What would you do if you were the CEO of Commodore Computers?

Travis Bryant moore · Post by **Travis Bryant moore** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:15 am

Basically what would you have done if you were working at Commodore Computers in the 1980s after Jack left?

I mean would you have cut the marketing spending and shifting to funding new software and drivers for the C64.

Would you can the C128 and do the Commodore Glass Top.

Would you have stopped the Amiga low end for the Mega 65.

Would you have run contest for great new software for the C64 and dole out prize money as a marketing gimmick and like wise for new hardware add ons and upgrade the programming manual and so on.

Or would you have upgraded to optical storage media or higher density 1.44 mb or some other media format.

Though I am sure people have asked the questions and others. What would have made the company more successful if you could time travel and do it right?

Thank you and I guess you can lump the Amiga Years into that as well.

Scott Robison · Post by **Scott Robison** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:29 am

As much as I love the 8 bit era, continuing on with the C65 in the early 90s was the wrong move (as much as I would have liked to have had one), and the Amiga was the right platform for their future. What it needed was low-cost compatibility with DOS / Windows in the form of hardware.

Also, just as DOS was an independently developed CP/M API for x86, they could have had some success with a CP/M API for 68K, as well as a Windows API to provide source code cross compiling.

I'm not saying any of these things were easy, just that it could have ensured more long term viability for the platform.

Of course, that all would have presupposed that Motorola would have continued the 68K line, which didn't happen.

Scott Robison · Post by **Scott Robison** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:26 am

And when I say "CP/M API for 68K" what I really mean is "DOS API for 68K" ...

Jeff Pare · Post by **Jeff Pare** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:34 am

Increase the price of the Amiga 600 when released but with a 14 MHz CPU instead of 7 MHz (allowing it to run at the lower speed when necessary).

Otherwise, no development at all for the 300/600 and just sell the 500+ longer until the 1200 is ready.

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 4:23 am

I would sell Plus/4 series (models 264, 232, 364) for as low price as possible, like Jack envisioned, and compete with ZX Spectrum on the market. I believe if that happened, these models would become much more widespread. And also would become as popular as ZX Spectrum today.

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Wed Jun 16, 2021 4:51 am

The C64 kept on selling into the 90s, arguments that Commodore made any big mistakes with the C64 are a bit hard for me to follow. By the time Jack left there was no big gains to be made from investments in the C64.

However, the C128 could have been refined to make it more attractive as an upgraded C64, given that the transition to a big C128 3rd party software market never actually happened. So refine it, accepting that people are buying it to run in C64 mode AND something else. Build it into a case with a 3.5" drive, fix the z80 chip so it ran at half the dot clock (roughly 4MHz) and accessed memory using wait states like a z80 should when it is faster than its RAM, so that a productivity CP/M bundle would actually work, and bundle that software on 3.5" disks.

But mostly, add a feature to C64 mode so that the 64K extra RAM could be accessed on the expansion pages (like a GeoRAM that only had 64K in it, with a switch to turn the access off for cartridges that used the expansion pages), and take advantage of existing 3rd party fast parallel drive interface systems for the C64 to let the C64 access the built in 3.5" drive at much higher speed, so that the buyer of the C128+ was getting also getting an upgrade if they stayed in C64 mode.

As to what to do to make the Amiga line an even stronger success than it was ... and I reckon it was a success as a product line, even if not the runaway success that the C64 was ... I dunno, I was never an Amiga guy.

DoubleA · Post by **DoubleA** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:12 am

On 6/16/2021 at 3:29 AM, Scott Robison said:

... low-cost compatibility with DOS / Windows in the form of hardware.

I don't think so. They tried and it was a waste of money.

What C= really needed was native "professionell" office software like Excel. Because Dos and Windows and Excel + Word were all over the offices and that was the backdoor for home computing.

Short version: C= should have bought MS while it was possible and should have made them their internal pro application provider. World peace restored ?

rje · Post by **rje** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 2:01 pm

On 6/15/2021 at 11:51 PM, BruceMcF said:

The C64 kept on selling into the 90s...

However, the C128 could have been refined...

As to what to do to make the Amiga line an even stronger success than it was ...

Yes to the above. The C64 could have, late in life, been a Spectrum killer, the weed-killer to wrap up the 8-bit era.

What did Tramiel do? The Atari ST... so both Commodore and Atari had part of the picture right.

Wikipedia: "Poor marketing and the failure of later [Amiga] models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share..."

I think Amiga was Commodore's bridge through the 90s. It was their only bet, and they muffed it.

StephenHorn · Post by **StephenHorn** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 3:34 pm

9 hours ago, DoubleA said:

I don't think so. They tried and it was a waste of money.

What C= really needed was native "professionell" office software like Excel. Because Dos and Windows and Excel + Word were all over the offices and that was the backdoor for home computing.

Short version: C= should have bought MS while it was possible and should have made them their internal pro application provider. World peace restored ?

I think it would have been impossible to buy Microsoft from Bill Gates at any point in C='s lifetime. Gates knew exactly what he had, which is why he licensed his software to IBM in the first place instead of selling it. There's just no way he would have sold to C=, at most he would have agreed to partner with them to provide Microsoft Works or, prior to 1987, to port MS-DOS and/or Windows to a Commodore platform. This wouldn't have been any real competitive edge for C=, though, they would have to compete on price and hardware performance like all the other also-ran companies of the early PC era, most of which died (including C=, which moved into the IBM-compatible market in 1987).

The big competitive edge of the C64 was its low price point, thanks to its relatively simple hardware design and the 6502 processor, something which C= were really never going to be able to replicate, and especially not without their own Intel-compatible CPU that they could manufacture without a license, and turn around to license and second-source to third parties. If C= could have bought AMD, that would have been prescient, but I suspect that AMD's long technical partnerships with Intel may have been written with poison pill clauses to prevent purchases and buyouts, and that their even longer feuds with Intel would have been another poison pill entirely and I question whether their administration under C= would have been willing or able to continue the legal battle with Intel into the 90s.

But I think AMD is a model of what C= needed to do to survive: Lean into the MOS/CSG side of their business and partner with the winners of the CPU competition to co-develop and second-source the x86 platform, while developing their own clean room implementation of Intel's processor. This, too, is no guarantee of survival, just ask Cyrix. But I think that, shy of some miraculous encounter with someone who could drop a "Micralign"-level production advantage in their lap and undercut the competition by laughable margins, it would have been their best shot.

Scott Robison · Post by **Scott Robison** » Fri Jun 18, 2021 3:02 am

21 hours ago, DoubleA said:

I don't think so. They tried and it was a waste of money.

What C= really needed was native "professionell" office software like Excel. Because Dos and Windows and Excel + Word were all over the offices and that was the backdoor for home computing.

Short version: C= should have bought MS while it was possible and should have made them their internal pro application provider. World peace restored ?

The operative part of my statement was "low-cost". https://dfarq.homeip.net/amiga-bridgeboard-the-pc-compatibility-option/ describes some history, and the hardware solution was nowhere near "low-cost" relative to a separate box. A software only emulation solution was not a practical way to run the business software that people would want an IBM compatible for.

I'm not saying the price they were charging was unreasonable, but the reality was that people weren't looking to spend as much on a card as they would for an entire computer, by and large.

While more native SW for Amiga would have been great, the problem is the number of people who would have wanted to use it as a bridge to work from home using the same software they were using in the office.

As far as software API compatibility with DOS and Windows, I think that could have supported relatively easy ports of software to Amiga that conformed to DOS / Windows conventions. Certainly not a magic bullet, but it would have been something that people would have been more apt to attempt to port their programs to Amiga after writing a DOS/Win version in the idea that it would be significantly easier than a full re-write.