Commodore 900 vs Commodore Amiga 1000

[psxphill]

By 1989, C= could be using Z80000, which blows the NeXT's 68030 away.

The z80,000 was cancelled in 1984 before it was completed, either because the z8000 was a failure or because the z80,000 never worked.
 
It's likely competitive to the 68020, although it's irrelevant. Commodore were still shipping 68000 based Amiga's in 1992. There is no way they'd have switched from the z8000 to a z80000 by 1989.

[WolfToTheMoon]

The z80,000 was cancelled in 1984 before it was completed, either because the z8000 was a failure or because the z80,000 never worked.
 
It's likely competitive to the 68020, although it's irrelevant. Commodore were still shipping 68000 based Amiga's in 1992. There is no way they'd have switched from the z8000 to a z80000 by 1989.

Not true... Z80000 was sold to military and telco, where it was used to upgrade from Z8000. They made a CMOS version too(Z80000 was NMOS), called Z320.

[toRus]

Don't get confused with the Z80180 which was basically an imroved Z80. Z-88000 was only in test phase after being late 2-3 years, the bugs were not ironed out and by 1987 the word was that it did not perform very well in practice and was considered vapourware. I don't think CBM would fair better than Exxon and I find it difficult to believe that a C900 machine would stand a chance against Amiga in the desktop or the existing minicomputer market in the enterprise.

[agami]

Who cares whether color was important for Unix workstations? The point is, the Amiga had that capability, and it was used for a lot of great stuff. The C900 didn't. Had Commodore gone the 900 route, would we have gotten the Cinemaware titles? Shadow of the Beast? Deluxe Paint? If we even had, they would've looked like ass by comparison, unless you sprang for an expansion card to provide the capabilities that the Amiga had right out of the box.

You must suffer from CMPS (Chronic Missing-the-Point Syndrome). The questions was not whether we (the Cinemaware title playling public) would have been better off, but rather would Commodore (the computer company) have been better off.

Obviously if Commodore never bought Amiga, or if it did and then pulled a "Gateway" we wouldn't have had all the things that Amiga enabled. Computer game players would maybe have the C256 or may have gone over to Atari ST systems. The graphics and video amateur would have waited a bit longer until someone else kick-started the multi-media computer revolution.

[commodorejohn]

You must suffer from CMPS (Chronic Missing-the-Point Syndrome). The questions was not whether we (the Cinemaware title playling public) would have been better off, but rather would Commodore (the computer company) have been better off.

Well, A. that really hasn't been the general thrust of this thread, even if the OP tried to sound like it - it's been much more this wistful pining for the idea that maybe we could all have had chickenheads on our generic Unix workstations - and B. who cares? Commodore the company was sunk at least as much by managerial malfeasance and refusal to commit to improving its product line as it was by failing to catch on to some theoretically-inevitable shift towards Unix workstations (and I'd just like to ask, how much could they really have expected to benefit from that? Even if they had managed to establish a foothold in that market, it's not like Unix workstations were enough to save DEC from a buyout.)

I swear, it's like half the people in this community operate on the logic that the way things did go is the only way things could have gone - because Unix/Unixoid is the "in" thing right now, it must have been inevitable, and anybody who explored another avenue that ultimately didn't pan out should be alternately mourned and castigated for their lack of vision in failing to accurately predict future developments and accede to their obvious inevitability. Who cares if Commodore might have made it through a few years more, if doing so would require sacrificing their hands-down best product for some generic-ass Unix box? I'd rather they have died doing something good (or even having done something good and just failing to follow up on it) than hang on through mediocrity.

[WolfToTheMoon]

Who cares if Commodore might have made it through a few years more, if doing so would require sacrificing their hands-down best product for some generic-ass Unix box? I'd rather they have died doing something good (or even having done something good and just failing to follow up on it) than hang on through mediocrity.

I think a generic UNIX box is a little harsh to say about the C900.
It had custom graphics system. Commodore's own windowing system on top of Coherent.
And it was pretty cheap(for an UNIX box)... 3000ish $, and that's without the inevitable educational discount... It could have been far bigger than Amiga 1000 ever was.

Commodore the company was sunk at least as much by managerial malfeasance and refusal to commit to improving its product line

Apparently, Ghould wanted Gasse before he brought Ali into C=... maybe that was the last chance to change something...

[psxphill]

I swear, it's like half the people in this community operate on the logic that the way things did go is the only way things could have gone - because Unix/Unixoid is the "in" thing right now,

Unix always had a following & it's basically the same people who followed it in the 70's that follow it now. Amiga was different, some people ended up getting sucked into Unix but it's just a pretender to the Amiga legacy.
 

I think a generic UNIX box is a little harsh to say about the C900.
It had custom graphics system. Commodore's own windowing system on top of Coherent.
And it was pretty cheap(for an UNIX box)... 3000ish $, and that's without the inevitable educational discount... I

The 8563 was horrible in the C128 and it would have been no better in the serial terminals for the C900. It would have sunk commodore quicker. At least with the Amiga they didn't have competition for people making compatible computers. How long do you think they'd have succeeded with competition?
 
The Amiga lasted so long because it was in a niche market.

[commodorejohn]

The 8563 was horrible in the C128 and it would have been no better in the serial terminals for the C900.

Which reminds me of Bil Herd's great tale of the development of the 128, and all the trouble they had getting the dang 80-column video to work...