The Computer Chronicles: Low End Computers (1985)

A consumer's guide to the most popular low-cost home computers.
Guests: Jack Tramiel, Atari; Leonard Tramiel, Atari; Frank Leonardi, Commodore; Gary Kildall, Digital Research
Products/Demos: Commodore Laptop, Commodore 128, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST 512

[@DanVanDam]

gentleman from Atari was spot on from most of the predictions lol

[@teltri]

Great show! Thank you. It reminds me of the tv programmes I used to watch as a kid every afternoon after coming home from school. Good Ol` 80s science stuff :)

[@jonathont5570]

Jack was a great man, his to the masses and not the classes has been lost over last 30+ years.

[@AllGamingStarred]

This is an amazing view. Great job man

[@iWerli]

18:47 bro he called it in 1985 lmaoooo

[@BNGamesYT]

Great find man, takes me back.

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

It is ironic that what really kept Japanese computers out of the US in the early 80s was simply the language barrier and keyboard input challenges... something not critical regarding consoles. It also is amazing how Commodore users groups still survive today...in 2019.

[@raydeen2k]

Unfortunately, by the time Atari and Commodore released their next gen systems (and they were phenomenal), most consumers were put off by the brand due to the video game crash of a few years before and held both companies in low regard. Both companies went on to do big business in Europe and Asia for a time but here in the U.S., IBM and Apple and their clones owned the market. Unfortunately for us, this was almost a digital 'Dark Age' as both companies offered horrible products compared to what the ST and the Amiga provided. Had the Amiga not fallen victim to the XOR patent problem, we might well be using much more powerful computers today than what we currently have. The Amiga was easily a full decade ahead of the competition in terms of what it could do. In the late 80's, early 90's, an Amiga was capable of full digital music production, desktop publishing and 3D rendering that put the current offerings from PC's and Macs to shame. And this was all 'out of the box'. If you wanted to do the same on a Mac or PC at the time, you had to purchase additional hardware to achieve the level of production that was present in the Amiga. If it wasn't for a stupid software patent on how to implement a blinking block cursor, we'd have a totally different computing landscape today.

[@JonnyInfinite]

Indeed. Look at the Video Toaster in 1990. My ST had a full GUI in the 80s and full MIDI capabilities

[@raffiequler7510]

raydeen2k If Amiga or Atari were any good, demand for their clones would have been created. That never happened because those machines were slow and very expensive for what they were. I can build a custom PC today, a 96-core monster (8x12-core Xeon processors) and using an 8 socket motherboard. Windows based machines were always the most powerful and by far the most versatile because of all the great software. This is why they still keep around 90% market share even in the today's tough market.

[@raydeen2k]

***** PC's and Macs were about a decade behind the curve back in the late 80' s/early 90's. The Amiga was capable of doing some pretty incredible audio and video production in the mid 80's that we didn't see on Macs and PC's until the mid to late 90's. Yes, today a PC is incredible but had the Amiga not gone bust when it did, it would probably have changed and evolved over time just the way our current computers have but much, much sooner. But we'll never know. It's not a machine I'd want to run today but back when I was a teenager, it blew the doors off of other machines that cost hundreds and sometimes thousands more.

[@raffiequler7510]

raydeen2k Wow, you are really clueless. Amiga machines were very slow compared to the 486DX monsters running at 40 MHz at the beginning of 1990s. You can't bullshit me. My friends were buying Amiga 500s because they could barely even afford that. Amiga 500 had a crappy processor running at 7 MHz.

[@raydeen2k]

***** Last time I checked, there were no 486 machines until '89. In any event, PC's typically didn't have the sound and graphics hardware that could compete with the Amiga. I bought my first PC in '91 - 486 DX33, 8 MB Ram, 180 MB HD, no sound card, and a 256 color SVGA card.It was a custom build system just shy of $2700. The Amiga had vastly superior hardware years before that in comparison. A PC from the mid '80's couldn't touch the Amiga hardware of the same time. Just to be clear: I'm making comparisons between machines from the mid 80's. The Amiga was the clear winner at the time.

[@alphonsocarioti512]

In 1985 I bought a new Atari 800XL.. Learned to program in BASIC. Loved it

[@michaeliverson2164]

I miss my Atari 520 ST! Speed of 8 MHz, which was slightly faster than the Amiga and Mac Plus!

[@nicholas6900]

18:50 aged like fine wine. lol.

[@Icza]

Awesome upload. I had a vic20 as a kid and loved that thing. I always wanted to learn to make my own games for it haha but I was kinda young and by the time I was older there were better and of course more complex machines. I had some of those books though that are just full of code for games and you have to type them all in yourself. It was a pain cuz you always made errors and it wouldn't run then you search forever for all your errors lolll good times >.> I think XD

[@ericchamberlain9260]

Interesting how low-key these guys are compared with Steve Ballmer and Steve Jobs.

[@MikhailBakunin]

Jack Tramiel makes a pretty rapt comment in this video about his having 'invented' the personal computer in 1976. And he goes on a bit of a rant about the Japanese and "keeping 'those people' out of America and the World Market", so a little intense and not quite low-key. But I know what you're saying, I think. They're more like manufacturer's than behind-the-desk-businessmen (Balmer) or Inventors/Snake Oil Salesmen (Jobs/Jobs)

[@rooneye]

4:00 that map thing is fucking awesome! Anyone know what that program at 4:02 is called?

[@HappyConsoleGamer]

LOL Ohhh that crazy past!

[@askhowiknow5527]

“Our customer is sophisticated” You don’t often hear that sort of attitude nowadays

[@lark5000]

When he said 256K ram he must have been talking kilobits not kilobytes...

[@SteveLeicht1]

I'm pretty sure it was Kilobytes.

[@SteveLeicht1]

Yeah, the Commodore Amiga was "low-end" because it outperformed any other computer in every way at a fraction of the price ?!

[@tekcomputers]

Well, to be fair the Amiga wasn't a low end computer, this program was before Amiga was in production. It was just known about as a code-name at this time. It seems to be the media assumption was basically the idea that the Amiga would be the next iteration of Commodore low-end computing... as that is what they were used to from Commodore, the Amiga on the other hand when released was neither low-end in function nor cost. It was a mid-range PC that had high-end PC performance of the time.

[@SteveLeicht1]

@@tekcomputers I agree with everything you said.

[@AureliusR]

Wow, was Leonard ever a bad fit at Atari. Talk about getting the job on family alone.

[@moow950]

This was before the first color Macintosh (1987)

[@JustinHallPlus]

Nobody will ever need more than a a half-mega ram.

[@JustinHallPlus]

***** it was a joke, dummy.

[@raffiequler7510]

Justin Hall Read your initial comment and then come back.

[@JustinHallPlus]

*****​ Develop a sense of humour and then come back.

[@belstar1128]

In the 80s low end computers had better grafics then the high end computers but the low end computers still lost the pc war how sad.

[@kikyouwuv]

Wow not even 1 MB today we have TB. How fast technology changes xD. A good example my 62gb 5 year old HP pavilion dv2000 costed 900 dollars. Now computers with 5x the power and hard drive sale for 300 dollars lol.

[@Steve.909]

20:10 - Straight to the point. 21:07 - Hi5 /*

[@JonnyInfinite]

18:44 - STILL TRUE TODAY!

[@MrMental6001]

LMAO

[@GustafStechmann]

lol

[@hristaki99]

***** Mac Mini - Intel HD 4000, 4GB RAM, 2.3 GHz processor $800 price.

[@JonnyInfinite]

hristaki99 my laptop cost just over half that and has double the RAM. You could build a system that would destroy a Mac Mini for 800

[@hristaki99]

***** I know. That's what I meant. Apple products are overpriced trash cans, quite literally: i.imgur.com/ok1lVD6.png

[@hsk-jm6kh]

3.08 what's that poster on the wall say? 'live exotic dancers nude'? Fast forward to today and he can have the best of both worlds in GTAV's strip club.

[@ferreday1]

I can't keep my eyes off that guys comb over looks like he used a flat iron on it and a ton of hairspray

[@bitwize]

Jack sounds like he has a secretary named Mrs. Wiggins.

[@warrengonline]

Throw back! Wow! Same rules apply today. There are STILL not a lot of 'sophisticated' users.

[@bryanhodges125]

If 256k of ram only cost $4 why wouldn't you add more?

[@Jasonrotfl]

+Bryan Hodges Hardware limitations.

[@bryanhodges125]

+Jasonrotfl I think that sounds right. Thanks

[@Jasonrotfl]

+Sam Nyholm The second sentence doesn't make any sense.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

I'm pretty sure these could handle at least 4 megabytes of ram, and the 68000 processor had a 24 bit address bus which would allow for a maximum of 16 megabytes of ram without bank switching.

[@tetsujin_144]

Adding cost to the machine, even a little bit, can mess with the sales numbers and price of the machine in weird ways. Like doubling the RAM doesn't necessarily increase the sales of the machine much, or even at all. But it increases the cost, which means increasing the price of the machine - which in turn decreases sales and potentially requires increasing the price even more to make the same amount of profit. Using more RAM in the machine also means you need to acquire more RAM for each machine you turn out - and if your suppliers can't meet that demand then you won't be able to sell as many machines. The home computer industry was basically on a race to the bottom at this time: trying to offer the good computers for the least money in an attempt to one-up each other and capture the home market. So for something like the early STs and Amigas it wasn't about making the best machine they could, so much as making a machine that was good enough to justify the cost, to offer comparable specs to competing machines (in this case, probably the early Mac computers) while keeping that cost down - to protect the company's ability to make profit and keep the machine price down to drive that early adoption.

[@rustynail6819]

We called it the jack'n tosh for different reasons LOL!!! Thank you adult BBS's!

[@ens8502]

Jack Trzmiel

[@miroslawkaras7710]

Jacek Trzmiel

[@dee5298]

The guy on apple, still true. Not for people into good tech.

[@quadravert]

KEEP THOSE PEOPLE OUT!

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

Pity he lost his crystal ball in the early 90s. Ste Fail. Jaguar Fail. Lynx fail. Falcon fail. Atari fail.

[@tommyeastwood4393]

BAZFANSHOTHITS atari was run by jacks son at that time...

[@sassoleo]

18:40 nerdiest look in the world

[@unnamedchannel1237]

F me well spotted

[@jinggarcia]

don't copy that floppy.

[@cn8299]

"High resolution color graphics, 640x240 display" Man the 80s are cute. Although I'm sure 28 years from now 4k will be looked down as well.."Ultra High resolution at 4k!? LOL" Those damn kids will say with their fancy 64k resolution nano diodes implanted in their Occipital Lobe! Get off my lawn!

[@oldtwins]

+John Doe those were the low end computers. mid to high end systems at this time could do 1024x768. Coincidentally, budget laptops still run 1366x768. quite poor rate of progress when it comes to resolution.

[@stefankrautz9048]

on the c64 320x200 16 Colors = 4KB was gone just for one screen of data. Plus 8K Character Data copied in RAM (if programs wanted to change that) plus data for the soundchip. Remember in the c64, there was no dedicated Videomemory, all the 64k in use by Videochip, CPU and soundchip.

[@tarstarkusz]

I seriously doubt we are going to go much higher than 4k. You reach a point of diminishing returns at a given size and I don't see TVs or especially computer monitors getting much bigger. It's not because of technology, but rather aesthetics. We might see resolution growth in pocket screens though.

[@lucius1976]

The human eye at one point cannot see the difference. I doubt the human eye can see much more resolution then todays high one

[@tetsujin_144]

@@oldtwins What had 1024x768 display resolution in 1985? I don't think the resolution was at all common prior to the PS/2 line in 1987 (at which point it was still a high-end option for those machines)

[@DanKirchner5150]

wat was he out messing with his jet and lost his windows system? got clubbed at a club and that was it?

[@DyoKasparov]

You see guys, this is what WON'T run Crysis - Low-end PCs

[@markwilliams5654]

they use the education excuse again to sell a toy lol

[@sheepthehack]

He couldnt work out that 2% of 800 is 16 dollars??? Not sure he should have been hosting a computer show..