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From: fred@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Fred Bowen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: What's a C-65???
Date: 17 Sep 93 14:56:25 GMT

>To the best of my knowledge, the C65 was never put into production.  I
>visited the person last week who actually wrote the DOS operating system
>for it, and saw a prototype of it.  According to him, Mr, Gould "pulled
>the plug" on the system amonth before its' completion date.  The Britoish
>mags had some coverage of it in previews about a year-year and a half ago,
>but that was the end of it.  Too bad, cause it was a decent little
>critter, with a built-in 3.5" drive, and a lot more features and memory
>and such than the C64.

Apparently Grapevine picked up some C65's during Commodore's liquidation
of its warehouse/storage areas a couple months ago.

What is a C65?  A product that almost made it out the door.  What you're
seeing are "alpha" pilot-production units.  There were only something
like 50 units made, and a dozen or more of these were distributed around
engineering, system developers, etc.  Obviously, they were never meant
to be sold to the public, but... 

	CPU	CSG65CE02, running at 3.54MHz
	RAM	128K, expansion to ~8MB
	ROM	128K, including C65 mode (v10.0), C64 (v2.2) mode, & DOS
	Video	CSG4567 "VIC-III"
		 analog RGB with composite sync on each primary,
		 separate active-high digital sync,
		 composite chroa/luma,
		 digital fgnd/bgnd control (genlock)
		 all original C64 video modes (40x25 text, 320x200 bitmap)
		 new modes (80x25 text, with blink, bold, underline attributes)
		 true bitplane graphics (VGA resolution): 
		  320, 640, 1280 horz. pixels in 8, 4, or 2 planes
		  200, 400 vert. pixels, non-interlaced & interlaced
		  DAT "display address translator" to access display memory
		 standard 16-color C64 palette
		 programmable 256-color palette with 16 intensity levels per
		  primary color.
	Audio	Stereo SID chips
	Keybd	77 keys, including separate cursor keys, ALT, ESC, etc.
	Disk	Built-in 3.5" double-sided, 1MB MFM (1581 format)
		custom 4191 controller with 512 byte buffer and  parallel bus
		external mini-DIN for one A1011-type expansion drive.
		accepts CBM serial drives (1541,1571,1581), fast/slow/burst
	I/O	Built-in DMA/blitter
		Built-in 6511-type UART, supports MIDI data rate.
		All C64 ports: parallel, expansion, etc.
		new RAM expansion port, accessible by DMA and video chips.

I guess that's enough for now.  But be warned- these boards are very out
of date- the ROMs, PLA's, etc. are pre-pre-preALPHA, there are absolutely
NO spare parts (so if it breaks, that's it!), all systems are PAL (but
they display okay on regular 1084-type monitors in analog mode).  Oh,
and there aren't any manuals.  I'm surprised that Grapevine can sell them
as "new" equipment.  Buyer beware, and all that.

All things considered, not a bad machine, though.  I still use mine :-)
--
-- 
Fred Bowen			uucp:	...!rutgers!cbmvax!fred
				domain:	fred@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
				tele:	215 431-9100

Commodore Electronics, Ltd.,  1200 Wilson Drive,  West Chester,  PA,  19380
--
From: fred@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Fred Bowen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: Re: What's a C-65???
Date: 24 Sep 93 19:21:07 GMT

In article <1993Sep23.143114.22507@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE> brandtc@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Christian Brandt) writes:
>
>|> : World by the Grapevine Group.  They advertise a 'C65', which they claim
>|> : to be a new european c64 with a built-in 3.5" drive.
>|> : Any info on the subject (a picture maybe?  :-)  would be greatly
>|> : appreciated!
>|> Well,would be cool to get it ! A stereo 16 bit C64 !
>
> You can buy an C65 or at least the follow up to the C64:
>
> It has 8Bit-Stereo, 1MB Ram and 4096 Colors and costs only about 250DM=$140
>inkluding a 900k Diskdrive. Its sometimes named C640 but A600 hits the point
>better....

This is incorrect- I called Grapevine and inquired (pretending to know
nothing about the C65 :-)  Apparently they are selling the real thing,
although I don't see how thay can do this legally- it was never FCC
approved!  As I indicated in a previous post- they are super collector
items, but hardly a "finished, debugged" computer.

Hmmm, maybe I should finish the LOADIFF command, after all!  :-)


-- 
Fred Bowen			uucp:	...!rutgers!cbmvax!fred
				domain:	fred@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
				tele:	215 431-9100

Commodore Electronics, Ltd.,  1200 Wilson Drive,  West Chester,  PA,  19380