The Rise & Fall of Commodore: From PC Dominance to Bankruptcy

#thecommodorestory
Having been already showcased 7 months earlier at the Consumer Electronics Show. The Commodore 64 lived up to its hype. In just a couple of years, the Commodore 64 became the best-selling PC in history selling more than 15 million units. It is officially recognized by the Guinness book of world records as the best-selling PC in history. The Commodore 64 outsold every other PC company including IBM, Apple, and Compaq. Commodore was one of the largest computer companies in the world but by the end of the 90s Commodore had ceased to exist having gone bankrupt.
Commodore was initially started by Jack Tramiel as a government contractor, Commodore would expand further and begin manufacturing its own equipment, including calculators. Commodore’s calculators were built using Texas instruments' calculator chips, this became a problem when in 1975 Texas Instruments decided that it wanted to enter the calculator business, Texas Instruments released its own calculator that was the price of the calculator chips they made which most other calculator companies used, this meant that if calculator companies wanted to compete with the cost of TI’s calculator they would have no room for profit which led to many of them being driven out of business. But Commodore refused to concede defeat. They went searching for other companies that created calculator chips, during this search they came across MOS Technology which was a chip manufacturer that produced calculator chips. MOS technology was having financial troubles and so Commodore decided to acquire the company outright.
In 1976 Chuck Peddle an employee at MOS Technology and the designer of the 6502 microprocessor knew the power of his microprocessor and managed to convince Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead end and that Commodore should make its own computer using the 6502 microprocessor. At first, they considered purchasing an existing design, in September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniak's Apple II prototype. Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs's offer too expensive. So Commodore decided that it was going to build its own PC. So Chuck Peddle moved to California and assembled a small team to build a machine called the Commodore PET 2001.
The computer Commodore was building required a programming language that people could use to program on it, at the time the best one available and practically the only programming language available was Microsoft Basic so the team contacted Bill Gates. Bill Gates initially wanted a licensing agreement that stipulated that he would get one dollar for every machine Commodore sold that used the Microsoft Basic programming language, but CEO Jack Tramiel offered him an upfront fee of $50 000 which Bill Gates accepted.
Various PET models were manufactured between 1977 and 1982. The PET was most successful in the U.S. and Canadian education markets because of a genius marketing campaign by Commodore which was a "buy 2, get 1 free" program offered to schools as part of a promotion that also allowed Commodore to right off the free computer on its taxes as a donation to an educational organization.
This computer was the Commodore Vic-20, the computer got its name from the Video Interface Chip that Commodore had designed, the chip was originally designed for arcades and video game consoles but Commodore struggled to find a market for it so after heavy revisions to the Chip’s design it was used in the Commodore Vic-20. The Vic-20 featured color display capabilities, which the first Commodore didn’t have, and heavily focused on gaming. Commodore took out advertisements featuring actor William Shatner as its spokesman.
The VIC-20 was a bestselling computer, becoming the first personal computer to sell over a million units. In total, 2.5 million computers were manufactured. But its decline would begin in the summer of 1982 when Commodore unveiled the Commodore 64, a more advanced machine.
Commodore initially launched with a price of $595 but within a couple of months, they had dropped to $300. Aggressive pricing of the C64 is considered to have been a major catalyst in the video game crash of 1983. In January 1983, The success of the VIC-20 and C64 contributed significantly to the exit from the home computer market by Texas Instruments and other smaller competitors. Commodore had finally gotten its revenge on Texas Instruments after they had nearly driven Commodore out of the calculator market all those years ago.
In 1965, Commodore was experiencing some financial issues to get out of this situation they sold 17% of the company for $400 000 to an investor called Irving Gould.
Amiga

[@madcommodore]

Specifically Irving Gould blew it. That was only possible because of Texas Instruments during The Calculator Wars which almost bankrupt Commodore, which is how Irving Gould got his claws into Commodore. Gould ultimately pushed Jack out of Commodore. Commodore's plan was solid, Plus/4 type machine for $80, Commodore 64 for $199, Commodore LCD laptop/portable for business users (including purchase of an LCD manufacturer called Eagle Pitcher by Jack Tramiel for massive cost reductions on Commodore LCD), and Commodore PET and branded 8086 PCs later. Instead we got the $299 Plus/4, the Commodore 128+1571 disk drive which cost more than the 520ST+Disk drive in 1986, they stopped trying to sell the Amiga 1000 for 12 months, the A500 and A2000 were technically the same 1985 technology, A1200 was b0rked and stuck at 7mhz for the 020 with no 'Fast RAM' unless you bought a $199 RAM expansion mail order after buying your A1200, CD32 cost more than Megadrive + SF2 Champion Ed' AND SNES+Starfox etc.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

That is an absolutely amazing analysis! You are right, when Irving Gould became the defacto in charge through his large shareholding he stifled Commodore’s innovations, he pushed for cuts to its R&D budgets which eroded further improvements to the Amiga and other Commodore computers. If a system that was way ahead of the competition in 1985, only gets a few minor upgrades for the next 5 years, it will no longer be way ahead of the competition and that’s exactly what happened to the Amiga, in 1985 when it was released people couldn't believe what they were looking at but by 1990 IBM PC compatibles and Apple had caught up and in some cases surpassed the quality of the Amiga that’s when Commodore began losing tons of market share eventually leading to bankruptcy.

[@madcommodore]

@@Tech_History_Channel Many mistakes happened from 1984 onward, the last good idea at Commodore was the $80 64k TED based Commodore 264 and the Commodore LCD, none of which happened. Irving Gould at Commodore is just like Warner Bros Atari after kicking out Nolan Bushnell. Jack and Nolan were the most shrewd of all those businessmen and both got forced out of their own company and the company suffered without them. Irving only bought Amiga so Jack couldn't get it but it took them 6 months before they could even manufacture the custom chips reliably for Amiga 1000, I think it was 60-80% failure rate. It was a slow painful death for Commodore from 1984 to 1994. Atari lasted 1 year longer with no MOS Technology equivalent to keep their costs down, that says it all. Sad because even the Amiga 1200 was powerful, to play Super Stardust on the PC you needed a Pentium 120/133mhz £1000+ PC vs £399.99 Amiga 1200. Lotus II/III also needed an expensive 50/66mhz 486 to run as smooth as on an Amiga 500/1200.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Its true what you are saying they made several mistakes that lead to their demise. I wanted to mention the fact that Irving bought Amiga because Jack now CEO of Atari wanted it, but I had to cut out many parts of the video because it was getting too long, Irving's way of doing business was just terrible, I'm even surprised that Commodore survived as long as it did under his leadership. I guess their vertically integrated business model that included MOS technology's chips was strong enough to carry Commodore until eventually, it couldn't. The Amiga computers were tremendously powerful machines that were held back by Commodore's own shortcomings as you mentioned they struggled to reliably manufacture the custom Chips for the Amiga 1000 - the PCs shouldn't have won Amiga was clearly the better machine, I keep wondering had Irving not recked Commodore, Would we have Mac, Windows, Linux, and Commodore's OS as operating system choices today? Odds are Apple wouldn’t exist today if Commodore succeeded because Bill Gates would have never bailed Apple out in 1997 to keep them alive to prove that Windows wasn’t a monopoly, Commodore’s operating system would have been sufficient proof of that.

[@madcommodore]

@@Tech_History_Channel I'm not sure what would have happened to Commodore once the C64 and Amiga 500/1000/2000 chipset ran out of steam really. The C64 was once a premium system but later it did well as a budget system, I think by the end it was only costing Commodore $25-30 to make the C64. There was nowhere for Commodore to go after 1200 AGA chipset that would replace it for a £399.99 computer. The Amiga OS was also going nowhere, the A5000 successor was going to have expensive HP RISC chips and run Windows NT Commodore told magazines. This is odd because IBM wrote OS/2 v2.0 based on their access to Kickstart/Workbench source code in exchange for their REXX batch control language that they gave to Commodore to make A-REXX. When everybody else was adopting Text to Speech in the OS Commodore lost it after Kickstart 1.4 etc etc The mythical Hombre 3D chipset Dave Haynie talks about would never be cheap enough to put in a low end Amiga 1200/CD32 replacement either. Sooner or later it would have ended for Commodore because they messed up everything after C64 and took a long time to make A500 £399.99 etc. The Megadrive and SNES were so cheap to buy for playing games you couldn't really spend £399.99 on Amiga to play games. I liked my A1200 but none of the games ever pushed the system like Shadow of the Beast 1, Lotus II or Turrican III pushed the A500 to the limit too. It's a lovely computer (the A1000 that is) but you have to keep improving. Atari messed up the Falcon to make it ST compatible and then had nowhere to go. The Jaguar + CD was very tricky to program and most games were SNES port jobs too anyway. I think the CDTV was Commodore's last chance to make it really big, you could have a stereo CD quality sound to go with Paula sound and you could fit 50mb hard disk PC style install sized games onto a single CD for a lot less than a PC + HD drive cost. All the CDTV software was crap though so never a reason to buy it like A1000 or A500 before, what we needed was a 50mb version of It Came from the Desert with lots of animated characters and speech and a much bigger game on the 700mb CDs but Cinemaware went bankrupt after wasting their money on the horrible PC Engine CD port of It Cam from the Desert. Once people started playing 3D games it was over for the Amiga anyway. Irving Gould was very childish, he would write himself bonus cheques every year for $1 million from Commodore profits, that's why the price of Amiga 500 was so high and stayed high. The Amiga 600 was meant to be £199 not £399, an alternative to Megadrive/SNES £150 bundles for people who wanted to do more than play just games etc. The funny thing is the Acorn Archimedes was also a great computer that just died, well the £399/£499 models that were A500/A1200 alternatives. Commodore forced all the original Amiga 1000 designers out but RJ Mical and Dave Needle made the 3DO and the 3DO is just a £499 Archimedes A3010 computer with their Amiga 1000 genius level custom chip design talent added......talent that if Commodore had kept would have made a 1994 Amiga with 3DO quality graphics for £499. Commodore had plenty of chances not to fail, a complete disaster! Even the £249-£299 Commodore 65 prototype of 1991 was more powerful than A500plus £399. It had 256 colours in up to 640x400, it had two SID chips (6 channel waveform, 2 channel sampled sound=8 channel sound!) it had a similar CPU to the SNES and it had a blitter chip like Amiga/STE had. Another company also made the C64 small enough to fit inside the original gameboy case and Commodore didn't do anything with that. Portable colour C64 console in 1990-1991 would have been cool, better than Gamegear games anyway.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Your breadth of knowledge is quite remarkable! I wasn't aware of just how many times Commodore messed up. The CDTV didn't succeed also because the device was met with confusion by the general public- they didn't think of it as a computer, because it had no keyboard, but they didn't think of it as a game console either because it was sold without game controllers and was priced prohibitively high at $999 making it sell only 30 000 units. Another issue was how Commodore’s own systems weren’t compatible with each other for example it was originally the marketing team that marketed the idea that all C64 software would run on the C128 in reality this wasn’t true and wasn’t the initial plan but the engineers managed to get the C128 to be highly compatible with C64 software although it wasn’t 100% compatible. The C65 prototype specs looked really great for the price point, the innovation alone in Commodore’s unreleased machines is absolutely staggering, the loss of talent they experienced in the years following Jack Tramiel’s departure left very little brilliant technical leadership at the company and it shows. I can only imagine how awesome an Amiga fused with the 3DO would have been. I am currently working on a video about a company called Psion and how it pioneered the idea of handheld/pocket computers, the fact that there was a company that made the C64 small enough to fit in a GameBoy case is quite interesting, I can imagine that this would have made a neat little pocket computer because the main criticism of pocket computers in the early 90s was how they lacked the software functionality of home/personal computers, given how much software already existed for the C64, had commodore released a pocket version it would have set the market standard immediately after its release, it would have set Commodore up to dominate the PDA industry.

[@kwc0435]

It's a shame. Before jack left to join atari, commodore machines were amazing

[@Tech_History_Channel]

True!

[@johnhunt1725]

If Atari had listened to Jay Miner when he was pitching developing a successor to the 400/800 based on Motorola's new 68000 CPU, they could have released what was eventually called the Amiga at the same time Commodore released the C64. Coulda-shoulda-woulda...

[@umairjqureshi]

I had the beige colored beautiful c64 machine in 1987.... recently gave it to my lab people in my university to put as a display unit for showing to my freshman computer science students....

[@albinklein7680]

I can remember getting my C64 like it was yesterday. What a rush that was. I was 18 back then and I bought the computer from my meager salary as an apprentice and my parent's chipped in for the disk drive. It was soooooooooo awesome.

[@Oli1974]

14:30 the CD32 wasn't a desaster, the contrary was true. The problem was "only" that Commodore couldn't produce sufficient units because the debts they had with suppliers. Could they have produced more, it would have saved them.

[@awuuwa]

Your audio is very quiet. Hard to hear, make it louder for future videos

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thanks for the tip

[@PascalGienger]

Their downfall began when they went into producing PC clones because they failed too long with the AMIGA. And business software developer were locked into DOS and Windows despite those being inferior systems.

[@tonycarpenter-Makzimia]

I owned a Commodore PC, it was great for the time. The real issue with it was you couldn't upgrade it, and the bespoke MB. But, it played games great in 1991.

[@TheAndjelika]

Nice video. I was witness of most of the things here. Just please learn about difference in between kilobyte and kilobits (: And why did you use this guy, salesman Steve from another company in the video?

[@whiteshadow1771]

I had to teach a computer applications class using C64's. Wasn't a bad platform. It's amazing what that little computer could do for the time.

[@andre0000000007]

there's a few mistakes.. the amiga 1000 came out before the amiga 500. you didn't talk about the lawsuit atari vs commodore (re: rights to the amiga) you didn't mention the Commodore C65. also worth mentioning would be how successful the amiga was in europe compared to the usa.

[@Sl1pstreams]

The pushing out of Jack from Commodore was even worse for Commodore than pushing Jobs out was for Apple. Had Jack stayed, Commodore would still be around and a major player.

[@semicuriosity257]

Nope, Jack has Mega ST (with blitter) vs ST (no blitter) product segmentation. Plus 4 being incompatible with C64 was Jack's crap moment. Jack doesn't understand 3rd party software development. Commodore 900 was rubbish.

[@Sl1pstreams]

@@semicuriosity257 The Plus 4 was supposed to be a $50 computer for people who couldn't afford a 64; it failed because the muppet who took over after Jack tried to sell it for $250. The C900 was never released but would have been a revolutionary machine -- an affordable full UNIX PC a decade before Linux 1.0. It would have preserved Commodore's place in the business computing market that ended up being lost when the post-Jack management decided to only market toys like the Amiga.

[@semicuriosity257]

@@Sl1pstreams It's software ecosystem segmentation for Plus 4 and C64.

[@semicuriosity257]

@@Sl1pstreams Commodore 16 has $99 price and it failed.

[@semicuriosity257]

@@Sl1pstreams Coherent operating system was Unix like and it was available on X86-based PC clones. Coherent doesn't abstract the CPU instruction set difference. C900 had $2,700 price target. C900 had a separate Z8010 MMU and Z8001 CPU which is not price competitive against MMU integrated 80286. Like Motorola, Zilog was late with MMU's integration into the CPU. Every 286 and 386 for PC has integrated MMU. Every 286 and 386 PC clone has an Xenix potential. Every 386 has Linux potential i.e. one of i386 PC was the desktop computer for Linus Torvalds. Commodore had another try with AT&T Unix System V Release 4 via Amiga 2500UX and 3000UX models. PC clones had the "second source" advantage, not just the CPU.

[@askannav2094]

If only Jack Tramiel's " Commodore" had merged with Jack Tramiel's later "Atari" to become one powerful company instead of competing ... things would have ended up very different.

[@jonfreeman9682]

Goulding was the problem that caused Commodore to fail. After they bought Amiga they could have consolidated with Atari to fight the onslaught of PC.

[@dbranconnier1977]

I agree. Atari graphics with SID chip sound would have been amazing, in the early 80s. Commodore should have also developed SID chip based sound cards for the IBM PCs and also released their LCD computer to compete with the TRS-80 model 100 and purchased Berkeley Softworks to incorporate GEOS into later versions of their LCD computers and to make a GEOS ROM cartridge for the C64 and Plus/4 computers.

[@CaptainDangeax]

2 moves would have changed the face of the world: First, get Excel from MacIntosh port to Amiga 1000. Second, outsource chinese computer builders to build clones of the Amiga, while providing them with the proprietary chips from MOS / Commodore technology

[@jonfreeman9682]

Don't think Excel will do much as most customers were into gaming. But clones would help. But ultimately they would still fail. The reason is the Amiga OS was not robust enough. Windows was a better platform and Mac too but they kept their OS to themselves. There was a time in the 90s when John Scully signed deals to have clones for Mac but Steve Jobs came back and cancelled it.

[@CaptainDangeax]

@@jonfreeman9682 AmigaOS was far better than MacOS (no multitasking) or MSDOS (Windows was just a gui, Windows as an OS just began with NT3.1 in 1992, then NT4, Win2000...). Excel made the Mac because every trader in wall street wanted one on his office desk. the history shows the software makes the hardware a success or not, and not the other way around

[@dbranconnier1977]

Go back further and Commodore should have had the first spreadsheet (Visicalc) running on their PET computers instead of first being released on Apple II computers. The first PET should have had a real keyboard and at least 8Kb of RAM, when it was released.

[@CaptainDangeax]

@@dbranconnier1977 you get a point visicalc on pet

[@semicuriosity257]

The bulk of Amiga 500 was made in Hong Kong.

[@bobriemersma]

I saw the end coming with the introduction of the A500. Commodore was over, turning a once-promising combination of hardware and software into a kiddie game console.

[@jonfreeman9682]

The Commodore was a very versatile computer that did a lot besides gaming. But it was unmatched for gaming until Atari came along and then Amiga was even better. Instead of fighting each other they should have worked together to fight the PC onslaught.

[@jamesgrist1101]

@@jonfreeman9682 'The Commodore' never heard of that system.

[@semicuriosity257]

The Amiga platform (5 to 6 million) sold more than Atari ST(TOS) platform (2 million).

[@foradome5204]

Amazing!

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thanks!

[@MePeterNicholls]

Amiga- they didn’t know what they’d got. They totally blew it

[@jonfreeman9682]

They were the best multimedia gaming music and graphics platform in the day. Priced right too. Superior to even Mac but they didn't know how to sell it.

[@bierundkippen720]

Ofc they knew what they had. Wouldn't have bought the company otherwise.

[@Sl1pstreams]

The Amiga was a dead end. The customer chips became a liability over time and the interlaced display meant an Amiga was a very expensive game console rather than a real computer.

[@MePeterNicholls]

@@Sl1pstreams the interlacing was why it was used for video and Vfx in tv industry for quite a while after though.

[@Sl1pstreams]

@@MePeterNicholls Until the standard went to HD. It was okay to sell a few thousand to video producers but it made using the Amiga so rough as a regular PC.

[@victorgw]

Irving Gould destroyed Commodore

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Pushing Jack and Thomas out of the company was a big mistake

[@hansneusidler7988]

Whats about Mehdi Ali?

[@giant000]

@@hansneusidler7988 Α pawn of Gould that facilitated putting Commodore in an early grave...

[@RaymondDay]

I think they should of never went with Amiga. It was not commodore. They should of went with the commodore 65 that they did make like a 100 of them that was like the next version of the Commodore 128. Then they should of keep updating from there better that would be backwards compatible other systems just keep on getting better.

[@bierundkippen720]

*should have

[@fuzzywzhe]

The Amiga was truly revolutionary at the time. It had a staggering amount of colors, the graphics capability was unrivaled up until the the very late 1980s, and the architecture is what standard PCs adopted only in the late 1990s. For its time, it was amazing. Pre-emptive operating system, true multi-tasking, and with some software you could run MacOS on it, and PC (productivity) programs. The failure is that they kind of rested on their laurels for a LONG time, and eventually competition caught up. When the PS1 came out in 1994 a GAME MACHINE just absolutely trounced the best offers that Commodore had to offer. It wasn't the fault of the machine itself. It was cheaper than a Mac or a PC, could emulate a Mac literally faster than a Mac could run, was fully documented, had tons of 3rd party support, and was very cutting edge when it came out. I knew people that worked for Commodore, according to them, marketing was terrible and management was awful.

[@lisdexia1]

I still have a working comador 64. It's keyboard is awesome. Still trying to find ways of using it.

[@bierundkippen720]

Try some programming in BASIC or ASM.

[@lisdexia1]

Yes. Been there redone that. I've been very successful with many MIDI programs using it to create complex Euclidean rhythms and composition. It's very rudimentary but still kinda fun @@bierundkippen720

[@munehaus]

Misleading caption image showing a Pet and then a video about the 64. Now obviously the Pet was never a best selling computer, but if you can't even get the caption right....

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Yes, I know that the computer I used in the thumbnail was the PET/CBM, not the C64, as the caption suggests. I initially did this because I could not find an appealing enough image for the C64 that would make a captivating thumbnail. But then I also thought, true Commodore fans would probably head straight to my comment section to point out my flaw, my hope was they'd at least watch the video see if they like it, and maybe consider subbing. If they only just commented on the flaw without watching the video at least the algorithm would see the engagement and hopefully recommend my video to other Commodore fans who might enjoy watching it. I guess you can call it some form of clickbait although a none Commodore fan wouldn't know until after watching the video that the computer on the thumbnail was the wrong one.

[@bierundkippen720]

@@Tech_History_Channel The clickbait is in the title.

[@victorn5179]

Commodore blew it!

[@Tech_History_Channel]

They really did!

[@Mr.BrownsBasement]

At 8:03, "64 kilobytes" (not "kilobits"). Notwithstanding the early sales numbers, the performance of the C64 with the 1541 floppy drive was extremely poor, often taking minutes to load a program making it quite lame for serious applications. Tramiel's departure from Commodore probably wasn't the nail in the coffin that you suggest; it was just one of many times Commodore shot themselves in the foot. At 11:02, the C-128 was released in 1985 (not 1965). By this time the market was already moving to 16- and 32-bit machines but the C128 was still only 8-bit and lacked installed base in institutions (like the Apple //e) to keep it going. You are correct however, about the tidal wave of PC compatibles that were displacing almost everything else in the market including the Amiga. Amiga also got to market way too late. Though Amiga was introduced in 1985 stores couldn't get a reliable supply until 1986, and the attractively priced A500 wasn't released until 1987. Good retrospective video though.

[@bierundkippen720]

"the performance of the C64 with the 1541 floppy drive was extremely poor, often taking minutes to load a program making it quite lame for serious applications" The C64 never was a business machine and nobody has ever claimed that. It was a pure gaming machine. That's why there are thousands of game titles for the C64.

[@vinmangob8555]

How about those dumb computers they came out with like the commodore 4 plus and the commodore 16. For the record I have a c64, great computer, still waiting for a game to load. My fav was my Amiga 1000.

[@bierundkippen720]

"still waiting for a game to load" Then get yourself a Fast Load or a Super Snapshot cartridge. Many times faster than the original speed.

[@a4000t]

There was Jiffydos out as early as 1985! get out from under that rock.

[@NineInchTyrone]

Management

[@lukaszwos]

Dude, you take too much artistic liberty in using clips from Jobs and HACF... You talk about Amiga and show clip of Apple I. You talk about Commodore and show Joe MacMillan talking about the Internet. You show Mike Markulla and talk about Irving Gould.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Yeah sorry bout that, I really struggled to find pictures and clips to use in this video, I noticed after the edit was done - just how much artistic liberty I took, but I am working on bettering my graphic skills so that I don't need to fully rely on clips from movies and shows in my videos instead I want to use pictures with motion graphics and other effects to make the videos still look good without compromising their visual appeal.

[@kristerlund8845]

Too many wrong moves like Plus 4, C16, C128, C64GS, CDTV and CD32. If they had stuck to the line of VIC-20, C64 and the more affordable Amiga models they might have made it much longer. Their mistake was trying to get in to the business market instead of concentrating on the home market and gaming computers.

[@kristerlund8845]

Oh, forgot about the weird B models as well. ;)

[@Oli1974]

Nice vid, but gotta hate that AI voice.

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thank you, I'm working on getter a better mic that captures more of voice

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

commodore would never have won any 'pc war'. they're not ibm. which already had sales people and account managers in all larger clients (banks, primarily) for their mainframes. tramiel also never understood that computers need network interfaces (big fail). atari had a chance or 2. first in selling the 800 outright to ibm. (so they never would have made the ibm pc to start with but sold that instead) then later at least grab a chunk of the market with their parallel processor experiment thing. HOWEVER. commodore had a rather profitable pc line of it's own in later days. and if it were not for goulds screwups, (somehow bankrupting a profitable company - literally every branch of it on it's own was profitable) it COULD have remained a good second to dell. instead of selling out to tulip and gateway2000 (both smaller companies than cbm itself ;) also gotta keep in mind. their other product lines besides pc's each operated in a niche market of their own. pc's amigas and c64's and such, simply are not in competition with one another. they each serve different purposes. in that 'pc market' however. they were a large player. there are plenty of pc10's 20s etc left (for a clone manufacturer, they are a big one).

[@Tech_History_Channel]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the topic! It still truly baffles me to think about how Commodore just failed when it had one of the strongest positions in the early computer industry, Gould really screwed up massively to kill Commodore.

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

@@Tech_History_Channel actually all devisions were running a profit individually when it went belly up :P very odd :P LOL. that's some really creative accounting right there :P

[@andrewbrown6786]

The Amiga was every bit as capable as any Mac or PC. I ran a 500+ with max ram against a 486 with max room - both using H/D - whilst studying with UO. The PC 486 was not even close in speed, nor could it multi task! Multi Tasking was a standard part of the Amiga OS - so I was able to run a demanding spreadsheet that was doing some ‘what if’ operations, whilst also writing my assignment using Wordsworth (as good as Word, hence the MS Lawsuit!) whilst also playing chess and printing out other parts of the completed assignment with my 24 pin dot matrix printer. All at the same time… The 486 needed to have the base memory configured to get as much out of the PC as possible, and then it gave me a choice of which program I wanted to run. I made use of Win 3.11 to try and multi task, but it just ground to a halt trying to get it to do 2 things. If Bill Gates developed for Apple to make sure he wasn’t losing income, pretty sure he would’ve developed for Amiga if he’d realised how much more ones was available from the users. The Amiga 500+, then 1200 were amazing computers ahead of the game - 1000’s of people were waiting to upgrade to a 4000 or better because of the potential such a machine would offer them in science, graphics, video and office based software suites & speech synthesis. As much as I love using my Apple kit, the Amiga is still my choice for best computer ever owned. The educational software I was able to develop using the speech facility would still need some hard work on today’s machines. An A5000 with a 27” screen would’ve been a pleasure to work with, especially with the internet available to hook up to…

[@bierundkippen720]

"their other product lines besides pc's each operated in a niche market of their own" Sorry, but that's BS. The Amiga line was not a "niche". The C64 even sold well in the early 90s. "amigas and c64's and such, simply are not in competition with one another" Of course they were. They were gaming computers and you would have to choose which one of them you prefer. That's what I call competition. Commodore bought Amiga because they wanted to be part of the business market. That failed terribly because the Amiga was mainly used as a gaming machine for kids.

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

@@bierundkippen720 ofcourse platforms which have only one supplier, or in case of the c64, even only have one model in 3 slightly different shapes, or in case of the vic-20 literally have just 1 model of one supplier (not counting drean), are a niche market. compared to cp/m or pc or anything else. and that includes the amiga unless you can point me out 20 other manufacturers that made amigas back then :P they each target to very specific audiences. audiences that cannot take their stuff anywhere else cuz it won't run there.

[@volkerking5932]

the C64 is not a PC! it is a closed system that you never can upscale, update, expand!

[@Hasse.Andersson]

but it was a "personal computer" ? A PC.

[@volkerking5932]

@@Hasse.Andersson I thought that a PC is from IBM PC (trademarked by IBM) and a x86 prozessor and 80 columns progressive scan. But all the 6502 system don't have this columns and no progressive scan.

[@jonfreeman9682]

That's true. It was a proprietary OS with its own system and applications. But it was versatile and could be used in many business applications. I actually saw the C64 used to run the city monorail and subway transportation back in 1986 in Vancouver Canada when they were host to the world's fair the theme being connecting the world thru transportation and communication. Yes I saw thru the glass panel the control room using a bunch of Commodore computers. 😆

[@fr_schmidlin]

@@volkerking5932 The IBM PC wasn't the only PC (Personal Computer). This is why it must be called "IBM PC/Clones" , or by its incarnations: PC-XT, PC-AT etc. I.e: NEC had their PC-88 and PC-98 computers that were very different from the IBM's.

[@weakbit633]

@@fr_schmidlin for sure IBM called like the PC (Personal Computer) all the other computers and closed systems like the Commodore C64, Atari 800XL, Sinclair ZX81 and many other's are 'Home Computer' and not declare as "PC - Personal Computer". I think there are the intel x86 CPU's meaning that are a PC. The Z80, 6502, 6510 and other chips are called Microcomputer, Home computer and so on.

[@johnhunt1725]

What made the C64 the "best selling PC in history" was its cheapness, not because it was a great PC. That same cheapness is also what limited its usefulness as a personal computer, which ultimately didn't matter since most people only used it to play games and maybe do some BBSing (mostly to download more games).

[@bierundkippen720]

"That same cheapness is also what limited its usefulness as a personal computer" No, that's just BS. It's limited use as a business computer was due to its lack of 80 columns. You just can't do serious business computing with just 40 chars per line. Sure, the C64 was relatively cheap. But what you don't seem to know is that it was actually a great machine - at least for gaming purposes. It had hardware sprites, a great video chip, a sound chip ahead of its time, and it could do raster interrupts. Finally, it had 64K of RAM, which was A LOT at the time it was released. Technically, in the early 80s it was better than any other home computer.

[@fuzzywzhe]

The C=64 was cheap AND it was a very good PC. It was certainly better than an Apple of the time, and it was cheaper. It was WAY cheaper than an IBM or any clone. It had passive cooling so it was absolutely quiet, it had relatively amazing graphics for the time, there was just so much support for programming and tinkering with the thing as well. I ended up getting it because the TRS-80 I had, only had 4K and I ran out of memory writing a video game for it at 9. We went shopping and checked out the price of getting more memory. It was cheaper to buy a C=64 than to get the memory upgrade. The MSX might have been better than a C=64, but I was in the states, not Europe. I don't think any machine, at least in that price range, had anything on it. I do think it was certainly the best machine for the cost, without doubt.