3 ms·

my HAD comment: 'design started in 1989? Commodore was so mismanaged its not even funny :( Another pointless pet project like C128 (I had one, what a piece of

by rasz_pl 12y ago

my HAD comment: 'design started in 1989? Commodore was so mismanaged its not even funny :( Another pointless pet project like C128 (I had one, what a piece of shit, there was pretty much no c128 soft so you ran it in c64 mode all the time, at twice the price). They were already selling Amiga 500 in 89, and you could go out and buy 386DX 40MHz or first 486s. What were they smoking to come up with 3MHz 8bit computer when market moved on to 16/32 bit? Commodore didnt know what they had when they took over Amiga :( and kept wasting money and R&D on pos like this.' Just to reiterate, post Jack Tramiel Commodore hired new CEO with industrial construction background who knew F-all about computers or business. This new CEO canned completed and almost ready for production Commodore laptop project because Tandy CEO told him there is no money to be made in laptops (while selling HUGELY popular TRS-80 Model 100) ... This is like GM calling Musk, and convincing him to cancel Model 3 because there is no money to be made in ~30K electric cars, while selling Volt and planning Bolt.

kw71 12y ago
> What were they smoking to come up with 3MHz 8bit computer when market moved on to 16/32 bit? I think the A500 cost more than 8-bit money, and back then a barebones 386 from a computer shopper ad cost about the same. Add VGA, monitor, sound card, hard disk and you far exceeded the A500 cost and there still weren't many good arcade type games for the PC. They probably wanted to sell to gamer-pirates. I remember thinking NES users were getting shafted buying $40 rom chips, when 100 floppies cost $25 and some of my friends had huge libraries to copy and trade. Edit: I liked the C128. I used CP/M on it at times. Ultima V was cooler to play in 128 mode. 80 columns, wow, I used that all the time with a 128-mode terminal (was it "desterm?"), some word processor I can't remember now, and GEOS was better except that it did not know how to handle the display aspect.
sgt 12y ago
The jury's still out on that one, though. Maybe there is no money to be made in ~30K electric cars. :-) But I am almost certain that's not true.
vidarh 12y ago
Commodore 64 was still selling very well in '89 (1.5 million in '88 - I don't know specific numbers for '89), and continued selling well enough that Commodore kept manufacturing them right up until their bankruptcy in 1994. You can say a lot - mostly bad - things about Commodore management, but they had actual hard sales numbers that demonstrated that there still was a market for a really cheap entry-level computer in 1989. Their big problem was figuring out what to do in that space.

by rasz_pl 12y ago

kw71 12y ago

> What were they smoking to come up with 3MHz 8bit computer when market moved on to 16/32 bit? I think the A500 cost more than 8-bit money, and back then a barebones 386 from a computer shopper ad cost about the same. Add VGA, monitor, sound card, hard disk and you far exceeded the A500 cost and there still weren't many good arcade type games for the PC. They probably wanted to sell to gamer-pirates. I remember thinking NES users were getting shafted buying $40 rom chips, when 100 floppies cost $25 and some of my friends had huge libraries to copy and trade. Edit: I liked the C128. I used CP/M on it at times. Ultima V was cooler to play in 128 mode. 80 columns, wow, I used that all the time with a 128-mode terminal (was it "desterm?"), some word processor I can't remember now, and GEOS was better except that it did not know how to handle the display aspect.

sgt 12y ago

The jury's still out on that one, though. Maybe there is no money to be made in ~30K electric cars. :-) But I am almost certain that's not true.

vidarh 12y ago

Commodore 64 was still selling very well in '89 (1.5 million in '88 - I don't know specific numbers for '89), and continued selling well enough that Commodore kept manufacturing them right up until their bankruptcy in 1994. You can say a lot - mostly bad - things about Commodore management, but they had actual hard sales numbers that demonstrated that there still was a market for a really cheap entry-level computer in 1989. Their big problem was figuring out what to do in that space.