The KERNAL already supplied with the Commodore 64 had enough basic functionality to be considered an operating system and not just a "monitor":
- Devices were addressed by a primary address (0-31) and secondary address (meaning=device specific)
- You had basic I/O calls: OPEN, LOAD/SAVE (read/write a block of memory), CHRIN/CHROUT (read/write a character), READST (get I/O status), and CLOSE.
- You had the default input and output device and those could be redirected to a file (CHKIN/CHKOUT)
- It was totally possible to open the keyboard for input (device 0) and screen for output (device 3) and get basic buffered terminal-like I/O.
Now if you want to talk about windowed event-driven GUI, now that was crazy for 1982. But Commodore 64 users were lucky to get the above, as Commodore was all about cost cutting, time to market, and underpricing the competition with the 64. Developing a GUI-like environment would have been seen as an unnecessary cost - after all Commodore 64 was stuck with BASIC 2.0 which was primitive even for the time (other Commodores had higher BASICs). That's why an external entity like GEOS really had to come along and do it, because Commodore just wanted to sell as many as possible, and they did that spectacularly well.
It's a new OS designed from the ground up for the Commodore 64 by Gregorio Naçu [1]. A video does it more justice [2]. There's an active Discord as well.
I wish someone decided to make ZX Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64 again. Those were my childhood micros and I'd love to have them. And by "make them again", I don't mean "stick an emulator on a Raspberry Pi and then stick that Pi inside a shell that resembles those micros", I mean make the exact same hardware again.
Both were produced in very respectable numbers so they are not that expensive to buy used these days, despite the recent appetite for retro HW. Approximately 100 USD.
Yes, but if you want to repair a C64 with a broken SID or build a C64 from scratch, it's a decent replacement part even though it's on-chip emulation and not exactly the same sound as a real SID chip.
(Besides, even real SID chips are different from each other.)
I would rather see a 6502- or Z80-based smartwatch platform, honestly. It would totally fit the performance class of those chips, and you could even have some meaningful compatibility with the old 8-bit systems.
Genuine question… Could Commodore have made an OS like this in 1982, if they had today’s perspective?