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Ask HN: Would the C128 have been more successful with only one mode?
In particular, it could have had just a C64-compatible mode but with more memory and an advanced BASIC for C128-specific programs that could take advantage of these enhancements.
Would this have given the C128 more focus and resulted in more sales?
- rurban 2y agoThe C128 was commercially successful, the C264 was the stink.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThis computer which was similar to the C128 https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46843/Tandy-Color-Computer-3-(CoCo-3)/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46843/Tandy-Color-Co... was highly compatible with the earlier TRS-80 Color Computer and didn't have a special compatibility mode. The C128 was more radical though because it added another CPU and compatibility with CP/M software. I think those "8 bit" machines were on the run at that point. There just had been an attempt to make super-low cost machines to compete with the Timex-Sinclair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 which resulted in machines like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_MC-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_MC-10 but the world was really going in the opposite direction of a computer that was more expensive and a lot more capable in the guise of the "PC Compatible". In 1981 you could point to CP/M as the high end microcomputer OS for business applications but in 1985 when the C128 came out, the business software market was moving decisively towards MS-DOS and the PC. So I'd say putting the Z-80 in the C128 was a mistake, particularly because the Z-80 didn't add anything when the machine wasn't in its third mode, had it been a coprocessor which made the C128 mode better it might have been a different story.