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Commodore did have a fair bit of compatibility within the PET/CBM line. The C128 is a good example of how Commodore did compatibility wrong. Instead of creatin

Commodore did have a fair bit of compatibility within the PET/CBM line. The C128 is a good example of how Commodore did compatibility wrong. Instead of creating a 100% C64 compatible mode, separate from the C128 mode, they should have taken the C64 and added a second bank of 64K of RAM, an MMU, an enhanced VIC-III with added registers for the enhanced graphics (eg. colors, resolutions, sprites), a second SID, a 2 MHz CPU, an enhanced KERNAL, and an enhanced BASIC that had the same tokens as BASIC v2. While C128 mode was very similar to the C64 mode, it wasn't enough to run hardly any C64 apps and games without modifications. I don't blame Bil Herd for what the C128 is though. It is a great computer, especially considering he was fighting the top levels of Commodore to get it out the door. If he'd had more support, it could have been better.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I feel like the right way to do it would have been to have shipped a C64 compatibility mode in the Amiga, instead. An A500+ with a 100% C64 compatible mode capable of running a C64 in a window even, IMHO would have been great product that could have sold like gangbusters because the C64 was still a hot selling product right through the late 80s. I can't imagine it would have been that expensive to do given how well understood the C64 architecture was at that point. Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000. Like the IIgs but with even better sound and graphics.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000. This would be a huge mistake. The 68000 was much more elegant and had a way forward, something the 65816 never had. Had they gone the 65816 route, there would never be an Amiga with a better CPU except, maybe, a faster one. And the whole Amiga 1000/2000/500/600 was saddled with TV signal timing dependencies that made it more difficult to have better graphics and ended up having to play catch-up with VGA and Sound Blaster.
  - rasz 5y ago
    65816 at 7MHz would be faster than 68000 despite 8 bit databus. one modified for full 16bit would fly circles around motorola. Bill Mensch would have no problem extending and growing this chip as long as Commodore was buying. 65816 already has reserved mnemonic for expanding instruction set further.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      The 65816 (much like the 6502 before it) punched way above its weight, but that'd not be enough in the long term. There was a point neither IBM nor Motorola cared about making PPC CPUs for Apple - that's why Apple moved to Intel. Moving to a bespoke, Apple-only CPU, would only precipitate things by making a series of CPUs just for Apple. Not sure WDC would be able to rival the investment of the big CPU shops of the time. If, instead of tapping WDC they went to MOS with a roadmap that could accommodate both Apple and Commodore, maybe history would be different. In either case, these are parallel universes I'd love to observe.
rbanffy 5y ago
> an enhanced VIC-III This chip wasn't ready when they were building the C128. It was later included in the C65. But, apart from that, there is a lot Commodore could have done incrementally with the C64, making it iteratively more functional without breaking backwards compatibility that the company simply didn't want to. > he was fighting the top levels of Commodore The 128 shares a lot of sins with the Apple /// and comes from a very similar story. At least Apple learned something from the /// and made the //e, //c, //c+, and the IIgs (lovely, albeit kludgy, machine, which was an absolutely idiotic project that only took resources away from the Mac). Computer for computer, an LC with Apple //e PDS board was a smarter choice.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  IIgs was a lovely machine that was kludged and handicapped because they didn't want to take resources away from the Mac. They could easily have clocked it up 4mhz or higher and had a much more capable machine. But my understanding is they didn't want to eat into Macintosh market share. But schools here in Canada at least were highly invested in the Apple II, and my school acquired a whole fleet of IIgs machines. They were pretty nice actually. If they'd clocked it higher it would have been a very worth competitor for Amiga and Atari ST. But they didn't. They also priced it too high for what it was.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    As a Canadian I am surprised to hear schools, "were highly invested in the Apple II". In Ontario and any other province I've heard about, Commodore PET, VIC-20 and 64 were nearly ubiquitous. What province were you living in? Even if clocked higher, the IIgs didn't have the video power to compete with the Amiga. No blitter, sprites, or hardware scrolling. What Apple product wasn't priced too high? Always have been, since day one.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > handicapped because they didn't want to take resources away from the Mac. They had resources. The IIgs had a ROM Toolbox, a lot of hardware and was, overall, a very complicated machine that took multiple iterations to be developed. Apple was trying to make a 16-bit Apple II since before the Mac. That they didn't want it to take sales from the Mac, makes sense. The IIgs was an evolutionary dead-end. There was no successor for the 65816. No matter what they did with the 65816, it'd still have segmented memory, few registers (somewhat aleviated by the single-byte address trick) and no way forward - no MMU, no FPU. WDC still makes them, and never made a 65832 or 65864. The ST and Amiga were excellent opportunities thrown away. Commodore could have the 3000 be the entry-level Unix workstation Sun would sell and, with that, gain a foothold of the technical and financial desktop market. Commodore had the professional video market thanks to the Video Toaster, but made machines where the Toaster wouldn't fit. Atari, OTOH, made a couple decent workstations, but never invested much in anything beyond gaming machines with tiny monitors. It found a niche in the Music segment thanks to its MIDI interfaces, the same way the Mac survived because if was at the right place to take hold in low-end publishing.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

I feel like the right way to do it would have been to have shipped a C64 compatibility mode in the Amiga, instead. An A500+ with a 100% C64 compatible mode capable of running a C64 in a window even, IMHO would have been great product that could have sold like gangbusters because the C64 was still a hot selling product right through the late 80s. I can't imagine it would have been that expensive to do given how well understood the C64 architecture was at that point. Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000. Like the IIgs but with even better sound and graphics.

rbanffy 5y ago
> Either that or have built the Amiga around a 65816 or similar instead of 68000. This would be a huge mistake. The 68000 was much more elegant and had a way forward, something the 65816 never had. Had they gone the 65816 route, there would never be an Amiga with a better CPU except, maybe, a faster one. And the whole Amiga 1000/2000/500/600 was saddled with TV signal timing dependencies that made it more difficult to have better graphics and ended up having to play catch-up with VGA and Sound Blaster.
- rasz 5y ago
  65816 at 7MHz would be faster than 68000 despite 8 bit databus. one modified for full 16bit would fly circles around motorola. Bill Mensch would have no problem extending and growing this chip as long as Commodore was buying. 65816 already has reserved mnemonic for expanding instruction set further.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The 65816 (much like the 6502 before it) punched way above its weight, but that'd not be enough in the long term. There was a point neither IBM nor Motorola cared about making PPC CPUs for Apple - that's why Apple moved to Intel. Moving to a bespoke, Apple-only CPU, would only precipitate things by making a series of CPUs just for Apple. Not sure WDC would be able to rival the investment of the big CPU shops of the time. If, instead of tapping WDC they went to MOS with a roadmap that could accommodate both Apple and Commodore, maybe history would be different. In either case, these are parallel universes I'd love to observe.

rbanffy 5y ago

> an enhanced VIC-III This chip wasn't ready when they were building the C128. It was later included in the C65. But, apart from that, there is a lot Commodore could have done incrementally with the C64, making it iteratively more functional without breaking backwards compatibility that the company simply didn't want to. > he was fighting the top levels of Commodore The 128 shares a lot of sins with the Apple /// and comes from a very similar story. At least Apple learned something from the /// and made the //e, //c, //c+, and the IIgs (lovely, albeit kludgy, machine, which was an absolutely idiotic project that only took resources away from the Mac). Computer for computer, an LC with Apple //e PDS board was a smarter choice.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
IIgs was a lovely machine that was kludged and handicapped because they didn't want to take resources away from the Mac. They could easily have clocked it up 4mhz or higher and had a much more capable machine. But my understanding is they didn't want to eat into Macintosh market share. But schools here in Canada at least were highly invested in the Apple II, and my school acquired a whole fleet of IIgs machines. They were pretty nice actually. If they'd clocked it higher it would have been a very worth competitor for Amiga and Atari ST. But they didn't. They also priced it too high for what it was.
- timbit42 5y ago
  As a Canadian I am surprised to hear schools, "were highly invested in the Apple II". In Ontario and any other province I've heard about, Commodore PET, VIC-20 and 64 were nearly ubiquitous. What province were you living in? Even if clocked higher, the IIgs didn't have the video power to compete with the Amiga. No blitter, sprites, or hardware scrolling. What Apple product wasn't priced too high? Always have been, since day one.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > handicapped because they didn't want to take resources away from the Mac. They had resources. The IIgs had a ROM Toolbox, a lot of hardware and was, overall, a very complicated machine that took multiple iterations to be developed. Apple was trying to make a 16-bit Apple II since before the Mac. That they didn't want it to take sales from the Mac, makes sense. The IIgs was an evolutionary dead-end. There was no successor for the 65816. No matter what they did with the 65816, it'd still have segmented memory, few registers (somewhat aleviated by the single-byte address trick) and no way forward - no MMU, no FPU. WDC still makes them, and never made a 65832 or 65864. The ST and Amiga were excellent opportunities thrown away. Commodore could have the 3000 be the entry-level Unix workstation Sun would sell and, with that, gain a foothold of the technical and financial desktop market. Commodore had the professional video market thanks to the Video Toaster, but made machines where the Toaster wouldn't fit. Atari, OTOH, made a couple decent workstations, but never invested much in anything beyond gaming machines with tiny monitors. It found a niche in the Music segment thanks to its MIDI interfaces, the same way the Mac survived because if was at the right place to take hold in low-end publishing.