MAX Machine

The Commodore MAX Machine, also known as Ultimax in the United States and Canada and VC-10 in Germany, is a home computer made by Commodore International. It came out in Japan in early 1982 as the Commodore 64's predecessor. Commodore may have wanted to sell it outside of Japan, as its name was in the Commodore 64 manual. It was first shown in Tokyo, and as Commodore VICKEY. It is rare, selling much less than the Commodore 64 and being discontinued in the same year.

Hardware
Software came on ROM cartridges. It has a membrane keyboard, 2 KiB of RAM and 0.5 KiB of color RAM (1024 × 4 bits). A television is used as a display. The Commodore 64 has the same chipset, 6510 CPU and SID sound chip, and has a compatibility mode, which was often used for "freezer" cartridges, such as the Action Replay, to easily allow control of the running program. Tape drives (for storage) worked, but not disk drives, printers or modems due to not having the right serial and user ports.

250px|thumb|right|MAX Machine, accessories and retail packaging.

Business
It was going to cost about 200 USD. It had better graphics and sound, but Commodore's own VIC-20 was much more popular. It was costing about the same and with much more expandability and software titles. It also had a better keyboard.

Related pages
 Commodore 64
 Commodore 64 Games System

References

Other websites

The UltiMax machine (a.k.a. VIC-10)
The MAX Machine, the odd one out

Category:Historical computers
Category:Commodore computers