Jo22 wrote:

That's now half a century ago! Insane how time flies.. 😐

Your math there may be a little off. Fortunately somebody made a device that can help with that.

( 😜 )

I see, so someone did actually read this thread.. 😉

It's a quarter, of course. ^^

Sorry, just had to be cheeky. 😜 I'm always amazed at how companies that should be unmitigated success stores can mismanage themselves into oblivion like that in a few short years. I grew up during the C= heyday (the family got a then-brand new C64 when I was, like, 1) and they were everywhere; all the non-NES kids I knew had one, and I even remember some classrooms having them (before the Unisys ICON got introduced, and then after again once all the teachers realized how hopeless those were.) I still credit the SID chip for me getting into electronic music.

I bought a couple on eBay, 1 needs repairs, and the other one works without issues. I was 3 when the Commodore 64 was discontinued completely when they filed for bankruptcy at that time. The reason why they went bankrupt was because they introduced the Amiga CD32 and didn't sell very well. The SID chip was the icing on the cake and better than the IBM systems when they had the PC Speaker as the only speaker on there.

What a delight this news was back then! (At least for me)
I was used to call it "Commonsore".

These urine-stained bread boxes with their boring spriter games, these unbearable "Amigas" with their useless (due to the lack of serious, i.e. non-toy and non-gaming applications) and boring "Workbench" and that eye-pain and headache-inducing combination of low resolution and extreme flicker.

I was glad that the flood of this crap finally ended.

🤣 🤣 🤣

xjas wrote:

Sorry, just had to be cheeky. 😜 I'm always amazed at how companies that should be unmitigated success stores can mismanage themselves into oblivion like that in a few short years. I grew up during the C= heyday (the family got a then-brand new C64 when I was, like, 1) and they were everywhere; all the non-NES kids I knew had one, and I even remember some classrooms having them (before the Unisys ICON got introduced, and then after again once all the teachers realized how hopeless those were.) I still credit the SID chip for me getting into electronic music.

Nah, never mind it's okay! 😀 While I wasn't so into their computers, I did grew upt with a Commodore 1702 video monitor.
I played so many different games on it (incl. (S)NES) and used it for all kinds of experiments with video devices.

bjwil1991 wrote:

I bought a couple on eBay, 1 needs repairs, and the other one works without issues. I was 3 when the Commodore 64 was discontinued completely when they filed for bankruptcy at that time. The reason why they went bankrupt was because they introduced the Amiga CD32 and didn't sell very well. The SID chip was the icing on the cake and better than the IBM systems when they had the PC Speaker as the only speaker on there.

There are two things that amazed me when I learned about the Commodore 64 - the SID and obscure text-adventures/text-adventures w/ graphics written by individuals. 😁
To this day, I wonder why so many C64 people honour the demoscene so much but never these hidden gems (adventures).
That being said, there are so many things I didn't understand, either. For example, why didn't Commodore/Escom sell individual parts,
like Amiga mainboards, to enthusiasts instead of trying to selli the whole package ? A simple A500 in a 386SX motherboard form factor would have been nice.
The demand was there, apparently. Also, the A4000 was essentially a Big Tower machine with an Amiga in PC formfactor already.
Years before, third-party tower chasis that were modified for the Amiga 2000 and other low-end machines existed already.

Jo22 wrote:

For example, why didn't Commodore/Escom sell individual parts, like Amiga mainboards, to enthusiasts instead of trying to selli the whole package ? A simple A500 in a 386SX motherboard form factor would have been nice.
The demand was there, apparently. Also, the A4000 was essentially a Big Tower machine with an Amiga in PC formfactor already.
Years before, third-party tower chasis that were modified for the Amiga 2000 and other low-end machines existed already.

Imagine the success story they could have had, if they had built an ISA mobo and a soundcard already in the mid-1980s, to be used with PC video and interface cards.
They would have become the industry leader in soundcards 😀

With AmigaOS on serious hardware they could have even downed the Mac 😀

bjwil1991 wrote:

The reason why they went bankrupt was because they introduced the Amiga CD32 and didn't sell very well

No. The reason they went bankrupt was management, or lack thereof. At least Tramiel had a vision, one of making money by undercutting everyone, and it clearly worked up to his departure with record profit in 1984 and Commodores flagship model owning 40% of worlds computer share!

Idiots and plain crooks after him had no clue nor sense of direction for the company. Hardware people got fired and Commodore spend next 9 years selling basically same computer(A1000) with no meaningful changes other than name and ram. Commodore was selling computers with Single Density floppy up to 1994! Their starting at $4000 Workstation class product (A4000) had a special "hd" floppy spinning at Half Speed due to negligence to upgrade floppy controller - this coming from a company with own chip fab.

Oh, did I mention crook CEO was getting paid more than IBMs CEO at the time? Its true miracle they survived that long.

In defense of the Commodore management, all non-PC makers suffered from the flood of cheap PC clones that appeared in the 1990s. Even Apple nearly went under. They survived by focusing on a niche market (creative professionals) that was poorly served by the PC. Commodore needed to do something similar, but it's hard to see what. There was room for only one 'Apple' in the market.

Don't forget. When companies made clones of the Apple systems, Apple filed suits against those companies.

retardware wrote:

What a delight this news was back then! (At least for me) I was used to call it "Commonsore". […]
Show full quote

What a delight this news was back then! (At least for me)
I was used to call it "Commonsore".

These urine-stained bread boxes with their boring spriter games, these unbearable "Amigas" with their useless (due to the lack of serious, i.e. non-toy and non-gaming applications) and boring "Workbench" and that eye-pain and headache-inducing combination of low resolution and extreme flicker.

I was glad that the flood of this crap finally ended.

Well.. They were not useless, a lot of high profiles used Amiga's. Like NASA that used Amiga's for launching the space shuttle for instance. They have said that there were absolutely nothing that was able to replace them, at a decent price. Nothing. The Amiga's are simple machines and easy to program. They were the first true multimedia and multitasking machines. They were 10 years ahead of it's time at launch. It is just, that people did not know what to do with stuff, 10 years before it became standard. And they were the first plug and play machines. Just try and have 4 programs open on top of an active GUI, with only 1mb of Ram or even 512kb of Ram in 1985 on an Mac or an PC. And then have it running for one year without shutdown and without any freeze. Now, you need a serious Unix server for that in 1985. Another thing is that you were able to do studio quality video editing in your home, running native and without any compression at all. Yeahhh.... That was what the Amiga's were all about. As a bonus, they were incredible gaming machines, and the best for gaming until somewere between 1991 and 1993. That was when games on the Dos platform, slowly began to get better. Syndicate, Dynablaster and Settlers are a few examples.

On topic...
I remember the 29'th of April like it was yesterday. What a blow in our faces. And the story are still unraveling as to why they went bust. The major issue of course, were lack of money. As in they went broke. Yet the story on to why exactly are muddy and span over lot's of years. First they fired Jack. And that was a big problem. He was the main force, the vision and the leader of the company. And without him, it left a giant power vacume. Bill herd and others have reported years after, that people were running around like headless chickens.

Then we have all them CEO's and other with positions of power within Commodore. They were only there with the intend of grabbing as much money as possible. Irwine Gould, the top CEO, had only money on his mind. He basically used Commodore as his own little piggy bag. He owned a lot of those companies, that basically surplied parts and stuff for Commodore. So he was able to profit at the expense of Commodore's health. Then we have Mehdi Ali, that saw a golden opertunity to gain power and have his annual sallery raised to sky high levels. That man, was actually the brains behind why Commodore released the C64 Games system (C64 based console) and the Amiga600. Both an absolute failure at that time. Commodore also spend tons of money on prototype projects. Like AAA, Nyx-Board and so on. Most projects was put to an grave, both early and near completion. And Commodore forgot to pay back the suppliers, and they ended up with a hard time sourcing parts for production.

People often cite the CD32 as "The cause" for the downfall of Commodore, yet the story is not that simple. The CD32 actually sold well, yet it was banned for sale in North America, due to some licensing. And then the Philipines held back a huge load of CD32's that would have saved Commodore. It was something about Commodore trying to run from the bill. (Yet again) Back at West Chester in Pennsylvania, the engineers actually saw were Commodore was heading. Even as far back as 4'th quater of 1991. They knew that things were not going to end well and they were only able to stand by and watch. Yet they are the heroes of Commodore. Bill Herd, Dave Haynie, Greg Berlin and others. They had more or less free hands, and they were more or less operating independently from the rest of the company. Like the Commodore128. Bill Herd saw that Commodore was missing a product for the future, and then he sat his ass down and started to design it on paper. Yup. One man job. When the CEO's and others on charge saw that they were missing a product, they tried to sell the C128. And they did not even know that it was under devellopment before it was finished. If they had known about it, they would have shut it down. That is actually bad leadership, and one example on how the leaders of Commodore destroyed it all.

Greed, bad leadership, tons of wasted money on sallery, tons of money wasted on unfinished projects and tons of unpaid bill's. That is how they destroyed Commodore from between 1984 and 1994. 10 years to bring down a company from within, that had the same status as Apple had around 2005/07.

The way I understand it, there were a number of problems:
The Commodore 64 sold very well, but the cost-cutting that Jack Tramiel did to get there, meant it wasn't all that profitable. A good short-term strategy to gain marketshare, and eliminate competitors, but not sustainable.
The Amiga was a moderate success as well (mainly the Amiga 500, which should have been the original machine, like how Atari started with affordable ST models). But again, I don't think it was profitable enough.
The problem here is that Commodore did not bother to look ahead (Jack Tramiel might have, but he was gone by this time). They did not invest in updating their chip facilities (so they could not profit from Moore's Law), and they started scaling down their R&D department. Sure, that may make the company healthier in the short term, but there's no future development.

If the Amiga platform had been developed properly, it could have become something great, but instead they got stuck with 80s technology forever.
It's interesting that Atari managed to develop the ST series much further, and live longer than Commodore.

Scali wrote:

The way I understand it, there were a number of problems: The Commodore 64 sold very well, but the cost-cutting that Jack Tramie […]
Show full quote

The way I understand it, there were a number of problems:
The Commodore 64 sold very well, but the cost-cutting that Jack Tramiel did to get there, meant it wasn't all that profitable. A good short-term strategy to gain marketshare, and eliminate competitors, but not sustainable.
The Amiga was a moderate success as well (mainly the Amiga 500, which should have been the original machine, like how Atari started with affordable ST models). But again, I don't think it was profitable enough.
The problem here is that Commodore did not bother to look ahead (Jack Tramiel might have, but he was gone by this time). They did not invest in updating their chip facilities (so they could not profit from Moore's Law), and they started scaling down their R&D department. Sure, that may make the company healthier in the short term, but there's no future development.

If the Amiga platform had been developed properly, it could have become something great, but instead they got stuck with 80s technology forever.
It's interesting that Atari managed to develop the ST series much further, and live longer than Commodore.

Yup... I can't remember who mentioned it, was it Bill Herd or John Pleasance who is always mentioning it as one of the reasons? The leaders of Commodore did only care for what they could personally gain and profit from. They were like "Yeah, I know the company is bleeding. Yet I still get to earn a new private jet, paid for by the company".

Might also be why they polluted the ground, on were MOS were located. No interest in cleaning up and invest in production equipment. Was it the AGA chipset that were produced elsewere, because Commodore were not able?

brostenen wrote:

Was it the AGA chipset that were produced elsewere, because Commodore were not able?

HP and VLSI fabbed some AGA chips for Commodore.

xjas wrote:

(before the Unisys ICON got introduced, and then after again once all the teachers realized how hopeless those were.)

I never knew that existed! (/reads Wikipedia, etc to learn more)

BloodyCactus wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Was it the AGA chipset that were produced elsewere, because Commodore were not able?

HP and VLSI fabbed some AGA chips for Commodore.

Ironcically, Commodore also made an "AGA" (Advanced Graphic Adapter) card for its own PC line. It was a CGA/Plantronic and Hercules multimode card.
Very interesting and depressing at the same time. They could have had become a market leader in PC graphics, if they wanted to.

Just imagine what what "CBM" could have had accomplished in the "IBM" world if their bridgeboards had superior graphics features.
Companies like Sierra, Borland or Microsoft wouldn't have had hesitated to provide some basic support in their products, at least.

Of course, no one can say if that would haved had really taken off. But it was a chance, surely.

PC AGA Graphics card

Jo22 wrote:

Ironcically, Commodore also made an "AGA" (Advanced Graphic Adapter) card for its own PC line. It was a CGA/Plantronic and Hercu […]
Show full quote

BloodyCactus wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Was it the AGA chipset that were produced elsewere, because Commodore were not able?

HP and VLSI fabbed some AGA chips for Commodore.

Ironcically, Commodore also made an "AGA" (Advanced Graphic Adapter) card for its own PC line. It was a CGA/Plantronic and Hercules multimode card.
Very interesting and depressing at the same time. They could have had become a market leader in PC graphics, if they wanted to.

Just imagine what what "CBM" could have had accomplished in the "IBM" world if their bridgeboards had superior graphics features.
Companies like Sierra, Borland or Microsoft wouldn't have had hesitated to provide some basic support in their products, at least.

Of course, no one can say if that would haved had really taken off. But it was a chance, surely.

PC AGA Graphics card

The page states that it is made by ATI, for the Commodore PC 10/20 line of x86 machines. And that it has nothing to do with the Amiga AGA chipset. It only has that AGA in the naming in common with the Amiga AGA Chipset. It is a late 80's product, and predates the Amiga AGA by some 3 years or just below. As far as I can see by the datestamp on the Floppy disk. It is basically just an advanced Commodore branded 8-bit CGA card.

brostenen wrote:

The page states that it is made by ATI, for the Commodore PC 10/20 line of x86 machines.

Yea, it's a rebranded ATi Small Wonder (the PCB is marked 'GSSC' which stands for Graphics Solution Single Chip).
Later PC10/20 models used a Paradise PVC4 instead, which is very similar, feature-wise.