What NEURA/8 is
NEURA/8 is the Commodore 64 rebuilt entirely in software, and in time the whole Commodore family with it. Every chip inside the machine is recreated, cycle by cycle: the processor, the picture chip, the sound chip, the disk drive and the tape deck. It runs in your web browser, with nothing to install.
It isn't a video of a Commodore, or a collection of old files. It's the computer itself, working. Switch it on and you get READY. Load a program from 1984 and it runs exactly as it did then.
The machines that started it all
In the 1980s, a beige keyboard plugged into the family television changed millions of lives. Commodore built the machines: the PET, the VIC-20, the 64, the 128, the Plus/4, and later the Amiga. People built a world around them: the bulletin boards they dialled at midnight, the users groups that met in library basements, the disks traded hand to hand, and the programs typed in from magazines one line at a time.
NEURA/8 exists to keep those machines, and that world, alive.
Why now
The machines are forty years old. The disks are fading, the drives are wearing out, and the people who remember how it all worked are getting older. Commodore's machines deserve better than a glass case in a museum. They deserve to be switched on and used, by the people who loved them and by people meeting them for the first time.
How we build it
Ours.
Every line of NEURA/8 is written by us, from the chips to the ROMs the machines start up with. None of Commodore's code is copied. That is what lets us put these machines on the open web, free for anyone to use.
Exact.
The machines should behave as Commodore's did, down to the details programs depend on. Commodore's machines are the standard we hold ourselves to.
Checked against the real thing.
Before a machine is called finished, the same programs run on Commodore's original and on ours, side by side, and everything a program can see is compared. Every difference is fixed or written down with its reason.
Tested in public.
Hundreds of tests run on every build, and the results are published.
Documented.
Every part is written up in plain language, in a manual anyone can read.
Period-correct.
The screens, the sounds, the speed, the quirks: as they were, not as we would improve them.
Where it is going
- petscii.nw. The Commodore bulletin board, live again. Call the board, browse the Software Library, run any title in your browser, and meet the people who were there.
- neura8.nw. The home of the engine itself: the manual, the test results and the work in progress, all in the open.
- More machines. The 64 comes first, then the VIC-20, the PET, the Plus/4, the 128, the 1541 drive and the Amiga.
- On your site too. Publishers drop NEURA/8 onto their own pages to launch new games, music and tools, running exactly as they would on the real machine.
Who we are
NEURA/8 is built by NeuraWeb Global, Inc. It was founded by S. Vincent Anthony, the company's chairman, chief executive and chief visionary.
Chief Visionary
I was twelve when a Commodore turned up at my school. I don't know whether someone donated it or the school bought it. I just remember switching it on for the first time and thinking, this is cool. Then I found the modem: you could dial in, leave messages, talk to people. That hooked me.
Then I wanted to know what made it work. I took it apart and put it back together, pulled the EPROMs and plugged them back in, and learned how the ROMs, the drives and the floppies made it tick. Over the next six years I had them all: the Plus/4, the 128, the Amiga.
Then I joined the service, an IBM PC landed on my desk, and there was a living to earn. The Commodore got left behind. It's been 42 years since I last switched one on, but I haven't forgotten any of it.
NEURA/8 isn't competing with Commodore. It keeps their machines running, exactly as they were, for people today. We are here because what Commodore made mattered, and it still does.
Join us
Whether you had a breadbin in 1984 or you're seeing READY. for the first time, there's a seat for you. Come and run something.