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The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595.Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64KB (65,536 bytes) of memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time. It is commonly known as the C64 or C=64 (after the graphic logo on the case) and occasionally as the CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64. It has also been affectionately nicknamed the “breadbox” and “bullnose” due to the shape and color of the first version of its casing.<\/p>\n
During the C64’s lifetime, sales totaled between 12.5 and 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983\u20131986), the C64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple Inc. computers, and Atari 8-bit family computers. Sam Tramiel, a former Atari president and the son of Commodore’s founder, said in a 1989 interview “When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years.”<\/p>\n
Part of its success was because it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost. It is sometimes compared to the Ford Model-T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative mass-production.<\/p>\n
Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office productivity applications, and games. Various C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible game console, to run these programs today. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demoscene|demo scene. The C64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/c64-DKK-scaled.jpg” title_text=”c64-DKK” _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/256K-PCB-eprom.jpg” title_text=”256K-PCB-eprom” _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/16K-PCB-eprom.jpg” title_text=”16K-PCB-eprom” _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/magic-cart-scaled.jpg” title_text=”magic-cart” _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/magic-cart2-scaled.jpg” title_text=”magic-cart2″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.5.3″ _module_preset=”default”] The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595.Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vintage-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1698,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/1698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagevibe.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}