Commodore 264 (Prototype)

Computer published 41 years ago:

Commodore 264 (c) 1984 Commodore, Limited.

- TRIVIA -

When the first Commodore 264 (or C264 for short) prototype unofficially debuted at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1984, the developers had obviously not yet agreed about the keyboard layout; some keys are unlabeled, the right shift key was missing, instead having a key which seems to be meant as a line feed key.

It was planned that when buying a C264, you could have chosen between these programs:
- 3 plus 1 (word processor, data base, spread sheet, windowing)
- Superscript (professional word processor)
- Magic Desk (word processor, data base, spread sheet, calculator)
- Logo
- Pilot
- Easycalc 264 (spread sheet)
- COM 264
- Financial Advisor

The C264 should then be delivered with the selected program built in. The remaining programs could only be used with cartridges for the expansion port.

The official presentation of the C264 series took place on the Hannover fair in 1984. Luckily, the developers didn't eliminate the right shift key in the final keyboard layout. The formerly unlabeled keys bear a label now: the key that used to be the left arrow key on the C64 and the VC20 says 'Esc', the key between '@' and '*' bears the English pound sign, and the key that was labelled 'SHIFT LOCK' on all 8-bit computers Commodore ever produced now says - guess what - 'SHIFT LOCK' :-) (must have been a hard decision between SHIFT and CAPS lock).

- CONTRIBUTE -

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