[ubuntu-uk] C64 running Ubuntu?

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Simos Xenitellis
<simos.lists at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Dianne Reuby <pramclub at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Is this real?
>>
>> http://www.commodoreusa.net/index.html
>>
>> A revamped C64 running Win7 or Ubuntu.
>
> Think of it as a modern computer in the "C64 form factor" (shape).
>
> Does this form factor have any technical advantages over modern desktops?
> I cannot think of any technical advantages.

No, but several disadvantages. There's next to no expansion. There is
a PCI slot in there but you can't use it as there's no room. It
doesn't boast faster external buses such as eSATA, USB3, Firewire or
Firewire 800. A CardBus slot would have been more use than that PCI or
mini-PCIe one.

You are stuck with the built-in keyboard. Bizarrely, it has keyboard &
mouse ports - which along with the PCI slot show that this is not a
purpose-designed motherboard, just a mini-ITX one in a novel case. If
you spill liquid into the keyboard or something & it shorts out,
you're stuffed, even an external one won't help.

And the notion of an external keyboard & mouse plugged into a PC that
is essentially a keyboard & mouse is rather bizarre, to my thinking.

> It mentions a Core Duo CPU (instead of Atom), which means it's rather heavy duty
> instead of an eco friendly computer.

Well, not really, no. The Core2 Duo is a laptop chip as well, it's not
power-hungry. Meanwhile the Atom is a deeply crippled chip, massively
less powerful than even the crappy crippled low-end Intel offerings
such as the Celeron and "Pentium Dual Core". Atoms run something like
one-quarter to one-sixth of the CPU horsepower of a Core2 Duo of the
same speed. The Atom was made for netbooks - I don't think they're a
good idea for any desktop device.

But the Core2 is rather past it now. A Core i3 or Core i5 would have
made more sense if they want to claim half-decent CPU power.

Not that I would want to recommend Dell, normally, but if you want a
small neat quiet computer, something like this - a Dell Zinio - makes
more sense to me:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspiron-zino-hd?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1


> The market they are looking into is those who want to revive their old
> C64 memories.

Absolutely.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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