NAME  

PLUS 4 - C232/264/364

MANUFACTURER  

Commodore

TYPE  

Home Computer

ORIGIN  

U.S.A.

YEAR  

1984

BUILT IN LANGUAGE 

Commodore BASIC 3.5. Built-in machine code monitor (12 commands)

KEYBOARD  

Full stroke 67 keys with 4 function keys and 4 cursor keys

CPU  

7501

SPEED  

0.89 MHz or 1.76 MHz

RAM  

64 KB (60 KB free for user, and 48 KB free when used in high resolution)

ROM  

64 KB

TEXT MODES 

40 chars x 25 lines

GRAPHIC MODES 

Several modes, maximum: 320 x 200 dots

COLORS  

121 (15 colors x 8 luminance + black)

SOUND  

Two channels; 4 octaves + white noise

SIZE / WEIGHT 

42.3 (W) x 23.9 (D) x 6.7 (H) cm

I/O PORTS 

Tape, Cartridge, Joystick (2), Floppy Disk, Printer, User port, RGB, expansion bus port, serial bus

BUILT IN MEDIA 

Cassette unit. Provision for 170 KB 5.25'' floppy disc unit

PRICE  

ё249

 

Commodore Plus 4

Commodore PLUS/4
(C-232/264/364)

 Among the Commodore news from the Summer CES 1984 was the renaming of the C-264 to Plus/4. This renaming came along with a slight change in the built-in software: you could not choose between many different programs anymore, but each Plus/4 was delivered with the 3-plus-1 software.

The built-in software is not worth the silicon it is etched in:


a word processor (only with 40 columns and can manage documents with only 99 lines of 77 columns), a very small spreadsheet (only 17 columns and 50 lines), a poor graph generator program (which can graphically display data from the sheets, but only in text mode) and a small database (999 records with 17 fields each and only 38 characters by field). Most of these programs can only be used with a floppy drive.

The Plus/4 can use some of the peripherals of the C-64 or the VIC-20, like the famous MPS-801 dot-matrix printer and the 1541 Disk Drive run well with it but it can't use C-64 programs (unfortunately, it cannot use the same joysticks & Datasette as the C-64/VIC-20).

This machine was not built to be a competitor of the C-64, but it was not meant to replace it either. It has an improved BASIC compared to the C-64's, this one features graphic and sound instructions and a built-in assembler, but has lost lots of interesting C-64 features like great sound chip (SID: Sound Interface Device) or hardware sprites.

The Commodore Plus/4 was an error in the Commodore marketing policy and had no success.


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