The Commodore 64 is one of the most successful computers in history, if not the most successful one. It was produced between 1982 and 1993, and about twenty million were sold. It cost about $600. The Commodore 64 continued to be used till about 1996/97. After that, little new was developed for it any more, until the start of the retro scene in the Millennium.
There is also a list of C64 Games.
Apart from its low price, the graphics capabilities of the Commodore 64 were its greatest strength. Most games used chracter-based graphics. There were 40×25 chracters on the screen. They could be 8×8 pixels monochrome or 4×8 pixels in four colors. The background color had to be the same for the whole screen, the other colors could be freely chosen from the C64's 16-color palette, and you could mix color and monochrome characters on one screen.
Additionally there were eight hardware sprites, which could be monochrome 24×21 or color 12×21. For color sprites, two colors had to be the same for them all, while the third could be chosen individually for each sprite. (Obviously, the forth color was the transparent background color.)
The palette set the C64 apart, too. While nearly all the other 8-bit platforms had rather garish palettes (usually containing first and foremost the eight colors that result when you set red, green and blue either to full brightness or leave it off completely), the Commodore 64 had a rather subdued palette making it good in representing things like earth or skin. At least before the Amiga, no system was better fit for creating art.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reconstruct this palette, since the C64 did not use RGB value, but composite video. Composite video treats brightness (luminence) and color (chrominence) seperately. This is important for television, where the signal has to be compatible with both color and black-and-white displays. But in this case, it results in nearly every emulator having its own palette.
Unless you actually owned one of these machines once and are fairly familiar with it, C64 emulation can be a very frustrating experience. Especially since the authors of these emulators seem to be intent on making them as close to the original as ever possible. Meaning, for example, that if you have finally figured out how to open a disk image in your emulator—nothing will happen. For minutes. Because that is how long it would have taken the original C64 to load the original disk or tape.
As for the system requirements of these emulators, I have found no statements, except for C64S. It is an interesting question: What kind of performance do you need to emulate a computer with 64kB RAM and a 1MHz CPU? C64S is content with a fast 386, about 40MHz.
ADemoin the traditional sense is essentially a demonstration program that shows off a certain ability of the computer, or a new programming technique or effect. Demos have developed into a hobby for many of our programmers (which explains some of their lazy attitudes!) and as such are more artistic rather than technologically advanced. This is true of most demos today, and so they are evaluated based on the overall quality of the finished production, and of course their enjoyability (which obviously varies from person to person.) A "Demo Scene" exists on just about every computer platform, but the Commodore 64 was one of the first, if not the first computer to have a Demo Scene. It began soon after the computer was first sold (about 1979 or so) and still grows today!—The Renegade Programming Group
The Commodore 64 had an especially lively demo scene. Demos are visual sequences with synthesized music and were written for many platforms in the first half of the nineties. They had their origin in the intros put before cracked games, but soon got a life completely of their own.
When someone had cracked a game, an intro was often put in front of the game that showed who had cracked that game. Since it was illegal, the crackers used alias instead like Mr. Z and Strider. From these intros, people started to make more and more advanced effects. Out of this, the demo was born. A demo is a program where the makers shows their abilities of doing things with the computer. Slowly but surely, a network started to grow all over the world with people making demos and cracking games. The "C64 scene" was a fact. In the middle of the 80's, people started to get together and meet each other on so called copy parties.—The Spy's Commodore 64 World
A few demo group websites still exist:
Somehow I can't help the feeling that the Commodore 64 isn't completely dead. Here are a few links I found on the site of an Austrian newspaper, and some more.
The Commodore One computer started off as a 2002 enhanced adaptation of the Commodore 64 - the most sold of any computer model (Guiness book of World Records) While retaining almost all of the original's capabilities the Commodore One adds modern features, interfacing and capabilities. The C-One fills a gap in the hobbyist computer market.
During development, it evolved into a re-configurable computer, a new class of computers where the chips do not have dedicated tasks any more. The two main chips carry out different tasks, depending on the needs of the program. The technology used is called FPGA - field programmable gate arrays. These chips can be programmed to do the tasks that the chips of the C-64 or other computers have done. It's no emulation, but it's a re-implementation of the chips that are no longer available since many years.
Contiki was originally written for the Commodore 64 system (1 MHz 8-bit 6510 CPU, 64 k RAM) but ports to a lot of systems are currently being developed by a bunch of developers: 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment system, PCEngine, Gameboy, Atari 8-bit, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Apple ][, VIC-20, CBM PET, Plus/4, Tandy CoCo, Sharp Wizard, Casio PocketViewer, Sega DreamCast and the Sony Playstation.
The possibility of connecting the Commodore 64 to an Ethernet local area network has been a collective dream in the Commodore community for decades. A C64 Ethernet adapter would make it possible to connect the C64 directly to the Internet, making it possible to download software, transfer data to and from the C64, play network games over the Internet; the possibilities are endless.
With our TFE cartridge (The Final Ethernet cartridge) this is now possible.
Most Commodore websites are about emulation and games, I found less histories and technical descriptions as for the Apple ][. Commodore.ca is a good page about the history of Commodore in general, and there is a Commodore 64 page at oldcomputers.net, but most of the links on it are broken.
They were the secret weapons! The unrealized phantasms of technological wonder! The ravings of mad geniuses made flesh and locked away in caverns of dust never to see the light of day! The demons that Tramiel forgot, to come tapping at their door even as the winds of oblivion beckon and spit!
There used to be a site called Sharkbite Online, with lots and lots of downloads. Many C64 sites still link to it, but it's gone.