This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Commodore  PLUS 4 - C232/264/364 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

The C116 from what I can tell over here it was suppose to compete with cheap computers like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and in America the TIMEX SINCLAIR 1000

My dad found one of these on the top of a trash bin. It was meant to be found by someone who could put it to good use. He took it and gave it to me. It sat on the top of my cupboard for a decade. After watching videos of people like The 8-Bit Guy, I decided to refurbish it.
I cleaned it, added heatsinks, and so on. I managed to track down a 1531 datasette and a 1551 disk drive, both of which I refurbished myself. It was only the beginning of my Commodore refurbish mania :D

It was my second computer (bought in 1985 for about 540USD with 1702 CRT and 1541 floppy) after a self soldered Z80 clone. From the usability surely limited but it contained every software I wanted/needed in ROM. The spreadsheet was low compared to the competitors, but enough for me to do my stuff. Word editing was very simple (more like a simple editor) but great (compared to my Z80) and I learned how to use the printer ESCape sequences. I''d even use the colour plotter printer (Casio afair) I bought for my Z80 years before. I even wrote a fantasy book on it (1987) with about 400pages.
It was very hard to get the data''s I wrote converted from Floppy to PCs afterwards and a lot is still trapped on bad floppies.

Oh boy, that was my first computer. Failure for Commodore - maybe - but not for me it wasn''t. Thanks to relative lack of games it allowed me to start programming, hacking and cracking (thanks to the built in asm/debug tool). I have a lot of great memories. And there were games, too. I remember playing Mercenary, which was a proper 3d FPP game, with cool wireframe graphics.

I bought a used one for a hundred francs ( 15 euros) in 1989 2 years after my brother destroyed it. I was sick I would have killed him for that lol

I got one of these for Christmas in 1984 along with a 1541 disk drive, a 1702 monitor and an MPS-803 Printer and some C64 games. I was seriously bummed when the games wouldn''t work. My folks bought it because the store was out of C64s and he said that this would fill the bill. It didn''t. It was just as limited as the description states. I did like the default color scheme (blue border, white background, black cursor) better than that of the C64 (pale blue boarder and cursor with a light blue background), however.

I found one of these in the trash today...took it home...hooked it up and it worked...never seen this old of a computer in person...its pretty awesome.

Sweet memories! I bought this computer together with cassette device 1988 from Germany. It was very nice ... I even got some magazines with software. Later I also got floppy 1541... You may not believe, but I still have them!!!

This was my first computer. I was to young to remember now when I got this but it shaped my future. I got only one game for it (text only RPG) but I did not manage to pass the first page :-). It had an assembler compiler. I wrote a program to scroll the screen to the left or right (this was extremely slow). I also experimented with basic and wrote a program to jump with the horse in each field of teh chess board only once. It took I think many minutes to find a solution (maybe over an hour) but it did find many :-) I did start my programming carier with this :-) but I think it was the worst computer I could get, useless for games. I moved to PCs few years later.

This was my first computer. I was to young to remember now when I got this but it shaped my future. I got only one game for it (text only RPG) but I did not manage to pass the first page :-). It had an assembler compiler. I wrote a program to scroll the screen to the left or right (this was extremely slow). I also experimented with basic and wrote a program to jump with the horse in each field of teh chess board only once. It took I think many minutes to find a solution (maybe over an hour) but it did find many :-) I did start my programming carier with this :-) but I think it was the worst computer I could get, useless for games. I moved to PCs few years later.

The first time I saw one of these was at a store called Service Merchandise, now out of business, along with the C16. My understanding about this machine was that it was developed shortly before Jack Tramiel and his sons were ousted from Commodore. Tramiel had a specific plan for marketing the C16 and Plus 4 but was given the boot before he could pull it off. The management at Commodore had no idea what his intentions were for the two new machines so they marketed them the same way as the C64 which was a big mistake as they were never intended to compete in that market. Tramiel intended to sell them at higher margins than the C64 to business users. All the fancy graphic and sound capabilities of the C64 weren''t seen as necessary for business, which was why they were omitted.

I must give the Plus 4 it''s due. The included Basic was extremely powerful compared to other 8-bit Basics of the day (the BBC Micro sold in the UK had the only 8-bit Basic that I have seen that was more powerful) and the memory space available to programmers on the Plus 4 was unprecedented in a 64k machine. Nearly 60k was available for programs. The real downfall of the machine, though, was software. The majority of programs were written for the C16, which was seen as the mass market machine, so not much was available that took full advantage of the Plus 4''s additional memory. Incompatibility with C64 peripherals was also a big issue.

I''ve found the C16/Plus 4 family models to be more popular in the UK than the US. You can still find the black cassette and floppy drives made for the Plus 4 sometimes and there''s usually software on ebay UK every day of the week. You don''t see much on ebay US for these machines at all, ever.

I Remember going into K-mart and seeing this for the first time then playing with it and I have to tell you that I thought it was so awesome and having built in programs to , man!! I was in heaven. Only having a Vic-20 at the time this system was mind blowing , I never got one,but I sure did dream about it , funny I now have two of them .....lol ...

Plus/4 is the computer I grew up with. My parents ordered it from Germany somewhere around 1987, and I believe it costed little over $100 (came with two joysticks and a tape). It was nothing spectacular compared to some other systems of the time, but it did have nifty BASIC and some fun games. Mostly a computer people bought for their small kids.

I had one of these in the mid/late 1980s, when they were recognised as a commercial failure and were being sold for relatively cheap (£80 if I remember rightly). I absolutely loved mine. As a Spectrum fan who liked to program in BASIC, I wouldn't have touched a C64 at the time, but this machine with the same memory and a decent BASIC language (as well as a machine code monitor/assembler), was very different. I only wish I had room for one now!

I am a bit of a retro collector and I am looking for a power adaptor for a Commodore +4. Does anyone know where I can still get hold of this sort of equipment

Hi Dave, I am very interested in any informations about the IFR Flight Simulator and Rug Ride. Do you still have these two games?

The Plus-4 was my first home computer. Purchased at Sears with the Diskette Drive and Printer as a bundle. It worked great. Served well as a word processor for letters (no graphics) as a spreadsheet for checkbook and (gasp) taxes, and even the database for addresses. I enjoyed games like Jack Attack, Zork, Rug Rider and a IFR Flight Simulator (no visuals, only text clues) and a fine 2 person fighter pilot game. It served as home office and video game machine - plugged into a portable color TV as a monitor. Sadly the membrane keyboard faded, lost a few critical key contacts and was retired. But we loved it. As a geek/packrat, I recently found it in a box. Aug. 2004 Some years later, the company I worked at purchased one of the vacuum systems Commodore had used in production from a broker and used it to good effect.

I just picked up a Plus 4 at Saint Vinnies in its origional box with all the manuals. After a few minutes spent on hooking it up to the [gasp] TV it fired right up. Not to bad for $2.10, eh!