First screen On turning on a C64 the first thing to greet you will be the distinctive colour scheme chosen, according to Al Charpentier, because they wanted to show off the colours of the new machine and because black and white was too boring. When looking at this screen the C64 is running two pieces of software: Commodore Basic and the KERNAL. Both pieces of software had been carried forward since there original versions on the Pet. KERNAL is the C64s operating system and provides low level access to the hardware. There are two conflicting theories as to where the KERNAL name comes from. One theory is that it is a misspelling of the word kernel - a kernel being the core of an operating system. Alternatively it is believed that it could stand for Keyboard Entry Read Network and Link.

Commodore Basic had been licensed from the fledgling Microsoft for the Pet for a one off non-exclusive licence fee. Like KERNAL it was kept for both the Vic-20 and the C64. Microsoft derived Basics were very common at the time as they had been licensed by other computer manufacturers such as Apple and Atari. A useful feature, particularly compared to BBC Basic that I was familiar with, is the full screen editor - simply move the cursor to a line containing Basic code and you are then editing that line. However this benefit is offset by a serious downside: in order to use graphics or sounds you have to resort to obtuse POKE commands.

A SID Chip Its a real shame the graphics weren't more accessible through simple Basic commands as thanks to its Vic-II chip the C64 was very impressive in that regard. It supported two resolutions (320x200 and 160x200) and could display up to 16 colour's at a time. Even more impressively and unusually for a home computer the C64 featured hardware support for sprites, a means of rapidly showing graphics normally found on consoles. Furthermore the hardware supported smooth scrolling of the screen something that some of its 8-bit rivals often found difficult.

In addition to its graphical capabilities the C64 also had superb support for audio through its SID chip. This allowed the C64 to play three channel sound using 4 different waveforms on each channel. These abilities attracted talented composers to the machine such as Ben Daglish, Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard whose compositions could be found in many of the games released on this format. In many ways the SID chip has made as lasting an impression in its own right as the C64 spawning SID music players, a SID based musical instrument, CD compilations of SID tunes, and live events where SID composers such as those already mentioned play their music using more traditional instruments.

geoWrite
GEOS Even if you've never come across the C64 before its probably becoming clear by now that coupling this level of graphical and audio power to 64k of RAM made for a potent games machine. However in 1986 Berkeley Systems took advantage of these abilities in a different way when they released GEOS. Clearly inspired by the Apple Macintosh GEOS (standing for Graphic Environment Operating System) gave Commodore 64 users a graphical user interface and a taste of the future! It shipped with geoPaint (a drawing package) and geoWrite (a word processor) and amazed users with what it could accomplish on there computers so much so that later in the C64s life Commodore began bundling it with the machine. GEOS was able to take full advantage of any additional hardware connected to its host including the Commodore 1351 mouse, RAM packs and printers. As well as the paint and word processor packages bundled with it additional software could be bought for it including spreadsheet, desktop publishing, and charting.

Impressive as GEOS was there's no point in beating around the bush any longer. Unwittingly or not (I wonder just how many parents heard the phrase "it'll help me at school") most people bought a C64 for the games.