy.
very nice :-) i wonder what miracles are hidden in this machine - it has a SID and twice the CPU speed and memory of a C64! "mayhem in monsterland" port, 4th audio channel, ... :-)
18:18 - a cartridge slot without a cartridge. It's almost like the Commodore MAX game system in reverse. At least this machine actually got into the hands of the customers!!!
Cool to see another obscure Commodore machine from the early days. The cursor keys' placement was not the best design choice. And the 6509's strange memory management would require some fancy programming to make good use of all the memory. Not the greatest for a business machine, though it could have worked well assuming all the bugs were ironed out.
Yeah, that bank switching by using port 0 & 1 would have been weird tricky business. Definitely, a real challenge. Unfortunately, the machine wasn't properly marketed. And I have doubts if it was much any backward compatibility with the original Commodore Pet at the time.
The 6509's memory management was not terribly strange: though it was a bit different from how it was done on systems like the Apple II and C64, it was probably a _more_ reasonable approach for business programs. On the C64 and the like the CPU was accessing only one bank for any particular memory location, so if you had, say, 50 KB of code and 50 KB of data you'd need to do bank switching of your code itself, which is a bit of a pain. (I.e., some code would be in one bank, and some code would be in a different bank.) The 6509 had two bank registers: one determined the bank from which code ran and the other the bank used for accessing data. (To be precise, if you know 6502 assembler, the LDA/STA ($nn),Y instructions could use a bank independent of the bank that all other instructions were using.) So this allowed you to have, e.g., program code in locations $1000-$C000 in one bank and data in locations $0000-$FFFF in another bank and use them both at the same time without having to twiddle the bank switching hardware while doing this. This is precisely how BASIC worked; all the code ran out of bank $F (stored in the execute register at $0000) and it could change the indirect register at $0001 to $1, $2, or whatever as necessary for each of the various data storage areas BASIC used (program text, variables, arrays and strings). This was not really a new idea; other machines had done it before, and I've even seen custom hardware that let a standard 6502 CPU do the same thing. Of course, as noted by 5mf1nc in his comment here, there were other issues with the system memory design that slowed things down that were nothing to do with the 6509's design.
This machine would have been a beast if it included a Vic-II and joystick ports. If Commodore kitted it out like the C64 for gaming, the C128 may never have had a need to exist! But then, the extra RAM would have made it possibly prohibitively expensive, and possibly it would not have done as well.
Damn, that is most beautiful computer i have seen, especially with that monitor, those curves, what would i give for same case reproduction for pie or some itx bord...
Nice machine! That "Space Chase" uses so called block graphics, using 8 different characters from the character set and their inverted equivalents to be able to draw 160x50 square blocks instead of native 80x25 characters on this machine. 50p resolution!
Upon seeing this machine, I had to dig out my Compute's Gazette mags, because I remember there was a company that ran black-print-on-yellow-background full-page ads (that took up multiple pages) where these machines were featured prominently, and they certainly left an impression (both the computer AND the ads). That company was Computer Direct from Barrington, Illinois. They would not be undersold, and they meant it! Unfortunately the mags I have are later ones and the B128 is nowhere to be found... I wanted to see what the pricing was at that point in time. :(
Ah, not sure if anyone noticed, but the B128 has a few additional keys, then the C64/C128 line. Though, in retrospect, I think the B128 had a simpler architecture than the C128 which came after.
It was on the Super Expander of the VIC that I first came across INSTR, TRAP and RESUME (NEXT), things I recognised immediately when beginning to program in VBA (Instr, On Error Goto and Resume (Next)). Incidentally, on the Super Expander you could scroll up and down through a BASIC listing if you did a Break partway through. I think it was Ctrl+A to scroll up, and Ctrl+Z to scroll down. I wonder if the B128-80 does that?
I remember seeing ads for these in magazines of the era, but I'd never actually HEARD of them anywhere else. I just assumed it was some non-US alternate version of the Commodore 128 being imported and sold in bulk. Waaay wrong on it being like C128. WOW. :)
