[Speculation] How to keep Commodore afloat

[KThunder]

Clones, cross license with atari, anything to make the platform dependant on just one company.

Back in the day people used to talk about the war between Atari, Apple, Commodore, and IBM. What they didn't realize was that it was really IBM and its clones, with all of their manufacturing capability, against everyone else. IBM was one of many.

[KThunder]

The custom chipset has been mentioned a few times recently on a couple threads and I thought I would comment on it.

The custom chipset wasn't the reason Commodore, or the Amiga had trouble, because it was Commodores chipset, as in not only did they own it they owned Mos tech which produced it all the way up to AGA.

"Vertical Integration" was the reason the Vic and C64 were less expensive than the competition, had generally better chipsets, and the c64 had a custom 6502. It was the reason Commodore could take on the Amiga chipset in the first place and sell for less than most of the competition, whilst having better features etc.

The problem came because Commodore didn't put enough money into Mos tech. By '85 rather than produce a 16bit cpu they went with a 68000 (the 16bit 65816 which is 6502 compatible works pretty dang good in the Apple IIgs and snes) And by the time AGA came around they couldn't fabricate some of the chips so they had to outsource.

So much of the cost savings of having your own chipfab were negated by the early '90s and commodore had to charge more and more while giving less and less in features. The cpu manufacturer of most of the 80s computers didn't plan ahead. The computer company that holds a guiness world record for the most systems sold of any single computer line, died.

As much as I like the 68000 the Amiga should have had a 65816 style 16bit chip. By the 90's they should have transitioned over to a 32bit 6502 compatible risc chip. All the ram and chipset components should have been Mos tech produced. And the Amiga chipset and OS should have been licensed out and chip fab services as well.

[KThunder]

Thats the thing though, the chipset probably wouldn't have had to be changed much at all. And they should have been able to handle it easily. The 68000 has a 16bit interface and kinda funky control bus setup but nothing too weird. I have seen 68020's connected to Apple II's so even if a little glue logic was required for OCS it could be completely fixed by ECS.

The amiga could have been a c65 in 1985 with the amigaos. Kindof like the Apple IIgs. and the gs sold more than the mac did until Apple killed it.

I don't think the terbium got enough funding and died. WDC does embedded stuff now mostly i think.