 The Forgotten Japanese Commodore Console We all know the Commodore 64, it’s the highest selling single computer of all time. And I am sure there are many of you that have heard of the Commodore VIC-20 that came before it. But are you aware that in 1982, Commodore released, in Japan, the MAX Machine, aka the Ultimax or VC-10. This was a response to the huge popularity of video game consoles from Atari, Coleco, Magnavox and the like, Commodore wanted a piece of the gaming pie. So set about to produce a low cost video game console, this was just before the C64, but shares some very cut-down similarities, a proto-C64 if you will. Commodore Japan engineer Yashi Terakura was in charge of creating this video game console, and had learned about the new chipset Al Charpentier and Bob Yannes were designing specifically for gaming. So using a MOS Technology 6510 CPU running at 1.02Mhz, similar to that of the Commodore 64, they paired it with only 2KB of RAM (they wanted 8KB), and just 1/2 a KiloByte of VRAM to work with the VIC-II graphics chip, also found in the C64. It even had a SID chip for audio like its successor. The Max Machine itself doesn’t have any built in ROM, so when you switch it on without a cartridge, all you get is a blank screen. They did release two version of BASIC on cartridge for it, MiniBASIC and MaxBASIC, although why you would ever want to use MiniBASIC over MaxBASIC is unfathomable, you can’t LOAD or SAVE programs and you only get a tiny 510 bytes to code in, as compared to 2047 bytes with MaxBASIC. To keep costs low, as stated before they only gave the MAX Machine 2KB of RAM and no ROM, they also gave it a membrane keyboard, which unless you were coding in BASIC, you would hardly ever need to use. The casing is a futuristic (at the time) looking silver and black affair with red accents around the keys and the writing MAX in the bottom left. There were two 9-pin DSUB joystick ports, the cartridge port, a Tape I/O port, TV RF out, and it was powered by the same power supply that is used in the Commodore 64, with 5V DC and 9V AC rails. There were a total of 24 cartridges released for the MAX Machine, 5 Applications, including the 2 BASIC, 2 Music and a Solar System viewer. The other 19 games include Avenger (Space Invaders), Gorf and Road Race. These are all available in the original silver labelled MAX Machine Japanese cartridges, with some also available in Commodore 64 labelled cartridges. The Commodore 64 we all know and love today will actually boot up in MAX Machine mode if one the Ultimax cartridges are plugged into it. So even though MAX Machine didn’t last very long, it was cancelled the same year it was released, it managed to live on as the basis for the venerable C64. - Asobi Quang DX June 2019 Back |