Where's my C64?

To be more accurate the picture should be of a //e, because the ][+ and C64 didn't really overlap in sales much if at all.  The C64 was ostensibly released in late 1982, and the //e not until early 1983 but more or less they both became widely available in early 1983.   By the time most kids would have been asking for a C64 in department stores, the //e would be what would be found at an Apple dealer.  I got my first ][+ in mid 1981, and the Commodore offerings at that time were the PET and CBM lines which were mostly monochrome block character graphics only and mute and without a game controller port or the VIC-20, which had color, bit mapped graphics and sound...  and the sound was even better than the Apple II, but the graphics resolution on the VIC-20 was limited mostly because they came with such little memory that they were largely useless for anything but cartridge games.  The C64 was indeed much more capable when it came out, but at first it had a very limited software selection so an Apple //e would actually have been a generally preferable gaming machine for kids until at least later in 1983 if not 1984.  And those 1541s....  sooooo slloooooow, espeically before the "fastloader" cartridges came out.

Khaibitgfx wrote:

Where I lived it was a sea of C64s, however I never owned one, go figure. 

Oh, C64s were super common where I lived too, but only from 1983 on, the same time as the //e was also fairly common.  The C64 was of course much, much cheaper, so a lot of people had them, but I guess I lived in a fairly afluent town (small town of about 40-50k that was mostly a State University town) because I knew probably just as many people who had Apple IIs as Commodores up until 1984 or 1985.  Another reason for that I guess was that there were two very active Apple dealers early on.  One of them was also a Commodore dealer during the PET/CBM days but more or less started to drop out pushing Commodore when the VIC-20 and C64 became Commodore's focus.  Those low end computers were mostly sold through retailers like Target and there were basically very slim margins which didn't allow "real" dealers enough profit to be worth messing with them.  The larger town that was the state capitol was about 30 miles away and Commodores were more common there because it was more blue collar.  I moved to the capitol "city" (if you can call it that, I guess maybe technically it is, although suburbs of the place I live now are larger) in 1990.  By then the PC clones were the most common thing and Apple dealers had mostly moved to Mac except for the K-12 market. The Apple II was still sold into K-12 until it was discontinued around there, and they were used in schools for years after that, although some schools districts started surplusing some by the mid to late 1990s.  Initially mostly older machines like ][+ and non-Enhanced //e that hadn't been upgraded.  In the early 2000s a lot of that stuff was dumped.  I wish I had the forethought to grab more because you could get a lot of stuff for free or nearly so.  Prices on most stuff didn't start to move upwards until several years later.  And of course there are still a lot of people who think it should all still be cheap or free.

I never owned a C64 until the late 1990s either.  I think I have two of them and a couple 1541s around somwhere, but none of them have been turned on in ages.  I had a VIC-20 at one time but I think my wife made me get rid of it along with a bunch of other stuff about 15 years ago or so when we were cleaning out the storage shed in the back yard.

I knew a few people back in those days who bought C128s because it could theoretically run CP/M, but a lot of them never did more than boot it up once or twice and never actually bought any CP/M software to run on it.  I can only remember one C128 owner who actually used CP/M on a regular basis.  One problem CP/M had was that there were so many different disk formats that packaging software was a huge issue.  Ironically the Apple II was according to number of Z80 cards sold, the #1 volume CP/M platform, but actually finding CP/M software in Apple II 140k floppy format was not that easy.  I suspect at finding CP/M software on floppy disks that a C128 could read was also a problem, especially if someone didn't have one of the better Commodore floppy drives like the 1571 which could read some of the more popular MFM formats like Osborne and Kaypro.  The issue of people buying CP/M for the Apple II and not really using it much if at all was also common.  The people who I knew were dedicated CP/M users on the Apple II often had bought non-Apple floppy drives which could read MFM formats similar to what Commodore's 1571 could.

Actually because there wasn't a lot of C128 native software either, most C128s were used most of the time in C64 mode.  It was kinda too bad, because the C128 was actually a fairly capable machine in its native mode and if you had one of the better floppy drives like the 1571 or 1581.  It was fairly feature matching to say, the //c.  Lack of availability of software that took advantage of the extra memory and 80 column capabilities for the C128 was really what held it back.  Even though it was way better than the C64 it never sold that well because Commodore buyers were so price conscious and most of them were really gamers who didn't use much serious software.