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Hypex 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 3-May-2022 16:15:37
#21 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@BigD

Funny that. Power of Love used as the theme song. But Back in Time suited the theme more. I was 13, love power didn't make sense, time travel did.

My vote is buying out shares.

But take that A1200 back futher to 1987.

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Hypex 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 3-May-2022 16:27:48
#22 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Nonefornow

Quote:
The acquisition of the Amiga was just to spite jack because he had that interest. It really did not fit in the culture of the company.


It really didnt. It wasn't a real Commodore. It had a big endian CPU, no text matrix modes, no Commodore DOS, no compatibilty with Commodore drives, and the big killer is no compatibility with the C64. After the Plus/4 experiement that could have killed it. After 1982 Commodore was C64 and nothing else matters.

By comparison, a real Commodore has a little endian CPU, it runs Microsoft, has text modes, and is compatible with a C64.

Quote:
Bil Herd mentined many times that he know that the C128 was just a stop gap type of product until the Amiga was completed.


Given the amount of work making it compatible with a C64 I wonder why. If you can't create a new machine because your customer base has too many hangups the why bother trying to? But without the Amiga would there have been a C256? Which would have needed to get over the C64 compatibility.

Quote:
However (fortunately or unfortunately) that product proved to be more successful than the A1000.


What the C128? No wonder. It's compatible with a C64!

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 5-May-2022 4:03:35
#23 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@Hypex

Quote:
But without the Amiga would there have been a C256?


Yes / sort of. After the C128 there would have been a C65. CSG4510 CPU at 3.54MHZ - VICIII graphic chip with 256 colors - 128KB of RAM (up to 1MB) - 128KB ROM - 2 (stereo) SIDs - Basic 10.

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_65#:~:text=The%20Commodore%2065%20%28also%20known%20as%20the%20C64DX%29,advanced%20features%20close%20to%20those%20of%20the%20Amiga.

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Hypex 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 5-May-2022 8:21:12
#24 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Nonefornow

I always thought the naming of the C65 was slightly odd. As well as being an odd number it didn't fit in with the power of 2 naming scheme Commodore had started. Even the odd one out, the C16, used this naming scheme.

There were a few strange decisions like adding bitplanes. Oh I forgot to mention in my other post. Real Commodores have chunky. Though they were configured in the Commodore way. I thought it would make sense to take the Plus/4 colour configuration and double it to 256. It may be a fixed palette still but it's faster to write pixels in packed than some exotic bitplane format. As well as inheriting the C128 modes. Also, the drive was neat but no one had 3.5" C64 floppies and with no alleged 1541 support that didn't make sense.

Another thing is the timing. Early 90's would have meant a release about 1992 or close too. That's ten years after the C64 came out. Which is is more than the average lifetime of a computer. Apart from that it overshadowed the Amiga. Now if there was no Amiga it wouldn't matter and they would need to get it out. After all the 90's was already 5 five years after the C128. But they had the Amiga, so the best thing would have been to take features like 8 bitplanes with 256 colour palette and super hi res modes, and apply it to the Amiga which would have gone beyond ECS, Ranger and almost matched AGA.

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Turrican3 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 5-May-2022 12:13:34
#25 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 20-Jun-2003
Posts: 386
From: Italy

@bhabbott

Quote:
Amiga fans who excoriate Gould for 'killing' the Amiga should consider their own culpability first. Rampant piracy, refusing to upgrade, constantly whining about perceived inadequacies compared to the PC, switching to PCs as soon as they could - the Amiga community sucked far more out and put less back in than Gould did.

Except piracy, which is unfortunately a very well known fact, I have to strongly disagree here.

I think Gould actually both saved and most of all killed the Amiga indeed.

Perhaps he did the latter not because he willingly wanted to, but simply because he let Medhi Ali took control of the company and utterly destroy engineering first and the whole company as a result later.

Regarding your specific points:

- refusing to upgrade - upgrade to what, exactly? The Amiga has always been about the low end, like it or not.

The first, and unfortunately last significant architecture improvement arrived after a staggering 7 years after the A1000 launch.

Of course we got ECS before that, but even ignoring it was a minor upgrade, the most important thing is since the platform was popular in the low end you surely couldn't expect millions of A500 owners to suddenly go and purchase an A3000 - it wasn't going to happen even if the A3000 wasn't expensive the way it was

(yeah I know, accelerators and the like were cheaper than an A3000... but not *that* cheap, unfortunately, so we're back to square one: the platform was popular because the investment required was relatively low, accelerators not only would fragment the userbase but most of all would render it unaffordable for the vast majority)

- whining about perceived inadequacies compared to the PC - the PC may suck big time from a OS perspective (as a matter of fact I still can't help but appreciate using AmigaOS, even in its dated versions - sorry I'm not supporting Hyperion so no 3.x 68K upgrades for me) but it definitely had more powerful hardware, especially when "raw" power became significant: colorful, textured graphics, high resolution displays, enhanced audio, etc.

While the Amiga was cheaper on paper, the moment you needed to get on par with features it was often as expensive, if not more.

Unfortunately this happened right while Commodore, thanks to the coordinated "efforts" of Gould and Ali had been destroying its R&D capabilities for years. It wasn't an issue in 1985 (the A1000 while not cheap HW at all seemed like alien technology, and likely was :D) nor in 1987/88 (PC gaming was still not on par and/or too expensive), but it definitely was in 1992/93.

- switching to PCs as soon as they could - unfortunately the writing was on the wall (and I'm not only talking about hindsight, but actual statements, number of releases, and so on) way before Commodore went under.

With underpowered available + stalled (or vapourware in the best scenario, as the only actual AmigaTech R&D we saw results of was a turbo-charged A1200, not exactly Earth shattering) HW development, rising console and PC gaming markets first, then a bankrupted company whose IPs took ~2 years to be purchased and brought back to the market (but even MORE expensive!?) I find it *really* hard to blame users for leaving the scene and moving to a different platform for everyday practical use.

Could we stick to the Amiga for longer? Of course, and as a matter of fact I'm an avid Amiga user still to this date too, with both real Classic HW and emulated/simulated ones. But I'm not even sure a properly funded Commodore would have been able to keep being somewhat relevant against the plethora of competitors (Sony, the rising of Apple, mobile, etc), let alone the actual defunded and sabotaged from the inside one. Jumping to an actually supported ecosystem was the only reasonable thing to do IMHO back in 1997-98, if not way earlier than that.

Last edited by Turrican3 on 05-May-2022 at 01:25 PM.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 5-May-2022 23:35:18
#26 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@Turrican3

Quote:
then a bankrupted company whose IPs took ~2 years to be purchased and brought back to the market (but even MORE expensive!?)


The blame on this falls exclusively on the Bahamian court and their liquidation procedure.

Mr. Gould used the house to establish a basis that he was a resident of the Bahamas and the fact the Commodore International was actually incorporated there to transfer all bankruptcy proceeding to the Bahamas.

Stockholders, creditors, and all stakeholders wanted the bankruptcy to be handled (at least partially) in the US (since Commodore was traded in the NY exchange).

The Bahamian court found a number of reasons to delay the settlement, the liquidation, and the related proposed bidding process.

Even though an agreement was in place between the liquidators and the creditors, the court accepted the objections of Mr. Gould (and Mr. Ali) because it wanted to have full jurisdiction on the proceedings.

That caused David Pleasance of Commodore UK and Alex Armor of CEI to eventually drop out and the Amiga went to Escom.

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Turrican3 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 6-May-2022 7:59:47
#27 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 20-Jun-2003
Posts: 386
From: Italy

@Nonefornow

Quote:
That caused David Pleasance of Commodore UK and Alex Armor of CEI to eventually drop out and the Amiga went to Escom.


IIRC they lost a huge financial backing, and in his book Mr. Pleasance blames Petro for that.

Having said that, I stand corrected: Escom/AT actually took *less* than two years to bring the A1200 back to the market, but I believe the main point still stands, the A1200 arguably wasn't a game changer in 1992/93, and unfortunately definitely wasn't in 1995 with the exact same technical specifications and a higher price.

Last edited by Turrican3 on 06-May-2022 at 08:02 AM.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 6-May-2022 23:29:59
#28 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@Turrican3

I can understand Petro's decision on that.

By late 1994 (I do not have the actual precise date) all the details of the liquidation and bidding process agreement had been worked out. They only needed the court approval.

The court continuous postponements caused a number of companies and external participants to lose interest and drop Amiga. Just about everyone liquidated their inventory and moved to other ventures. Existing customers were left without support.

At the same time, other interested parties showed up like Escom. Escom was a late comer and was given the same chance as the others, but also this delayed the final settlement until April 1995.

In that environment ,is easy to see why Commodore UK did not pursue the deal.

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Hypex 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 7-May-2022 16:28:08
#29 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Turrican3

Quote:
Having said that, I stand corrected: Escom/AT actually took *less* than two years to bring the A1200 back to the market, but I believe the main point still stands, the A1200 arguably wasn't a game changer in 1992/93, and unfortunately definitely wasn't in 1995 with the exact same technical specifications and a higher price.


It was nice to have new Amigas back on the market. But as lazy as Commodore to be producing the same obsolete design three years later. Now, a redesign of even the slightest would have added to the expense, but they could have fixed a few problems. However, it's likely they simply used a cache of existing AGA chips, to get it out fast. It still would have been good to get a Falcon matcher at best instead of the Falcon loser we were left with.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 7-May-2022 17:04:14
#30 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@Hypex

The Amiga Walker was going to be the successor of the A1200 using AGA chips.

But considering that Escom paid something like $14M for Commodore International (and the Amiga brand), it needed to recover the money somehow.

Re-releasing the A1200 was a quick work-around solution.

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Hypex 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 8-May-2022 13:38:06
#31 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Nonefornow

It was. But by all accounts the Escom salesmen weren't interested in selling Amigas in their PC shops. To be realistic an average PC in 1995 ran a 166Mhz CPU with 16 bit gfx and a SoundBlaster. A slow A1200 couldn't compete with that! And an A1200 didn't come with a monitor. It had a HD if you were lucky.

Last edited by Hypex on 08-May-2022 at 01:39 PM.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 8-May-2022 17:20:08
#32 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@Hypex

So at the end of the story Amiga US users were left with nothing.

Escom users got a recycled A1200 but ultimately were left in the cold of the German winter.

And Mr. Gould kept his house in the sunny Bahamas. Which is really what the Bahamian bankruptcy court was concerned all along.

Last edited by Nonefornow on 08-May-2022 at 05:21 PM.

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matthey 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 8-May-2022 20:33:23
#33 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

Nonefornow Quote:

And Mr. Gould kept his house in the sunny Bahamas. Which is really what the Bahamian bankruptcy court was concerned all along.


I don't expect Irving Gould was in danger of losing his house. Some sources have him as an early investor in the cargo container concept which became very popular.

Quote:

Because Jack was persona-non-grata with the financial world, he turned to a private investor for capital. Irving Gould had a lot of money from developing the now common concept of the cargo container (the truck sized metal boxes used by the millions to move cargo from sea port to sea port). In 1966, Irving gave Jack $400,000 ($3M in 2018 dollars) in exchange for 17% of the company and the title of Chairman of the Board. There were not many men that were not intimidated by Jack Tramiel, Irving was one such man. Chuck Peddle explains that Jack understood authority and he knew that when it came to Irving, Irving was in charge.


https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/jack-tramiel-king-of-the-home-computer/

Gould was a wealthy investor before investing in CBM and likely didn't invest all his wealth in CBM. He likely had very deep pockets. Jack Tramiel had $100 million in assets when he left CBM and bought Atari from Warner Brothers according to the article. I wouldn't be surprised if Gould was wealthier. Gould may have even been able to save CBM from bankruptcy but I don't think he saw how a turnaround was possible. He had brought in the turnaround guy Mehdi Ali and his attempts failed. Medhi didn't understand the technology and didn't think he needed to but bringing in the IBM PC jr guy Bill Sydnes was disastrous. Bill killed much of the Amiga development pipeline and invested more in the tanking and lower margin PC clone business.

I don't think CBM would have fared much better had Jack Tramiel stayed at CBM. Jack rubbed people the wrong way and had a bad reputation with distributors and suppliers. He was inpatient even removing Chuck Peddle from being in charge of product development after the introduction of the successful PET. He wasn't an investor according to Chuck and that can be seen by the lack of investment in MOS after becoming vertically integrated. Jack made his own rules instead of following rules. Jack leaving CBM allowed someone better to lead it but he took many experienced people with him to Atari and the low cost Atari ST competition hurt the Amiga market. The exit of Jack allowed Thomas Rattigan to become CEO of CBM who was a big improvement and more professional. Unfortunately, Gould was too controlling and liked his sketchy CBM business perks and payouts so Thomas didn't last. CBM went mostly downhill from there except for some management talent like Jeff Porter and Lew Eggebrecht.

Last edited by matthey on 08-May-2022 at 08:41 PM.
Last edited by matthey on 08-May-2022 at 08:35 PM.

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Turrican3 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 9-May-2022 11:23:04
#34 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 20-Jun-2003
Posts: 386
From: Italy

@Nonefornow

Quote:
In that environment ,is easy to see why Commodore UK did not pursue the deal.

I don't know *shrugs*

I re-read that specific part on Mr. Pleasance's book and this is what he said:

Colin [...] approached Petro and, straight to his face, asked "Did you persuade New Star Electronics to abandon our consortium and join forces with ESCOM?" Petro admitted that he had. Effectively, Petro told New Star Electronics that ESCOM would sell them the CD32 license for $5.1 million. ESCOM put that money towards their bid for the Commodore assets

so it seems that (at least according to Mr. Pleasance) C= UK buyout failure had nothing to do with the delays in the liquidation process but was more or less a deliberate sabotage act.


@Hypex

Quote:
It was nice to have new Amigas back on the market.

Absolutely.
But as you said, there's nothing else they could do to bring the Amiga back on the shelves more quickly, so in a way I totally get that but at the same time I can't help but feel it was even more too little too late compared to what the market had to offer to potential buyers in 1995/96. Not to mention the software support that was already horribly suffering, especially on the gaming side, when Commodore was still in the business.


@matthey

Quote:
I don't think CBM would have fared much better had Jack Tramiel stayed at CBM. [...] The exit of Jack allowed Thomas Rattigan to become CEO of CBM who was a big improvement and more professional. Unfortunately, Gould was too controlling and liked his sketchy CBM business perks and payouts so Thomas didn't last. CBM went mostly downhill from there except for some management talent like Jeff Porter and Lew Eggebrecht.

100% agree, especially the quoted text.

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bhabbott 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 11-May-2022 10:53:14
#35 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote:
But by all accounts the Escom salesmen weren't interested in selling Amigas in their PC shops.
Which is perfectly understandable. Just imagine a bunch of customers demanding a refund because their new computer can't run PC software!

Quote:
To be realistic an average PC in 1995 ran a 166Mhz CPU with 16 bit gfx and a SoundBlaster.
'Realistically' the P166 was introduced in 1996, so I think your date is a little off. However it is true that CPU speeds were continuously going up. To keep up the average owner would have to buy a new PC every 2 years or so, which the industry loved!

Quote:
A slow A1200 couldn't compete with that! And an A1200 didn't come with a monitor. It had a HD if you were lucky.
The A1200 sold for £249 and didn't need a monitor or hard drive. An expensive PC couldn't compete with that!

But you needed a PC to play the latest games etc., so the fact that the A1200 was much cheaper was irrelevant. You could justify the price of an expensive PC, but not an expensive Amiga because it wasn't IBM compatible.

Where interoperability is concerned 'there can only be one'. When IBM introduced the PC in 1981 it wasn't immediately obvious that it would be 'the one', but the industry's response soon showed that it was. Eventually it would beat all rivals and leave no room for alternatives. Blaming Gould for the Amiga's demise ignores the fact that it was doomed anyway - by a flood of PC clones and consumers who didn't want a choice.

Even a company with huge resources and stellar reputation would struggle under the same circumstances. Sony invented the home video recorder with Betacam, but protecting it with several patents and licensing the design to other manufacturers didn't prevent JVC from creating an inferior format that flooded the market with slightly cheaper clones. In the end there could only be one. Eventually video stores were forced to choose one format or the other, and VHS won out because more people had them. As a result the 'better' format failed, despite Sony's enormous clout.

Gould could have done everything 'right', sacrificing his own fortunes for the good of the Amiga community, and it wouldn't have helped - the Amiga would still have failed. The vitriol that Amiga fans direct towards Gould is misplaced. Commodore was - like any company - built for the sole purpose of making money for its owners. Any legacy coming out of that is a bonus, and we should be thankful that despite its problems Commodore managed to produce something of beauty that we can still cherish today.

The A1200 is a wonderful machine and I love it. That this model might not have existed had Commodore not followed the path it did with Gould's input makes it even more valuable. It could have been so much worse.





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matthey 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 11-May-2022 21:38:49
#36 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

bhabbott Quote:

'Realistically' the P166 was introduced in 1996, so I think your date is a little off. However it is true that CPU speeds were continuously going up. To keep up the average owner would have to buy a new PC every 2 years or so, which the industry loved!


Has ppcamiga1 been successful by repeated his historic revisionism propaganda? The 68060 was a Pentium killer but CBM and Atari were slow to upgrade to new 68k CPUs and only bought low end 68k processors in quantity. Apple was the game changer as they bought many 68040s but when they switched to PPC, there was no hope of achieving economies of scale to mass produce and clock up 68060s despite the 40% integer performance/MHz advantage and the longer pipeline advantage of the 68060.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/stage-pipeline Quote:

As the pipeline length increases, the amount of work done at each stage is reduced, which allows the processor to attain a higher operating frequency. This in turn increases the performance.


Motorola played a part in switching Apple to PPC which was disastrous for both Apple and Motorola. The new PPC market was smaller than the 68k market as it left CBM, Atari and embedded customers behind.

bhabbott Quote:

The A1200 sold for £249 and didn't need a monitor or hard drive. An expensive PC couldn't compete with that!

But you needed a PC to play the latest games etc., so the fact that the A1200 was much cheaper was irrelevant. You could justify the price of an expensive PC, but not an expensive Amiga because it wasn't IBM compatible.


The Amiga 1200 68020+AGA platform received reasonable software support and nearly became a low end platform replacement of the Amiga 500 68000+O/ECS. The CD32 would have increased the popularity of the 68020+AGA platform and had a successful launch. Unfortunately, CBM was slow to upgrade and integrate so performance was lower, prices higher and everything later than it should have been. One year earlier launches of the Amiga 1200 and CD32 while cancelling late and expensive ECS hardware like the CDTV and Amiga 600 likely would have been enough to save CBM.

bhabbott Quote:

Where interoperability is concerned 'there can only be one'. When IBM introduced the PC in 1981 it wasn't immediately obvious that it would be 'the one', but the industry's response soon showed that it was. Eventually it would beat all rivals and leave no room for alternatives. Blaming Gould for the Amiga's demise ignores the fact that it was doomed anyway - by a flood of PC clones and consumers who didn't want a choice.


I think there was room for an alternate low end platform but CBM made too many mistakes. It certainly was not all Gould's fault even though he deserves his share of the blame on the Amiga deplorables list.

1. Jack Tramiel
2. Irving Gould
3. Medhi Ali
4. Bill Sydnes

I place Jack at the top of the list due to his attitude and shenanigans. He wanted to compete against IBM and even gave CBM a name like them but was ultimately beat because IBM had a great reputation while CBM had a horrible reputation.

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/jack-tramiel-king-of-the-home-computer/ Quote:

o He personally signs every cheque over $1000: Jack insisted suppliers payment terms be stretched beyond their maximums in an effort to make them even more dependent on Commodore.

o He rewards only performance; quickly firing those who let him down: So called Jack Attacks, where he yells and pounds his fists sometimes for hours, become common. In his book the Home Computer Wars, Michael Tomczyk tells a great story about how he provided a disappointing VIC-20 marketing presentation and Jack screamed at him for an entire afternoon. When Tomczyk came back the next day, Jack started up where he left off for several more hours. Wholesale terminations of entire management teams were not uncommon. It is useful to note that throughout his book, Tomczyk states repeatedly that he has never seen anyone figure out what motivates people faster and more accurately than Jack Tramiel.

o Jack refuses to allow budgets to be used because he believes “they are a license to steal”: To this day, no one has even a solid guess as to what it cost to engineer and prototype the best selling computer in the world, the Commodore 64.

o Jack used Commodore’s legal department into a strategic tool: By the early 1980’s Tramiel’s Commodore was so ‘law suite happy’ that a joke inside the company was that the legal department had become a profit center. Chuck Peddle explained that Jack also used it as part of his tactics; “The strategy is just to slow you down… give them time to catch up”.

o Jack would frequently and without regret renege on deals and even contracts if they did not suite his interests at the time: The largest North American computer store at this time was Computerland and they had a long standing relationship with Commodore and the PET. When the VIC-20 came out Jack made a deal with mass marketer K-Mart to sell the machine to consumers at a price below Commodores wholesale price sold to Computerland. As you might expect Computerland was furious so when the 64 came into being Jack again met with Computerland executives and said he would not “screw them”. Naturally, Jack immediately did it again and Computerland pulled the Commodore line completely.

o Jack focus’ exclusively on the consumer market: Jack’s now famous “computers for the masses not the classes” is heavily promoted throughout Commodore literature and internal culture. Even though some of his senior engineers and many marketing staff wanted to develop more profitable business computers, he insisted on perusing the other end of the spectrum, a super-low cost computer designed to kill the TI-99 / Sinclair line. In 2005 the Plus/4 lead engineer Bil Herd told Commodore.ca, “After Jack left the layers of middle management had their way, from the God awful software, to the price, to even making it talk. So I guess the TED project was badly engineered as stated on your site, but I can say the engineering itself was good”. The only version of the Plus/4 that had any market success was… wait for it… the stripped down, cheap model called the 116.

o Jack Does Not Tolerate Dissent: Years before the IBM PC, Chuck Peddle spearheaded a group of Commodore managers who wanted to replace the aging fleet of PET computers with an updated line of real business machines. At a fateful April 1980 meeting in London England, Tramiel was late and the group made the mistake of openly considering splitting the company into to parts, a consumer division and a business division. Chuck knew that Tramiel’s heart and expertise was in the consumer line and Chuck felt it was only natural that he would lead the business line. When Jack arrived and found out what was going on, he wrongly interpreted the meeting as a mutiny. “Or maybe it was?” says Chuck. Jack was furious and Chuck was going to take the brunt. The next day Jack ordered the Chuck’s R&D office in California closed and the staff to be relocated to Commodore’s head office in Pennsylvania. Most of the staff including Chuck Peddle quit on the spot.

o The harshest but perhaps most telling quote describing Jacks personality during these years came from former President of Commodore (1982) James Finke when he said “He comes in like a lighted flare in a darkened room. He illuminates the scene with such brilliance that you’re almost blinded. But his vapor trails take a lot of the oxygen out of the air and when he leaves the room there’s no more light.”


Jack built the house but sabotaged it. Jack is a big part of the reason why there was a minimal North American Amiga market despite it being his home market, especially for higher end business and professional computers. Even when he went to Atari, he had trouble with distributors and suppliers because of his reputation. Some of his shenanigans are similar to Ben Hermans tactics who has burnt his reputation and has practically no chance of success with the Amiga now. Business is not war but rather suicide for unethical people like this. Dave Haynie has said multiple times that CBM died from suicide. We can expect Hyperion to be next.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 12-May-2022 16:44:18
#37 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@matthey

Quote:
Jack built the house but sabotaged it. Jack is a big part of the reason why there was a minimal North American Amiga market despite it being his home market, especially for higher end business and professional computers. Even when he went to Atari, he had trouble with distributors and suppliers because of his reputation.


Jack really had nothing to do with the Amiga under Commodore.
In fact Commodore decided to acquire Amiga because Jack was interested in that project after he left Commodore at the beginning of 1984.
From Jan 1984 Commodore simply continued the development of the legacy project like C16 Plus+, C128 while the Amiga team developed the A1000. There was very little interaction between the two teams. The two teams had different cultures and different objectives, the only communality was just they were owned by the same company.

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matthey 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 13-May-2022 0:23:33
#38 ]
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Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

Nonefornow Quote:

Jack really had nothing to do with the Amiga under Commodore.


Jack built a bad foundation at CBM which carried over into the Amiga years. Reputation, which can't be quickly repaired even with a management change, was a major problem especially for more professional business computers. Lack of MOS Technology investment limited vertical integration advantages during the Amiga years, limited R&D and resulted in a loss of employee talent. Chuck Peddle's vision was subdued by Jack's power from the initial cheap PET keyboard to not letting Chuck create a business line of CBM computers to firing him as chief engineer. CBM lost about 35 top employees in May 1984 as Jack left. Jack's Atari ST was similar to the Amiga and I suspect took more sales from the Amiga than any other computer platform. Jack's actions set the stage for later Amiga failures.

Nonefornow Quote:

In fact Commodore decided to acquire Amiga because Jack was interested in that project after he left Commodore at the beginning of 1984.


Is that a fact or speculation? It is good speculation at least. Jack likely tried to target CBM by buying Atari to compete with CBM. Jack had every right to compete but doing so was likely because of a grudge and affected the Amiga. In my opinion, Jack's flaws had plenty to do with the failure of the Amiga.

Nonefornow Quote:

From Jan 1984 Commodore simply continued the development of the legacy project like C16 Plus+, C128 while the Amiga team developed the A1000. There was very little interaction between the two teams. The two teams had different cultures and different objectives, the only communality was just they were owned by the same company.


CBM post Jack made plenty of mistakes too. Hi-Toro/Amiga Corporation was poorly integrated into CBM and the talent under appreciated resulting in a loss of valuable employees similar to the MOS Technologies acquisition. The closure of Los Gatos and loss of much of the talent including major early visionary Jay Miner was incompetent. CBM had more microcomputer talent slip through their fingers than IBM ever had. Jack wasn't a good investor and didn't respect and treat valuable people right. That culture didn't change with his departure and the controlling Irving Gould.

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Nonefornow 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 13-May-2022 14:58:49
#39 ]
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Joined: 29-Jul-2013
Posts: 339
From: Greater Los Angeles Area

@matthey

Quote:
Is that a fact or speculation?


Educated inside analysis of the dynamics of the computer business in the '80. See quote.

Quote:
Having heard rumors that Tramiel was negotiating to buy Atari, Amiga Corp. entered discussions with Commodore. This led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga Corporation outright, which Commodore believed would cancel any outstanding contracts, including Atari's. Instead of Amiga Corp. delivering Lorraine to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $500,000 to Atari on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds Atari invested in Amiga for the chipset. Tramiel countered by suing Amiga Corp. on August 13, 1984, seeking damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with its technology.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST

Quote:
Jack's flaws had plenty to do with the failure of the Amiga.


Maybe. But the AtariST (after Jack bought Atari ) was released in 1985 and discontinued in 1993 and sold something like 2.1million unit.

The Amiga 1000 (After Commodore bought Amiga Corporation) was also released in 1985 and was discontinued in 1987 and sold less than 100,000 units.

I believe the A1000 to be clearly superior to the AmigaST, but that's not what the market wanted at that time.

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BigD 
Re: Irving Gould's House
Posted on 13-May-2022 16:12:13
#40 ]
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Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Nonefornow

Quote:
I believe the A1000 to be clearly superior to the AmigaST, but that's not what the market wanted at that time.


The A1000 wasn't marketed as an Atari ST killer. it was marketed as the future with printed adverts in sepia!

The Atari ST was effectively marketed as a Mac Killer and later a cheap music production tool. It was also sufficient as a home computer from 1985 to 1988 when the A500 started showing it up.

The Amiga outside of C= UK's game bundles/TV spots was VERY poorly marketed. It's not that the market didn't want it, they just didn't know they wanted it and needed a Steve Job's character to show them they really did want/need it and that multimedia really WAS the future. It required more than a video of a baby being born and the audience being left to piece together that this was the dawn of a new computer age and what that meant for their household or business! Cost, colours and bang for buck versus the competition were all missing from the adverts! Confusing expensive mess springs to mind as to what consumers must have thought! No amount of Debbie Harry and Andy Warhols can correct lack of marketing clarity and first impressions!

No one knew they needed a computer for animation and games only for spreadsheets and word processing in the mid 1980s. The US had games consoles for games so that only left the local TV networks as a niche market in America when the Video Toaster arrived. Other than that ALL the fun was in Europe with the home computer scene A500s and A1200s. I prefer Big Box Amigas but what market were they for in Europe? They were too expensive for the home and only the VideoToaster technology (NTSC only) made use of them really! I guess the A2000s and A4000s were useful to NASA and the A3000 looked nice despite having the AGA and DSP interesting stuff lobotomised out of it!

Last edited by BigD on 13-May-2022 at 04:17 PM.

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