It's here: a C64 Ultimate arrives at the bunker

Sunday, just before noon, a long white box with a black stripe and C64U at one end turned up on the sysop's doorstep. petscii.nw has its own Commodore 64 Ultimate.

Inside The Shipper

It came the way they ship: a brown outer carton marked SOLD AS A SET, DO NOT SEPARATE, and inside it the box itself, white with the black band across it. The side panel names the maker as MOS Technology, Inc., the same name that was on the 6502 chips inside the PET, the VIC-20 and the first 64. Net weight 3.3 kg. On the edge, three editions to tick and one ticked: BEIGE.

What It Is

The C64 Ultimate is Commodore's own new 64: the breadbin case and a real keyboard, with an FPGA inside that behaves like the original hardware cycle for cycle, HDMI out, two SID sockets, a turbo mode, WiFi and Ethernet. Ours is the BASIC Beige edition, the colour the 64 wore in 1982.

What Happens Next

Over the coming days we open it on camera, piece by piece, and post the unboxing and a video here in PETSCII News. Then it goes to work: the plan is to build the modern Sysop Room around it and have it call the board from the bunker. If you have a C64 Ultimate too, tell us about it in the message bases.