New Book: The rise and the fall of Commodore

[gklinger]

I think there was a Commodore 64 emulator produced by Commodore for the Amiga 1000.

That would have been useful but no, there wasn't. Commodore was fractured and those responsible for the Amiga were desperately trying to distance themselves from the "toys" (read the Commodore 64.) Those same people felt it necessary to provide 'IBM' compatibility which resulted in the Transformer which was a 5.25" floppy disk drive (model A1020) along with emulation software and later with the hardware solution called The Sidecar which was an entire IBM PC/XT that connected to the Zorro expansion port on the side of the Amiga A1000.

The first Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga was software and was released by a company called ReadySoft (located just north of Toronto actually). The software really wasn't very good though.

[ral-clan]

Ok, the Readysoft product is what I remember then. I do remember seeing the Transformer software operating, and I owned an A1000 Sidecar a few years ago.

[ral-clan]

But there are things that are in it that immediately trigger my BS sensors, too. A lot of his window-dressing prose--where he's trying to convey a setting or feel--hits me just wrong.

I'll definitely give you that. In the part where he's talking about (SPOILER WARNING) the emergency landing of the PET JET, the book prose almost turns into that of an action thriller - with all the edge-of-your-seat descriptions. The things he describes the occupants of the jet as doing/thinking totally seem made up -- I get the feeling he's just inferring those things and I doubt he really knew the intimate thoughts of these people as the plane was in danger.

[carlsson]

That book sounds a bit like the "Da Vinci Code" for the Commodore community.

Edit: Or maybe that should be "Da PETSCII Code"?

[saundby]

That book sounds a bit like the "Da Vinci Code" for the Commodore community.

Edit: Or maybe that should be "Da PETSCII Code"?

ROFL! "Da PETSCII Code!" I love it.

Certainly there's been enough cloak and dagger in Commodore's history, not to mention the industry as a whole, to make a whole series of thrillers. Perhaps Commodore's history is really that of a covert counter-insurgency team. Jack Tramiel was the hard-nosed spy boss, placed on leave after a botched action concening the Marcos administration in the Phillipines, then removed after a shakeup in the White House after the midterm elections and the upheaval with John Turner in Canada.

The "company" fought an unholy alliance of crypto-fascists, Soviet Communists, and fundamentalist Shinto sects. The computer business provided a handy cover during travel and an easy explanation for the vast sums of money they consumed in their work. And somewhere, hidden among the card symbols and graphics patterns of PETSCII lies a message of ultimate power, secretly encoded by astrophysicist Leonard Tramiel. Even the C= symbol has a dark past shrouded in the mysteries of strange sects that rose in ancient Poland in the wake of the Magyar invasion...

Sounds good to me. But then, I'm shy more than a few hours sleep this week, too.

-Mark

[saundby]

Just read some more of the book. There's one big howler I can't let slide (there are a bunch of other little ones I won't bother with.) Bagnall tries again to make the case there's a huge distinction between the PET and other systems--he claims that unlike the PET which opened up to reveal the circuit card, both the TRS-80 and the Apple II came as sealed machines whose warranty was voided by opening them.

Uh, wrongo. The Apple II case opened up to reveal a row of slots right from Day One.

D'oh!

I also find it amusing that he considers the PET user-friendly for opening up to reveal its innards. I get the feeling that if the PET had not opened up, he would have considered _that_ friendly behavior, raged against Apple for allowing their box to open up to show a confusing and hypertechnical PCB to the user, then accused Tandy of ripping off the PET by shipping a closed box.

I'm confused here. Was the Vic less friendly than the PET because it didn't open up even if it did come with a pair of simple expansion connectors/cartridge ports? Did Commodore make the PET friendlier when they started taking out RAM sockets so that users couldn't do their own RAM upgrades, thereby protecting innocent users from the hazards of techie-ness? I guess I'll have to keep reading to learn the answers... 8P

-Mark
(For future books, Bagnall not only needs a copy editor but someone to turn down his hyperbole knob about two or three notches.)

[carlsson]

Well, don't both all PETs and the VIC require you to remove a few screws on the bottom to open them up? I would think all computers are possible to open in this manner, but there is the issue about voided warranty or not when you open it.

One can discuss which of the PETs you fold backwards and those you fold forwards is the most user friendly.

[saundby]

The main error in Bagnall's book is his claim that the user voided the warranty by opening the Apple II case. It was intended to be opened, and it didn't void the warranty. It would be like voiding the warranty on the Vic if you plug something into the expansion port or user port. The Apple was very much a hacker-friendly system. That was his factual error, and it's a big one.

Whether that's the same thing as user-friendly is something else.

On the other point, I was surprised that Bagnall wanted to make a big deal of how 'user friendly' it was to have an openable machine. It seems somewhat at odds for someone who dislikes a machine that boots to an ML prompt first, requiring a two-key combo to start BASIC as being too techie to truly be considered a "personal computer." He considers the PET to "invite users in" (though giving them little to do once they get there-no slots) whereas booting directly to BASIC and having no built-in monitor program seems the software antithesis to this attitude. It just seems like a logical irregularity to me, especially as I expect him to go on raving about every later model of Commodore computer at the expense of what he considers the competition, and none of them after the PET open up until you get to the PC clones and the Amiga 2000.

-Mark

[saundby]

More factual problems in the chapter "The Trinity." He claims that the PET outsells everybody else, and goes on to say it did this with sales of about 4000 units in 1977. He expressly dismisses the S-100 systems, in fact, and concentrates on Apple and Radio Shack as being "the competition" (while simultaneously claiming that Commodore considered themselves in competition with IBM. Too bad he doesn't tell us whether Commodore was out to scoop the market for the 5100 or if it was the 370XA machines they were after. )

Since he looked up enough in the way of figures to come up with the PET sales number (Commodore didn't announce figures), it's too bad he didn't come up with figures like about 6,000 IMSAI 8080s sold that year, and about 20,000 Altairs being sold of the 8800b type. If I recall correctly, even the Altair 680 would have outsold the PET that year.

When the TRS-80 came out, it blew everything away, but I don't think he counts that against the PET for 1977, even though it went on sale in August, as I recall, and sold about 10,000 units in the first few weeks of its availability.

Bagnall's enthusiasm for things Commodore was fun, at first, but it's starting to get a bit hysterical now. And the Vic-20 hasn't even come out yet.

I hope the section on Commodore's demise isn't equally flawed, because I was looking for another account of that (aside from the ones I've heard from some of the Amiga people themselves, and the carefully crafted tales that were in the stockholder communications at the time.)

-Mark

[PaulQ]

Sounds like a typical middle management guy; heavy on the BS, light on facts. Perhaps he's helping Apple with their new ad campaign?

[saundby]

Sounds like a typical middle management guy; heavy on the BS, light on facts. Perhaps he's helping Apple with their new ad campaign?

Hehe, an interesting take on things, DQ!

Of course, right after I posted the last post the book took a severe turn for the better. The rest of the "Trinity" chapter is much better than the start. It did a really good job of giving some insight into what was going on when Peddle was shifting around during that time (trying to avoid spoilers here.)

Also, I have to say that earlier in the book Bagnall did a really good job of relating the tale of the creation of the 6502 when the crew first came to MOS Technology. I felt like I was _there_. Now, I'm not sure how accessible this section would be to the average reader. Bagnall gave a fair bit of technical detail in there, and while I think he did a good job of describing it, I already have an entree into it since I did some (much smaller) chip design in the same period, so I'm not the right one to judge how accessible Bagnall's account is.

But I think he did a good job of getting across how tough it was to design something like the 6502 back then, and how ability and persistence were the keys to making it all work. He also does a great job (I think) of getting across what a superhuman feat Bill Mensch pulled off when doing manual layout of the chip, and getting working silicon on the first run. Astounding!

The other stuff I've been complaining about just seems like a redux of the old "holy wars" between systems, and it's pretty tiresome any more. Nowadays, it's pretty clear there wasn't really as much distinction between systems as we made it out to be at the time, and that a capable person could make almost anything work at doing something well. Even a TRS-80 Model I.

-Mark

[zhx]

Hate to dredge up an old thread, but I figured it was preferable to starting a new one. When I picked my VIC up it came with Compute!'s First Book of VIC, which included a couple chapters on Commodore, and more specifically, VIC history. I LOVED those chapters and was trying to find some interesting books to pick up on Amazon the other day and decided to see what I could find Commodore history.

I'm only about 70 pages in, and despite being a little rough around the edges, it's a very interesting read so far. So far there DOES seem to be a ridiculous amount of Apple (especially Apple II) bashing, so it was interesting reading Saundby's posts on the subject.

The author's whole "Apple revisionist" conspiracy overtones are a little silly, but I DO think Commodore isn't really as highly regarded as it should be. Can't wait to get through the rest of the book.

[gklinger]

It could stand a good spell checking too.

[Centallica]

It could stand a good spell checking too.

Ya as I commented before too bad editor and choppy reading but I was glued
to reading it

[Kweepa]

Yeah, I couldn't put it down. There were some great anecdotes in there!

For me the most irritating part of the writing was the constant "Peddle explained" "Peddle said" "Peddle claimed" "Peddle ejaculated"... I was almost glad when he left the company.