LumaFix64: Commodore 64 with less stripes

Not really, IMHO - the C64 is as if made for tinkering; if you want to design hardware to interact with or enhance a computer, the C64 is the place to go; just about every conceivable signal is easily accessible, a lot of the chips are in sockets, rather than soldered in (thus easily replaceable or, for that matter, simpler to break signals out of).

In addition, 6510 assembly is pretty straightforward getting into, so writing your own software to make use of the hardware you just designed and built is not unsurmountable for a hobbyist.

Heck, I still play with my C64 on occasion.

> I find it amazing people are still producing new things for the C64,

With his USER and EXPANSION ports, the Commodore 64 was designed from the ground up to be expandable, and to be used as a controller, either in industrial applications (controlling traffic lights, for example), or as a complete house systems controller.

Not just the C64, but also the more archaic 8-bit machines still get a lot of love and attention from those of us who still keep the machines running.

Writing code on these machines is still a very rewarding activity. Maybe not financially, but certainly the fun of actually doing something that was once considered impossible on these machines, is just really, really fun.

Myself, I'm an Oric-1/Atmos fan. http://oric.org/ has an absolutely astonishing amount of software for the machines, which barely made a ping in the 8-bit wars, and the fine folks at http://defence-force.org/ continue to bring new titles to the platform. More fun to be had with an old computer now than ever before .. after all, old computers never die. The users do!

Yeah, when I got back into C64 computing a couple years ago, I was blown away at how much was still happening. I've got a MIDI interface and synth program on a cartridge (MSSIAH) and an SD card "hard drive" SD2IEC, which provides faster and more storage than even the most elaborate C64 setup back in the day (and I knew people with CMD hard disks, who ran large BBSes on their C64s, including a multiline C64 BBS, which was quite a feat back then, requiring multiple computers).

not really, it's the intensity of the stripes rather than their count that is reduced