Commodore pc

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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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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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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 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?