Commodore 64s arrive in N.Z.

Press, 5 April 1983, Page 33

Commodore 64s arrive in N.Z.

The first batch of 50 Commodore 64 personal computers has arrived in the country and been distributed to dealers. Local Commodore fans are excited by the $1295 price of the machine, originally to have been sold at $1695 in this country. In the United States the Commodore 64 sells for $595. The Commodore 64 looks like its brother, the Commodore VIC 20, but inside it bears a close relationship as well to the larger Commodore CBM range of smallbusiness computers.

About 80 dealers throughout the country will be authorised to sell the Commodore 64. This includes selected dealers who now handle the VIC 20 and also dealers who handle the

CBM range. “The Commodore 64 is designed for a different market to the VIC 20,” said Mr Mike Cooch, New Zealand marketing manager for Commodore. “It is designed for the very serious home computer user and the business user. “There is a large range of business software coming out,” he added. The business packages will include an electronic spreadsheet program, a data management package, a plotting and charting package, and a word-processing package. “Also there are unbelievable games, because of the computer’s sophisticated graphics,” said Mr Cooch. The Commodore 64 is a combined keyboard and computer unit with 64K bytes of RAM and 20K bytes of ROM. The ROM contains a BASIC interpreter. There are 64 keys on the typewriter-style keyboard, including four function keys. A feature of the machine is its colour graphics, which use a concept called Sprite for defining graphics objects at character positions. The sound chip in the machine has three voices (each with a nine-octave range) and four wave-forms. “It rivals a music synthesiser,” said Mr Cooch. There are a number of standard peripheral interfaces on the unit, with an

lEEE interface for compatibility with CBM peripherals. The VIC 20 disc drives and printer can be hooked up to the Commodore 64. Mr Cooch put the price of a Commodore 64 with a disc drive and a printer at less than $4OOO. “I particularly see an enormous market in schools,” said Mr Cooch. “As an example we can network 10 Commodore 64s with a shared disc drive and printer for about $10,000.” VIC 20 programs can be converted to the Commodore 64 with a few adjustments for screen handling and memory locations, according to Mr Cooch. A CP/M option, consisting of a plug-in ZBO card and software, is available. “There are also 2500 pub-lic-domain programs already available for the Commodore 64,” said Mr Cooch.