In 1989, Commodore began an endeavor which was way overdue. The creation of a near Amiga-quality computer that is 8-bit in spirit, compatible with the popular Commodore 64 (through an emulation mode), and containing a built in disk drive. Assuming that the price range could have been set below $499, and assuming that this project had been done back in 1985 instead of 1989-1991, I believe this would have been an big seller for Commodore, and would have breathed life into them which would have extended CBM beyond 1994.
I never knew they tried to create the Commodore 65. Fascinating. There’s even an emulator for it.
Well if that gives you the horn, check out this guys work reverse engineering the c65, completing the missing bits and aiming to release a machine:
http://c65gs.blogspot.com.au/
Thanks for that link, interesting to see a guy pour money and time into recreating a prototype.
What I don’t fully understand about a project like this or the emulator linked is what the point is. I mean, I don’t think there was any real software written for these machines, so why bother emulating or recreating them (beyond the curiosity and challenge).
Its interesting and something I’ve known about for a while. Although I suppose 8 bit computers still had some life in them in 1989-91, I’d argue most of the market had moved on. It might have sold enough to cover costs as a bargain computer, but I doubt it would have recaptured the C64 glory years.
In a lot of ways, it seems to me to show how directionless and out of touch CBM was. In 1989 they should have been devoting all resources to the Amiga and developing that market (maybe spend some marketing money) instead of trying to upgrade yesterday’s computer.
Yeap, but the Amiga was in a different market. I mean, the Amiga line always was a kind of an “elite” machine for creative people (just like the Mac).
Apple had the Apple II and the Mac lines. Commodore had the C64/128 line and the Amiga line for the upper market.
I think C65 was a great idea (a more “Tramielish” idea than the Amiga if you want)… way way too late, that’s for sure.
I don’t know where you live but at least in Sweden the Amiga was primarily a gaming rig and not in any way elite in the way a Mac was.
And it was… affordable.
That’s what non-Amiga people think. Not true. Amiga world was always EXPENSIVE, crazy expensive.
Did you try to buy a hard disk for your Amiga 500 back then?? Or any expansion to make it usable?
Yes, the A500 was cheap if you wanted to use it as a console, if you actually wanted to work with it you have to expand it or buy an A2000/A3000.
Edited 2015-02-17 19:44 UTC
I think it was perhaps a bit of both.
the 2000 model was the more “serious” variant, but the one most people got to know was the 500 keyboard computer.
I have the impression that the Amiga 2000 got quite a run in broadcast television, where it was used to add various graphics and such.
The A-2000 was huge in video editing due to several unique hardware properties and especially some extension hardware (I think the name was video-toaster). From what I read, Amigas had been used in India for TV-production well after the year 2000.
Yep, it sold far more numbers of the all-in-one varieties (500, 600, 1200) as a gaming machine, but for a time it was well known for serious video and graphics work too with the 2000/3000/4000 line.
I knew plenty of Amiga users who considered themselves ‘elite’, in the 1337 sense. This was entirely about access to pirated games, though.
I don’t see how the Amiga was less elite just because it was much cheaper than a mac.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the number of programmers/creative people of the Amiga was higher too ..
I don’t agree with the first arguments though. I don’t see how this was all that relevant in 1985 either. Even less so in 1989. The Amiga 1000 & 500 was already beyond this and was released four years earlier.
But yeah. Most people played games on their Amigas in Sweden. And people still play games on PCs today.
Whatever the Amiga was “more serious” I don’t know.
I guess it make 100% sense to advertise the Amiga 1000 as more serious than a C64 when it was released =P
And it was seriously used in video production if nothing else.
Sure it was a different market, but it was a similar attempt to hold on to a declining market in the same way Apple pushed out the Apple IIc in 1988. Remember, this was 1991, a year after Windows 3.0 was released. As the article states, it was a great idea for 1985, not 1991.
To call the Amiga an “elite” system is somewhat correct, but this was a time where people were dumping multiple thousands on Pentiums and well built 486’s. The market for an expanded 8 bit was declining and had no mass market future.
I loved my C64 as much as anyone, and it makes me sad to this day that there’s no more CBM and history treats their contribution as an asterisk to the Apple/Microsoft story. Having said that, an 8 bit enhanced C64 in 1991 just wasn’t where the future lie.
Exactly my thoughts, even though I would have worded it a bit more harshly. As an ex Amiga-User (who is disgruntled about the death of it) I’ve read a lot of texts concerning the downfall of Commodore. And I still can’t believe how utterly clueless the Commodore-Managers were when it came to the Amiga. They single-handedly destroyed the technology, with stopping numerous projects that were completely or nearly completely developed.
They should have concentrated on the Amiga which was a tremendously huge hit in Europe, particularly in Germany where one of the more lively development centers were situated.
But no, instead they diverted their attention to the C-65 that nobody needed nor wanted. At that time, 16-bit was all the rage and the Amiga filled that spot perfectly, including gaming. Who in their right mind would have gone back to the C-65, an inferior technology to the Amiga or comparable computers?
“Commodore Amiga C65” is written on PCB
I’m surprised he says that they were only known of because of the leaked prototypes. I remember this proposed successor to the C64 getting a lot of hype in magazines like Zzap64 back in 90/91. They had regular news items charting its development, and for a while just about every letters page featured reader speculation about it.
I was a C64 user myself, with disk drives and a big collection of games and software. I’d been thinking of upgrading to an Amiga at the time, but the “100% C64 compatible” C65 hype was one of the things that made me hesitate.
Commodore would definitely have been better off focusing on the Amiga, but at the time the C64 was perhaps still a bit too successful for them to simply kill off.
Too little too late. xD
Here in Argentina C64 was very popular, It’s crazy how Commodore lost the market to crappy over-priced PCs of the era.
I think C65 could’ve been a great contender, even better than the Amiga cause the C64 was a better established platform and more affordable.
PS: I’m not against the PC, I had a PC XT with Hercules monitor in the late 80s but the C64 was way cheaper and the games were so much better!! Amazing sound.
one was sold on ebay for over 20,000USD!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-rare-Commodore-65-C65-DX64-prototype-…
I remember reading about the C65 but I didn’t care. I was wondering this exact thing: Why are they wasting time on an old platform? Sure, the incompatibility was a bitter pill to swallow but the Amiga had lots of software and was so much better.
In germany I can recall that for a short period there was an equal divide but soon after everyone who was still interested in Computers had gone for the Amiga. Thus creating the same ecosystem that was needed to be relevant. Some people kept their C64 for games besides the Amiga.
The Amiga made computing accessible to those that were too shy to type in commands and those that had experience with programming welcomed the capability of the Amiga. The Amiga was the established successor and being an awesome machine I don’t think anybody looked back.
But soon after the real wars by the time were Amiga vs. Atari ST. The ST was a tad bit cheaper and better for creating music (Midiports) but came with a bw screen, wich gave it a more serious feel. It was often used in offices but I had a ST and it played nearly all the games that the Amiga had in full color on a TV or a color screen.
I think it was the fragmentation that made everyone jump ship to the PC. In 1991 you could go Mac, Amiga, Atari or old school C64/c128 and a few odd folks from school even had Schneider CPC (german Sinclair) and I remember a couple of Acor diehards as well. You could hardly trade games/software anymore and had to relearn different concepts for each machine. They were all binary incompatible. You couldn’t buy a harddisk or a printer that would work with two machines.
When the PC came along, it’s modularity and it’s compatibility made it succeed. Everyone by then knew that DOS was crap, everyone knew they were slow, incapable and expensive but it was a common platform offices, gamers, programmers and teachers could agree on. That’s what made all the other platforms disappear and made Microsoft ruler of the world until the first iMac came out in 1998.
And it’s the reason I only got in touch with Unix after 25years of using a computer when I installed Slackware on a 486. But that’s a whole different story… 😉
The Schneider CPC was a rebranded Amstrad CPC (known for 464, the amazing 664 and later also 6128 and various + models).
Thanks for the correction. I never had one of the Schneiders, I heard they were quite good, too. And a quick search reveals Acor was in fact called Acorn. My memory doesn’t serve me well. Man, this was loong ago, feels like yesterday, though.
Edited 2015-02-17 09:00 UTC
Yes they were, esp. the inbuilt cassette recorder. Much more stable than on the ZX81 with external HIFI equipment.
The BASIC was great and easy to extend. And it did use an Z80 not this “crappy” 6502 like the Ataris 😉
Though they made some strange compromises: Only 26 colors. Interleaved video-memory (80 bytes per line, but byte 80 appears on the screen 8 lines deeper as byte 0. Later the 3″ disk.
Those 3″ disks were however quite solid. A bit like a KV1 tank, but more rugged :p
*ROTFL* You made my day!
Edited 2015-02-17 10:17 UTC
I used those disks in my first sampler. It was a Roland S-50. 😉
http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/s50.php
Yes, really a pity. We all know that the Atari ST computers and its successor were the best machines at that time *grin*. But often, not the best but the compromise succeeds.
PC bashing always makes me cringe…
Which platform had more than half megs of RAM in 1982 and an fpu?
Which platform had more than a meg of RAM and 20 meg HDD in 1984?
By the time the Amiga was getting traction in 1986, there were already 386 PCs out there with a back catalog of software and hardware of 4 years.
I love the Amiga, but until the Amiga 2000 with some serious cards based on 020 and 030 came out, it was just not a real competitor of the PC in the business market.
And that is where serious profits are made.
Yep, it was the business end that made the difference of course, but selectively quoting specs like that doesn’t give the full picture – there are so many other fields where the Amiga kicked those PCs around the park. Things like colours, sound, mouse as standard, GUI as standard, you know the rest. But people who wanted to work at home wanted to do their wordprocessing and spreadsheet work in monochrome under DOS, and there was only one option for that. As far as capability and technology was concerned, the Amiga made the equivalent PCs of the time look ridiculous, and that’s even without taking the price difference into account. As far as business software was concerned the PC was king by a mile though, and that’s what the market wanted for serious machines.
Anyway things like hard drives and 1MB+ RAM certainly weren’t standard even in PCs in the early 80s, more like extremely expensive upgrades. In the late 80s, people who had PCs at home that I remember still used 5.25″ floppies, used one disk drive to boot DOS and the other drive to load their software from, and often didn’t even have a mouse.
That was the thing: Even when there were things availabe like ELSA Winner VESA cards or Soundblaster 16, most games were written for the lowest subset and for example just used the PC speaker. DOS didn’t help either: Configuration was a nightmare with every gamedisk using their own config.sys and autoexec.bat. The PC was no match for the Motorola crowd.
Games do not move markets, business do, and there x86 reigned. I am not saying that there were not some good turbo cards for the A1000 and the A2000, but in the business market it was less competitive. By the time CBM was able to give some really good solutions( that was around 88-89) with a good price, IBM was way ahead in market share.
And I am speaking about high res black and white screens and production software without sound , mind you. That mattered in big office buildings with hundreds of computers, not games.
90-91 were really good years for CBM with good profits, but they spent money on stupid things like the C65, A600 instead of a new chipset, and they lost 2 of their advantages: advanced graphics and sound.
By the time we hit the 90s, there was things like audio autodetection and DOS4GW that eliminated most of these problems.
I am saying that the Amiga was was not king of the hill in every area, especially it lacked a competitive edge in the business space where real money was made.
In 85 it had shiny graphics and an awesome audio, but it did not have an FPU, it did not have hard disk support and it had only 256k base RAM which was simply insufficient. The Atari ST, like someone mentioned before, had an excellent bw screen and was cheaper than the Amiga therefore it was better for small businesses.
For proper business use you needed at least 1 Megs of RAM because you needed to load printer drivers, fonts, etc. The Atari ST earned its early success there, though because its design limitations it stalled after. The Amiga 2000 was where Commodore had a comparable offering.
What I want to say, that in the beginning the Amiga was not competitive enough on the business side, and by the time it became competitive on the business side, the lack of chipset development from Commodore let the PC to catch up in other areas.
That’s so true. For business, an A500 cannot compete with a PC back then… you had to buy a monitor, ram and a GVP HDD expansion (or buy an A2000/3000).
As I said before, the Amigas were used by creative people (video editing, music) and the entry-level Amigas (A500) were used as a game console (but in the early 90s, in the 80s they were too expensive for a console).