A Commodore Vic MP3 player?

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:45 pm

Someone once told me you can find anything on eBay. I think this item makes his case:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Commodore-MP3-Player ... dZViewItem

Looks like Commodore is alive and well and ready to go head to head with Apple once again...

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:02 pm

Yeah, the e-vic, fpet, and some other stuff came out a few years ago. They also liscenced the production of the C64-DTV.

http://www.commodorecorp.com/corporate/default.aspx

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:24 pm

I'm still waiting for them to develop a smart card reader that works off the IEC bus, and sell a new edition of the C64DTV that has a serial port already attached, perhaps with PS/2 style keyboard connectors as well. The new storage device would also be backwards compatible with the old Commodore computers and sell for a reasonable price. I know there are some other similar products by 3rd party manufacturers, but it'd be really nice to see Commodore themselves produce something like that. If it was priced right, I'd probably be a customer, in particular as an IEC device can be connected to a VIC, C64 or anything else that has the same bus without needing to develop special hardware solutions for each computer.

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:47 pm

They should've made it resemble a C2N datasette, on a smaller scale. Don't those design people know how to push retro?

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:58 pm

no comprendo...
no comprendo...

does not compute...

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:58 pm

Yeah, they really missed the boat on the way the DTV looked. They AT LEAST should have coloured the joystick the same as an original C64 (grey-beige-brown with the rainbow C64 logo).

Instead they made it black and red. Yay.

I agree with Carlsson that it would cool if they sold a 2nd generation C64 that was just a tiny box into which you could instantly hook a PC keyboard, joystick, disk drive, etc. Of course it would also have to come with flash memory or a memory card slot.

And they'd have to colour it like the old C64, of course!

There is a vague mention about a new DTV on the C= website - but as we have discussed before, none of the original DTV developers know anything about it.

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:18 pm

IHNJH, IJLS: Gravel in Pocket

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:42 am

gklinger wrote:IHNJH, IJLS: Gravel in Pocket

i have no idea what you are saying (except for "Gravel in Pocket" - what a strange name).

EDIT: okay http://silmaril.ie/cgi-bin/uncgi/acronyms?IHNJH

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:34 pm

ral-clan wrote:Yeah, they really missed the boat on the way the DTV looked. They AT LEAST should have coloured the joystick the same as an original C64 (grey-beige-brown with the rainbow C64 logo).

Instead they made it black and red. Yay.

The look (and colour) was modeled after the Competition Pro joystick, which many in PAL land consider to be *the* definitive C-64 joystick... that was the reasoning, anyway. You can find a pic here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_Pro

There is a vague mention about a new DTV on the C= website - but as we have discussed before, none of the original DTV developers know anything about it.

commodore.ca had some talk about it too from the site admin, who made it sound like he was personally involved with the product. I've pressed for details, and many months later no further details have surfaced.

I'd like to be involved if something ever started again, but in the meantime I'm going on with other opportunities that were made possible because of it.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:43 am

MacbthPSW wrote:
ral-clan wrote:Yeah, they really missed the boat on the way the DTV looked. They AT LEAST should have coloured the joystick the same as an original C64 (grey-beige-brown with the rainbow C64 logo).

Instead they made it black and red. Yay.
The look (and colour) was modeled after the Competition Pro joystick, which many in PAL land consider to be *the* definitive C-64 joystick... that was the reasoning, anyway.

Yeah, I know about that....I have a Competition Pro in my joystick box (or whatever they were called here). So I kind of assume that's why that design was chosen. I guess here in North America the design doesn't have the same resonance. Still, would have been nice to have the C-Pro joystick design to please the Europeans, but have moulded it in the colours of the original C-64 to please everyone else.

I never understood why the C-Pro is so loved by the Europeans. It was a decent joystick, but I found it a little uncomfortable and there wasn't enought movement in the joystick or buttons for me. I'm a WICO-bat man myself - but I realise a lot of people don't like that one.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:47 am

The worst "missed boat" is the way the Intellivision 25-in-1 looks. Looks like a Sony Playstation controller. No brown and gold, no wood grain. Awkward adaptation of buttons so that games originally using the Intellivision's keypad can be played with all the Sony-style action buttons. I realise they did this because it's basically a NES on a chip, and they went with an existing controller design to keep it cheap, but it really looks the exact opposite of retro.

The least the INTV people could have done is had the controller moulded in the original Intellivision brown, and then applied woodgrain stickers under the buttons. Might have helped a bit without upping the price by changing the actual moulds/design.

Bacon · Post by **Bacon** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:23 am

ral-clan wrote:Yeah, I know about that....I have a Competition Pro in my joystick box (or whatever they were called here). So I kind of assume that's why that design was chosen. I guess here in North America the design doesn't have the same resonance. Still, would have been nice to have the C-Pro joystick design to please the Europeans, but have moulded it in the colours of the original C-64 to please everyone else.

Would have suited me fine here in Europe too -- I hadn't even heard of the Competition Pro until I bought one a few years ago. Don't care for it much though.

ral-clan wrote: I never understood why the C-Pro is so loved by the Europeans. It was a decent joystick, but I found it a little uncomfortable and there wasn't enought movement in the joystick or buttons for me. I'm a WICO-bat man myself - but I realise a lot of people don't like that one.

That's my favorite stick too! I had one back in the 80s and I'm lucky to have a couple of them now too, along with my second and third choices, the Wico ball handle (or whatever it's called) and the Tac-2.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 8:36 am

Bacon wrote:That's my favorite stick too! I had one back in the 80s and I'm lucky to have a couple of them now too, along with my second and third choices, the Wico ball handle (or whatever it's called) and the Tac-2.

The Tac-2 is a tiny, tight little joystick. Really good!

I have a huge cardboard box full of joysticks. There are some crazy designs in there. There's even one made by suncom that is a touchpad. Sort of looks like a silver intellivision controller at first glance.

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:15 pm

ral-clan wrote:The worst "missed boat" is the way the Intellivision 25-in-1 looks. Looks like a Sony Playstation controller.

The first Atari 2600 Activision game plug & play was equally bad... maybe even worse, since it had two d-pads: one direction of one pad was used for the single fire button on a 2600

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:08 pm

I also had forgotten the Competition Pro completely before looking in old computer magazines and seeing full-page advertisments. I don't think I ever knew someone who owned one.

By the way, someone elsewhere posted that Tac-2 is almost impossible to find on eBay and similar sites, while it is very common on Tradera (Sweden). I don't know if it is true, and in which countries the Suncom joysticks were popular. Obviously Canada, as ral-clan favorously (?) mentions it.