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"I punched Marshall one night." - Commodore Engineer Bil Herd

That one made me laugh out loud. I haven't resorted to punching any managers yet but some days it gets pretty close.

Last edited by ssolie on 02-Jul-2005 at 08:45 PM.

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Definitely gonna get this one!


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Definitely gonna get this one!

Just told my girlfriend "I must have this book." If thats not dropping a big enough hint I'll just have to buy it myself :)

Gotta get this... No question. I just hope they made enough copies.

I think a harder story to tell might be what happened after.

Wasn't there another book about Commodore up until Tramiel left.
Wasn't his name Sam not Jack? I'm a little confused.
He went to Atari then right, so I hope the book covers a little of his misadventures over there to some degree.

Come to think of it...Anyone know any good books about Atari. I just bought "Apple Confidential 2" the other day so I'm getting into the spirit of the micro era again. Has there ever been a book about Sinclair or Amstrad?

Ok. Going back to my happy place now.

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Opinions expressed are my own and not those of C= USA.
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Wasn't his name Sam not Jack? I'm a little confused. He went to Atari then right, so I hope the book covers a little of his misadventures over there to some degree. Come to think of it...Anyone know any good books about Atari. I just bought "Apple Confidential 2" the other day so I'm getting into the spirit of the micro era again. Has there ever been a book about Sinclair or Amstrad?

Always was Jack. Since he refused to grant an interview, there will be little about him post-CBM.

There are a number of books from the mid eighties about the micro era, but for the most part they focus on Silicon Valley, Apple and M$, while ignoring CBM and Atari.

Got to have it!

Coder

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"God, what an incredible thing we did." - Commodore-Amiga Engineer R.J. Mical

Sure is...

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This book sounds great! Cant wait to get it

Amiboy

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I dunno - the book seems to be interesting but:
the author is a few years under age to know something really interesting internal stuff.
It would be better if an ex-employee was the writer...

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the author is a few years under age to know something really interesting

Yes but what should be interesting are the interviews with the internals...

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I think a harder story to tell might be what happened after.

thats in my book if I ever get to finish writing it...lol
anyone good at ghost writing?

right now its just too sad a story.

Last edited by Interesting on 03-Jul-2005 at 09:02 PM.

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"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

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There are a number of books from the mid eighties about the micro era, but for the most part they focus on Silicon Valley, Apple and M$, while ignoring CBM and Atari.

the real story of the late 70's and 80's has been rewritten to focus on the Apple, Wintel. What most forget is the 6502 processor, further there would be no Apple Computer without it!

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"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

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the real story of the late 70's and 80's has been rewritten to focus on the Apple, Wintel. What most forget is the 6502 processor, further there would be no Apple Computer without it!

The 6502 is a story in itself... Seems Motorola got really annoyed and sued MOS, claiming the processor has parts that belong to Motorola.

Then there is a decision by Tramiel to pursue a buyout of MOS' biggest customer, Apple. Which went well, until... Seems Jobs and Tramiel were cut from the same cloth, and the more they talked, the more they hatred they had for each other, which in time put an end to the plan of CBM buying Apple.

Imagine how different things would be now... Amigas may have gone on to dominate 25 or 50% of the market while the clones struggled with an inferior set-up and operating system. Bill Gates may have only been a millionaire, and we'd see M$Office on the Amiga. OR the Mac would be an entirely different entity. It's even possible that Hi-Toro/Amiga Inc. would have disappeared, since CBM wouldn't have needed their 16 bit machine.

It is interesting to speculate... What would a combination of CBM and Apple have resulted in?

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It is interesting to speculate... What would a combination of CBM and Apple have resulted in?

A disaster. Neither company knew how to run a computer business.

Apple had a technology that was 20 years ahead of its time, and yet somehow managed to capture less than 10% of the market. Outrageous prices and failure to licence technology - along with a generous slice of smugness and complacency - will do that to you.

Then the Amiga came along, a computer that ran rings around everything that both Apple and Wintel were doing. Somehow Commodore managed to translate this brilliant piece of technology into bankruptcy.

Bill Gates had by far the worst technology, but was the only guy who knew what business he was in.

Last edited by uboat on 04-Jul-2005 at 01:37 PM.

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Apple had a technology that was 20 years ahead of its time, and yet somehow managed to capture less than 10% of the market. Outrageous prices and failure to licence technology - along with a generous slice of smugness and complacency - will do that to you. Then the Amiga came along, a computer that ran rings around everything that both Apple and Wintel were doing. Somehow Commodore managed to translate this brilliant piece of technology into bankruptcy.

I guess no one has explained what the letters IBM mean.

They mean that when you buy one of their products, you'll be getting older technology. Safe technology. And a company that will stand behind it.

When you bought an IBM PC for your business, any problems that couldn't be solved on the phone would be solved by a service call to your premises the next day. When your hard drive died (a regular occurance on those machines), it would be replaced on-site by an IBM tech within a day.

To the business community, this was very important. Apple didn't quite grasp the concept of service contracts, and CBM lost a lot of sales because they had no maintenance agreements, or any interest in providing them to large buyers.

At least Apple treated their boxes as a short term product, to be replaced by something better in a year or so. With upgrades in the mean time. CBM treated the computers like the Model T, cranking out thousands with little or no updates, for longer than they should have. The A500 was in production too long, the C64 should have been phased out in 1988, not 1992. Customers were confused by the similar appearances of the A500 and the cheaper C64.

There were no cheap computers back in the 80's. They were all expensive. What sold the Amiga was you got more, for less money. Apple didn't get the the stratosphere with their prices until the mid '90s. The 8Mhz 68k power Mac SE, 1987-1990, was under U$3000. Even came with a hard drive.