The Commodore 64 Returns, As the FPGA-Powered Commodore 64 Ultimate

The Commodore 64 is back, more than four decades after its original launch — now in FPGA-powered "Ultimate form," designed to offer enthusiasts an enhanced but familiar and backwards-compatible alternative to dwindling stocks of original hardware.

"Honouring the past. Innovating the future. Without the distractions that stole it. Commodore has returned from a parallel timeline where tech stayed optimistic, inviting, and human," the team behind Commodore International Corporation claims. "Where it served us, not enslaved us. We’re here to bring that feeling back — retro, futurism, transparent tech, digital detox, real innovation This is the first real Commodore computer in over 30 years, and it's picked up a few new tricks."

The history of Commodore is well-trodden: founded in 1953 as Commodore Portable Typewriter by Jack Tramiel, who immigrated to the US after surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp and being rescued from a work camp near Hanover at the end of the Second World War, the company that would become Commodore International launched a series of microcomputers with increasing popularity until hitting it big with the Commodore 64. Built around the MOS Technology 6502 processor — a company Tramiel also owned, as he sought to maximize the potential of vertical integration — a low cost and innovative design would see the Commodore 64 become the biggest-selling single model of computer in history.

That success was hard to follow, however. Commodore's plans for a successor, dubbed the Commodore 65, were shelved in favor of buying in an external project called Amiga. The Amiga family of computers ran rings around the IBM compatible PCs of the time, particularly for multimedia work —but as PCs increased in their capabilities Commodore struggled to keep up. Ill-received attempts to break into the console gaming and home theater markets coupled with corporate infighting eventually did for the company in 1995, when it was acquired by Escom.

That wasn't the end of the story, though: when Escom itself was liquidated, the Commodore brand and its intellectual property were spread on the wind — but are now being claimed by YouTuber Christian "Perifractic" Simpson, who is in the process of finalizing a seven-figure deal to acquire the rights and bring back the Commodore brand. Its first product: the Commodore 64 Ultimate, a recreation of the original "breadbin" machine built around modern components — yet claimed to be compatible with the vast majority of existing software and hardware released for the machine since its original launch in 1982.

The Commodore 64 Ultimate isn't an original design; it's a rebranding of the Ultimate 64, created by Gideon Zweijtzer as a spin-out of a project to build an FPGA-powered emulation of the Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive. Envisioned as a drop-in replacement for faulty Commodore 64 motherboards, it replaces all the original hardware with modern equivalents while retaining as much compatibility as possible — and adding a few new features along the way including expanded memory, an HDMI video output, support for Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, and a "turbo mode" for the recreated MOS 6502 processor.

Simpson and colleagues are housing this board in a recreation of the original-model "breadbin" Commodore 64 housing, but again with improvements: the spongy keyboard of the original has been replaced by a mechanical keyboard with crisp Gateron Pro 3.0 switches. The keyboard includes RGB backlighting, too — more easily visible in the "Starlight Edition," which makes the move to a translucent plastic for the case. The "Founders Edition," finally, is translucent amber — helping to bring out the 24k gold-plated badges, inspired by Commodore's gold-plating of its millionth C64.

Internally, all machines are the same: an AMD Artix-7 FPGA with 128MB of DDR2 memory and 16MB of flash storage runs motherboard, acting as both the 6502 processor and a Sound Interface Device (SID) — though there are two sockets compatible with MOS 6581 and 8580 SID chips, for those who would prefer original audio hardware. There's a 1080p HDMI output with "virtually zero lag," plus CVBS, S-Video, and RGB analog outputs, the ability to load software from an original tape or floppy drive or from images stored on a USB flash drive, Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity, and original cartridge, Datasette tape drive, and disk drive ports, plus a 26-pin internal user port that can be used through an optional adapter.

Although Simpson's acquisition of the Commodore brand is still a work-in-progress, and despite the fact some aspects of Commodore's IP remain in the hands of third parties, the Commodore 64 Ultimate is up for pre-order on the Commodore International Corporation website now, starting at $299.99 for the "BASIC Beige" model. All devices from the first production batch are expected to begin shipping in October or November this year, and include a "cassette-style USB" flash drive with 50 games and demos pre-loaded.