As I have not done much with it in a year, I'm offering it up for sale again to one lucky bidder!
With their permission, here are the original listing details:
This Auction, for Your Consideration
Ladies, and gentlemen, what you are looking at on display, for your consideration, is one Commodore 65 (a.k.a. Commodore 64DX) prototype:
This is not one of the usual Grapevine units, that have surfaced for auction in the past...
We are proud to offer, on special consignment, in private sale for the first time in over fifteen-years, one of the prototype PCBs that left Commodore in 1991.
Along with this unit, we received paperwork, and documentation, with hand-written notes from the Commodore engineers, including a preliminary Users/Service manual, and a tall box of loose sheets. The paperwork has handwritten corrections, modifications, and other notes, that later made their way into photocopied duplicates that others have exhibited. To say the least, the materials provided to us to document this unit, are unique; although we note expressly that the paperwork is not part of this lot.
What is part of this lot, is one C65 mainboard *prototype*, that was part of a documented series of internal, on-board (on-the-fly) modifications, used in the development of the system.
This PCB is partially loaded, but only includes components seen in the photographs. To our knowledge, there are no defects on the board, however, the sale of this item is 'as-is', for its historical, and collectible value [u]solely[/u]. We certainly cannot warranty the operable state of an engineering prototype of this sort, however we will of course fully guarantee its safe arrival to whomever is fortunate enough to purchase it.
The following photographs of these documents (for the purpose of demonstration, and illustration) are placed here as supporting documentation to the claims presented, and shows the C65 documentation, with hand-corrections, as well as other documents from Mr. Robbins. This documentation is not included in this auction, and is here solely to demonstrate the statements made in this auction: At this time, this is the only artifact that the consigner is interested in selling, however, as part of a special agreement, the consigner has is willing to discuss the sale of related items, and materials.
Click Images to Enlarge
Some of this literature may become available in the future, however it is not included in this sale. One original C65 service manual is available to the purchaser of this mainboard, for an additional cost.
The item up for your consideration, is one Commodore 64DX (Commodore 65) Rev 2B prototype mainboard.
Please note that the early project name, ë64DXí is present on all C65 mainboards. Only power supplies, casework, labels, and documentation were badged as a Commodore ë65í.
Of the four known variations of Rev. 2B, this is the earliest type, without ad-hoc modifications that are known to exist on later variations, between Rev. 2B, and Rev. 3. This mainboard exhibits a single, yellow label with hand-scribed numerals ë2213í,. The burn-in, and other labels present on developer units are absent, and were never applied to this unit, and the video modulator is the less-seen, smaller type.
This PCB came directly from the development team at Commodore, and has been in private hands for almost twenty-five years; never was it in the hands of Grapevine.
It is a visually flawless specimen, and would make a commendable addition to any museum, or to a private collection; or as a charitable donation to any vintage computing organisation, such as 'The National Museum of Computing'.
Ladies and gentlemen, please consider the amazing opportunity before you, and bid with all due sober consideration. We will attempt to answer any and all questions that you have, and act as an intermediary between you, and the consigner, who has refrained from any form of public disclosure, or publicity.
We accept all forms of payment, and are perfectly happy to make accommodations to buyers in any country; however we must insist that freight be fully insured, and certified; and that all freight, and insurance costs be paid by whomever has the foresight to purchase what is indeed, a treasure in vintage computing history. Personal courier delivery, and direct pick-up options are also available.
We should note here, that the Grapevine developer units, working or not, have been steadily doubling in value over the last few years, and the last two C65 developer units that were auctioned on eBay, sold for US$20,100 and Ä17,827 (US$20,216 ) respectively:
This is indeed, a rare opportunity to bid on an historic treasure.
Thank you for your kind consideration, and good luck with your bids.
Commodore 65 Development History
Intended as a successor to the renowned Commodore 64, the Commodore 65 has a rich history, first debuting on paper as the Commodore 64DX (Deluxe) in 1989.
While it remained heavily popular on four continents, by 1989, the Commodore 64 was truly showing its age. Naturally, although Commodore had heavily invested in their Amiga platform, and made various attempts to enter the business PC market both with the A2000 (and the 3000, released in late 1989), and the PC-10 a PC-20 systems, their most popular system to the average consumer was (at this time) still the venerable C64.
Commodore had made an earlier attempt to enhance the C64 architecture with the Commodore 128, using a faster custom variant of the 6502 (the 8510), that could work both at 4MHz, and 1MHz; combined with a Zilog Z80, and an 80-column display, plus high resolution monochrome modes, the 128 was a very likely candidate to usurp the C64 when it was released in 1985, save that few publishers ever took to the new platform.
As the C128 maintained nearly full hardware compatibility with the C64 architecture, most software companies continued to release programmes for the C64, and developing a scarce few business-oriented applications for '128 mode'. This relegated the native, performance-modes of the 128 essentially null, and certainly those who were looking for business systems at the time usually skipped the 128, in favour of the Amiga, or gazed out toward the Macintosh, and IBM PC platforms.
The main problem, being that the 128-mode was seen as an enhancement, rather than a proper native operation mode by both developers, and consumers. In fact, Commodore often pushed the C64 backward-compatibility of the 128 in their advertisements, only further driving the nails into the coffin of its advanced features. Commodore tried to stress the business nature of the C128 architecture with their 128D, and 128DCR models, but this was only a further commercial disaster.
By 1987, the single most common reason to purchase a C64 platform, whether it be the 64C, or the 128, was for household use; primarily as a hybrid productivity, and gaming system. Although competition against companies such as Nintendo, and Sega put the C64 into third place, third place at the time was a very solid market. The fact that the C64 was still selling six-figures worth of units annually showed that despite their efforts to convince people to migrate toward newer 16-bit architectures, wasnít working for Commodore.
The A500 was a well-selling system, competing with the C64 with grace, but the C64 was still in tremendous demand. In fact, itís easily noted that self-competition of Commodore products was a chief component of what created so many of their later problems. The A500 was neck-and-neck with the C64 for a very long time, and was the top-seller for Commodore for a decent period too.
Trying to simultaneously develop four main platforms, and market all four, was not a sound policy on their part; and their utterly ineffectual marketing of the PC-XX series systems, pitted up against companies such as Compaq, was not working; whereas the production cost of these products was a devastating loss, that bogged down their resources, leading to their ultimate financial downfall.
It is imperative however, to remember that Commodore was able to do all of this multi-platform development due to owning MOS, and fabricating all of their products, from the plastic casing, down tot he semi-conductors, internally. This allowed Commodore to experiment with ideas readily, and experiment they did. Thus, the 64DX was born, from the minds of engineers [ Fish and ? ] .
The idea, as odd as it may seem, was to create a second successor to the C64, that would be produced and sold alongside it, with the goal of eventually downsizing C64 production, in favour of the new model.
This time, instead of making a product that ran a native 'fast' mode, and had full hardware backward-compatibility with the C64 chipset, the native mode would be 16-bit, with advanced colour graphics; that while not nearly as impressive as the Amiga systems, would be a decent competition for a gaming system, comparable to the Sega Mastersystem.
This 16-bit machine would support legacy software via an emulation mode, with far less strict compatibility, but old programmes that did run, would do so without the user needing to select a mode on boot-up: the system only had a single native operational mode, and would detect when older programmes were loaded.
The emulation mode was intended to make the system more roust, at less cost; but may have actually led to its demise, as many popular games would fail to run on the system without full hardware-compatibility, due to the manner in which developers commonly utilized (system-illegal) tricks to squeeze more out of the C64ís aging hardware.
Such operations would not have the same effect on the C65, as it did not facilitate these out-of-boundary memory areas, or other ëundocumentedí instructions, that worked on C64 and (usually on) C128 systems.
In theory, the system architecture would make it easier to port software from 8-bit to 16-bit, and the product would be a bridge between the C64, and the Amiga series, however, the development cycle dragged on, into 1990, and 1991.
By 1991, the world of console and computer gaming had radically changed: The Super Famicom (Super NES, or SNES) and the Megadrive (Sega Genesis) had again revolutionised video games in the home, re-instilling the feeling of then-current arcade games, such as Capcom's 'Ghouls and Ghosts', into the minds of home gamers. Surely, the C65 could never compete with this trend, and only the Amiga at the time, had a ghost of a chance to stand side-by-side with the then-generation of console systems.
Commodore had already tried to compete with the big boys, by launching the C64GS ëGame Systemí (in very limited quantities), in 1990; and the Amiga CDTV, in 1991 ; and would again attempt to enter the console market with the CD32 in 1993. Thus, the development of the 32-bit game systems, including the very successful A1200, and the development of the C65, were happening around the same time.
To the bean-counters, it was clear that the development, production, and more importantly, the marketing costs were outweighing the benefits of producing so many products, especially as they would be in direct market competition with the A1200, which at this time, was Commodore's most advanced 'home' computer, slated for release around the same time as Commodore expected to release the C65.
Simultaneously, sales of the C64 were still high enough to warrant continued production, and the idea of selling developers on producing new, 16-it software for a hybrid, 16-bit 65xx series system was becoming increasingly implausible.
It is true, that the 65C816 was a very successful form of the 6502 for the 16-bit SNES, but the graphical capabilities of the C64DX, by this time known internally as the C65, would never compete with that platform, and would only be instantaneously overshadowed by the rigorous graphical capabilities of the AGA chipset.
All of these factors combined, coupled with the extremely slow development cycle for the C65óa backburner project, with little funding by 1991óled to the eventual cancellation of the entire system.
Commodore quietly axed the C65, never having shipped the developer units that they produced, and all of the prototype units, and internal-development materials were scrapped, going home with engineers that worked on the projects.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those engineering prototypes.
The remainder, Commodore stored in warehouses, and managed to leak into the public interest when Commodore liquidated their warehouse stock in 1993.
grapevine, and C65 Consumer Sales
Some of you may know that C65 developer systems did eventually make it onto the market, and the hands of consumers. This preceded the bankruptcy of Commodore, during a period when Commodore was liquidating parts, and inventory, in order to raise money to produce the CD32 consoleÖ
Fast forward (or re-wind) to 1993, when Grapevine procured a majority of the physical assets of Commodore Business machines: The company, Grapevine Group, Inc., was not a developer, nor interested in furthering R&D on any assets that they acquired from their purchase, and they certainly had no legal right to do so. (Those rights were split off to Tulip, and Escom, in 1994, after Commodore declared bankruptcy.)
Instead, Grapevine wished to sell the massive inventory from the liquidation quickly, and easily, and they advertised the C65 as a usable product that people could order:
Upon finding approximately 100, possibly 200, of the C65 Developer Unit packages in this inventory, and not knowing what else to do with them, Grapevine advertised them in various magazines, such as ëCompute's Gazetteí, for a somewhat high, but affordable sum, despite their own misunderstandings of exactly what they had in their stock.
They claimed the system to be an upgraded C64 architecture, but as few people in the market had ever heard of the C65, and as no dedicated C65 software existed, the units were slow to sell, and most ended up as curiosities.
Grapevine also had considerable trouble fulfilling orders, or answering questions regarding these unusual units, and in 1993, many people questioned if the entire C65 advert was no more than a mere hoax. Units did eventually ship out to Grapevine customers, and from that point onward, the C65 was in the hands of puzzled users.
Today, any and all C65 systems, and related materials, are exceedingly rare, desirable, and quite costly. The funny part though, is that these grapevine units were not truly prototypes: The units that Grapevine sold, in cases, complete with keyboards, diskette drives, and such, were intended (by Commodore) as pre-launch developer systems.
Actual C65 prototypes, such as this, left Commodore two years prior to their inventory liquidations, and are far more scarce than the developer units that have been sold in the past.
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