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Sun surpassed Commodore in revenue first a couple of years after the Amiga launched, I think? Though with the management chaos at Commodore maybe the Sun marke

by vidarh 3y ago

Sun surpassed Commodore in revenue first a couple of years after the Amiga launched, I think? Though with the management chaos at Commodore maybe the Sun market cap had already surpassed them? At the point Sun hit revenue parity Sun was one of the fastest growing tech companies, and Commodore had never reclaimed the peak revenue it reaches in 1984 (when it exceeded a billion USD), and so I'm not surprised it didn't seem attractive by the time it might have been financially possible.

ChuckMcM 3y ago
At the time (early 90's) Commodore was very much struggling. Since I knew their hardware team and had a lot of respect for them, and they were 68K based and seriously considering doing UNIX workstation level like things, my pitch to the corp dev folks was for a "modest" investment, Sun could produce an economical workstation that leaned in on hardware acceleration (important note: Andy Bechtolsheim was a huge "don't bother with custom chips, CPUs will get fast enough" person) and gave Sun a way to create a flanking attack on Windows. Here's an OS that doesn't have the baggage of SunOS, can compete head to head with DOS, and cause Microsoft pain trying to swat it away. Apparently it wasn't compelling enough of a pitch :-) But then again it was one of those times where I got a lesson in how folks cannot see what they cannot see.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Thanks for the added detail. It makes for another interesting "what if" in the very, very many missed opportunities in the Commodore saga...
- smackeyacky 3y ago
  They did do a workstation level Amiga - the A4000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 It was just a little too late as the workstation market was drying up and they arrived with a Sun 3/50 competitor in a market that Sun had already started to walk away from. You could buy alternate CPU for the A4000 as it had the CPU installed on a daughter card and I think you could get a PowerPC setup in that chassis.
  - ChuckMcM 3y ago
    I am aware :-). It was the direction Amiga (although not Commodore) was headed. The key is that Commodore didn't see it as strategic nor could they justify re-organizing around it once the end of the runway was pretty clear.

by vidarh 3y ago

ChuckMcM 3y ago

At the time (early 90's) Commodore was very much struggling. Since I knew their hardware team and had a lot of respect for them, and they were 68K based and seriously considering doing UNIX workstation level like things, my pitch to the corp dev folks was for a "modest" investment, Sun could produce an economical workstation that leaned in on hardware acceleration (important note: Andy Bechtolsheim was a huge "don't bother with custom chips, CPUs will get fast enough" person) and gave Sun a way to create a flanking attack on Windows. Here's an OS that doesn't have the baggage of SunOS, can compete head to head with DOS, and cause Microsoft pain trying to swat it away. Apparently it wasn't compelling enough of a pitch :-) But then again it was one of those times where I got a lesson in how folks cannot see what they cannot see.

vidarh 3y ago
Thanks for the added detail. It makes for another interesting "what if" in the very, very many missed opportunities in the Commodore saga...
smackeyacky 3y ago
They did do a workstation level Amiga - the A4000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 It was just a little too late as the workstation market was drying up and they arrived with a Sun 3/50 competitor in a market that Sun had already started to walk away from. You could buy alternate CPU for the A4000 as it had the CPU installed on a daughter card and I think you could get a PowerPC setup in that chassis.
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  I am aware :-). It was the direction Amiga (although not Commodore) was headed. The key is that Commodore didn't see it as strategic nor could they justify re-organizing around it once the end of the runway was pretty clear.