Jack Tramiel Part 2: The Commodore 64 vs The TI-99/4A and the American Computer Crash - Kim Justice

In the 2nd part of our look at Jack Tramiel, two more brilliant engineers help to create the Commodore 64, the company's most successful computer. Commodore and Texas Instruments engage in a brutal and bloody price war. Jack ends up getting on the wrong side of Irving Gould for the last time...and we have a bit of a look at the big American crash - the games had already happened, and now it was the computer's turn. Enjoy!
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[@Nostalgianerd]

Awesome, as always. This was an area I was a bit sketchy on, so this did the trick marvelously. Also, I love how the clips tie in so humorously with the narration, tying Gus to Tramiel particularly.

[@ProtosMerkabah]

When I heard Jack Tramiel's voice in this video, I never imagined that would be how he sounded. Yet another excellent episode!

[@98of99]

As usual, Kim does not disappoint. Extremely well done!

[@nicholas_scott]

"You Need a home Computer!". That is so true. My parents bought me the TI 99/4A in 1982 because that was supposed to turn me into a genius. But the games were terrible and using the tape drive was hassle. So they ended up buying me the C64 in 84, and that at least had way better games. Never played any of the "educational" apps they were hoping I'd use.

[@conradojavier]

it would take a turn of a Millennium to where Computers are Regularly used like Today.

[@robintst]

It was the opposite for us, my parents to this day are technophobes so back then, my older brother was the one saying we needed a computer and he started on a Timex Sinclair of all things. Once he got the VIC-20 it got me interested in computers too.

[@davedogge2280]

I bet you bought Elite for the Commodore 64 back in 1984.

[@Inaflap]

+Dave Dogge The C64 got its version of that game about 6 months after the BBC micro.... i.e. the spring of 1985.

[@davedogge2280]

Inaflap I could swear I saw a magazine review of Elite for the C64 in Zzap64 ! around Nov / Dec 1984. Let me check .. Nope .. I was wrong it was May 1985 ... www.zzap64.co.uk/zzapcovers/i1may85.jpg Stop the press, someone on the internet has just admitted that he's WRONG !

[@richardgadberry8398]

"The Commodore 64: Motivated By Nothing But Revenge" would've been one hell of a tagline.

[@RichardTroupe]

Another excellent video Kim! It makes me wish that the real Commodore company was still around today; to have someone as driven as Jack throughout their history would have been an asset to them, instead of what happened to them with Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould.

[@conradojavier]

Imagine a Commodore wanting to Bury Apple & Microsoft out of Business if they have a Competition Hungry CEO like Tramiel.

[@Horzuhammer]

Very high quality stuff yet again Kim. Love your clip choices.

[@davedogge2280]

It's funny how back in the day (the 1980s) the paper press (namely the video game magazines) used to just skip the nitty-gritty of Tramiel and other CEOs of 8-bit computers, this video series in a way finally brings closure to those mystery men of the past.

[@littleNorwegians]

I absolutely love these. Goes above and beyond what more "pure entertainment" video makers do. I like the informative, but with some wit and dry humour. Perfect for me.

[@wildbilltexas]

Awesome video Kim! As much as Commodore, TI, Apple, Atari and other companies tried so hard to convince everyone that they needed a home computer, computers like the C-64, TI-99/4A, Apple //, and CoCo were still seen by many older Americans (parents) as just toys for kids and geeks.

[@TheFavorista]

13:30-ish: There's an early episode of Married...With Children that directly pokes fun at this from the marketing standpoint (courtesy of their considerably wealthier yuppie neighbors), Al being talked into spending a small fortune on all of the peripherals, and of course none of the Bundys really using it or knowing how to use it after they get it.

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Hi Kim. Amazing stuff. I have been watching your recent shows with a lump in my throat because I've been working on a Lemon History of the Amiga myself. Its taken 18 months and a lot of hard work, but you seem to turn around in a week what it takes me a month to do, and your work looks a lot better than mine will ever look. I just dont have the touch I guess. Anyway, my documentary will be out in December, about Warners and Jack Vs Amiga, so I am biting my nails hoping the cat doesnt leap out of the bag before then, and spoil the surprises.

[@Kim_Justice]

Thank you for the comment. LemonAmiga is one of the greatest Amiga websites on the net and has helped me many a time...so if your perspective doesn't have any value, then whose does? Don't get downhearted or think that your own perspective and take on history is devalued. I look forward to seeing your documentary :)

[@LemonTubeAmiga]

Hi there Kim, I thought I had replied to this message (well, I said I had replied in my Introduction to Film 1.4), but in truth I am happy to leave the perspectives and juicy gossip to folk such as yourself, who do it Justice, and you know how to bat away a wry comment. I dont like verbal confrontation, so I tried to make sure my perspectives were left off the table, and we just hear stories and facts. That way I can always quote the facts to keep out of trouble. I made this having been inspired by your work, and also The Spectrum Show, as a way to tell the story with a few interesting twists, so I hope its not too boring. The Amiga Mickey story I was worried someone would leak before I told it, but other than that, I wanted this to be a tribute to those machine and to help investigative journalists and pioneering youtubers to have a head start in finding their own stories. I am pretty sure you covered the MSX story before, but I'd love to know more about the Osborne 1 story, the development of the TEDS and C128, the story of the 'Portable' computer, the story of the LCD computer. So I feel the more the merrier. Hope you had a nice Christmas and will continue your great work this year. As I was saying to someone the other day when your name came up, I fully respect everyone who brings these gifts to the retro community, and trying to keep everything in context and entertaining is a challenge for everyone. Please PM me on Lemon Amiga forums if you want the complete colour referenced script with all the dates, any of the images, artwork, PDFs, you name it. This project is now over for me, so you are most welcome to a free 'research pack'. I have RAR archived everything already, so just post and I'll send you the dropbox link :) Any feedback of course very welcome.

[@Kim_Justice]

LemonTubeAmiga Yes, as you say - we have differing styles on these things. The writer in me always builds people up to be almost like characters, to really build up a narrative and such - I always research dilligently in support of that, but I'll never be the most accurate out there and I'd never describe myself as a historian or anything like that - I'm not objective enough, haha :) I have not had the chance to watch your series in full yet, but from what I have seen it is absolutely sterling work, another fitting tribute to the greatest of machines. Thank you for the fantastic comment and the mention, and I'll be sure to take you up on that! All the best. -Kim

[@Rayofficial13565]

The TI-99/4A was an open platform if you distributed your software on floppies, but the floppy drive was a very expensive upgrade.

[@briantw]

The floppy drive served pretty much the same purpose as the cassette deck, so it didn't make the platform any more open. To program in assembly, you needed to add the 32K RAM upgrade and a floppy drive and the Editor/Assembler cartridge, which only came out in 1982.

[@LegionsAU]

All the Kefka music works well when played against Tramiel, i have to say.

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

My memory is a bit foggy, but didn't the C64 come with a BASIC handbook, so that people could start programming right away? There was another book, "Commodore 64: Programmer's Reference Guide", which is still considered the defacto standard for that machine. Some great memories are associated with that computer... and some silly ones, too: I remember loading some huge game on cassette (before I finally could afford the 1541 disk drive) and had to wait more than 5 minutes before it was finished. I'd get the loading started and then go watch TV in the living room until I could hear the theme song from the game start... Ah, those were the days! JW3HH

[@AudieHolland]

Yes.

[@akwalek]

Outstanding 2 part video. I grew up with the Amiga & have many fond memories. Really enjoyed your effort here. Cheers Kim.

[@MrHERNIOL]

Hands down this is the most interesting video game related channel on KZbin and you Kim deserve a lot wider recognition!

[@MrHERNIOL]

Also kudos for Motorhead in the background however I'm scared of watching the next part as I've only just started fourth season of Breaking Bad and already seen some unwanted spoilers :P

[@conradojavier]

Triple H.

[@davedogge2280]

For serious and interesting video game journalism the only ones I've ever found are Kim Justice, A Life Well Wasted (independent site) and The Point on GameSpot which has now moved as Danny O'Dwyer left the company last week, moved to the No Clip KZbin channel. Apart from those not much and occasionally Jim Sterling, but he's more like a consumer watchdog for video games and quite rightly so.

[@sluggotg]

Jack tramiel was a micro manager.. but he actually, knew talent. He was the reason the C64 became the unbelievable popular computer! He handpicked the guys to make it! He leveraged the 6502 CPU with the SID chip.. and his Japanese Company connections to create the awesome C64 computer. He owned MOS ...had access to memory chips. and a furniture company, (To create the PET computer...it was very nice looking..I own a PET and many, many C64s...and Amiga's!!!). Jack had his problems... but He is one of my heros... along with his sons!

[@mgabrysSF]

Good call on noticing home sales stalled. Without something like the internet (which was still called the Arpanet at the time and was closed off to home-use), the Home PC market stalled at 15% in the US during the 80s - and stayed stalled for a decade.

[@dwarfeatergoldvaultoverlor2233]

So this is the end of your Jack story for now? The Atari ST will be another documentary? Great stuff as usual, its crazy that he has each of his sons specialize in something different that will apply to the business, imagine Commodore run by the three Tramiels.

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

Jack Tramiel once said "The Japanese are coming, so we will become the Japanese."

[@StephenJ68]

Great work as always Kim! Seeing a new vid from you on my subscriptions is the highlight of my day

[@WarMomPT]

Awesome video; I've really enjoyed this two-parter, and share your sentiment that even if Tramiel did shitty things, god *damn* you had to admire just how effective he was at what he did. That man is freaking DRIVEN. And that's what has me hyped for part 3; I just want to know what this guy did. As an aside, you talk about how microcomputers required some rudimentary high-level code knowledge to work with them. It's always a bit shocking to think about how things were so different from the computers I've used. You did mention in another video that another system didn't have 'games software' as such, rather that you got a booklet with the code to copy and basically build the game yourself. I find that freaking fascinating; could I ask which system that was again, please? Looking forward to more PS1 footy, to boot!

[@Kim_Justice]

The most famous machine for what you're talking about is probably the ZX Spectrum and everything else from that line (ZX80/ZX81), although you could do this for any machine that had a BASIC (including, of course, the C64). It wasn't really something you had to do though - in all these examples, you can happily load software from a tape and never worry about coding beyond LOAD "" (or LOAD "*", 8,1) and RUN. It was just fairly popular at the time...you could get books with programs that you'd have to type in the code in order to get working, or there'd usually be code in magazines that you'd copy in. There were a few very famous released games that were written entirely in BASIC, particularly for Spectrum (Football Manager is a good example), although most weren't after a couple years - due to the obvious limitations (say, the creation of "sprite" going barely further than a crude line drawing), games written in BASIC were very simplistic indeed and usually terrible quality...so coders would soon move on to assemblers and other proper devtools. Copying code out was a good way to start learning how to code though.

[@waltherstolzing9719]

BASIC also needed to go through an interpreter, which used up the meager resources these computers had. So demanding applications -- and there's no type of application more demanding than games -- had to be written in assembly. The thing with assembly was that you needed 'monitor software' to enter the code; where I lived that means you had to get a cartridge. (Although simpler monitors existed on tape, I had no idea that they did.) I had taught myself a little bit of BASIC, and was seeing snippets of machine language code (yeah, machine language, not assembly -- assembly is basically human-friendly mnemonics for instructions you feed the processor byte-by-bye) in magazines -- so I was really curious. However I could never ask my parents to get me a cartridge (games on cassette tapes were expensive enough). Many years later I discovered Jim Butterfield's amazing machine language book, and studied through most of it. It's amazing how much insight into the workings of 'higher level' languages you can get, by doing all the memory management and cycle counting 'by hand' in assembly. It's no wonder that so many systems programmers cut their teeth on C64s. I believe Linus Torvalds also used to program assembly on a C64 as a kid.

[@SyphonNL]

Yeah was hoping part 2 would hit. Thanks!

[@s3vR3x]

fantastic documentary! Really well done and did a great job of exploring the nuances of Tramiel!

[@HardyRyan]

Woohoo, more Kim Justice! Ive been looking forward to part 2. Thanks :)

[@InterCity134]

It's always funny to watch these sorts of reselling which come from their own perspective. Because for most users I think none of it mattered. My first computer encounter was with a TI99/4A but that was all it was, to discover the realm. What I ended up with in 1983 was an Atari 800. Because that was what the US Department of Defense school system had put in the high school I went to. So all the rest of the stuff was totally irrelevant. That Atari 800 let me learn BASIC, assembly and graphics. It served me well all they way through my university years learning computer engineering into 1991, when I purchased a PC in the form of a 386 DOS/Win3.11 system. Apple want even an entity I was aware of. The C64 was what other folks had. The one I got in 1983 was all I needed and did what I needed. Games, word processing and term papers and BBS dialup over modems to local boards and CompuServe, the Atari was up to the task. But from the Tramiel world.the Atari 800 isn't even a footnote, but it doesn't matter because Tramiel isn't even a footnote in my compute history. .

[@oubrioko]

0:43 "As all the poor beleaguered computer dealers sat crying into their eggnog . . ." 0:47 - [ _Patton_ _slaps_ _helmet_ _off_ _crying_ _soldier_ ] 😂 🤣 😀

[@totalnoobdrummer7454]

I really like your style of docco....ive seen all your vids...very good stuff...hello from Australia

[@OperationPhantom]

Thanks Kim, a nice and probably fair tribute to Jack! Also, if anyone would be interested in reading the (often crazy) goings on at Commodore during it's heyday... you may want to check out On the Edge by Brian Bagnall. Many priceless stories; some real characters besides Jack too!

[@Phoenix2312]

Totally excellent again Kim.... Look forward to your Atari ST coverage...

[@Kilroy_5150]

You know what's REALLY scary (and somewhat true), If you look at "Return of the Jedi" and see Vader when that mask comes off....well, he's only a slight worse looking version of pasty Jack....and Jack was the Darth Vader of the computer industry.......hmmmm....what was Hollywood trying to tell us?

[@Flamekebab]

9:21 - The Apple Lisa came out a decade after the Xerox Alto which pioneered the GUI.

[@mgabrysSF]

The Alto never went into the public space. It was (largely) a proof of concept vehicle at PARC. Apple did an advance stock purchase with Xerox (which made Xerox a ton of money since it was pre-public shares) in exchange for a technology share agreement. Xerox's Alto never found a public footing until the Star which came out in 1981. How well did it do? You've probably never heard of it - so ya. It was also very VERY expensive over 16k making it enterprise-only. : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star

[@Oldskool4Life]

Thanks dude. I really like these documentaries. Keep up the good work.

[@Dkentflyer]

Excellent video series and one that is close to my heart. I think we have alot to be thankful to jack for.

[@Halbared]

Lovely doc. Funny to think that septics ut the 64 in the attic because they didn't understand it. I had it as a wee kid, and worked it with my tape player. Looking back now, I wonder how I did it. :D

[@tomsuzyinfluencerinfj2712]

IBM/+compatibles started middle 80s in USA to gain momentum. CGW magazine (and Byte) came out in force.

[@heyzoos-cgr9369]

Pure quality Kim! Love the H3H3 ref. too! \//\

[@sluggotg]

Jack Tramiel owned Commodore back in the Day. It manufactured calculators... Texas Instruments Destroyed Commodore in the Calculator market. That is why Jack had a bit of a dislike for Texas Instruments. The Limey trash talking Jack... should explain why Jack and Texas Instruments had issues.....

[@rossfindlay8253]

Great video loved the patton reference.

[@SuperHDJ_]

We need more Business people like Jack Tramiel

[@Rocketbunny71]

Another great video documentary, thanks Kim. Thumbs up as always.

[@RUOK2000]

7:22 that boss battle theme, love it Kim

[@bf0189]

Top notch video like always. You are by far one of my favorite KZbin since you put a lot of effort into your videos. I always learn something from your documentaries. Do you think you could tackle Japanese micros in the future? Obviously there's a huge language and culture barrier but I think your skill and knowledge would produce the best western information on Japanese micros.

[@Tossphate]

Hi KJ, I wanted to send a pm but can't see where or how to do it. I would like to make a video request please, I think it would be great if you do something on a selection of retro games that were widely regarded as disappointingly shit. but do it from the developers perspective, with input from them e.g. I would really like to hear from the developer of outrun on St/Amiga as to why it was crap? I mean, pretty much everyone was disappointed with it, but is there a story behind it? what do you think?

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

Fantastic work...and in 1983, I begged my dad to buy me an Atari 600xl with cassette drive instead of a C64 with a Floppy drive...those were the days.

[@CaptainRufus]

St and Amiga era! NEED IT.

[@HappySnoutHour]

I usually agree with the assessments you make but the "facts" you gave about the American computer crash is wrong. The simple fact of the matter was there were far too many companies trying to sell computers in the US back then and in many ways it mirrored the US video game crash. I mean for a short time many of the computers that were manufactured in the UK (e.g. The BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32/64, etc.) were sold here and all failed. I think the average consumer here were vastly confused by the sheer variety they had to choose from. Not that computers were too complicated for your average American as you claimed (although it was a factor) because even back then many people including adults worked with computers on a daily basis but there was no standard to go by and even as well as Commodore sold it was a computer you didn't see in everyones home back then.

[@Gamevet]

I remember the C-64 still being quite popular in the mid to late 80s.' The problem for Commodore was that even the C-128 couldn't sell well enough to bring profits from the current C-64 owners that were happy with the former machine. I was buying software for my C-64 until @ 1989.

[@wildbilltexas]

I agree, I bought a used C-128 & 1571 in the early 90's. I liked the 128 mode for calling BBS's and Word Processing, but I cant remember any games that took advantage of it.

[@oldtwins]

Software house wasn't going to drop development money on a machine that could revert to 64 mode. You just would not risk hundreds of thousands of dollar for a 5% segment of the market that owns 128's when you can spend that same money and get the whole 100% of both 128 and 64's, running in 64 mode. Also, the other problem was that the regular C128 wasn't that great for gaming enhancement over the C64 anyway. Sure, the 80 column mode was crisp but there wasn't enough video memory for anything more meaningful than text game adventures. The 128D cured that with the 64k video memory. But now you got two different 128 models... so again, why would a software house even bother trying to get themselves into a risky investment.

[@wildbilltexas]

Thanks for the explanation. The C-128 was a huge missed opportunity for Commodore. They should have made it a serious yet compatible gaming upgrade from the C-64 with better graphics abilities, stereo sound, and a faster hard drive.

[@OrionBlastar]

Agreed, the Atari 2600 was supposed to have a keyboard attachment to turn it into a full computer. Coclecovision had the Adam adapter to turn it into a computer. TRS-80 used Z80 CPUs and TRS-80 COCO had color and a 6809 16 bit CPU. The best thing the Commodore, Atari, TI, TRS-80 COCO did were video games. In Europe they had the ZX Spectrum, but not in the USA as the ZX80 was called Timex/Sinclar 1000 and had 1K of memory and sold in super markets with a 16K expansion module for very cheap. The quality was poor, black and white only, the 16K expansion would lose connection and you were stuck with 1K and out of memory errors. It wasn't so much that the computer crash was caused by too many competitors, in fact that competition drove prices down. As in Commodore vs. TI etc. The crash was caused by Reaganomics at the time, and the new computer systems not being backward compatible with the old. Apple Lisa for example was expensive and did not even run any Apple II software, Apple /// same thing no Apple // compatibility. IBM PCjr had better audio and video than IBM PC but keyboard had issues. Tandy 1000 used the PCjr tech to make Radio Shack PC clones. Nobody wanted to buy the Atari 5200 because it did not run Atari 2600 games, and there was no keyboard upgrader to make it a computer. It was called the video game crash in the USA, and people saw the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, TI 99/4a, Atari 8 bit etc computers sold in toy stores and department stores as 'toys' rather than computers because most of the software available were video games. The IBM PC and Apple // users would star a war against each other on the BBSes and then gang up on the Commodore, Atari, and TI users for having a toy instead of a real computer. My father could only afford the Commodore 64 when it was $200 and hooked up to a black and white TV set like the Atari 2600 did. We couldn't afford the business computers like the IBM PC and Apple // series.

[@HPPalmtopTube]

awesome as usual kim!, where do you find all these newspaper articles and videos ???

[@Kim_Justice]

For the newspaper articles, Google actually has a great archive filled with scans of old newspapers from all over America - so I get screens of them from there. It's kind of hard to find though - literally, I have no idea how you'd even get to it from Google's main page! It's on Google News somewhere...I just stumbled across it while searching for info on the Atlantic Acceptance Scandal in Part 1.

[@jrherita]

Hey Kim - Was TI-99 more popular in Europe than the US? IIRC, in the US it never really gained that much traction with other computers (such as the much more powerful Atari 800) even outselling it..

[@Inaflap]

I remember seeing the Atari 400, Atari 800, and a TI-4 (not 4a) on sale in 1980. In the UK at that time their prices were mind boggling ( especially for a kid). The updated 4a did not sell well in the UK either. I remember my uncle bought one but that was at a point when TI had given up and shops were just getting rid of old stock for about £90. There just wasn't much software available for them... not compared to the big sellers in the UK, the Sinclair Spectrum and the C64. The other machine I saw a lot was Acorn's 6502 based BBC micro, which had the best BASIC on a micro, and was sold in large numbers to schools and colleges in the early 1980s.

[@StanislaoMoulinsky79]

Woh, what's the title of the video at 1:58? They showed it once at my workplace and it was hilarious. Also, italian ADs! What a blast from the past (I feel old...)

[@Loggins1969]

I always thought that ST was called after "S"am "T"ramiel - but there you go

[@Kim_Justice]

Sixteen/Thirty-Two - because that was the make up of the Motorola 68000 chip the computer was based on (16-bit bus/32-bit internal)

[@LUCKO2022]

I hear Robocop 2 Title Screen music. Nice touch.

[@will_it_work]

Jack's final defeat? He took Commodore down first. Seems like another victory!

[@DTM-Books]

Why buy a home computer in the early 1980s? The only honest answer is "to teach your children how to program, so that they can build the computers of tomorrow." Well, that and play videogames, of course. This is such a great series. I can't help but admire Jack Tramiel, partly in spite of his Tony Soprano image, partly because of it. He's one hell of a character, that's for sure.Today's computer industry is far more sterile and boring by comparison. When was the last time you really cared about a computer? Be honest.

[@clray123]

At 2:00 that's Staplerfahrer Klaus!

[@nathanpollard1980]

Been looking forward to part 2.

[@worldpeace9395]

Great stuff Kim, been looking forward to this..... Hey have you ever considered doing a doco on Elite Software??

[@jackofall3834]

Elite would be a good video

[@davedogge2280]

I tell you one that is screaming to be done and that is U.S. Gold .. I think Geoff Brown or was if Jeff Brown was the owner of that one, it was a publisher that got various titles from the U.S. C64/Atari 400/800 and distributed them in Europe (so many classics, Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow, Impossible Mission, Summer Games, Winter Games, Bruce Lee, Infilrator, the SSI Dungeons and Dragons games + strategy games etc).

[@jackofall3834]

Codemasters ain't dead but it could make a good video but I might do that on my new channel under my rally games series I am working on, but it will be in Norwegian so not for everyone.

[@CandisClassicGameShrine]

I really enjoyed these vids. Keep up the great work, girl!

[@CSProductions918]

Perfect way to end my night, Thank you Kim!

[@FerrariKangaroo]

What do the arrows around the "C" in the Kim Justice logo mean?

[@EQuivalentTube2]

20:14 Whoa. Pep talk of the year.

[@reyellis3172]

Love your documentaries, great use and timing of FF6's The Decisive Battle too!

[@vanhetgoor]

Surviving Auschwitz formed Tramiel. Back in the '80's I didn't like the way all the Commodore computers were put together, cheap and full of short comings. Now I see that there was a reason for him to do so. Setting up a succesfull company with a big turnover is only a small goal. Very humane, no revenge. And getting even with Texas Instruments is brilliant, because TI was much bigger then Commodore.

[@bunglebro]

I found a commodore plus 4 with 3 cartridges at a garage sale in perth australia, I traded it for a copy of faxanadu and a mint sonic 2 lol

[@garfunkle187]

Cheers Kim

[@mcenglish4654]

Another excellent video. Loved the reference to "the White Whale". Call me Ishmael !

[@MarkTheMorose]

Forklift Driver Klaus deserves a thumbs-up all to himself.

[@MagicOnTablet]

Why do you believe you would've needed specialists for the Amiga? The thing autoboots. All Commodore had to do for the US market is put the modulator in the box and sell the thing to whichever store wants one. It was the new management in their infinite stupidity that decided that it wanted to sell a "serious" machine. No games! Here in Germany the Amiga (500 onwards, I don't recall the initial launch) was sold in pretty much all the big department store chains with an electronics corner. The worst that could happen is that you went home without RGB cable or RF module, and had to make a second trip to get the computer hooked up.

[@NR-rv8rz]

Great Video Kim. It's good to learn more about the Comodore story as I started with the Amiga. Was the C64 really only $200 in the USA? By the way, what's wrong with Jack waging a scorched earth price war against competitors? That's good for the customers and it also clears the field of too many brands. Having just too many players can cause none of them to make enough money to develop. The best possible product for the lowest possible price. Without a price war with the competition companies would inflate the cost of things to crazy levels.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Problem is he pissed off dealers in the process and drove out the talent that made the machines. After the gaming and computer crashes, department stores stuck with Nintendo, and when time came for the ST and Amiga, there were no dealers interested: they stuck with the IBM clone market and never looked back. TLDR, it's fine to crush your enemies, so long as you don't crush your friends too.

[@NR-rv8rz]

I still don't get why he or we should care about that. By the time I bought my Amiga around 1989 it was in Dixons. In fact, I first became aware of 16 big gaming computers when I was blown away in Dixons on Tottenham Court Road in London as I saw Star Ray running on demo on a monitor and the paralax blew me away. I had just bought a Spectrum (not knowing anything about gaming units at the time) and instantly returned it. I was about to by an Atari ST520 when some dweeb said 'Amigas are better' so I got an Amiga 500. So, if Jack destroyed competition and also burned bridges/reliance on speciality stores then I can understand why both of them would be pissed off but from a customer and business point of view it is not only of no consequence but both of them are actually good things as it's good if rivals go out of business (as long as you don't end up as a monopoly) and it's good if you no longer rely on a speciality outlet and can be sold in shopping malls. I like that Jack was a murderer in that sense. His bad points was that he did not understand the business that he was in so he did not value engineers and programmers or even the customer and he certainly did not understand the need to spend money on R&D.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Well, you can't sell things without retail space. That was the problem in post-crash America. Neither Tramiel's Atari nor post-Tramiel Commodore had that space here in the States. With department stores being gun-shy about home computers after 84, where would Americans, what few were left that would tolerate a non-IBM, go for an ST or Amiga? The problem with talent would be more obvious with Commodore later on, but if talent leaves, where does the next product come from? As Boris Yeltsin said once, you can make a throne of bayonets, but you can't sit in it for very long.

[@NR-rv8rz]

Fair points Jesus. I always thought that Atari and Comodore should have merged. Their collective user base and joint engineer pool, not to mention budget would have held them in good stead to take on the console world as there was still some time before graphics cards in PC's became a thing. Wow, did Yeltsin really say that? It sounds like he's describing Game of thrones.

[@oldtwins]

Well, early on it was $299 but discount stores sold it at cost, or at $199. The store sold it as a loss leader, to get people into the stores, to whom would come back to buy software and peripherals in mass volumes. Need to understand that the C64 was cheap to build, very cheap, especially when the C64c cost reduced model came out, it was something like $10 to build them. Commodore owned the foundry so they had zero markup on nearly all the semiconductors used in the machine.

[@bjrnen8505]

Commodore did was first with both business computers and consumer computers. Yes. Jack Tramiel saw all of this happening at his company, that's it. It was his son Leonard that did the interview with Chuck Peddle, because that guy Chuck was not talking about calculators. Jack knew about calculators, that's it. And so began Chuck Peddle the work on the Pet seriea of computers. He needed a keyboard for the thing and Jack gave him calculator keyboard. Yeah, Jack knew about calculators. And then came the "computers for the masses, not classes". Commodore started their consumer line of computers with the Vic 20. I don't think it ever was supposed to be compatible with the Pet, it was from another line of computers. The Vic 20 was a success, but know Jack was on a new path. He knew calculators wasn't so big anymore. Now he was at war and what he wanted was "an Apple killer". The Apple computer was rumoured to be grand, or whatever. No one had seen much of it at this time. Oh, Chuck Peddle knew this and that about the Apple. He had met with the two Steves in their garage and taught them how to use his cpu. Anyway, work soon began on the Vic 40, which of course turned into to the Commodore C64. Compatibility with the Vic 20? No, calculators didn't need this compatibility so why would computers. Now the C64 was the big thing. The Apple killer. Now things were changing at Commodore. First of all, the team behind the C64 were acting like they had achieved something, and Jack fired them. Then he decided he wanted a "Spectrum killer". And so began the downfall of Commodore. Jack was soon to leave his own company, but not before Commodore released their C16 and Plus 4 computers. Not compatible with anything, because... why bother... I think Commodore did win the computer war with the C64, and computers like the C16 and Plus 4, or the console C64 GS shouldn't have been. The C64 did beat Apple back in the 80's, and it just baffles me how anyone can believe that doesn't include beating the Spectrum too. Or that the C16 came even close to the Spectrum. Also, the C64 had a cartridge port from day one. It was a computer/console "hybrid" from the squirrel. The C128 came along and did so many right things, but it failed in the end, due to failed marketing and no in house software. Commodore had stopped doing software by then. So, Kim, I haven't watched all of your Jack Tramiel videos. I saw part 1 yesterday, but I will watch them all. I trust you have done research and the presentation is great.

[@sluggotg]

The C64 was eventually so cheap.... that it cost Commodore $5.00 to manufacture. It was the best selling computer of all time.

[@Pinman1973]

`Thank you very much for this video !

[@lokiskywalker]

Was Custer's Revenge released on the TI-99? 'Cuz if it was I'll bet that was Bill Cosby's favorite game.

[@RoboBoddicker]

"In closing, I would like to thank my esteemed colleagues Big Dick Pony, bluntmaster69, and XxX-ThePube-XxX for their boundless wisdom and consummate professionalism."

[@LUCKO2022]

Long Live JACK and LONG LIVE COMMODORE. Life would be so much better if the REAL Commodore was still here.

[@handsomebrick]

So Tramiel knew that he was getting excellent talent and saving money in the process by solely employing up-and-coming engineers, yet he also routinely screwed them over as horribly as he possibly could. He sounds like a garden variety idiot to me.

[@magpieeverspirit9773]

Great video, Thank you

[@uomoartificiale]

this is great as always, Kim, but let me voice some constructive criticism. I come here for a bit of history and your insightful analysis. Your use of vintage tv footage and advertising is really the icing on the cake. for that reason, the footage from breaking bad, etc... it's really out of place. it's funny the first minute and then it adds nothing. Believe in your work, you don't need that crutch. as always, keep up the good work, Kim!

[@LouerTube]

So ...Tramiel was Daniel Bryan for a bit, until he won and then became Triple H before CM Punking on Gould's Vince

[@jackofall3834]

Notice kindergarten cop, was that the idea behind Kimble since it was the name

[@Kim_Justice]

Indeed it was, way back when...

[@mibri]

outstanding video - you've dramatised the story wonderfully, and entirely convincingly!

[@user-vg5rv5xf4u]

1:37 Genius

[@American-Motors-Corporation]

Well I live here in the Midwest in central Ohio. I can tell you did computers really we're not that big a deal especially within the homes back in the 70s and 80s there were computer stores yes but there were not a lot of them now granted I'm thirty-five I was born in 1985 but I know a lot of people much older than me and not a damn one of them had any interest hardly they periodically could have had some curiosity to it but back here in this part of the country and most common computer is it cost you a couple $3,000.... I remember in the 90s even with Pentium ones and 480's a lot of those were still costing the better half of $800 very few people really had interest!!

[@carbonara2144]

It amazes me that Tramiel didnt reward his great engineers, but instead used money to destroy them through litigation. Did he think he can always find new ones? How about keeping those that are proven to be good? Clearly a man that doesnt believe in creating goodwill or existence of loyalty or human decency. That must what life is like in a cut-throat world of "business is war".

[@gingernutpreacher]

awesome vid

[@Mr_ToR]

can anyone tell which game is it at 16:45?

[@scottchampyan9349]

Remake Strider Review into a Strider Series Review.

[@sluggotg]

Lets keep it real...the apple LISA was $10K

[@Henrik_Mikkelsen]

Well I like the humorous speaking..

[@giantm2323]

glad those quadruplets made it home

[@Simon-ml4lu]

Brilliant

[@SteveLeicht1]

And if you were a pretty young girl, Bill Cosby would personally give you a tour of the T.I. factory.

[@MrHarney]

Fantastic x2

[@landsbyreview3420]

i really hope you'll see this comment. i love you comment, and I finally saw a game I've been looking for for years. but I can't remember the name. It's the one you show at 16:47, could you tell me what it's named?

[@fdameron]

Ah the fictitious video game crash that only existed in the minds of corporate execs. If only they'd bothered to do any research, they would have seen that gamers were sick of all the shovel ware that was hoisted on them.

[@proairprod]

Great

[@glammetalrenegade408]

"MASTER-PIECE"!

[@garrycowan4394]

brilliant videos , I love watching videos that aren't from the American viewpoint as per 99.9999% of videos regarding this subject on KZbin

[@CasperUK31]

PRINT, INPUT, GOTO, FOR, TO, NEXT, GOSUB, LET, RND, CLS: END