Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: lassie on September 11, 2012, 01:06:18 AM
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Hi found this when surfing the net, never knew Commodore made PC.
Many people remember Commodore for their 8-bit and Amiga machines, but many forget that they also made PC's as well. These were fairly non-descript machine ranging from the 8088 to the 486 processors. Commodore first began to produce PC's around 1987 and continued until 1993. When the company reorganised the PC division was one of the first to be cut. Their PC sales never compared to the number of Amigas sold and towards the end they were allegedly making a loss. A rumour circulated after Commodore's demise suggested that the company ordered their engineers to alter the A4000 design, allowing it to be sold in their existing supply of PC cases. For more information on Commodore PCs visit Home Computer.de
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Wait what? I though the last one was the PC-60 386 and no 486 ones?
Edit: Sorry my bad was thinking the ones named "PC-" :)
I got an mint condition Commodore PC-20 III including the monitor/keyboard and mouse that I bought new :)
It's this one, tho this picture is from google.
(http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cip/computer_pc20iii_01.jpg)
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Wait what? I though the last one was the PC-60 386 and no 486 ones?
I got an mint condition Commodore PC-20 III including the monitor/keyboard and mouse that I bought new :)
It's this one, tho this picture is from google.
(http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cip/computer_pc20iii_01.jpg)
That is quite cool that you have that :) Are it Commodore games you can play on it or pc games? never knew they made PC
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That is quite cool that you have that :) Are it Commodore games you can play on it or pc games? never knew they made PC
Well since it's an PC compatible with an 8088 CPU it runs PC games.
Mine has Windows 2.0 installed and the screen is a monochrome screen :)
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Well since it's an PC compatible with an 8088 CPU it runs PC games.
Mine has Windows 2.0 installed and the screen is a monochrome screen :)
Yes of course it runs PC games when i think about it :-) Did you buy it in Sweden?
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Yes of course it runs PC games when i think about it :-) Did you buy it in Sweden?
Yepp, it has a Swedish keyboard, I start it once a year maybe to check if it works as it should other then that I never use it.
These are quite rare here now days, mine has no yellowing what so ever, it was used in my radio room so little to no light on it ever :)
Have been thinking of selling it from time to time since I never use it, but ive kept it :)
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Yepp, it has a Swedish keyboard, I start it once a year maybe to check if it works as it should other then that I never use it.
These are quite rare here now days, mine has no yellowing what so ever, it was used in my radio room so little to no light on it ever :)
Have been thinking of selling it from time to time since I never use it, but ive kept it :)
Well i think you will regret it if you sold it :) i have never seen one before.
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Well i think you will regret it if you sold it :) i have never seen one before.
Yeah I am glad I kept it :D Ill bring it out some day and take a few photos and post here :)
I know many that never seen one before they saw mine :P
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Yeah I am glad I kept it :D Ill bring it out some day and take a few photos and post here :)
I know many that never seen one before they saw mine :P
Yes you should do that :) it could be nice to see.
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Their nicest looking PC was the PC-1, which looked exactly like the Commodore 128D computer (a bit like the A1000) and apart from Atari's also slim n sexy PC-1 too (which looked exactly like a Mega ST) ALL other makes of PCs from the 80s and 90s look rubbish and obese to me :D
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I have a Commodore 386SX laptop, but I remember that back in the day, I wanted the Commodore 486 laptop.
Yow! It runs Windows 3.1!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Hi found this when surfing the net, never knew Commodore made PC.
Many people remember Commodore for their 8-bit and Amiga machines, but many forget that they also made PC's as well. These were fairly non-descript machine ranging from the 8088 to the 486 processors. Commodore first began to produce PC's around 1987 and continued until 1993. When the company reorganised the PC division was one of the first to be cut. Their PC sales never compared to the number of Amigas sold and towards the end they were allegedly making a loss. A rumour circulated after Commodore's demise suggested that the company ordered their engineers to alter the A4000 design, allowing it to be sold in their existing supply of PC cases. For more information on Commodore PCs visit Home Computer.de
Commodore's decision to try to compete in the IBM clone market, with it's ever shrinking profit margins was part of their downfall. They could not compete with the razor thin profit margins that also almost killed the likes of Dell and Gateway (named Gateway2000 at the time), plus dozens of other IBM clone manufacturers, or assemblers who were trying to cash in on the rapidly increasing computer sales market during the early 90's.
IIRC, Commodore had already lost too much money before they shut down the PC division. Shutting that division down was a last ditch attempt to save themselves from going bankrupt, but it was already too late, and only delayed the inevitable. Most game developers had already abandoned the Amiga market for PC clones & consoles by 1993. Also, since the Amiga had been neglected by Commodore, who spent their money trying to get established in the IBM clone market, instead of spending the needed money on R&D to keep the Amiga ahead of PC clones and the Mac, every new release of AmigaOS was a disappointment to existing Amiga owners. Everything after the original Amiga, later called the A1000, was too little too late.
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From what I've read the PC clones were deveoped by Commodore Europe and were mostly sold there where the Commodore name was worth a lot and held in high regard.
It's doubtfull these PC clones were the primary reason in Amiga falling behind. Amiga started losing its lead when the 1000-500-2000-CDTV-3000 years (1985-1990, 5 entire years and so many models!) saw no real advance in Amiga graphics besides EHB, productivity and a scandoubler, and NO advance in sound, meanwhile the PC market did not stand still and Commodore cancelled projects like the 3000+ delaying AGA for years.
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Commodore's decision to try to compete in the IBM clone market, with it's ever shrinking profit margins was part of their downfall. They could not compete with the razor thin profit margins that also almost killed the likes of Dell and Gateway (named Gateway2000 at the time), plus dozens of other IBM clone manufacturers, or assemblers who were trying to cash in on the rapidly increasing computer sales market during the early 90's.
IIRC, Commodore had already lost too much money before they shut down the PC division. Shutting that division down was a last ditch attempt to save themselves from going bankrupt, but it was already too late, and only delayed the inevitable. Most game developers had already abandoned the Amiga market for PC clones & consoles by 1993. Also, since the Amiga had been neglected by Commodore, who spent their money trying to get established in the IBM clone market, instead of spending the needed money on R&D to keep the Amiga ahead of PC clones and the Mac, every new release of AmigaOS was a disappointment to existing Amiga owners. Everything after the original Amiga, later called the A1000, was too little too late.
Dell was on a rocket through the 90s. They were no where near death. Gateway maybe but not until the 00s.
Agree on the CBM Clone distraction.
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Yeah, Commodore made tons of these back in the late 80s. But it was too little, too late, to save them. By the time they got around to making PC clones, there were already hundreds if not thousands of other clone makers out there producing better products at better prices.
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If you remember at the time more people wanted a PC, It had better marketing.
Without the necessary upgrades the Amiga got adandoned.
The Amiga was very popular in the UK till at least the late 90's, but no one took advantage.
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I used to sell the Commodore branded PC clones and laptops right next to the Amigas in our store. Their cases were built like tanks. I think the earliest models actually shared a bit of their main board technology with the A2088XT and A2286 bridgeboards. Just like the Atari PC clones of the day they had credibility issues with the general public. Half of the people told me they were happy buying a PC from a company they trusted (CBM) and the other half just couldn't get past CBM making a serious business machine. Sad really, as I thnk that if CBM had invested a bit in this end of their business it could have been a money maker as well.
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I used to sell the Commodore branded PC clones and laptops right next to the Amigas in our store. Their cases were built like tanks. I think the earliest models actually shared a bit of their main board technology with the A2088XT and A2286 bridgeboards. Just like the Atari PC clones of the day they had credibility issues with the general public. Half of the people told me they were happy buying a PC from a company they trusted (CBM) and the other half just couldn't get past CBM making a serious business machine. Sad really, as I thnk that if CBM had invested a bit in this end of their business it could have been a money maker as well.
Hi yes if they were made of the same quality as the early Commodore/Amiga then they were build to last 20 years easy, they could have been a susses :)
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If you remember at the time more people wanted a PC, It had better marketing.
Without the necessary upgrades the Amiga got adandoned.
The Amiga was very popular in the UK till at least the late 90's, but no one took advantage.
Yes they must have been quite popular in uk. Were there not an Amiga Magazine that keep up until around 2000?
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I used to sell the Commodore branded PC clones and laptops right next to the Amigas in our store. Their cases were built like tanks. I think the earliest models actually shared a bit of their main board technology with the A2088XT and A2286 bridgeboards. Just like the Atari PC clones of the day they had credibility issues with the general public. Half of the people told me they were happy buying a PC from a company they trusted (CBM) and the other half just couldn't get past CBM making a serious business machine. Sad really, as I thnk that if CBM had invested a bit in this end of their business it could have been a money maker as well.
True, my PC-20 III is a sturdy build, heavy and the build quality is nice, still works and have not been used more then started since early 90s.
Maybe time for me to look over all caps :)
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True, my PC-20 III is a sturdy build, heavy and the build quality is nice, still works and have not been used more then started since early 90s.
Maybe time for me to look over all caps :)
Yes that was mayby a good idea to look at them :) Think i have around 30 old computers/Conosles but i do not know how to fix/change the caps :( and it will cost a lot if i had to send them all to someone who could. Is it hard to change myself? Do i need some special tools or a solder iron
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My high school had a lab full of Commodore 286 desktops. They were quite slim for the time.
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My high school had a lab full of Commodore 286 desktops. They were quite slim for the time.
That is quite cool. Where are you from? I am from Denmark and i have never seen or heard about Commodore made PC before 2 days ago, and i have been an Amiga and Commodore fan since 1992
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I'm from Ontario, Canada....and my high school also had a computer lab full of Commodore PCs (I remember some of them were Commodore Colts). Before that it was full of Commodore C64s and PETs.
Commodore Canada had a really successful connection with the school boards in Canada. I think in the US Apple computers were more common in schools, but here in Canada, Commodore had the educational market (elementary and high school) sewn up.
The funny thing was that they seemed to have skipped the Amiga line altogether (going from 8-bit Commodores to Commodore-made PCs) BUT all the Commodore PCs were equipped with 1084 monitors (what a waste to use them only on EGA graphic PCs!).
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Yes, Commodore had a great presence in Canada. Their head office building on Pharmacy Ave. is still in existence - logo and all. Don't forget their relationship with the University of Waterloo - co-designing and building the SuperPET 9000 - awesome dual processor goodness!
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I'm from Ontario, Canada....and my high school also had a computer lab full of Commodore PCs (I remember some of them were Commodore Colts). Before that it was full of Commodore C64s and PETs.
Commodore Canada had a really successful connection with the school boards in Canada. I think in the US Apple computers were more common in schools, but here in Canada, Commodore had the educational market (elementary and high school) sewn up.
The funny thing was that they seemed to have skipped the Amiga line altogether (going from 8-bit Commodores to Commodore-made PCs) BUT all the Commodore PCs were equipped with 1084 monitors (what a waste to use them only on EGA graphic PCs!).
The only thing we had in high school was a Commodore 64 and nothing more. Sounds like Commodore had much success in Canada :)
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One of the first things newcomers (and others who may be on the edges) to the Commodore (and by default Amiga) world should do is to read the two Brian Bagnall books and to visit http://www.zimmers.net/commie/docs/cbm-products.txt
The Zimmers site will tell you about 99.9% of all the Commodore products ever made - PCs included as well as all the non computer items.
If anyone ahas any Commodore branded material not on the Zimmers site please submit it for future inclusion.
Ernie
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I grew up in Southern Ontario as well.
I remember having VIC-20 and C64 computers in elementary school, and even a few Amigas in my high school art class. I actually got a couple of joysticks and a bunch of pirated games(including Hollywood Poker Pro) from the art teacher, in exchange for teaching my fellow students how to use Deluxe Paint. I even sold them some of my Amiga equipment before I graduated.
Before it went under, we always had Commodore computers in school, with the exception of those awesomely bizarre Unisys Icon terminals. After that, it was all generic PCs or Dell.
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One of the first things newcomers (and others who may be on the edges) to the Commodore (and by default Amiga) world should do is to read the two Brian Bagnall books and to visit http://www.zimmers.net/commie/docs/cbm-products.txt
The Zimmers site will tell you about 99.9% of all the Commodore products ever made - PCs included as well as all the non computer items.
If anyone ahas any Commodore branded material not on the Zimmers site please submit it for future inclusion.
Ernie
Thanks i will read that :)
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Ha! The Icon - I remember that - the "bionic beaver" was the code name for model we had. Ahhh good times, but our PET lab was much more fun. We played Star Trek in ASCII on those. I think we had about 10 PETs all connected to one pair of disk drives and a printer. Each year we had a new teacher - most of us knew much more than they did about the setup. One teacher I had later on was absolutely brilliant - she taught us FORTAN on an old donated DEC PDP/11 with terminals and a teletype machine (look it up young folk) and a paper card reader. I credit her with sparking my interest in programming seriously and thusly my career! You never forget the teachers like that.
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I don't know, even while the C64 was on sale Commodore had a lot of respect in the business world. The PET was so sought after that Jack increased the prices to maximise his profit.
I'm not really sure in America what went wrong, all you lot seemed to buy was a rubbish EGA PC instead of Amiga 1000s and well even worse Mac 128k or horror of horrors that child's toy the NES.
Atari I could understand getting hassle from corporate side for the name and its connotations but Commodore before the A500/2000 still had willing corporate customers.
However whatever you say there was only ever 2 nice looking PCs sold in the world in the 80s really. Most PCs had the styling of a breeze block or just rubbish strange looks (like those crappy Apricot PCs)
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I know. There's no comparison in my mind as to which was better. I loved my A1000 - tried to convert as many as possible... Sorry, what's a breeze block?
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My grade school only had ibm pc jr's with cga - total ****.
High school had apple ii with the green monochrome screens, I know alot people are apple fans but by that time I had an amiga 500 and thought those were total **** too. My high school computer teacher let me bring the amiga 500 in, and even he was like wow when he said what the machine could do. I said now you know why I've been telling you all years that apples are ****.
Until soundblasters and vga became cheap on pc, I thought those were total **** too. I still thought they were kinda ****ty because of windows until linux improved enough to be usable as an everyday os.
I never liked the idea of commodore pcs, because amiga blew away a 286 or 386 even in my opinion. Its like royles royce suddenly making dodge darts or something to me... Just kinda dumb. Them making pcs was a total failure
and led to them bleeding cash badly, and probably contributed a great deal
to their death.
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I know. There's no comparison in my mind as to which was better. I loved my A1000 - tried to convert as many as possible... Sorry, what's a breeze block?
Oh those big grey concrete blocks they make garages or offices out of lol it's a UK slang term for them.
Funny thing about the A1000, all they had to do was just call it the Commodore PET1000 and businesses probably would have bought it and they probably would have sold more. Instead of asking "what is an Amiga" it would be something like "So what is different between the old 8 bit and new 16 bit PET?" see job done.
IMO the Atari ST is basically a 16 bit PET (which is why the games are so...erm....how to be kind to the poor custom chip deprived Atari hehe) and had Atari actually sold the more expensive Mega ST's under a new brand name not Atari badges they also would have sold more. Musicians however are artistic people so I doubt many cared about the badge on the case after trying out Cubase/Steinberg etc.
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My grade school only had ibm pc jr's with cga - total ****.
High school had apple ii with the green monochrome screens, I know alot people are apple fans but by that time I had an amiga 500 and thought those were total **** too. My high school computer teacher let me bring the amiga 500 in, and even he was like wow when he said what the machine could do. I said now you know why I've been telling you all years that apples are ****.
Until soundblasters and vga became cheap on pc, I thought those were total **** too. I still thought they were kinda ****ty because of windows until linux improved enough to be usable as an everyday os.
I never liked the idea of commodore pcs, because amiga blew away a 286 or 386 even in my opinion. Its like royles royce suddenly making dodge darts or something to me... Just kinda dumb. Them making pcs was a total failure
and led to them bleeding cash badly, and probably contributed a great deal
to their death.
Thing is by 386 days the underwhelming update from 020 to 030 by Motorola was hurting Commodore as the Amiga chipset is no help when rendering graphic fonts or rendering 3D images etc. But yes same for most of us, in the late 80s I had an Amiga 1000 at home but at college we had a 286 PC with EGA. Used to tell my Computer Science teacher that he was an idiot if he thought his £3000 PC was better than my £400 A1000 I had at home (OK add £200 for Sony SCART monitor/TV) but you know how it is, some people are just set in their ways. Even Apple couldn't break the cycle because if it wasn't for iPod Apple would have filed for bankruptcy last century the way their sales were going.
The PC was double the height, had a horribly industrial feeling keyboard, a mouse from MS (sh1t) and made as much noise as a fan on a V8 engine *bletch* and when I got home I'd switch on my 1000 which beeped in that classy manner and had a slight hum from the PSU fan and removed the excellent keyboard from under the slim elegantly designed case. HTH did it lose to such crap! :)
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(http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/cbm-bx256.jpg)
Oh yeah and there were these 8088 4mhz/5mhz babies with SID chips Commodore created in 1983, so make that 3 good looking PCs
OK OK I know it's not a PC as such but I bet you could hack PC-DOS to run on its 5mhz 8088 with a suitable BIOS emulator instead of the CSG ROMs inside it. Still the SK series of Super PETs are some of the most beautiful computers humans ever made. Lovely :)
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Dell was on fire during the 90's. Gateway started to flounder later on in the 00's. Use to work for them until I was made redundant, they had some cool stuff under development that we had a sneak look at, at the time.
Had a Commodore 486-sx25 back in the day was a couple of $1000 and later on bought a Sound Blaster card for $500, top of the line stuff. NZD of course.
Was a huge leap up from my A500, although have more of a bond with the A500 and missed that more when I sold it.
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This was my baby
http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/cip/computer/item/pc486sx25/en
Was installed by a guy from David Reid at the time, and I could remember thinking to myself I wanted and could do his job a lot better.
Ran a BBS on it for years, if I could rewind time I would.
LOL compare that to my existing machine http://www.sony.co.nz/product/sve17115fg .... man we've come a long way :-)
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Looks like a 4000 as I suspected, but they also did the same case with the 386 too. Here is the PC-1
http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cip/computer_pc1_01.jpg (http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cip/computer_pc1_01.jpg)
Well I had a 17" Sony laptop in silver a bit like that, was a 1.7ghz Centrino with 128mb ATI X600 graphics (so not a toy laptop like shared memory graphics today) and as an ex laptop dealer I can honestly say they had the nicest screens of any laptop ever, it was like a 17" plasma screen so bright and glossy, great for watching HD stuff on.
I looked on that site but could not see the Commodore Pentium 75mhz PCs that Escom were selling in the shop local to me at the time.
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Yes they must have been quite popular in uk. Were there not an Amiga Magazine that keep up until around 2000?
2002 I believe! AmigaActive was the last Amiga mag available on the news-stands.
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Yes, Commodore had a great presence in Canada. Their head office building on Pharmacy Ave. is still in existence - logo and all. Don't forget their relationship with the University of Waterloo - co-designing and building the SuperPET 9000 - awesome dual processor goodness!
Ha! Any pics of their head office floating around the net anywhere?
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Looks like a 4000...
The PC-1's case is smaller than the A4000's case.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Here's are really interesting comment about the Commodore PC used by the Toronto School Board. As Pc Clones were getting cheaper The TSB requested that their Service Vendor (I won't give the name but for a while I worked for then) replace all the PCB's in CBM PC10-III systems so it would appear that they wre still CBM Systems.
After we tried to retrofit one we determined that it was not cost effective.
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I don't know, even while the C64 was on sale Commodore had a lot of respect in the business world. The PET was so sought after that Jack increased the prices to maximise his profit.
I'm not really sure in America what went wrong, all you lot seemed to buy was a rubbish EGA PC instead of Amiga 1000s and well even worse Mac 128k or horror of horrors that child's toy the NES.
Atari I could understand getting hassle from corporate side for the name and its connotations but Commodore before the A500/2000 still had willing corporate customers.
Commodore had stopped pushing PETs for business around the time of the VIC-20 due to the idea they had that they could not supply support on the level that Fortune 500 companies required which they would get from companies like IBM who were used to dealing with those level of companies. Thats 'what went wrong' in America.
The idea was they would make the money in the consumer market to build the support structure required to deal with companies at that level then go back into the Business market but the people laying those plans left Commodore well before the Amiga, when they had a computer that could have done very well in Business again.
That the PET sold so well in America gave Commodore the idea that they had priced it too low and caused them to release it at a higher price in Europe.
Its true the Amiga was a lot better oriented to compete in business than the Atari especially once the 2000 came out. But Commodore lost the business name having so long not really pushed a 'business' computer and never really made the case to businesses as to what an Amiga could do for them and their productivity. Remember, no one knew what Multitasking could do back then since neither the PC most people had nor Mac could do it.
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@lassie,
Little do you know it, but Commodore at that time was taking money made from the Amiga and investing it into first the PC-10, then the PC-20, I quit working for Commodore at that time because I couldn't get any of the best sellers in like the Amiga 500, and had to order the Amiga 2000 which took from 3 to 6 months to get in. If I did get lucky and one time I did, they sent me in 3 spanking new Amiga 3000, which lasted in the store about one half day, now with the Amiga's selling that good, what do you think Commodore wanted me to push for sales, why of course the PC-10 & 20's which were real businees machines (sarcastically said) but I know one hard hat wearing individual at Amiga Org who would probably of bought one, no come to think of it he probably would of bought the Apple II that was out at that time, or knowing he isn't cheap the mighty first Mac, with the great black and white screen, with the smiley face. I remember the Mac salesman saying of course the Amiga looks impressive, it has color, sound, great graphics but it is a game machine, look at the Mac this baby is strictly professional, (now how could he say that, when you first turn it on it comes up with this sick looking smiley face) and the black and white screen is for doing business work, color just wouldn't look right doing professional work like spread sheets, data bases and word processing, would write a letter with red ink on a black sheet of paper?
See if you want to be professional buy a Mac, if you want to play silly old games and listen to looney tunes, get an Amiga.
Funny thing is though, I was salesman of the year three years running when the Amiga first came out, then it was harder to get Amiga's in from Commodore, and they expected me to sell PC 10 and 20's (boring). So just think Commodore invested all the profits into PC machines, putting another nail in the coffin of the Amiga.
smerf
sad but true.