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I find it hard to believe that the Commodore 8-bit line would be competing w/ the IBM PC in any real sense. The natural upgrade path from a Commodore 8-bit was

• zerohp 8y ago
  A lot of Commodore users switched to the IBM PC because they wanted the same machine at home and at work. My father, for example, picked up an IBM XT but later also bought an Amiga as a second computer because the XT never really replaced the Commodore. It just allowed him to work at home.
• protomyth 8y ago
  Well, market share wise it was the leader when IBM brought the PC out in 81. IBM even straddled the whole 8-bit / 16-bit line with the 8088 instead of the 8086[1]. It was Commodore's game to lose and they didn't move into the 16 or 32-bit eras with a machine that stayed in the price range they had carved out. Both Commodore and Atari went for the $800 (ST) to $1,300 (Amiga) mark for their next generation, and Apple decided $2,495 was a great idea. Heck, Commodore's sequel to the C64 known as the C128 coupled the 8502 (better 6510 which was a better 6502) with another 8-bit chip in the Z80. They built a Frankenstein and not a natural upgrade. 1) a curse on all those that prevented IBM from using the 68000. Sure, use the 68000 in something that's supposed to act like a 370 but not in the PC where it would have saved us all a whole lot of crap.
  • zozbot123 8y ago
    The point of that Z80 chip was to support the CP/M platform, which was used for a lot of business and utility software pre-IBM PC. So, I'm not sure why you think that coupling the two was a bad idea.
    • protomyth 8y ago
      Because it was an 8-bit chip with no future in 1985 and CP/M was pretty much dead. Two 8-bit chips was just a bad idea.