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I was a big Commodore 64 fan. So much that before starting college I had my own company reselling Commodore 64 computers. I was the first guy in Latin America to own an Amiga computer.

Over the weekend someone pointed me to Incredimazing where I found this scan for a Commodore 64 ad showing an executive and a portable Commodore 64. In those days Portable meant big, heavy computer with a handle.

This is what gets me: the C64 had a MOS Technology 6510 8-bit processor with a whooping 1Mhz clock. (I learned assembly language with this processor family). As its name implies, it had 64Kb of memory, but onlu 38911 bytes were available. I remember this because when you turned it on the first message on the screen indicated the ammount of memory available.

The first units had no floppy drives, the storage unit was a cassette recorder which you forwarded to the approximate minute where the application you wanted to load was found and then pressed play to load. Of course you had to wait until the cassete tape played. Sometimes this meant waiting 10 or 15 minutes for a game to load. Cartridges were the easiest way to play games. Then came the 1541 floppy drive with 170Kb capacity (per side).

Ok - why is this relevant besides remembering the good old times? I read this post by Engadget on the GloFiish X800:  500Mhz ARM 32-bit processor, 640x480 screen, 64Mb RAM, 256MB ROM, support for 4Gb MicroSD cards, 3.5G cellular radio, bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and 2MP camera. Imagine the possibilities.

More info at https://www.glofiish.com/

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