Some time ago, I penned my Speaking in [Archaic] Tongues (BASIC) column, in which we discussed a company that was planning on releasing a full-size reboot of the legendary Commodore 64 (a little later we also discussed a Steampunk Commodore 64 in my AWBOS (A Whole Bunch of Stuff) column).

Known as THEC64, this bodacious beauty did indeed come to fruition. As I mentioned in my Retro-Computing Christmas column, since THEC64 wasn’t available in the USA at that time, my mom ordered one to be shipped to her in the UK. Once it arrived, she sent it on to me, and I’m currently having a lot of fun programming in BASIC and playing vintage games on this little beauty.

The reason for my wafflings here is that my chum, Jay Dowling, just sent me a link to this video from 2012 in which American entrepreneur and computer chip designer and inventor Jeri Ellsworth is strolling around a Makerfaire flaunting her Commodore 64-based bass guitar.

From Jeri’s Wikipedia page, I just discovered that she gained fame in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 system on a chip housed within a joystick, called C64 Direct-to-TV, which ran 30 video games from the early 1980s, and — at its peak — sold over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel.

Wow! That’s pretty good going. One day I hope to create something like that that sells like hot cakes and makes me a lot of money (hey, I can dream, can’t I?).