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Why C128 did stay longer than 1989?


Serguei2

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1 hour ago, carlsson said:

It is true that the Osborne 1 (1981) has a 5" mono screen just like the SX-64 (1984) but in colour. However the Osborne Executive (1982) had 7" mono, the Kaypro II (1982) had 9" mono just like the Seequa Chameleon (1983) did.

 

Compare with the Educator 64 (1983) which had a 14" (or perhaps it is only 12"?) mono monitor. Certainly it is not luggable in the same way the SX-64 is, and I can understand the desire to show off the colour capacities of the C64, but we should also remember that early on Commodore announced two models in January 1983; the monochrome SX-100 with a single drive and the colour DX-64 with dual drives, which blended together as the SX-64. I believe if the SX-100 had happened with a 5" mono screen in a time where all the competitors already boasted 7-9" screens, it would have been a laughing stock.

C'mon, it's called the SX-100. That's 36 more than 64! It must have a bigger CRT, like a 9" monochrome.

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5 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

Yeah, the SX-64 has a crazy tiny screen.  But, then again, so did the Osbourne 1 and that one sold really well, as did other luggables which had tiny screens.  That being said, it didn't sell well at all and it was quickly discontinued.

I don't think we ever sold that SX. It just sat on a rear end cap & was ignored. Funny, do you realize that 5 inch screen  on the SX is smaller than most peoples cell phone screens now. ?

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6 minutes ago, hloberg said:

I don't think we ever sold that SX. It just sat on a rear end cap & was ignored. Funny, do you realize that 5 inch screen  on the SX is smaller than most peoples cell phone screens now. ?

Yep.  My cellphone has a 6 inch panel and my wife's is 6.7.  Crazy, especially when something with a 4.5 inch screen was considered to be pretty big in the early 2010's.  Now, something like the iPhone SE 2 with its 4.7 inch screen is "small".  That's they way things go, though.

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The SX-64 sold around 50,000 units which was a respectable total for a late arriving portable machine especially one that didn't play into its software's strengths. 

 

It does seem clear that Commodore managed to find a color CRT for the same price as the mono CRT leading to the SX-64 selling at the same $1000 that the SX-100 was announced for. If the SX-100 had arrived $300 cheaper than the SX-64 like the original announcements suggested, the SX-100 might have found a market as a cheap portable word processor. Not exactly a huge market but millions of dollars in profit with no effort shouldn't be eschewed. 

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10 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Yep.  My cellphone has a 6 inch panel and my wife's is 6.7.  Crazy, especially when something with a 4.5 inch screen was considered to be pretty big in the early 2010's.  Now, something like the iPhone SE 2 with its 4.7 inch screen is "small".  That's they way things go, though.

Well, it's 5" 4:3 so it's bigger than most phones still... 

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13 minutes ago, Krebizfan said:

The SX-64 sold around 50,000 units which was a respectable total for a late arriving portable machine especially one that didn't play into its software's strengths. 

 

It does seem clear that Commodore managed to find a color CRT for the same price as the mono CRT leading to the SX-64 selling at the same $1000 that the SX-100 was announced for. If the SX-100 had arrived $300 cheaper than the SX-64 like the original announcements suggested, the SX-100 might have found a market as a cheap portable word processor. Not exactly a huge market but millions of dollars in profit with no effort shouldn't be eschewed. 

never heard of the SX-100. Here's more: https://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/exec.html

Also beta-ware was a SX-500, a Amiga 500 shoved in an SX-64 case in the article. 

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Wasn't the SX-500 simply an one-off for shits and giggles? By 1987, I can't see Commodore seriously intending to sell anything like it. Although most laptops still were plasma or LCD based and obviously monochrome, if they really intended a portable Amiga I would imagine it being more like the Atari STacy from 1989.

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17 hours ago, carlsson said:

Wasn't the SX-500 simply an one-off for shits and giggles? By 1987, I can't see Commodore seriously intending to sell anything like it. Although most laptops still were plasma or LCD based and obviously monochrome, if they really intended a portable Amiga I would imagine it being more like the Atari STacy from 1989.

That I am not sure.  However, I do know that the laptop that Bill Herd was developing before he went and worked on the C128 could have been a fabulous computer and way ahead of its time if it had been seen through to the end.  But, chalk that up to another mistake made by the powers-that-were at Commodore.

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Yes, the Commodore LCD could have been a rather nice computer, not entirely sure about its specs and capacities. I believe that Bil has mentioned the reasoning behind why it got scrapped. At some point ISTR that Commodore boasted to be in the forefront of LCD technology but perhaps reality was entirely elsewhere.

But sure, if the LCD had gone to production and sold well, it is quite likely to have had a monochrome, portable Amiga around 1988-89. Now I realize the Amiga to a great deal was a multimedia computer (besides gaming) so its 4096 colours and four channel DMA sound may not have come to its full potential on a mono LCD laptop with headphone output. It all had depended on the external expansion options. Obviously it would have required full serial and parallel ports to connect hand scanners, MIDI interfaces, samplers, digitizers (?) etc, as its potential as a dull office computer was limited to software availability and a market where PC compatibles and Macs already were about to dominate.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Everyone I knew with a C128 back in those days (a few friends from school) never ever used any of the C128 features. It was just a big C64....one that you had to move into C64 mode each time you turned it on :)

 

I think the sentiment was the same for a lot of people. Commodore realized it all too soon, cancelled it and kept going with the C64. I think they really wanted this to be the evolution of the C64 but they just couldn't make that happen.

 

All of that said however, the C128 is a computer that I absolutely love for its design and durability. I would say that this machine along with the later model C64C (with the same type of metal shield/heatsink) are two of the most reliable machines in the line. These days I only have a C128...and I use it daily. Some chips had failed over the years and needed replacing (one CIA and the BASIC rom) but minor issues that were easily resolved by swapping them out.

 

And, I still only use it as a big glorified C64 ;)

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On 1/16/2021 at 9:21 PM, eightbit said:

Everyone I knew with a C128 back in those days (a few friends from school) never ever used any of the C128 features. It was just a big C64....one that you had to move into C64 mode each time you turned it on :)

 

I think the sentiment was the same for a lot of people. Commodore realized it all too soon, cancelled it and kept going with the C64. I think they really wanted this to be the evolution of the C64 but they just couldn't make that happen.

I think that was the biggest issue with the C128.  It could do a lot more than the C64, but too few people, and developers for that matter, took advantage of the machine.  Also, price was also another factor as the C64 really struck a great balance between price and usability, especially when you factor in all what the C64C model could do when loaded with the GEOS GUI.  Still, it was, and is, a great machine that is truly more than the sum of its parts.

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Adding the CP/M is probably what sent it over into the ridiculous. Otherwise they could have just added BASIC 7, 80 columns and a turbo mode to a C64 (80 column and turbo could been sys commands). The upper memory could been utilized for video and paging data freeing lower bank for all code. Using most of the legacy hardware saving money.

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It might have been a bit more successful as a hybrid business/home computer if it had an 8088 instead of a Z80, though that would have driven the cost up.  MS-DOS would have been a lot more useful in 1985 than CP/M. If it had been possible to use the REUs with the 8088, you could have had a fairly decent MS-DOS machine and yet still had all of the C-64 software available as well.

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As for making it MSDOS compatible, Commodore tried making PCs and that went nowhere since Commodore couldn't shed it's image as a gaming computer manufacturer. In an odd sorta way the C64 was it's savior and it's killer. It sold millions of the C64 but from that point on it was seen as nothing more than a game computer manufacturer even though it had started with calculators and CBM business machines. Which is also another reason the C128 never took off as a business machine or for that matter the Plus4 (there are a whole host of reasons that flopped that that was one of them). 

 

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Commodore's PC clones were late to market after a lot of other reasonably good quality yet affordable clones were available. The C128 sold fairly well for a CP/M machine in the mid-80s shipping roughly twice as many units as the entire Amstrad CPC line. The Plus 4 was a bad mistake. The product that Commodore probably needed was similar to the C128 or C65 but released back in 1983 as a business capable enhanced C64. Undercut the IBM PCs and grab the European market before the PC clones dropped in price while sharing in the bounty of C64 software. 

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Well, the first PC clones were on the market (in Europe) somewhere in 1985-86. I don't know if that was late to the market but Commodore wrote themselves that they considered making PC computers a marketing ploy and were almost taken aback at the demand, realizing there might be some profit to be made from this after all.

 

I think what prevented Commodore from investing more in making and selling PC clones was the Amiga project, as the Amiga 1000 was just about to be launched and they would've had two different but comparable product lines. The C128 was priced at a lower range and while indeed adding a 8088 had made it an interesting machine, it probably had increased the price as well, plus even more being a competitor to the Amiga 1000.

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46 minutes ago, Krebizfan said:

 The product that Commodore probably needed was similar to the C128 or C65 but released back in 1983 as a business capable enhanced C64. Undercut the IBM PCs and grab the European market before the PC clones dropped in price while sharing in the bounty of C64 software. 

I'm not sure that still wouldn't have helped. Its hard to see now the power of those 3 letters IBM on the business world back then but it was big. Once big blue acknowledged the microcomputer market it was game over for the business world. Then it was just scrambling filling niche markets like Amiga in graphics, Mac in desktop publishing an ST in music. 

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Yeah. Look at Sirius 1/Victor 9000 which hardware wise was an IBM PC on steroids but not fully PC compatible of course. They did exactly what was suggested above, cut into the European market before IBM got here. Remember it took about 1 to 1.5 years between the US release of the PC until they had fulfilled all the national orders and were ready to introduce it overseas. The Victor 9000 probably did OK, perhaps a good contender for Apple II and alike but didn't stand much of a chance once the "real deal" from IBM was available for business customers.

 

The "business enhanced" C64 actually exists in some form. It is called the P500 (prototype name P128) and has a 6509 CPU, 128K RAM, VIC-II and SID chips. It is super rare and to my knowledge never became popular. Of course you have its somewhat more common half siblings in the CBM-II series, the B128 (CBM 610) and B256 (710/720) as well. Those were mainly thought to replace the PET series, have monochrome fixed video but also with a SID chip onboard. The full profile model even had an option for a 8088 expansion, and in the last few years software has been patched and ported so nowadays it can run a good deal of IBM PC software in monochrome mode.

 

Software vendors were one of the keys to success. I've read that prior to IBM releasing the PC, they made sure that all the leading software suppliers on the Apple, TRS-80, PET etc would port their popular titles to the PC to have those available at launch day. Not bundled, but the fact that you could get WordStar, VisiCalc, DBase (??), various programming languages etc for your brand new personal computer were selling arguments. This is something Commodore would've had to make sure to in order to stay in that market.

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I believe the relationship between the P128, the prototype D128 (not C128D) and the C128 has been discussed back and forth. Some similarities may exist but that is almost inevitable for a company making (trying) that many different computers. At least the 80 column B128/B256 were marketed a bit in the beginning, but were dumped for clearance sales through Protecto only about 1.5 years after those were released. There is even evidence that Commodore themselves in newsletters referred to the B128 (or possibly P128) as the C128 already in the beginning of 1983, but it never was an official model name.

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20 hours ago, hloberg said:

In an odd sorta way the C64 was it's savior and it's killer. It sold millions of the C64 but from that point on it was seen as nothing more than a game computer manufacturer even though it had started with calculators and CBM business machines. Which is also another reason the C128 never took off as a business machine or for that matter the Plus4 (there are a whole host of reasons that flopped that that was one of them). 

 

Sorry, but I have to disagree.  The C64 saved Commodore a lot more than it hurt the company.  If Commodore hadn't had the C64, it would have certainly went out of business in the mid-80s until the A500 and A2000 came out, which those products along with the C64 and success of the C128 helped Commodore get back into profitability.  What really killed Commodore were bad products decisions (Plus 4, A600, CDTV), tons of money in R&D flushed down the toilet along with promising projects (LED laptop, AAA chip set, Hombre chip), sh*tty management (for the most part), and no definitive business plan.

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19 hours ago, hloberg said:

I'm not sure that still wouldn't have helped. Its hard to see now the power of those 3 letters IBM on the business world back then but it was big. Once big blue acknowledged the microcomputer market it was game over for the business world. Then it was just scrambling filling niche markets like Amiga in graphics, Mac in desktop publishing an ST in music. 

Yes, big blue was very big back in the day and the PC was a big industry disruptor.  However, Commodore was number one in market share in the U.S. circa 1984 and blew it via a lot of bad decisions.

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Nothing could stand in the way of cheap no-name clones.  I love them as much as most people despise them - they were, and still are, true "people's computers".

 

The only chances I see Commodore (or anybody else) surviving this concept, would be having a clone line which was in some way profitable (so becoming a Dell of sorts) or duking it out with Apple for the boutique niche.

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It took a few years for the IBM PC to be regarded as an advancement on technology. An 8-bit computer can run a word processor in 64K just as effectively as the 64K 5150. The Apple II and TRS-80 continued selling to businesses that already had some while Amstrad and Spectrum grabbed market share at prices too low for even PC clones. Commodore was well positioned to compete against those had Commodore managed to release a good product early enough to be established. Having an affordable 8-bit business line in the 82 to 90 time frame might not have saved Commodore but an extra billion or two in profits might have provided the cash reserves to give the 1990s Amiga redesigns a chance to find buyers. 

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