Hey Jan, thanks so much for that story! I’m originally from Bavaria and bought my C64 in November of 1985 at a local electrician’s shop. Different world back then… The C64 was 500DM, the 1541 was 550DM. I was in an apprenticeship at age 17 at the time so this was the largest purchase I had made to date by about a factor of 10 (I was very “sparsam” otherwise). I loved my C64 so much! I programmed a ton in C64 basic, Simons Basic, and a bit of Assembler. I also had the rare 1520 plotter and wrote a ton of programs for the plotter’s 4-color graphics, maybe the most fun I ever had with a computer. Some of my favorite games were Boulder Dash and Pit Stop II. I also had large stacks of 64’er and RUN magazines which I read religiously. I kept the C64 until 1994, even though I bought an Amiga 500 in 1988, another magical machine for me at the time. First love… Fast forward 35 years. I now live in the U.S., in a small town called West Chester, Pennsylvania but I still have a lot of ties to friends and family in Germany. Much to my surprise, I found out a while ago that the center of the universe of my youth (Commodore headquarters) is right next to where I live now! The current QVC headquarters building formerly housed Commodore, and is 5km away from where I am sitting right now!!! What are the chances of that??? So last night, I happened to see the C64 Maxi on German Amazon (thanks Jeff Bezos…) and went down the rabbit hole to eventually find and install the X64 emulator. After all these years, I still remembered the basics of C64 Basic. Sometimes, I have to ask my kids their names, that’s how bad my memory is at times ;-) I shared some of this with my 17 year old son (weird coincidence) who was really interested… I know this is a weird offer for a German but if you ever come to the U.S. East Coast, shoot me a message and maybe you’d like to stop by. Sometimes you just know you have a lot in common with someone. Now I got to check out some of your other videos. Auf Wiedersehen!
This video reminded me again of how different worlds we lived in, although actually not too far away. In 1987, we in Czechoslovakia were lucky to find toilet paper in our supermarkets, computers were something we knew existed somewhere. (1987 was actually the year I started going to a "computer club" where we learned to program PMD85, which was light years behind C64). It would really have been something completely unimaginable to find a computer in basically any store, not to mention a rather second class chain. I will never forget the winter of 89/90, just after the revolution when I and my parents went to West Berlin to buy me my first own computer - C64. I cost several average Czechoslovak monthly wages but my parents bought it for me anyway. (Although I had to wait a few years till I could afford a disk drive. And could only dream of ever being able to afford an Amiga.) I would only be a little careful to claim that 299DM was roughly €150. Wages were a little different back then. Even in West Germany. But still - when we walked in the computer store in the winter of 1990, it was like entering another dimension. Alice can't have felt more baffled behind the mirror. I don't, of course, regret that the days are gone and stores all around are now full of goods - but the truth is that today's kids will hardly ever experience the wonderful bedazzlement that we faced then when we left this communist shithole for the first time.
Thanks for sharing! Yeah, I have some friends from the GDR (even closer) that tell similar stories although by the end of the eighties it already was a bit less tough to get stuff into the GDR than into Czechoslovakia it seems. Some people already had C64s there. It's a weird world sometimes. Glad that this part of history is mostly over. At least for Europe. You're right about the Euro price of course. I just copied the number from a website without thinking much about it. It would be a lot more in today's money but still inexpensive compared to the usual price back then I think.
I have bought my C64 in 1983 for 900DM. Sill have the receipt :-) I think, back then, many electronic components were restricted to be brought to behind the iron curtain. The 7400 was one of them. It did not always work out, though.
@Michal Oh, that's hard to read... I'm from west germany, too. But my parents didn't buy me computer... even we had a house... (I wasn't sad about that... i had everything which i need.) But sometimes life sucks here(nowadays)... I sold my Nintendo NES and was working in holydays... so i could afford a amiga in 1992. But harddisk or other expensive amiga hardware, was to far away from my possiblities... And even we had only 1 Computer Shop in town, who was for Companies not for private... So i bought the amiga at a photo camera store, who belonged to a chain of stores, which also sold some little multi-media.
This reminds me of a story my parents told me, which is the exact opposite experience. My parents visited Czechoslovakia in 1990, and the first time my parents ordered food in some small restaurant on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I don't remember the exact cost of food, but considering my parents where used to Dutch prices they misunderstood the price the owner told them by more than a factor of 10 and insisting the owner kept the change as my dad thought it was nearly exact. Only later in the car an hour later realizing when my dad checked the bill that he vastly overpayed. The west and east where truly different realities.
We had the original model back then in 1985, but 2 years later it was murdered by a thunderstorm. Dad sold all the games and bought an A500, but I highly missed the 64. In 1994 we were at german shopping-center Karstadt, which was my electronics-homebase. One saturday they had an interesting offer: a C64G with matching 1541, iirc for 99,-DM. I looked at the packaging, but left it right there. When mom saw the offer, she took one to the cash-desk, put it in my hands and we went home. I thought, I was over the 64, but I learned, I never will. Some years before I tried to buy back our old gamebox, but the owner was unwilling, even when I asked for a list of the contents. Now that I have a sd2iec, I try to restore the old collection. Sadly my 1541 gave up last year, and after I repaired it, I put a connector the wrong direction, and when I tried with my original Turrican2-disk, it was damaged. I reseated the connector and all disks work fine, except that one. There ist still something on it, but the 2 1541 I have can't read it anymore... Good thing about it: I learned, that our very first 1541 is still working! I stored it always dry and dark over the years, hoping, that I could repair it one day...
@@thearchiveableI have several commodore computers and I was sensible enough never to part with most of mine. Sadly my vic20s both died. I sent a spare to be repaired and never saw her again. Amusingly nobody is willing to fix them on site even if I offer them a 1541 as payment. My fondest childhood memory was visiting the shops that sold the commodore computers and writing games directly onto them in basic. The shop managers would kick the kids out if they were playing on them,but were always pleased to see my little gang tapping away and would even fetch us chairs(as we were selling their computers faster for them). I got a saturday job with one store and I would write little demo programs for them. Whenever they discontinued a commodore I would see if my piggybank was full enough to buy one. I gave away my c16 and my +4 as they were just pale imitations of the vic20 with extra rom.
Wow, i remember those old Wedge PSU's. I used to have mine on the floor under my computer desk. It was great for keeping your feet warm in the winter !.
So it turns out that I have an ALDI, that I bought in Sweden. Everything checks out with your video, serial number and everyting! Found it at a flea market for 120 crowns back in 96 or 97 :) It must have an interesting story! There's a repair sticker from a store in Landskrona that I had to work around when I opened it to fix the keyboard. Thanks for the video, just what I needed to confirm my hunch :D
Nice! I wonder how yours made its way to Sweden. I heard of some Danish people that it was also sold there at the time, maybe it’s not an exclusively German thing after all.
Wow.. this was amazing! I had NO IDEA Aldi sold Commodore 64's. We are just now seeing Aldi stores pop up here in the US in recent years. Very fascinating!
Finally today manage to get on C64 aldi :), bought here in Croatia on local auction site. But this video was helpful to determine that machine is genuine, thanks Jan :)
Einwohner member Sid C64 from Aldi! Thank you very much for this Clip!!! I was ten years old and I think the Aldi C64 ,we thinking this was a new C64 and the "new' C64 was better than the*old64*😊👍
Pre ordered the C64 Mini due out in 10 days. Love playing the old games on S8+ using C64. EMU for Android. Bring back a lot of good memories from the 80's.
Would be fun to have one of those :) - my first C64 came from K-Mart. We earned the money for it by making and selling stuffed toy monkey's at local festivals (I actually still have one that we made).
I'm going to sell one or two of them via my Twitter in the next couple of days if you are interested. There's quite some demand I think so I'll probably end up drawing someone who is allowed to buy it (as stupid as that sounds). Love the monkey (and money) making story. :D
I just remembered that the Boots Chemist chain also sold Commodore VIC 20's around 1982. Also around 1984 I remember Boots selling Dragon 32 computers ! That's a part of ancient history lost in time, no wonder we don't know that much about the vikings for all we know they had cars with log wheels like the Flintstones.
Hallo Jan Beta, Dein Beitrag ist darüber hinaus insofern interessant, dass Deine abgefilmte Seite der Zeitschrift besagt, dass diese nicht offiziell in die DDR eingeführt werden durfte! Das ist wiederum für mich als ehemaligem DDR-Bürger interessant! Es gab westliche Publikationen in der DDR, die ich selbst erwerben bzw. in einer Bibliothek ausleihen konnte!
I worked for a company called Chelton House that makes the pasta sauces, salad dressings, ketchup and other "sauce" products for both Trader Joe's and Aldi here in the US.
We have Aldi here in the U.K. too, but it sells nothing like this! It's food and toiletries only. We also have anohter German store called Lidl, which does sell electrical items.
Thank you Juan! It's a very recommendable game and I recently realized that I didn't recommend it enough on the main channel (only in a Patreon video). Still have to finish it some time but I love it to bits. Very nice work!
hi, just wondering if a keyboard that looks exactly like this with the sticker on the underside "10860602 or it could be 10860802" could be an aldi model keyboard.
Difficult or impossible to tell, as Commodore very likely used up the keyboards from their warehouses for the Aldi models. So they are from the same batches as the ones used in the C64Cs of that era. I've even heard reports of Aldi C64s that shipped with the older style brown keyboards (but with the new PCBs).
Auch wenn 299 Mark tatsächlich umgerechnet ~150 Euro sind; Von der Kaufkraft heute (Inflation berücksichtigt) wäre der Preis eher vergleichbar mit knapp 300 Euro ;-) Danke für Deine Videos. Sehr unterhaltsam und vor Allem informativ :-)
Great video! Aldi, here in the US, still sells all kinds of electronics. I had no idea they sold C64's. I can't even remember where I bought mine lol! I had many Amiga's too. Still have a 2000, and a few other goodies like the drawing pen and Toaster GenLock and Dragon Lair, box and all 3 floppies hahaha... Love your videos, looking forward to watching more.
Well it looks like i can call myself almost a Commodore 'Aldi' family member. Just found one for sale here in NL and about to close the deal. €85,- for an untested model with a C2N, totally worth the gamble. I kinda remember those indeed being sold at the german Aldi stores as a 5 year old kid from NL. But maybe that's also because i live near the border i guess, since Papenburg, Bunde (Ems) and Leer are almost next door for me anyway. And i'm also still currently restoring a VC-20, which i bought in Neukamperfehn. Ya just gotta love restoring these old classics.
Thank you, enjoyed your video. Arround 8:30 you state the current price would be arround 150€ due to its then price of 300DM. I would recommend to include inflation which would result in todays price of ~486€ assuming an annual inflation rate of 4%.
Interesting story. Aldi is taking off here in the US. We shop there often. In a way, I'm not surprised there is an Aldi C=64. On occasion, odd things pop up in their store. They obviously grab cheap inventory of merchandise you might not typically find in a grocery store. Some of the items make me scratch my head. Great store, though.
The part number YM3535 on that chip seems to fit with the part numbers for Yamaha chips of the day so maybe Commodore was second-sourcing the chips from Yamaha as well as Sharp.
Yes, after shooting the video I learned that the PLA ICs were produced by both Yamaha and Sharp. There was another revision of these, too, that incorporated the color RAM as well so Commodore could further cut down the cost. :)
Thanks! I hope I'll manage to make the series in time. :) The 64'er magazine can be downloaded from various locations (Forum64, for example). I think the most convenient source is www.64er-online.de
Oh, there are various DIY approaches (I made my own a couple of months ago, there's also a video). Ray Carlsen makes very sophisticated replacements and there's the one that Greisi (RUclips Greisis Workbench) built. There's others, but I'm not familiar with them. You can also use an overvoltage protection device like bwack's C64Saver (he's also on RUclips) or a similar one.
I do work for ALDI in the United States. I've seen flyers in the stores that had cheap computers on sale. They were not put on display on the sales floor, but customers could inquire about them for purchase.
Wir haben kein Aldi in Costa Rica, aber wenn schon, dann möchte ich nicht Aldi Süd (wie in den USA), sondern lieber Aldi Nord (wie in Hamburg). Wurde dieser C 64 von beiden Aldi-Ketten verkauft, oder nur Aldi Nord/Süd?
I must have had C64G then , purchased by my Dad in Poland. It was one of the last breadbins and to sell them out they included a commodore gray joystick and a cartrige with a soccer game. In 1989 it costed the same as C64C without the extras. Last week my wife got me a 1983 c64 made in USA and I will recreate my Christmas just like Jan did. My daughter doesn't believe that its way better than ps5 lol.
Very interesting stuff. It is interesting the bizarre places stuff like this use to turn up in. Boots Pharmacy in England for example were the soul retailer in my country who sold Nintendo products back in the day haha.
strange indeed there used to be a Boots or there still is at Piccadilly Circus in London and upstairs I bought Nightshade at Boots Chemist by Ultimate Play The Game, the only isometric C64 game they did. Not a lot of people know that.
Bought mine here in Michigan at a Kmart. Unusual for them that they had a dedicated electronics counter. Aldis is a block away from us although my wife usually does the shopping. It is always interesting the non grocery items they do sell. I bought a few roll up beds there:)
Yeah, Aldi still sells a lot of electronics of the "Medion" brand here in Germany today. They had some amazingly cheap PCs a while back and continue to have interesting bargain stuff. I actually went grocery shopping there today. No Commodores anymore, sadly. ;)
It's a standard HDMI Philips flatscreen. I use a LIGAWO s-video to HDMI adapter to connect it. It works okay but it's pretty limited when it's displaying fast moving graphics.
Great video! I enjoyed it very much. I did not know about the CA4 serial number prefix was only for Aldi C64s -- that's a great tip for people who might be in a position to buy a C64 that claims to be an Aldi.
I'm going to have to disagree on calling it "state of the art" in 1987. By that point the C64 was 5 years old, the basic 6502 design was over a decade old, Amigas had been around for 3 years already and the Amiga 500 was already out.
What I meant was that it wasn't a very outdated computer. I'm aware that there were much better systems around at the time. The C64 was still the most widespread home computer at that point, I believe.
@@JanBeta "state of the art" means that it is the best generally available. Since your reply directly contradicts this, I think you simply misused the English idiom or chose the wrong idiom. I double checked with a dictionary: highest state of development. I also thought "That's not right" when I heard the remark. In 1987 I recall PC compatibles with 80386 32-bit CPUs, and hard disks of 90MB.
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know they were present anywhere outside of Europe at the time.
7 лет назад
I'm curious about the power LED colours. All Aldi-C64 models had red LED? I've seen one with green ... Normally those are not aldi-models (as far as I know ...), but other signs seems to match. However it can be an DIY modification for sure, who knows ...
Interesting question. All the Aldi ones I know of have red LEDs. I think the C64G models were the first breadbins I ever saw that came with green LEDs. That said, the C64Cs also came with both red and green LEDs so everything is possible. Maybe there's an even rarer sub-group of green LED Aldi C64s.
Thanks! The chips are mostly the ones used in later short board C64Cs. The big 64-pin PLA had the color RAM integrated in later board revs, too, so the Aldi PLA is something special in that respect.
Nice video, Aldi (oder Albrecht) ist schon 44 jahre in die Niederlanden ;) But we didn't have the C64 available at that time, but I would be suprised that there are some of the ALDI C64 computers overhere. Germany was a lot cheaper than the Netherlands back in the day with a lot of stuff, so it was obvious that people near the border went to Germany for shopping. As far as I know the Amiga 500, was 100 dutch guilders more expensive in the Netherlands. If someone could live with 'QWERTZ' instead of 'QWERTY' it was an easy choice :)
Thanks! Yes, you're right, Aldi was present in some other parts of Europe as well. I remember shopping at Aldi's when I went to the Netherlands some time in the 90s. They were also in Denmark and then "conquered" more countries pretty quickly. I think the Albrecht brothers are still the richest people in Germany.
I always thought I had an Aldi C64 here, but now I'm not sure what the heck this machine is: It's Made in W.-Germany with a serial no. WG A457206. The label says "C64", not C64G. The case is yellowed, but clearly has the same color as the Aldi C64, not the much lighter color of the C64G. The case has got port descriptions. The computer also has got the same keyboard as the Aldi, not the new one of the C64C or C64G and it's got the same board revision as in this video: PCB ASSY NO. 250469, PCB NO.252311 REV.3. All the chips were manufactured in 1987. The integrated PLA/logic chip has got a MOS logo on it. Can anybody tell what this variant actually is?
Yeah, that might very well be. I think there were some countries in Europe that had Aldi in the eighties, too. I seem to remember the Netherlands, too. Would be interesting to know if they sold the C64s there, too.
Very nice and informative video, Jan. As always, I should add. :) The only additional info I feel worth mentioning is that this model was indeed sold exclusively in Germany, but not only through Aldi. At least 'Quelle' is another distribution chain that I'd consider as confirmed. See here: www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/C64_Aldi and here: www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Datei:Aldi_C64_Komplett.jpg I think it's also not unlikely that there were even more chains like Wertkauf or Allkauf selling them.
Thank you Sir! I mentioned Quelle in the video briefly but I was unable to find proof for any other distributors so I left it at that. Wertkauf and Allkauf seem pretty likely of course, as they sold a lot of Commodore machines. Thanks for adding the info and links!
Great video. But the whiter C64-G was sold in many countries for years I believe, beginning around 1988, alongside C-model. I remember them in Norway and I got one myself. Maybe the G breadbin case was cheaper to produce than the C model case.
Thanks so much for your insight (!), and I did wanna point out that that METAL and black plastic "Quick Shot," ambidextrous/2-button, 9-pin joystick that you have sitting to the right of the Con-modore 64 😄 was my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE Atari 2600/Commodore 64, etc. controller. It was so well-constructed and -designed that it was (no pun intended) "joy" to "play" with. It was freakin' awesome, as Monkeyflop would say. Here's! PS -- I actually think I'm gonna go search one of those out on eBay, now! 😃
Thanks! Glad you liked the video. The joystick is a Suncom TAC-2 ("Totally Accurate Controller"). I made a little video about repairing it a couple of weeks ago. Very interesting construction and one of the best joysticks ever (in my opinion).
Nice Video! Do you know a place where i can find a new PSU build? I saw a video where you can solder your own with 2 different PSU (needed for AC and DC)... danke :)
I made my own simple PSU a while ago. -> ruclips.net/video/wWOU2sZv_ng/видео.html There's definitely more sophisticated ways to do it, but it works. ;)
"The rest of family took it as a joke, because it was no way Aldi going to sell a nice computer like this. Aldi had a reputation like a discount supermarket or grocery store, whatever you want to call it..." Well, it reminds me of our Biedronka stores in Poland, where you can pretty much buy food and other things you can find on every discount. But sometimes you can find PS4, PC and XONE video games there, which aren't even that bad.
If they ever started selling C64 again, I would put that effort and go to Germany myself and buy one of those. My C64G works, but because of its visual glitches, playing on it is just out of question, so possibly buying another C64 would be a nice solution. (I would never throw my childhood C64 away, i would keep it till the hell freezes over even if that means I will never use it again). I do have Medion CRT TV, and few Medion DVD players, which tells me that my dad probably used to shop in Aldi stores, maybe our C64 is from Aldi too, who knows.
As i remember i had an aldi c64 back in 2000 when i was a teen. Grey case breadbin, white keys, red led.... Sadly i sold it because i needed money for a used 486 dx4... The guy who i sold the machine to, had it destroyed few months later and it ended up in thrash :/ Nowadays i have a working c64G with green led, and two original black keyboarded c64, both of them are faulty.
Interesting video, especially hearing that these were Germany-only. In the US I used a hand-me-down breadbin C64 with white keys, and wondered what the story was on it.
Oh, they pop up frequently on eBay Germany. Look for the serial number stickers. If they resemble the ones I show in the video ("Made in USA") then it's most likely an Aldi. Most of the times, the auctions don't have "Aldi" in the title so you have to go by the photos though. Happy hunting (if you intend to do so)!
A very interesting video, i found your channel after watching Retro Man Cave.Growing up i had an Atari 800XL and my friend had a breadbin C64.I recently bought a C64C from ebay which i am having great fun using.Are they easy to connect to a modern television?
Oh, thanks! The C64 output signals that are slightly off from the norm. There's s-video and composite, but it's a matter of luck if a certain TV plays nicely with the signals. Your best bet are old CRT video monitors in my experience.
Hi Jan! I got myself a really interesting C64 the other day, that bears all the signs of the Aldi C64, except the keyboard: it has the earlier black keyboard mechanism. But it has that off-center Made in USA / CA serial number sticker, also the sticker on the side. It has the 250469, rev. 3 board. What could this thing be? An Aldi 64 with a replacement keyboard, or the standard Commodore method of just throwing together every component they had in the warehouse? Anyway, it was probably used as the control unit of some industrial machinery, as it was soaked in oil on the inside, and decades of dust ate itself into the oil. It took me a gallon of isorpopyl alcohol and dozens of cotton buds to clean it up :D Cheers, David
I think Commodore must have used up any parts they had left over so it makes sense that they put a brown keyboard in an Aldi C64. I haven't heard of one like that before but Commodore did a lot of that. There are C64Gs (the white breadbins) that have brown keyboards, too. Of course it is also possible that they had to replace the keyboard because there was too much dirt getting in. Probably repair shops stocked brown keyboards mostly because the old breadbins were most common by far back then. Thanks for letting me know, always interesting to hear about special Commodores. :D
Cool. I love the mix of the old box design and the gray colors. Mine was the earlier design, beige with gray f-keys. Oh, and I see you had GEOS running 😍
Yes, it's definitely one of the nicer designs of the C64. I used to do a lot of stuff in GEOS. Even made little magazines and stuff. It always felt like a pretty advanced system. I still like the simplicity of GEOS today.
I have actually planned to make a BBSing video some time. I've yet to make a proper user port adapter to be able to use the modem device I got with the C64.
ich habe einen aldi c64 bekommen vor paar wochen.der war aus einem intershop und laut quittung im mai`89 gekauft und am 2.nov.89 abgeholt...das gerät kam da 998 DM (in forum schecks)...;-) ....danke für den clip und weiterso!! de GrauKappe aus Chemnitz
Wow, we had an Aldi store in my home town in the middle of the United States. I don't think our store ever sold computers though. They were definitely very low-cost, all food was sold directly off of shipping palates, no proper shelves or conveniences anywhere.
Yes, they started out selling stuff directly from palates here, too, but soon became more organized. Today they are just like any other supermarket but still offer most stuff for good prices.
Yeah, I didn't put enough thought into the numbers and just copied it from C64 Wiki. Sorry about that. It still was pretty inexpensive compared to the usual price back then I believe.
Got a C64 in 1984 from my parents. It came with casette, amber monochrome monitor, a joystick and a game called "Raid Over Moscow". It was the "bread-box" and I think it was more brown-ish than this case? If your colours are gone, just replace the glass fuse inside.
I think the initial bread boxes had a slightly browner color, yes. The Aldi used the later version case which appears a bit lighter. It's definitely the same color as some other bread box C64s with the darker keyboard I have seen though. They also turn a bit yellow over time so it's hard to tell the original color really.
That was very interesting I never knew there were so many revisions of the machine over the years. Aldi did sell it cheaper than everyone else 😋 great vid Jan looking forward to the next....Kim 😋
Thank you Hans! Oh, I didn't remember the C64G label right then. Or maybe they even made two versions. Thanks for pointing that out. I only saw the G in real life at my neighbor's place back in the day who had one and it's of course been a while since then. ;)
Nice video. I seems to me that Aldi struck a deal with Commodore to use up any old parts Commodore had lying around, to clear up for the Amiga. By the way, the child Phil is deeply envious of the child Jan. You had a 1541! As a child, me owning one of those was almost a unlikely as me owning owning a Lamborghini Countach. Still at least the Datassette was reliable as it trickled those bits into memory. Poor Speccy owners :p
Thanks Phil. That's exactly what I think they did. Commodore seems to have used left over breadbin cases and kind of field tested their new PCB design at the same time. I think disk drives were very widespread in Germany (for whatever reason). Most kids I knew had a disk drive. I remember my father started with a datasette but got a 1541 half a year later or so. Just read a bit about Chuck Peddle's tape loading algorithm (that was used since the PET). Pretty sophisticated stuff. But hey, the Speccy owners had a microdrive! ;)
I think they were very common in the USA, too. Here in the UK, they didn't seem to catch on. Probably because of the price wars with Spectrum, Acorn and the like. I think the disk drive cost as much as the C64 itself. I think the price of a C64 + 1541 bundle would have scared most people's parents off, especially next an advert for a Speccy. I'm genuinely astonished, and very grateful, to have been bought a C64 and not a Speccy or an Electron.
I also have one of the 'Joystick' D64 Amazingly how they put the power of C64 in the base of a joystick, with about 20 games on board,... even says load "name of the game",8,1 arghhhh the memories. Its about 9 years old...
Cool :-) Ich habe noch meinen VC-20 und natürlich meinen C64. Ob die noch funktionieren, weiß ich nicht. Beide gehörten jeweils zu den ersten in Deutschland. Die Sockel waren ziemlich billig, darum musste ich sie manchmal reinigen. Weil ich so schöne, blaue Augen habe, hatte ich dann auch bald die Reparaturunterlagen und habe öfter mal für Freunde und Freundesfreunde die Dinger repariert. Ich weiß gar nicht, ob ich das noch habe... wahrscheinlich habe ich da mehr Nützliches gelernt, als im gesamten Studium. Mein C64 hat so um 900DM gekostet bei Vobis :-)
The old Pictures are great, ALDI was selling the in Holland too, ALDI sud i guess. I bought the Acorn model in 1984, a store as ALDI as well, the German Acorn, German Titles by Acorn soft too. TV setup as you had.
Oh, didn't know Aldi sold these in Holland, too. Interesting. Acorns were not very popular in Germany as far as I know but widely used in France and the UK I think. :)
Thanks! Mine came from Aldi Nord. If my information is correct, it was sold in both. They are separate chains (each belongs to one of two brothers) but they share some of their products.
So, in other words, it's a complete Commodore 64 with nothing missing except maybe some weird SID bugs missing from the original that make some pieces of computer music sound wrong?
Interesting version of the C-64 :) Nice to know the price as well, surprisingly cheap comparing to my 1989 Commodore 64c which costed in March 1989 1550 FIM (Finnish Mark) which is 425,50 Euros in 2017 money. It came with cassette drive and few games + Quickshot joystic. It had 6 months warranty and right after it expired, the power supply died :D Replaced it with new one. I don't have C-64 anymore as I sold it already in 1991 but have nice memories about it.
I actually miscalculated today's equivalent price a bit. I think it's closer to 200€ but it was still incredibly cheap back then. Commodore had a very strange pricing policy I think. The world wide prices vary a lot.
Thank you! I'm going to sell one or two via my Twitter in the next couple of days if you are interested (I actually bought 3 for researching the video--one to keep, of course).
UK keyboard I'd say, which seems to be the common thing for PAL versions. It seems that there was no QWERTZ keyboard for the C 64 but in the end, it doesn't matter. The C 64 was a gaming powerhouse.
Hey Jan, thanks so much for that story! I’m originally from Bavaria and bought my C64 in November of 1985 at a local electrician’s shop. Different world back then… The C64 was 500DM, the 1541 was 550DM. I was in an apprenticeship at age 17 at the time so this was the largest purchase I had made to date by about a factor of 10 (I was very “sparsam” otherwise). I loved my C64 so much! I programmed a ton in C64 basic, Simons Basic, and a bit of Assembler. I also had the rare 1520 plotter and wrote a ton of programs for the plotter’s 4-color graphics, maybe the most fun I ever had with a computer. Some of my favorite games were Boulder Dash and Pit Stop II. I also had large stacks of 64’er and RUN magazines which I read religiously. I kept the C64 until 1994, even though I bought an Amiga 500 in 1988, another magical machine for me at the time. First love…
Fast forward 35 years. I now live in the U.S., in a small town called West Chester, Pennsylvania but I still have a lot of ties to friends and family in Germany. Much to my surprise, I found out a while ago that the center of the universe of my youth (Commodore headquarters) is right next to where I live now! The current QVC headquarters building formerly housed Commodore, and is 5km away from where I am sitting right now!!! What are the chances of that??? So last night, I happened to see the C64 Maxi on German Amazon (thanks Jeff Bezos…) and went down the rabbit hole to eventually find and install the X64 emulator. After all these years, I still remembered the basics of C64 Basic. Sometimes, I have to ask my kids their names, that’s how bad my memory is at times ;-) I shared some of this with my 17 year old son (weird coincidence) who was really interested…
I know this is a weird offer for a German but if you ever come to the U.S. East Coast, shoot me a message and maybe you’d like to stop by. Sometimes you just know you have a lot in common with someone.
Now I got to check out some of your other videos. Auf Wiedersehen!
This video reminded me again of how different worlds we lived in, although actually not too far away.
In 1987, we in Czechoslovakia were lucky to find toilet paper in our supermarkets, computers were something we knew existed somewhere. (1987 was actually the year I started going to a "computer club" where we learned to program PMD85, which was light years behind C64). It would really have been something completely unimaginable to find a computer in basically any store, not to mention a rather second class chain.
I will never forget the winter of 89/90, just after the revolution when I and my parents went to West Berlin to buy me my first own computer - C64. I cost several average Czechoslovak monthly wages but my parents bought it for me anyway. (Although I had to wait a few years till I could afford a disk drive. And could only dream of ever being able to afford an Amiga.)
I would only be a little careful to claim that 299DM was roughly €150. Wages were a little different back then. Even in West Germany. But still - when we walked in the computer store in the winter of 1990, it was like entering another dimension. Alice can't have felt more baffled behind the mirror.
I don't, of course, regret that the days are gone and stores all around are now full of goods - but the truth is that today's kids will hardly ever experience the wonderful bedazzlement that we faced then when we left this communist shithole for the first time.
Thanks for sharing! Yeah, I have some friends from the GDR (even closer) that tell similar stories although by the end of the eighties it already was a bit less tough to get stuff into the GDR than into Czechoslovakia it seems. Some people already had C64s there. It's a weird world sometimes. Glad that this part of history is mostly over. At least for Europe.
You're right about the Euro price of course. I just copied the number from a website without thinking much about it. It would be a lot more in today's money but still inexpensive compared to the usual price back then I think.
In holland, when the 64 came out it was 1000 guilders. Almost 1 month salary.
I have bought my C64 in 1983 for 900DM. Sill have the receipt :-) I think, back then, many electronic components were restricted to be brought to behind the iron curtain. The 7400 was one of them. It did not always work out, though.
@Michal
Oh, that's hard to read... I'm from west germany, too.
But my parents didn't buy me computer... even we had a house... (I wasn't sad about that... i had everything which i need.)
But sometimes life sucks here(nowadays)...
I sold my Nintendo NES and was working in holydays... so i could afford a amiga in 1992.
But harddisk or other expensive amiga hardware, was to far away from my possiblities...
And even we had only 1 Computer Shop in town, who was for Companies not for private...
So i bought the amiga at a photo camera store, who belonged to a chain of stores, which also sold some little multi-media.
This reminds me of a story my parents told me, which is the exact opposite experience. My parents visited Czechoslovakia in 1990, and the first time my parents ordered food in some small restaurant on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I don't remember the exact cost of food, but considering my parents where used to Dutch prices they misunderstood the price the owner told them by more than a factor of 10 and insisting the owner kept the change as my dad thought it was nearly exact. Only later in the car an hour later realizing when my dad checked the bill that he vastly overpayed.
The west and east where truly different realities.
I shop at Aldi stores here in the states. I wish they still sold the C64!
Same here in France.
also same here in the UK
Odd, but Strack & Van Tips are selling the newer C64 Minis (NW Indiana). Picked up one a few months ago.
"A genuine Aldi Commodore 64." A phrase I never expected to hear until I started watching your channel Jan! Thanks for another nice video :-)
+Magnatron Haha, yes, it seemed odd back then and it still does now. ;)
@@JanBeta Weren't all of these Aldi 64s made from repurposed C64GS motherboards?
Great stuff, enjoyed the tour and thanks for sharing the time to show us such a rarity
Thank you! Glad you liked it. :)
We had the original model back then in 1985, but 2 years later it was murdered by a thunderstorm. Dad sold all the games and bought an A500, but I highly missed the 64. In 1994 we were at german shopping-center Karstadt, which was my electronics-homebase. One saturday they had an interesting offer: a C64G with matching 1541, iirc for 99,-DM. I looked at the packaging, but left it right there. When mom saw the offer, she took one to the cash-desk, put it in my hands and we went home. I thought, I was over the 64, but I learned, I never will. Some years before I tried to buy back our old gamebox, but the owner was unwilling, even when I asked for a list of the contents. Now that I have a sd2iec, I try to restore the old collection. Sadly my 1541 gave up last year, and after I repaired it, I put a connector the wrong direction, and when I tried with my original Turrican2-disk, it was damaged. I reseated the connector and all disks work fine, except that one. There ist still something on it, but the 2 1541 I have can't read it anymore... Good thing about it: I learned, that our very first 1541 is still working! I stored it always dry and dark over the years, hoping, that I could repair it one day...
TheIncredib13 can you contact me?
@@thearchiveableI have several commodore computers and I was sensible enough never to part with most of mine.
Sadly my vic20s both died.
I sent a spare to be repaired and never saw her again.
Amusingly nobody is willing to fix them on site even if I offer them a 1541 as payment.
My fondest childhood memory was visiting the shops that sold the commodore computers and writing games directly onto them in basic.
The shop managers would kick the kids out if they were playing on them,but were always pleased to see my little gang tapping away and would even fetch us chairs(as we were selling their computers faster for them).
I got a saturday job with one store and I would write little demo programs for them.
Whenever they discontinued a commodore I would see if my piggybank was full enough to buy one.
I gave away my c16 and my +4 as they were just pale imitations of the vic20 with extra rom.
Wow, i remember those old Wedge PSU's. I used to have mine on the floor under my computer desk. It was great for keeping your feet warm in the winter !.
Yes, I did the same. :D
Ah the old foot warmer ❤️
So it turns out that I have an ALDI, that I bought in Sweden.
Everything checks out with your video, serial number and everyting!
Found it at a flea market for 120 crowns back in 96 or 97 :)
It must have an interesting story! There's a repair sticker from a store in Landskrona that I had to work around when I opened it to fix the keyboard.
Thanks for the video, just what I needed to confirm my hunch :D
Nice! I wonder how yours made its way to Sweden. I heard of some Danish people that it was also sold there at the time, maybe it’s not an exclusively German thing after all.
@@JanBeta maybe it was purchased while on vacation or something similar? :)
I miss the "Run Stop" key. They don't make powerful keys like that anymore, sigh.
Haha, yes, the almighty RUN/STOP key. :D
Oh yes they do -- check out the Magic SysRq key, from the realm of Linux: www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.11/admin-guide/sysrq.html
sure they do, just go to a unix machine and program a key to the shutdown command.
Wow.. this was amazing! I had NO IDEA Aldi sold Commodore 64's. We are just now seeing Aldi stores pop up here in the US in recent years. Very fascinating!
They still sell PC stuff and mobile phones today here. :)
Finally today manage to get on C64 aldi :), bought here in Croatia on local auction site. But this video was helpful to determine that machine is genuine, thanks Jan :)
Your videos and the way you speak passionately about the c64 are something I can relate to.
Keep up the good work 👍
Thank you. :)
I wish Aldi would stock C64s now :) I know they wont but i still want one. Maybe the C64 mini?
Thanks, I really enjoy learning about all of the subtle differences of the various versions of the C64.
Oh, glad you enjoyed this. Thanks! :)
Einwohner member Sid C64 from Aldi! Thank you very much for this Clip!!! I was ten years old and I think the Aldi C64 ,we thinking this was a new C64 and the "new' C64 was better than the*old64*😊👍
When I was a kid I had the exact same desk chair then you had in white :-) And a bread bin C64. Very nice channel and greetings from Austria...
Pre ordered the C64 Mini due out in 10 days. Love playing the old games on S8+ using C64. EMU for Android. Bring back a lot of good memories from the 80's.
I have to get one of these. What a beauty. Thanks for this research.
Would be fun to have one of those :) - my first C64 came from K-Mart. We earned the money for it by making and selling stuffed toy monkey's at local festivals (I actually still have one that we made).
I'm going to sell one or two of them via my Twitter in the next couple of days if you are interested. There's quite some demand I think so I'll probably end up drawing someone who is allowed to buy it (as stupid as that sounds). Love the monkey (and money) making story. :D
Great stuff! Didn't realize there were so many different variants of the Commodore 64 out there.
Dunno if I mentioned this before but around 1984 and beyond in the U.K. "Boots" which was and still is the chemist / pharmaceutical shop in the u.k.
Yes, I think someone else posted that before. The strange ways of Commodore marketing... :D
I just remembered that the Boots Chemist chain also sold Commodore VIC 20's around 1982. Also around 1984 I remember Boots selling Dragon 32 computers ! That's a part of ancient history lost in time, no wonder we don't know that much about the vikings for all we know they had cars with log wheels like the Flintstones.
Hallo Jan Beta, Dein Beitrag ist darüber hinaus insofern interessant, dass Deine abgefilmte Seite der Zeitschrift besagt, dass diese nicht offiziell in die DDR eingeführt werden durfte! Das ist wiederum für mich als ehemaligem DDR-Bürger interessant! Es gab westliche Publikationen in der DDR, die ich selbst erwerben bzw. in einer Bibliothek ausleihen konnte!
I guess you got yours at ALDI Nord. ALDI Sud operates stores here in the US, while Nord owns a chain called "Trader Joe's".
Exactly! Interestingly, ALDI Nord has some Trader Joe's products here in Germany, too. So that explains that.
I worked for a company called Chelton House that makes the pasta sauces, salad dressings, ketchup and other "sauce" products for both Trader Joe's and Aldi here in the US.
Doesn't surprise me.
We have Aldi here in the U.K. too, but it sells nothing like this! It's food and toiletries only. We also have anohter German store called Lidl, which does sell electrical items.
yogibear2k10 Sad I suppose, the US ALDI's were always about surprises every once in a while.
Very interesting. Thanks! And thanks for recommending Rescuing Orc!
Thank you Juan! It's a very recommendable game and I recently realized that I didn't recommend it enough on the main channel (only in a Patreon video). Still have to finish it some time but I love it to bits. Very nice work!
hi,
just wondering if a keyboard that looks exactly like this with the sticker on the underside "10860602 or it could be 10860802" could be an aldi model keyboard.
Difficult or impossible to tell, as Commodore very likely used up the keyboards from their warehouses for the Aldi models. So they are from the same batches as the ones used in the C64Cs of that era. I've even heard reports of Aldi C64s that shipped with the older style brown keyboards (but with the new PCBs).
I potentially have a chance to buy one of these with original box but no manual/paperwork. What did this originally come with? Any idea?
Auch wenn 299 Mark tatsächlich umgerechnet ~150 Euro sind; Von der Kaufkraft heute (Inflation berücksichtigt) wäre der Preis eher vergleichbar mit knapp 300 Euro ;-) Danke für Deine Videos. Sehr unterhaltsam und vor Allem informativ :-)
Great video! Aldi, here in the US, still sells all kinds of electronics. I had no idea they sold C64's. I can't even remember where I bought mine lol! I had many Amiga's too. Still have a 2000, and a few other goodies like the drawing pen and Toaster GenLock and Dragon Lair, box and all 3 floppies hahaha... Love your videos, looking forward to watching more.
Thanks! They still sell electronics in Germany, too. There's some more Amiga videos coming on this channel some time for sure. :)
Ist der Aldi aus Witten in der Arthur Immhausen Straße?
Well it looks like i can call myself almost a Commodore 'Aldi' family member.
Just found one for sale here in NL and about to close the deal.
€85,- for an untested model with a C2N, totally worth the gamble.
I kinda remember those indeed being sold at the german Aldi stores as a 5 year old kid from NL.
But maybe that's also because i live near the border i guess, since Papenburg, Bunde (Ems) and Leer are almost next door for me anyway.
And i'm also still currently restoring a VC-20, which i bought in Neukamperfehn.
Ya just gotta love restoring these old classics.
Thank you, enjoyed your video. Arround 8:30 you state the current price would be arround 150€ due to its then price of 300DM. I would recommend to include inflation which would result in todays price of ~486€ assuming an annual inflation rate of 4%.
Yeah, I didn't really think it through and just copied the number from the C64 Wiki. Sorry about that! :/
could you show us an example of the sample playback issue the later ones suffered from with a comparison?
Interesting story. Aldi is taking off here in the US. We shop there often. In a way, I'm not surprised there is an Aldi C=64. On occasion, odd things pop up in their store. They obviously grab cheap inventory of merchandise you might not typically find in a grocery store. Some of the items make me scratch my head. Great store, though.
Way of the Exploding Fist.
Yassssss
Nice Video! Aldi has only really started taking off where I live, I was unware until recently that they sold commodore 64.
The part number YM3535 on that chip seems to fit with the part numbers for Yamaha chips of the day so maybe Commodore was second-sourcing the chips from Yamaha as well as Sharp.
Yes, after shooting the video I learned that the PLA ICs were produced by both Yamaha and Sharp. There was another revision of these, too, that incorporated the color RAM as well so Commodore could further cut down the cost. :)
Patiently waits for your december video release. ;) Any idea where I can download 64'er issues in PDF or any other form?
Thanks! I hope I'll manage to make the series in time. :)
The 64'er magazine can be downloaded from various locations (Forum64, for example). I think the most convenient source is www.64er-online.de
I have this model, can we make mods like sid2sid and jiffydos mod??
I thought this was a video about Aldi stores selling c64 in Australia now in the modern age lol.
Great video, thanks!
Ha! That would probably be a good idea for Aldi. ;)
What is a good powersupply replacement?
Oh, there are various DIY approaches (I made my own a couple of months ago, there's also a video). Ray Carlsen makes very sophisticated replacements and there's the one that Greisi (RUclips Greisis Workbench) built. There's others, but I'm not familiar with them. You can also use an overvoltage protection device like bwack's C64Saver (he's also on RUclips) or a similar one.
Danke Jan, interessante Geschichte! 🙂
I do work for ALDI in the United States. I've seen flyers in the stores that had cheap computers on sale. They were not put on display on the sales floor, but customers could inquire about them for purchase.
Yes, they do the same thing here nowadays. They have them on display behind glass usually. All sorts of Medion branded electronics is sold by Aldi.
Wir haben kein Aldi in Costa Rica, aber wenn schon, dann möchte ich nicht Aldi Süd (wie in den USA), sondern lieber Aldi Nord (wie in Hamburg). Wurde dieser C 64 von beiden Aldi-Ketten verkauft, oder nur Aldi Nord/Süd?
I must have had C64G then , purchased by my Dad in Poland. It was one of the last breadbins and to sell them out they included a commodore gray joystick and a cartrige with a soccer game.
In 1989 it costed the same as C64C without the extras.
Last week my wife got me a 1983 c64 made in USA and I will recreate my Christmas just like Jan did.
My daughter doesn't believe that its way better than ps5 lol.
Wow, really brings back memories. I always wanted a C64 when they were out but couldn't afford one.
They were pretty expensive indeed. That's why I only got one after Aldi offered them for the discounted price. ;)
Very interesting stuff. It is interesting the bizarre places stuff like this use to turn up in. Boots Pharmacy in England for example were the soul retailer in my country who sold Nintendo products back in the day haha.
Thank you Sir! Especially Commodore had a lot of chaotic and weird ideas for selling their stuff I think. ;)
yeah I remember Boots the Chemists in the 1980s sold C64s and VIC 20s and some cartridges for the Vic 20 also remember
Top Hat Gaming Man I forgot, boots was the only place to buy Nintendo. Thanks for the reminder. Stupid Nintendo robot in every boots window.
Makes sense that Nintendo would be sold in a soul retailer. (As opposed to one with exclusive sales rights, of course.)
strange indeed there used to be a Boots or there still is at Piccadilly Circus in London and upstairs I bought Nightshade at Boots Chemist by Ultimate Play The Game, the only isometric C64 game they did. Not a lot of people know that.
Bought mine here in Michigan at a Kmart. Unusual for them that they had a dedicated electronics counter.
Aldis is a block away from us although my wife usually does the shopping. It is always interesting the non grocery items they do sell. I bought a few roll up beds there:)
Yeah, Aldi still sells a lot of electronics of the "Medion" brand here in Germany today. They had some amazingly cheap PCs a while back and continue to have interesting bargain stuff. I actually went grocery shopping there today. No Commodores anymore, sadly. ;)
I always tell my wife "dont shop at ALDI". I may have to revise that to "ALWAYS SHOP AT ALDI!"
Whats the display you are using?
It's a standard HDMI Philips flatscreen. I use a LIGAWO s-video to HDMI adapter to connect it. It works okay but it's pretty limited when it's displaying fast moving graphics.
Great video! I enjoyed it very much. I did not know about the CA4 serial number prefix was only for Aldi C64s -- that's a great tip for people who might be in a position to buy a C64 that claims to be an Aldi.
Thanks Mark! I hope I could clarify some things. And I hope I got everything right. Commodore's policies are often a bit random and weird it seems. ;)
I'm going to have to disagree on calling it "state of the art" in 1987. By that point the C64 was 5 years old, the basic 6502 design was over a decade old, Amigas had been around for 3 years already and the Amiga 500 was already out.
What I meant was that it wasn't a very outdated computer. I'm aware that there were much better systems around at the time. The C64 was still the most widespread home computer at that point, I believe.
@@JanBeta "state of the art" means that it is the best generally available. Since your reply directly contradicts this, I think you simply misused the English idiom or chose the wrong idiom. I double checked with a dictionary: highest state of development.
I also thought "That's not right" when I heard the remark. In 1987 I recall PC compatibles with 80386 32-bit CPUs, and hard disks of 90MB.
My town in Kansas has had an Aldi since the 80s. Shopped there as a kid.
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know they were present anywhere outside of Europe at the time.
I'm curious about the power LED colours. All Aldi-C64 models had red LED? I've seen one with green ... Normally those are not aldi-models (as far as I know ...), but other signs seems to match. However it can be an DIY modification for sure, who knows ...
Interesting question. All the Aldi ones I know of have red LEDs. I think the C64G models were the first breadbins I ever saw that came with green LEDs. That said, the C64Cs also came with both red and green LEDs so everything is possible. Maybe there's an even rarer sub-group of green LED Aldi C64s.
Nice video! I didn't know it had different chips inside it. Always good to know!
Thanks! The chips are mostly the ones used in later short board C64Cs. The big 64-pin PLA had the color RAM integrated in later board revs, too, so the Aldi PLA is something special in that respect.
Great amount of info. Going from this, I think Nostalgia Nerd has the 64G.
Subscribed.
+Paul Potter Thank you and welcome aboard! Yeah, Nostalgia Nerd has a G model which is his favorite C64 flavor I believe. :)
Nice video, Aldi (oder Albrecht) ist schon 44 jahre in die Niederlanden ;) But we didn't have the C64 available at that time, but I would be suprised that there are some of the ALDI C64 computers overhere. Germany was a lot cheaper than the Netherlands back in the day with a lot of stuff, so it was obvious that people near the border went to Germany for shopping. As far as I know the Amiga 500, was 100 dutch guilders more expensive in the Netherlands. If someone could live with 'QWERTZ' instead of 'QWERTY' it was an easy choice :)
My C64 and Commodore monitor were bought a Allkauf back then and my uncle bought his IBM PS/2 in Germany as well.
Thanks! Yes, you're right, Aldi was present in some other parts of Europe as well. I remember shopping at Aldi's when I went to the Netherlands some time in the 90s. They were also in Denmark and then "conquered" more countries pretty quickly. I think the Albrecht brothers are still the richest people in Germany.
Ha, so many Dutch people. ( Hoi alle Nederlanders! ) 😋
Jan Beta there's 2 Aldi companies. I believe here in Holland we have Aldi-nord only.
Maico I think it were 2 brothers that started Aldi but that might be Adidas or Aldi too.
I always thought I had an Aldi C64 here, but now I'm not sure what the heck this machine is: It's Made in W.-Germany with a serial no. WG A457206. The label says "C64", not C64G. The case is yellowed, but clearly has the same color as the Aldi C64, not the much lighter color of the C64G. The case has got port descriptions. The computer also has got the same keyboard as the Aldi, not the new one of the C64C or C64G and it's got the same board revision as in this video: PCB ASSY NO. 250469, PCB NO.252311 REV.3. All the chips were manufactured in 1987. The integrated PLA/logic chip has got a MOS logo on it.
Can anybody tell what this variant actually is?
Excellent video once again Jan Beta!
Thank you! :)
Pretty sure we also had Aldi here in Denmark in 1987. I don't remember this being on sale in my local Aldi store though.
Yeah, that might very well be. I think there were some countries in Europe that had Aldi in the eighties, too. I seem to remember the Netherlands, too. Would be interesting to know if they sold the C64s there, too.
@@JanBeta As far as I know only Aldi Germany and Quelle sold this particular C-64.
Very nice and informative video, Jan. As always, I should add. :) The only additional info I feel worth mentioning is that this model was indeed sold exclusively in Germany, but not only through Aldi. At least 'Quelle' is another distribution chain that I'd consider as confirmed. See here: www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/C64_Aldi and here: www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Datei:Aldi_C64_Komplett.jpg
I think it's also not unlikely that there were even more chains like Wertkauf or Allkauf selling them.
Thank you Sir! I mentioned Quelle in the video briefly but I was unable to find proof for any other distributors so I left it at that. Wertkauf and Allkauf seem pretty likely of course, as they sold a lot of Commodore machines. Thanks for adding the info and links!
Great video. But the whiter C64-G was sold in many countries for years I believe, beginning around 1988, alongside C-model. I remember them in Norway and I got one myself. Maybe the G breadbin case was cheaper to produce than the C model case.
Thanks so much for your insight (!), and I did wanna point out that that METAL and black plastic "Quick Shot," ambidextrous/2-button, 9-pin joystick that you have sitting to the right of the Con-modore 64 😄 was my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE Atari 2600/Commodore 64, etc. controller.
It was so well-constructed and -designed that it was (no pun intended) "joy" to "play" with. It was freakin' awesome, as Monkeyflop would say. Here's!
PS -- I actually think I'm gonna go search one of those out on eBay, now! 😃
Thanks! Glad you liked the video. The joystick is a Suncom TAC-2 ("Totally Accurate Controller"). I made a little video about repairing it a couple of weeks ago. Very interesting construction and one of the best joysticks ever (in my opinion).
Nice Video! Do you know a place where i can find a new PSU build? I saw a video where you can solder your own with 2 different PSU (needed for AC and DC)... danke :)
I made my own simple PSU a while ago. -> ruclips.net/video/wWOU2sZv_ng/видео.html
There's definitely more sophisticated ways to do it, but it works. ;)
Thanks, i'll check it out!
Strange got a ALDI back then with a 250466. The first CPU 8500 i saw in 1985 on a 250425 Rev A.
You could check out Planet X2, also a C64 game made in 2017, and check it out on the special german C64s
Oh, definitely want to check out that! I missed the first batch unfortunately but hope there's going to be more copies soon.
"The rest of family took it as a joke, because it was no way Aldi going to sell a nice computer like this. Aldi had a reputation like a discount supermarket or grocery store, whatever you want to call it..." Well, it reminds me of our Biedronka stores in Poland, where you can pretty much buy food and other things you can find on every discount. But sometimes you can find PS4, PC and XONE video games there, which aren't even that bad.
Nice! Aldi still sells electronics (and also PCs) here from time to time. Mostly Medion brand though. No Commodores anymore, sadly. ;)
If they ever started selling C64 again, I would put that effort and go to Germany myself and buy one of those. My C64G works, but because of its visual glitches, playing on it is just out of question, so possibly buying another C64 would be a nice solution. (I would never throw my childhood C64 away, i would keep it till the hell freezes over even if that means I will never use it again). I do have Medion CRT TV, and few Medion DVD players, which tells me that my dad probably used to shop in Aldi stores, maybe our C64 is from Aldi too, who knows.
What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?
As i remember i had an aldi c64 back in 2000 when i was a teen. Grey case breadbin, white keys, red led.... Sadly i sold it because i needed money for a used 486 dx4... The guy who i sold the machine to, had it destroyed few months later and it ended up in thrash :/ Nowadays i have a working c64G with green led, and two original black keyboarded c64, both of them are faulty.
Interesting video, especially hearing that these were Germany-only. In the US I used a hand-me-down breadbin C64 with white keys, and wondered what the story was on it.
Great video, never heard about them before! :-) How hard is to find them on, like, eBay? What to look for when doing the search ? :-) Cheers!
Oh, they pop up frequently on eBay Germany. Look for the serial number stickers. If they resemble the ones I show in the video ("Made in USA") then it's most likely an Aldi. Most of the times, the auctions don't have "Aldi" in the title so you have to go by the photos though. Happy hunting (if you intend to do so)!
A very interesting video, i found your channel after watching Retro Man Cave.Growing up i had an Atari 800XL and my friend had a breadbin C64.I recently bought a C64C from ebay which i am having great fun using.Are they easy to connect to a modern television?
Oh, thanks! The C64 output signals that are slightly off from the norm. There's s-video and composite, but it's a matter of luck if a certain TV plays nicely with the signals. Your best bet are old CRT video monitors in my experience.
Hi Jan!
I got myself a really interesting C64 the other day, that bears all the signs of the Aldi C64, except the keyboard: it has the earlier black keyboard mechanism. But it has that off-center Made in USA / CA serial number sticker, also the sticker on the side. It has the 250469, rev. 3 board. What could this thing be? An Aldi 64 with a replacement keyboard, or the standard Commodore method of just throwing together every component they had in the warehouse?
Anyway, it was probably used as the control unit of some industrial machinery, as it was soaked in oil on the inside, and decades of dust ate itself into the oil. It took me a gallon of isorpopyl alcohol and dozens of cotton buds to clean it up :D
Cheers,
David
I think Commodore must have used up any parts they had left over so it makes sense that they put a brown keyboard in an Aldi C64. I haven't heard of one like that before but Commodore did a lot of that. There are C64Gs (the white breadbins) that have brown keyboards, too.
Of course it is also possible that they had to replace the keyboard because there was too much dirt getting in. Probably repair shops stocked brown keyboards mostly because the old breadbins were most common by far back then.
Thanks for letting me know, always interesting to hear about special Commodores. :D
Cool. I love the mix of the old box design and the gray colors. Mine was the earlier design, beige with gray f-keys. Oh, and I see you had GEOS running 😍
Yes, it's definitely one of the nicer designs of the C64. I used to do a lot of stuff in GEOS. Even made little magazines and stuff. It always felt like a pretty advanced system. I still like the simplicity of GEOS today.
Fascinating! And, Happy Thanksgiving!!
Thank you Sir! Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. :)
oh, the 300 baud and later 1200 baud were fun. hacking into bbs, and compuserver. you could read the stuff coming in.
I have actually planned to make a BBSing video some time. I've yet to make a proper user port adapter to be able to use the modem device I got with the C64.
Incredible. Look at the condition . Mint !!!!!
Yes, it just needed a bit of a wipe with a soft cloth. :)
ich habe einen aldi c64 bekommen vor paar wochen.der war aus einem intershop und laut quittung im mai`89 gekauft und am 2.nov.89 abgeholt...das gerät kam da 998 DM (in forum schecks)...;-) ....danke für den clip und weiterso!! de GrauKappe aus Chemnitz
Wow, we had an Aldi store in my home town in the middle of the United States. I don't think our store ever sold computers though. They were definitely very low-cost, all food was sold directly off of shipping palates, no proper shelves or conveniences anywhere.
Yes, they started out selling stuff directly from palates here, too, but soon became more organized. Today they are just like any other supermarket but still offer most stuff for good prices.
DM 299,- in 1987's money is roughly € 270,- in 2017. You just divided DM by two, which was a rule of thumb in 2002, but only for 2002's DM value.
Yeah, I didn't put enough thought into the numbers and just copied it from C64 Wiki. Sorry about that. It still was pretty inexpensive compared to the usual price back then I believe.
Not quite. The exchange rate of 1.95583 has been set already in the mid-90s.
Got a C64 in 1984 from my parents. It came with casette, amber monochrome monitor, a joystick and a game called "Raid Over Moscow". It was the "bread-box" and I think it was more brown-ish than this case? If your colours are gone, just replace the glass fuse inside.
I think the initial bread boxes had a slightly browner color, yes. The Aldi used the later version case which appears a bit lighter. It's definitely the same color as some other bread box C64s with the darker keyboard I have seen though. They also turn a bit yellow over time so it's hard to tell the original color really.
That was very interesting I never knew there were so many revisions of the machine over the years. Aldi did sell it cheaper than everyone else 😋 great vid Jan looking forward to the next....Kim 😋
Thank you Kim!
I saw the title and got excited because it seemed Aldi had re-released some kind of retro bundle :(
Ah ! Great mythbusting video. Thanks for making a video about this. Just a small note, the G64G has a plastic label. At least mine. :)
Thank you Hans! Oh, I didn't remember the C64G label right then. Or maybe they even made two versions. Thanks for pointing that out. I only saw the G in real life at my neighbor's place back in the day who had one and it's of course been a while since then. ;)
At the time, my father bought one in a Vobis shop. They sold them, too.
Nice video. I seems to me that Aldi struck a deal with Commodore to use up any old parts Commodore had lying around, to clear up for the Amiga.
By the way, the child Phil is deeply envious of the child Jan. You had a 1541! As a child, me owning one of those was almost a unlikely as me owning owning a Lamborghini Countach. Still at least the Datassette was reliable as it trickled those bits into memory. Poor Speccy owners :p
Thanks Phil. That's exactly what I think they did. Commodore seems to have used left over breadbin cases and kind of field tested their new PCB design at the same time.
I think disk drives were very widespread in Germany (for whatever reason). Most kids I knew had a disk drive. I remember my father started with a datasette but got a 1541 half a year later or so. Just read a bit about Chuck Peddle's tape loading algorithm (that was used since the PET). Pretty sophisticated stuff. But hey, the Speccy owners had a microdrive! ;)
I think they were very common in the USA, too. Here in the UK, they didn't seem to catch on. Probably because of the price wars with Spectrum, Acorn and the like. I think the disk drive cost as much as the C64 itself. I think the price of a C64 + 1541 bundle would have scared most people's parents off, especially next an advert for a Speccy. I'm genuinely astonished, and very grateful, to have been bought a C64 and not a Speccy or an Electron.
I have a 1540 and about 4 1541s
Mitchell McCreath - show off! :-P :-)
I also have one of the 'Joystick' D64
Amazingly how they put the power of C64 in the base of a joystick, with about 20 games on board,... even says load "name of the game",8,1 arghhhh the memories. Its about 9 years old...
Aldi UK have announced they are going to sell online in time for black friday apple airpods for £89.99 and refurbished 64GB iphone 8s for £199.99
Very nice video and very informative. Thanks a lot!
Glad you liked it. Thanks! :)
Cool :-) Ich habe noch meinen VC-20 und natürlich meinen C64. Ob die noch funktionieren, weiß ich nicht. Beide gehörten jeweils zu den ersten in Deutschland. Die Sockel waren ziemlich billig, darum musste ich sie manchmal reinigen. Weil ich so schöne, blaue Augen habe, hatte ich dann auch bald die Reparaturunterlagen und habe öfter mal für Freunde und Freundesfreunde die Dinger repariert. Ich weiß gar nicht, ob ich das noch habe... wahrscheinlich habe ich da mehr Nützliches gelernt, als im gesamten Studium. Mein C64 hat so um 900DM gekostet bei Vobis :-)
The old Pictures are great, ALDI was selling the in Holland too, ALDI sud i guess.
I bought the Acorn model in 1984, a store as ALDI as well, the German Acorn, German Titles by Acorn soft too. TV setup as you had.
Oh, didn't know Aldi sold these in Holland, too. Interesting. Acorns were not very popular in Germany as far as I know but widely used in France and the UK I think. :)
Were they sold in North Aldi or South Aldi or both? Very enjoyable video.
In the West Aldi, only! (just kidding)
Thanks! Mine came from Aldi Nord. If my information is correct, it was sold in both. They are separate chains (each belongs to one of two brothers) but they share some of their products.
I bought mine at Aldi South, so yes, it should be sold in both.
Wieso verkauft ALDI sie nicht mehr?
Gute Frage. Heutzutage wäre das vielleicht sogar wieder ein gutes Geschäft. ;)
8-bit Guy hat vor kurzem sogar ein neues Spiel für Commodore 64 geschrieben. Also, man konnte ja gute Knete an retro-Fans machen.
So, in other words, it's a complete Commodore 64 with nothing missing except maybe some weird SID bugs missing from the original that make some pieces of computer music sound wrong?
7:40 die rechte hatte ich am Anfang, war immer ein schöner Fußwärmer...
Haha, ja, die wurden sehr angenehm warm. ;)
Interesting version of the C-64 :) Nice to know the price as well, surprisingly cheap comparing to my 1989 Commodore 64c which costed in March 1989 1550 FIM (Finnish Mark) which is 425,50 Euros in 2017 money. It came with cassette drive and few games + Quickshot joystic.
It had 6 months warranty and right after it expired, the power supply died :D
Replaced it with new one.
I don't have C-64 anymore as I sold it already in 1991 but have nice memories about it.
I actually miscalculated today's equivalent price a bit. I think it's closer to 200€ but it was still incredibly cheap back then. Commodore had a very strange pricing policy I think. The world wide prices vary a lot.
Fantastic Video Jan! Thoroughly enjoyed it, one day I shall own a lovely Aldi model ;)
Thank you! I'm going to sell one or two via my Twitter in the next couple of days if you are interested (I actually bought 3 for researching the video--one to keep, of course).
Aldi (Nord) here in Denmark have always sold their "Medion" computers, decent-ish for the money OEM desktops and laptops.
Yes, they do the same in Germany (and elsewhere I believe). They had some pretty good value for money ones over the years although I never had one.
Why does it have a QWERTY keyboard with pound sign when it's sold in Germany?
UK keyboard I'd say, which seems to be the common thing for PAL versions. It seems that there was no QWERTZ keyboard for the C 64 but in the end, it doesn't matter. The C 64 was a gaming powerhouse.
My VIC 20 came with that wedge type power supply
Yes, the later VIC 20s used the same PSU as the C64.
I have the wedge type for my C64, the VIC 20 or actually VC-20 i had had a black square one.
hmm we bought a c64 with tape drive 3 games for xmas 1984 for £249 , lidl didnt discount them very much
Long Live the Commodore 64.!!!! i still have mine setup and working. i play Raid Over Moscow as often as i can.!!!!!
Yeah, Raid over Moscow is brilliant. :D