There was a joke about C= management going around for several years, I can't find it today, maybe you can post a link to the original source or someone could post the original text here.

There was a joke about C= management that went something like this.
Quote:

A new Commodore manager enters his office and finds a letter on his desk, he opens the envelope and reads: Instructions for a manager at Commodore: 1. Find out everything about the product and the market. 2. Analyze the existing products and the requirements from the market. 3. Talk to the developers about how the products can be adapted for the respective markets. 4. Plan the production and marketing of the products 5. Present the plans to your superiors 6. Copy this letter and put it on the desk for your successor

The management of C= was constantly changing, good managers where fired (getting compensated with million of dollars) because Gould and other Stakeholder thought they could have done better and they where replaced with managers that where focused on cutting costs and reducing development staff.

The team of hardware developers shrank down to just a few, that where under powered and lacked the equipment to do the development right.
The own chip development and production was cut down extremely, turning the 6502 from cash cow into a museum piece and causing extreme pollution from waste that wasn't handled correctly.

At the other side Irvin Gould draw out an unusually high amount of money from C= without the will to invest it again on a long term development plan.

@OneTimer1

Where's the joke? This makes me (again) want to open a lawsuit against ghosts.

@OneTimer1

I remember reading something like that in an editorial in Amiga World* magazine. probably early 1990s.

*despite the name, no relation to this web site.

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@OneTimer1

What's the time frame?

MOS 65xx are little-endian CPUs, hence they are foreign for big-endian Amiga.

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@OneTimer1

Quote:

The management of C= was constantly changing, good managers where fired (getting compensated with million of dollars) because Gould and other Stakeholder thought they could have done better and they where replaced with managers that where focused on cutting costs and reducing development staff. The team of hardware developers shrank down to just a few, that where under powered and lacked the equipment to do the development right. The own chip development and production was cut down extremely, turning the 6502 from cash cow into a museum piece and causing extreme pollution from waste that wasn't handled correctly. At the other side Irvin Gould draw out an unusually high amount of money from C= without the will to invest it again on a long term development plan.

Just the same old hostile narrative that totally ignores the reality of the situation, promulgated by entitled fans who think they were somehow wronged because Commodore didn't give them the Moon on a stick. All these armchair CEOs don't seem to have any clue about how corporations really work and what's needed to keep them going.

Imagine it's 1958 and you (a Polish-American Holocaust survivor) have a nice little typewriter repair business going. But business is slowing and you want to do more, so you incorporate and import new typewriters from Czechoslovakia. Only problem is you're constantly running short of the cash required to import them in bulk, so what to do? Give up of course and just get a regular job. Or... you sell a portion of the company to one of Canada's largest financing companies, whose president becomes the chairman of your board. Then you put it on the Montreal Stock Exchange under the name of Commodore Business Machines (Canada) Ltd.

That's how corporations work. You raise money by bringing in new investors - who may want a piece of the action to protect their investment - which allows the company to grow and do more stuff.

And everything's sweet, until one day your chairman gets indicted for fraud in one of his other companies, and you're on the hook for money he loaned to your business. Luckily the fraud didn't touch you, but you need bridging finance fast. Enter a new investor by the name of Irving Gould, who loans you $500,000 and becomes chairman. This begins a long fruitful relationship where he loans the company more money every time it gets into trouble, and perhaps gets more shares in return.

By 1977 your company has grown to the point where it's a major player in the electronic calculator business, helped by buying a distressed chip-making factory on the cheap to make your own custom ICs. Then the bottom falls out of the calculator market and you decide to get into computers...

Gould was getting a good amount of money from Commodore because he deserved it. Without him the company wouldn't be a household name selling the most popular home computer in the world and turning over a billion dollars a year. Only problem is the original owner and CEO of the company has other ideas. He's not happy about Gould having a say on the direction of the company, and wants to bring his sons onto the board to get a controlling interest.

Tramiel doesn't know much more about the technical side of computers than Gould does, but he 'knows how to ship boxes'. Actually he knows how to start a price war that kills the competition (such as it is) but creates a lot of bad blood between Commodore and their retailers, and he 'knows' how to create a computer to compete against the ZX Spectrum that is cheaper than the C64 but not compatible with it - another failure that will (hopefully) be hidden by the huge success of the C64.

So Tramiel storms off taking the best engineers with him, leaving Gould - a financier - to try to rescue the business. So what does he do? Hires a new CEO of course. But will he hire the 'right' person? The company has been run according to Tramiel's 'seat of the pants' management style for decades, and it will be tough for someone else to pick up the pieces. Furthermore the home/personal computer market is still evolving rapidly and nobody really knows where the technology is going. Industry pundits are now predicting Commodore's imminent demise - in 1984!

It's in that chaotic environment that Commodore bought the Amiga. The idea was that it would be their entry into the 16-bit home computer revolution that was coming. It was certainly a fine choice for that - better than anything Commodore's own engineers could have whipped up at short notice. Gould was willing to invest a lot into it. They would take Jay Miner's gaming console and turn it into the bee's knees of home computers, with a multitasking GUI OS, full professional keyboard and mouse, crisp RGB monitor output and all the ports you would ever need, as well as being expandable to a whopping 8 MB RAM, and take peripherals such as hard drives and even CPU cards - all for a base price the same as IBM's crappy PCjr. To do this they would make use of their chip-making factory to produce the custom chips, and leverage existing MOS chips for I/O etc.

A great vision - with just one problem. How would a market dominated by the IBM PC respond? As it turns out, poorly. Despite massive advertising it failed to achieve the expected sales. Part of the problem was that the advertising company didn't know what to make of it (a common problem at the time). Commodore wasted a lot of money hiring one of the 'best in the business'.

The other part of the problem was that the Amiga's OS was too complex to get properly finished by the time it launched in 1985, so they had to put in double the RAM just so the ROM image could be loaded from disk. This made it more expensive, but did allow developers to get their hands on the Amiga earlier. To reach the mass market they needed to get that OS finished and make a cheaper model, a job they kept the Amiga engineers on for. However a year later they still hadn't produced anything. Jay Miner was too busy trying to take the vision more upmarket, and the 'low cost' A1000 never appeared.

Those missteps are why Gould got rid of Marshall Smith. Had he kept him on as CEO it probably would only have gotten worse. His next hire did better, pushing Commodore's own engineers to come up with better designs (the A500 and A2000). The A500 debuted in 1987 and quickly became popular - finally the Amiga was on the map and could start making money!

However by this time Commodore had big money problems. The bank had been leaning on them ever since 1984 when Tramiel split, and this seriously limited their options. As usual in these situations, the bank insisted that Commodore sell off redundant infrastructure and let go of staff that weren't immediately needed. That's not to say they couldn't have engineers working on stuff, but not at the staffing levels Marshal Smith maintained. Jay Miner's team was let go because their job was done and they had nothing further of any note to offer.

When you look into the actual history without blinkers on, the situation was a lot more complex and nuanced than fans imply. It's all very well for us to look back with our 20/20 hindsight, but at the time the 'right' path was far less certain. Even the best visionary would have trouble deciding on the proper course, so for normal people it was just a matter of doing the best you could and hoping. This didn't just apply to Commodore - all home computer makers had challenges, even IBM. The market was littered with the bones of failed companies.

As for your other complaints,

The 6502 wasn't Commodore's own design, but they did put it in all their 8-bit computers (not counting 8088 PCs), some with enhancements to suit each model. They even produced a CMOS version. As a 'cash cow' it helped them sell millions of C64s and C128s, which is all they ever wanted from it. Other manufacturers could try to make money selling chips on the open market, but that wasn't Commodore's business. Their plant was kept busy just making chips for their own computers.

The pollution problem was caused by a trichloroethylene tank leak detected in 1978, not long after Commodore bought MOS (in 1976). The EPA completed their preliminary assessment in 1986, and CBM was ordered to perform a remedial investigation and feasibility Study in 1988. A remedial plan was made public in 1992. Pumping began in 1993 and was completed in 1994.

Pinning this on Gould is wrong. The contamination occurred 6 years before he took over, and the EPA took 8 years just to evaluate it. There doesn't seem to have been any urgency, and Commodore did start the cleanup process before they went bankrupt. In cases like this a total cleanup can take decades. Vapor extraction was done in 2003, and oxidation of bedrock in 2006. Final cleanup verification was done in 2014, 36 years after it was first detected and 20 years after Commodore left the scene.

BTW it wasn't just MOS who were on the hook for contamination in the area. No doubt there were/are many more similar sites in various places in the US and elsewhere, some of which may not be cleaned up in our lifetimes if ever. Your narrative makes it sound like Commodore (with Gould being responsible) was the only industrial site with contamination problems, which simply isn't true.

This was all deliberate of course. Amiga fans are always looking for more stuff to bash Commodore with, no matter how irrelevant or unfair. Why do they do it? You would think that after 30 years they would have gotten over themselves - but no. Like the song says "we're older but no wiser".

Last edited by bhabbott on 02-Dec-2024 at 05:09 AM.

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: All these armchair CEOs don't seem to have any clue about how corporations really work and what's needed to keep them going.

Yes, hindsight has 20/20 vision, and many an armchair CEO have chimed in to offer their 2 cents, or the entire contents of their change purse. Myself included.

To me, the joke says less about management and more about the culture at CBM.

Business success and good culture are not mutually exclusive. While there is some correlation, in my time I have seen and experienced failed organisations with good culture, and succeeding organisations with bad/toxic cultures.

Overall your point is valid. Neither of us can claim with any degree of confidence that we would've done differently were we in the same circumstances, or if anything we'd have done differently could've saved CBM from its fate.

Last edited by agami on 03-Dec-2024 at 12:37 AM.
Last edited by agami on 03-Dec-2024 at 12:37 AM.

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@bhabbott

Quote:

Imagine it's 1958 and you (a Polish-American Holocaust survivor) have a nice little typewriter repair business going. But business is slowing and you want to do more, so you incorporate and import new typewriters from Czechoslovakia. Only problem is you're constantly running short of the cash required to import them in bulk, so what to do? Give up of course and just get a regular job. Or... you sell a portion of the company to one of Canada's largest financing companies, whose president becomes the chairman of your board. Then you put it on the Montreal Stock Exchange under the name of Commodore Business Machines (Canada) Ltd.

Is running close to out of money unique to Commodore?

https://www.techspot.com/news/103083-how-dreamcast-almost-bankrupted-nvidia-before-sega-executive.html

How the Dreamcast almost bankrupted Nvidia before a Sega executive saved the company
"His understanding and generosity gave us six months to live"

Nvidia's first graphics accelerator product, the NV1, hadn't found much success following its release in 1995. But that didn't stop Sega from asking Nvidia to develop the GPU for the Dreamcast ahead of the console's 1998 launch.

Nvidia, however, was still using quadratic texture mapping for its graphics, while others used triangle polygon rendering. After working on the NV2 for more than a year, Huang realized that it wouldn't meet Sega's demands for the Dreamcast. His company had no option other than to give up work on the chip if it wanted to survive. The CEO recently admitted that fulfilling its contract with Sega would have left it too far behind the competition, but stopping the use of the NV2 chip would cause it to run out of cash.

"Either way," Huang said, "we would be out of business."

Nvidia was saved by one man, the then-CEO of Sega America, Shoichiro Irimajiri. Huang and Irimajiri already had a good relationship, so when the Nvidia boss said he needed to be paid for work on the Dreamcast GPU, despite not providing one, Irimajiri handed him a lifeline in the form of a $5 million investment in Nvidia.

"It was all the money that we had," Huang said. "His understanding and generosity gave us six months to live."


Sega's $5 million rescue investment into NVIDIA and 50 remaining employees has designed and released RiVA 128 in Apr 1st, 1997.

Quote:

@bhabbott Gould was getting a good amount of money from Commodore because he deserved it. Without him the company wouldn't be a household name selling the most popular home computer in the world and turning over a billion dollars a year. Only problem is the original owner and CEO of the company has other ideas. He's not happy about Gould having a say on the direction of the company, and wants to bring his sons onto the board to get a controlling interest.

Gould's fault is hiring the wrong leadership team and focusing on misguided FVM VCD hype.

Henri Rubin didn't have the background like AMD's co-founder Jerry Sanders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Sanders_(businessman)

Jerry Sanders joined Fairchild Semiconductor in 1961 as a young engineer.[4] At Fairchild, Sanders quickly rose from lower sales positions up to a succession of management positions in marketing, making him a likely candidate for one of the company's top vice presidencies.[2] However, in 1968, a new management team was brought into Fairchild Semiconductor by Sherman Fairchild, led by C. Lester Hogan, then vice president of Motorola Semiconductor. The staff from Motorola, also known as "Hogan's Heroes", were conservative and hence immediately clashed with Sanders' boisterous style.

In 1969, eight engineers left Fairchild Semiconductor together to start a new company, founding Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in Sunnyvale, California, in May 1969


AMD's co-founders clashed with former Motorola Semiconductor staff at Fairchild Semiconductor.

AMD and MOS have a similar start with clashing against Motorola Semiconductor's corporate culture.

Intel's co-founder Gordon Moore was also from Fairchild Semiconductor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel

Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore's law) and Robert Noyce, along with investor Arthur Rock,

Robert Noyce co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor before founding Intel.

Notice the common theme i.e. Motorola's imported culture into Fairchild Semiconductor sucked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor

Sherman Fairchild hired Lester Hogan, who was the head of Motorola semiconductor division. Hogan proceeded to hire another hundred managers from Motorola to entirely displace the management of Fairchild.

The loss of these iconic executives, coupled with Hogan's displacement of Fairchild managers demoralized Fairchild and prompted the entire exodus of employees to found new companies.


Motorola burned 68000's technical leadership which allowed Intel's 32bit 80386 to catch up.

The stain of Motorola affected AMD when Hector Ruiz was hired. That's another story with Bulldozer vs underground rebels Zen R&D.


Quote:

@bhabbott So Tramiel storms off taking the best engineers with him, leaving Gould - a financier - to try to rescue the business. So what does he do? Hires a new CEO of course.

Tramiel mostly attracted Commodore's 16-bit C900's key engineers e.g. Shiraz Shivji led the Atari ST project. Shiraz Shivji contributed to C64's disk drive.

Atari ST is missing C64's hardware scrolling. IBM VGA has hardware scrolling.

Tramiel didn't attract SID engineer, Bob Yannes who co-founded Ensoniq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Yannes

After he left MOS Technology he co-founded Ensoniq in 1982. The Ensoniq sound chips had multiplexed oscillators designed in such a way that it was possible to produce more voices per chip, typically 32 for Ensoniq's DOC, OTIS, and OTTO sound chips (48 for the final OTTO-48)


Commodore - The Final Years book has acknowledged the loss of the key SID engineer.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_VIC-II

The VIC-II chip was designed primarily by Albert Charpentier and Charles Winterble[1] at MOS Technology, Inc. as a successor to the MOS Technology 6560 "VIC". The team at MOS Technology had previously failed to produce two graphics chips named MOS Technology 6562 for the Commodore TOI computer, and MOS Technology 6564 for the Color PET, due to memory speed constraints

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Quote:

Hammer wrote: MOS 65xx are little-endian CPUs, hence they are foreign for big-endian Amiga.

C= still sold the 6502 for embedded applications and used a variant as keyboard controller in the Amiga but the 6502 couldn't really compete with Motorola 6809, 68HC11 or 68HC05
or take a look to Rockwell's 6511 (6502 with I/O) https://i.sstatic.net/8WkQY.png

...

But I mentioned it because it is an example of missing invest.

If you have an own chip production company you should try to keep it profitable, some problems with AGA restrictions or BUSTER problems may have also been a result of missing update to the own chip production line.

@bhabbott

Just a couple of points 'Mr Armchair Historian ; I think you owe it Thomas Rattigan to actually name him given that, as you say, he...
Quote:

...did better, pushing Commodore's own engineers to come up with better designs (the A500 and A2000).

You spend a lot of time framing why Gould acted the way he did but you don't even name the manager that did a competent job for a couple of years, allowing the Amiga to gain some traction as the A500 gestation period was effectively protected from Gould's subsequent inept cronies!

Gould was entitled to his money and hard earned investment, but he wasn't entitled to draw a salary higher than market leading CEOs were doing at the time while moving C= AGMs to the Bahamas to avoid accountability from the shareholders and to basically assure the company's destruction! I get that he lost interest in the Amiga tech about the time that the CDTV failed to gain traction as a consumer electronic device for the living rooms of the world, but he could have perpetuated this amazing computer platform AND lived out his retirement in the Bahamas!

The guy loved money and prestige above computers and technology and he set IT technology in our homes back around 10 years by allowing the Amiga to die in the manner it did! It is NOT too much to ask to expect him to choose a sensible and able successor like Rattigan and to bow out once he lost interest in his own company's products!

Last edited by BigD on 03-Dec-2024 at 09:58 PM.

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@BigD

Quote:

Gould was entitled to his money and hard earned investment, but he wasn't entitled to draw a salary higher than market leading CEOs were doing at the time while moving C= AGMs to the Bahamas to avoid accountability from the shareholders and to basically assure the company's destruction! I get that he lost interest in the Amiga tech about the time that the CDTV failed to gain traction as a consumer electronic device for the living rooms of the world, but he could have perpetuated this amazing computer platform AND lived out his retirement in the Bahamas!

Gould protected the multimedia group for CD32's FMV module ahead of core business gaming competency.

CDTV-CR R&D continued and evolved into CD32.

Around June 1991, Jeff Porter was placed in a multimedia group while Commodore PC's Jeff Frank took over the Amiga group.

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@OneTimer1

A1200's keyboard MPU is based on a licensed Motorola 68HC05 (CSG p/n 391508-01).
My point is that the keyboard MPU can be replaced.

After CBM's bankruptcy, MOS Technology (CSG) continued as GMT Microelectronics via the former management buyout for about $4.3 million, plus an additional $1 million to cover miscellaneous expenses including the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) license.

GMT reopened MOS Technology's one-micrometre process fab (semiconductor fabrication plant) in Audubon, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania that Commodore had closed in 1993.

After 1992's 1 million A600 order and sales flop debacle, Commodore was a deadman-walking during 1993.

By 1999 GMT Microelectronics had $21 million in revenues and 183 employees working on the site. GMT Microelectronics was killed by another EPA action.

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology

Commodore UK had $50 million in investors' money before New Star Electronics pulled out their $25 million. Blame Escom and ex-Commodore Germany's Petro Tyschtschenko.

Commodore UK's other $25 million investors' money comes from Coopers & Lybrand (Pricewaterhouse Coopers International Limited).

Commodore UK plan is to continue USA's Commodore-Amiga Inc's group's Amiga Hombre plan instead of Escom's shell company Amiga Technologies GmBH's Phase 5 PowerPC out-sourcing. Escom is just a PC box shipper.

Amiga Walker's recycled AGA shows the lack of engineering depth in Tyschtschenko's team.
I didn't expect much from Commodore Germany.

Refer to David Pleasance / Dave Haynie's new alternate timeline book https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/daretodreamhardback/dare-to-dream-commodore-and-amiga-today

Under Commodore UK's buyout, Dave Haynie agreed to be Head of Engineering in the new company.


For comparison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia
Quote:

In 1993, the three co-founders envisioned that the ideal trajectory for the forthcoming wave of computing would be in the realm of accelerated computing, specifically in graphics-based processing. This path was chosen due to its unique ability to tackle challenges that eluded general-purpose computing methods. As Huang later explained: "We also observed that video games were simultaneously one of the most computationally challenging problems and would have incredibly high sales volume. Those two conditions don’t happen very often. Video games was our killer app — a flywheel to reach large markets funding huge R&D to solve massive computational problems." With $40,000 in the bank, the company was born. The company subsequently received $20 million of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and others.

http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwpleasance_en.php

Escom bought the Commodore assets for approximately $10 million (within our estimated purchase cost) (interestingly New Star Electronics were immediately dumped by Escom and ended up with nothing). This was almost certainly one of the most stupid actions taken by Escom as not many months later Escom themselves went bankrupt.

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @bhabbott Just a couple of points 'Mr Armchair Historian ; I think you owe it Thomas Rattigan to actually name him given that, as you say, he... Quote: ...did better, pushing Commodore's own engineers to come up with better designs (the A500 and A2000). You spend a lot of time framing why Gould acted the way he did but you don't even name the manager that did a competent job for a couple of years, allowing the Amiga to gain some traction as the A500 gestation period was effectively protected from Gould's subsequent inept cronies!

Rattigan did OK, but we shouldn't lionize him. He tried to take over the board and push Gould out - a fatal mistake for him, and not good for the company or us.

Who were Gould's 'inept cronies' after Rattigan? I bet you can't name one.

Quote:

Gould was entitled to his money and hard earned investment, but he wasn't entitled to draw a salary higher than market leading CEOs were doing at the time

His wasn't the highest. But even if it was, so what? A corporation only exists for one purpose...

Quote:

while moving C= AGMs to the Bahamas to avoid accountability from the shareholders and to basically assure the company's destruction!

Yes, I've heard the narrative a million times before.

The Bahamas
Quote:

After tourism, the next most important economic sector is banking and offshore international financial services, accounting for some 15% of GDP. It was revealed in the Panama Papers that the Bahamas is the jurisdiction with the most offshore entities or companies in the world. The Bahamas is considered a major international financial center. According to some estimates, it is the fourth-largest tax haven globally based on assets under management. It is believed to hold approximately $13.7 trillion in private household wealth and an additional $12 trillion in corporate wealth sheltered within offshore shell companies. This combined figure represents roughly a quarter of the world's annual wealth creation.

Commodore was an international company doing more business outside the US that in it. Therefore incorporating in the Bahamas made perfect sense.

Quote:

I get that he lost interest in the Amiga tech about the time that the CDTV failed to gain traction as a consumer electronic device for the living rooms of the world, but he could have perpetuated this amazing computer platform AND lived out his retirement in the Bahamas!

This isn't true. He did perpetuate the Amiga, when everyone in the industry was shaking their heads. They all thought (correctly) that PCs were the future and the Amiga was an anacronism that should have been dropped years ago. A more 'competent' boss would have gone all-in on PCs from the beginning, while milking the C64 for as long as it still made a profit. But Commodore thought they could hoe their own row and push an incompatible platform that the majority didn't want. I thank them for that, but I won't deny the inevitable result.

Gould kept pushing it to the end, as did the delusional engineers who thought they had developed an architecture worthy of advancement. I read the post-bankruptcy documents where they tried to promote the Amiga's 'assets' and cringe. Did they really think that would convince anyone to invest in it? The age of home computer innovation was over and the PC won - the end. Only an idiot (or an Amiga fan) would touch it. Unfortunately the idiots won, but even if Commodore UK had prevailed the Amiga's days were numbered.

I was a huge fan full of hope for the Amiga, but as a computer retailer and developer I had to be realistic. When Commodore went bankrupt in early 1994 I knew it was over. Disappointing, but it didn't come as much of a shock because I knew of their financial difficulties. Not as much as I know now though. It's amazing they lasted as long as they did, and I for one am glad that they managed to achieve what they did with the Amiga.

They could have done so much worse. Just look at all the turds that other home computer manufacturers produced - IBM's PCjr, the Sinclair QL, the Apple II GS, Atari Falcon to name just a few. Amiga fans have no appreciation of the sacrifices everybody at Commodore - even Gould - made to give them a computer that is still as awesome today as it was 40 years ago. Gould bankrupted his company for us.

Quote:

The guy loved money and prestige above computers and technology and he set IT technology in our homes back around 10 years by allowing the Amiga to die in the manner it did!

Pure delusion. As far as information technology was concerned, the PC was already well ahead and advancing rapidly, while the Amiga had reached the end of the road. By 1995 it was totally eclipsed by PCs and had nothing to offer. It was pretty much irrelevant before that, but Windows 95 crushed it stone dead. There was no longer any reason to chose the Amiga over a PC, except as a retro computer for those of us who wanted to continue using the machines they loved.

Quote:

It is NOT too much to ask to expect him to choose a sensible and able successor like Rattigan and to bow out once he lost interest in his own company's products!

Blame Rattigan for Gould not taking on another like him. Gould actually got more interested in the Amiga towards the end. But the company had fatal wounds that wouldn't heal, going back to 1984. You can certainly blame Gould for not being a business genius, but yes it WAS too much to ask to expect him to have that genius. Your ingratitude and sense of entitlement is appalling. Gould owed you nothing, and yet he did what he could to keep the Amiga alive when others said it was folly.

Last edited by bhabbott on 04-Dec-2024 at 05:05 AM.

@bhabbott: you're obsessed by PCs.

I reveal you some secrets:
- new, NOT PC-compatibile, systems were created even when PCs already gained a big reputation as professional machines;
- some of such systems survived and are still alive. "Strangely", you never mention them.

The world isn't PC-centric. PCs were and are the most important systems, but not the only one.

Amiga & Commodore could have survived having had a better management and/or technical team. Continuing on its niche, much probably, but still alive, at least...

@bhabbott

Medhi Ali was the chief crony and he did everything he could to destroy the AGA launch! Like or not AGA and the CD32 were needed to save Commodore and Medhi prioritised the A600! It says it all! No successful A1200 launch = no CD32 hope in Hell! Not enough A1200 units made and a glut of A600s!

_________________
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@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: As far as information technology was concerned, the PC was already well ahead and advancing rapidly, while the Amiga had reached the end of the road. By 1995 it was totally eclipsed by PCs and had nothing to offer.

Yes, an Amiga OS 3.x device from late 1992 at late 1992 prices was not competitive with Windows 95 devices in late 1995 at late 1995 prices.

I guess Commodore's genius plan to go bankrupt didn't pay off.

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @bhabbott Medhi Ali was the chief crony and he did everything he could to destroy the AGA launch! Like or not AGA and the CD32 were needed to save Commodore and Medhi prioritised the A600! It says it all! No successful A1200 launch = no CD32 hope in Hell! Not enough A1200 units made and a glut of A600s!

That's narrative is not complete i.e. it's Commodore PC's Jeff Frank backed by Bill Sydnes.

Medhi Ali issued a direct command for A1200's design in Feb 1992 when AGA wasn't beta-tested, hence overriding Jeff Frank/Bill Sydnes direction.

Jeff Frank and Bill Sydnes caused "more than a six-month delay" on AGA refinement.

Due to PCMCIA, at least 1 additional month delay for the Budgie chip.

AGA can operate with Fat Gary, Ramsey, and four TLL bridge chips (replaced by Bridgette).

Budgie replaced Ramsey, Buster, and Bridgette. Bridgette was completed for 32bit Chip RAM equipped ECS based A1000Jr.

Gayle AA replaced Fat Gary. Gayle AA has PCMCIA with Budgie requirements.

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For Jeff Porter's multimedia group, Gayle AA's, Budgie's, and two CIA's core functions are combined into CD32's Akikio. Jeff Porter allowed hardware C2P to be included with Akikio.
Jeff Porter's 8 MB RAM CD32 was rejected by management.


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Somebody at Commodore management didn't order enough AGA chips from HP, hence Ali's 1 million units order for A600 vs 44,000 A1200s. A600 couldn't duplicate A500's profit margins and unit sales.

Bill Sydnes was later fired and replaced by Lew Eggebrech.

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@bhabbott

Quote:

Rattigan did OK, but we shouldn't lionize him. He tried to take over the board and push Gould out - a fatal mistake for him, and not good for the company or us. Who were Gould's 'inept cronies' after Rattigan? I bet you can't name one.

I've heard the narrative a million times before. It was Henri Rubin playing corporate politics.

From Commodore - The Final Years,
Quote:

CHAPTER 5 Management Moves 1987 The previous year, Chief Operating Officer Henri Rubin had played a crucial role in undermining Thomas Rattigan, leading to the latter’s eventual dismissal from Commodore.

Unlike AMD's or Intel's founders who had chip semiconductor engineering backgrounds from Fairchild Semiconductor, Henri Rubin wasn't the right engineering leader for a chip semiconductor company.

Continuing from Commodore - The Final Years,
Quote:

Rubin later worked for an electrical appliances company named Tedelex Electrics Ltd., with Rubin as executive chairman. As it turns out, Commodore was a trading partner with Tedelex. “He was the Commodore distributor for South Africa,� says Porter. This gave him an outsider's perspective on the types of computers dealers wanted from Commodore.

AMD's or Intel's founders were pushed out of Fairchild Semiconductor's imported Motorola's conservative (slow-moving) mindset personnel. LOL


Continuing from Commodore - The Final Years,
Quote:

Amiga 3000 Stalled After missing CeBIT, it seemed like the engineers did not have the same sense of urgency they had when putting out the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 under former CEO and President, Thomas Rattigan. Rattigan had a definite plan of intercompany competition to motivate the engineers. He believed nothing spurred on designers like knowing another team might beat them to the punch. However, under the leadership of Irving Gould and Henri Rubin, there was no such urgency. Both men lacked the experience to get their soldiers moving. On the A3000 project, those soldiers consisted of George Robbins (and the VLSI team) on the Hi-Res chipset, Bob Welland on the MMU board, and Jeff Boyer (and the VLSI team) on the SCSI hard drive controller. Heading up the group was Dave Haynie on the motherboard, as well as the new 32-bit Zorro III expansion bus. It would be up to him to pull along and cajole the rest of the team to complete their parts of the project. After Gerard Bucas and Bob Welland left at the end of February, the Amiga 3000 project fell into turmoil. Meanwhile, Dave Haynie completed his 68020-based accelerator card for the Amiga 2000 in early 1988. He then moved to designing another accelerator card based on the recently announced 68030 processor, unveiled by Motorola the prior year on October 30, 1987. The 32-bit Motorola 68030 processor was once again described as a mainframe on a chip, thanks to the inclusion of features like an MMU onboard. Haynie dubbed his new project the A2630.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Dec-2024 at 05:50 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Dec-2024 at 05:41 AM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: Quote: On the A3000 project, those soldiers consisted of George Robbins (and the VLSI team) on the Hi-Res chipset, Bob Welland on the MMU board, and Jeff Boyer (and the VLSI team) on the SCSI hard drive controller. Heading up the group was Dave Haynie on the motherboard, as well as the new 32-bit Zorro III expansion bus. It would be up to him to pull along and cajole the rest of the team to complete their parts of the project. After Gerard Bucas and Bob Welland left at the end of February, the Amiga 3000 project fell into turmoil. Meanwhile, Dave Haynie completed his 68020-based accelerator card for the Amiga 2000 in early 1988. He then moved to designing another accelerator card based on the recently announced 68030 processor, unveiled by Motorola the prior year on October 30, 1987. The 32-bit Motorola 68030 processor was once again described as a mainframe on a chip, thanks to the inclusion of features like an MMU onboard. Haynie dubbed his new project the A2630.

The A3000 should never have been developed in the first place. Accelerator cards for the A2000 were a good idea. Apart from that, the A500 needed to grow sales to reach critical mass. While that was happening they should have developed AGA, but nobody seriously considered doing that. They were too stuck on the idea of a workstation, just like Jay Miner was.

Rattigan might have pushed them into getting AGA out, but I doubt it. The A500 was a done deal and just needed good sales to consolidate the user base. He probably would have pushed to get the C65 out while it was still relevant, unlike Copperman and engineers who wanted to concentrate on the Amiga. Would this have been a good thing? Probably not. C65 sales would to some extent cannibalize Amiga sales.

@bhabbott

Quote:

he A3000 should never have been developed in the first place. Accelerator cards for the A2000 were a good idea. Apart from that, the A500 needed to grow sales to reach critical mass. While that was happening they should have developed AGA, but nobody seriously considered doing that. They were too stuck on the idea of a workstation, just like Jay Miner was.

A3000 had 32-bit Chip RAM with a similar uplift performance as AA models.

A3000's 32-bit Chip RAM was the basis for AA's 32-bit/16-bit hybrid e.g. 32-bit Lisa with 16-bit Alice/ECS Agnus i.e. AA3000+.

Blame Henri Rubin for A3000.

During A3000's R&D, Commodore management issued "read my lips, no new chips". This is why the A3000 has the new 32-bit Chip RAM with the old 1988-era A2000's ECS.

Amber was Henri Rubin's allowed VGA-like substitute for 1988-era A2000's ECS.

AA3000+'s AA chipset was extracted for the Amiga group's lower-cost AA600 (A1200) and the multimedia group's low-cost CD32.

AA3000+ AA chipset and DSP3210 cost weren't expensive.

256 colors AADenise could have made for A3000's 32-bit Chip RAM i.e. AA Lisa.

A3000's 1991 revision would have AA chipset as the A3000 Plus along with 1991 A1000 Plus (68EC020, AA chipset) releases.

Jeff Porter 1991 releases are A500 Plus (ECS), A1000 Plus (AA), and A3000 Plus (AA). Jeff Porter's A4000 has AAA for 1992 release, and 68060 was considered.

A1000 Plus (AA) is A1200 in a slim pizza box without PCMCIA, hence no need for extra Gayle AA and Budgie R&D.

From Commodore - The Final Years,
Quote:

A1000 Plus Design Goals After Jeff Porter’s European meeting, Joe Augenbraun had to convert his 68000 ECS-based A1500 to a new system using the AA chipset. “The idea behind the A1000 Plus was to build something that, functionally, was better than an A2000; it was almost as good as an A3000, but cost just a tiny bit more than an A500,� explains Augenbraun. “That's why everyone thought it was an exciting machine.� The new system was true to Commodore’s roots of producing high value electronics for an affordable price. By 1990, the computer-in-a keyboard design was seen as something of a relic, even for home computers. Users wanted a product that looked like a real computer, with a detachable keyboard, but without the high cost. And with the new AA chipset, it would be superior to the A3000 in graphical capabilities. Jeff Porter had initially conceived an A1000 Plus in early November 1990 with a $350.42 bill of materials using a 16-bit 14 MHz 68000 processor and two Zoro II slots. However, Augenbraun countered his proposal with a more powerful 32-bit 16 MHz 68EC020 and a single slot for $351.96. “My original concept was it was going to have one expansion card so it was supposed to just have an edge card connector on the end of the board, not the male one that an A500 had where it needed special peripherals,� explains Augenbraun. “A female one so it could just take a regular A2000 [Zorro II] card. And it would have a hard drive interface built in.

Mass-produced A1000 Plus with a single Zorro II slot would have expanded the Zorro II/III market.

A1000 Plus's single Zorro II slot was replaced by the PCMCIA slot with Jeff Frank's AA600 (A1200) project.

I prefer the A1000 Plus's single Zorro II slot for a graphics card upgrade.

Last edited by Hammer on 06-Dec-2024 at 05:03 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-Dec-2024 at 04:45 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-Dec-2024 at 04:42 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-Dec-2024 at 04:40 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-Dec-2024 at 04:35 AM.

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