classic battle atari 8bit vs commodore 64

[Geister]

C64 deserves to be on the top 25 list on sales alone. However, those sales were driven entirely by price.

 

I worked at Sears in the office supply department when the C64 came out. Until then it was a no contest battle between the Ti99/4A and the newly released 800XL. The 800XL was leading sales against the TI on price alone until the C64 came out cheaper. But I remember a LOT of angry C64 customers who either couldn't get 1541's because of short supply, or were bringing them back in a few weeks because of poor quality control.

 

It didn't take long for the fan boys to start the computer wars and I remember in particular a guy who owned a local computer and software store that was particularly into the C64. I had sold a woman an Atari system for her son after showing her a side by side comparison of the two system's disk handling. Sears didn't carry a lot of software, so I sent her to this guy's store and she came back screaming at me to return the Atari because this clown at the store had a wall of Commodore software and only kept a couple small shelves of Atari software. He actually told her that there wasn't much software for the Atari because Atari was going out of business. The first time, and not to be the last time, I heard that claim from someone that was talking out their ass about Atari. I was ready to go smack him around for costing me a sale because as usual, we didn't have a complete C64 system in stock. That idiot ran his business into the ground and quickly sold out to a guy named Jim Finley who was much more Atari friendly. I also realized that I didn't own Sears, so what did I care about a lost sale, I got paid either way. But it still stung that the woman though I was trying to put something over on her.

[Faicuai]

C64 deserves to be on the top 25 list on sales alone. However, those sales were driven entirely by price.

 

(...) That idiot ran his business into the ground and quickly sold out to a guy named Jim Finley who was much more Atari friendly.

You are describing the "Rise and Fall of Commodore."... in a later venture, I had the fortune to work with executives mentioned on that book... and there I learned what was really happening in Commodore, back then...

[shoestring]

I actually prefer this list to be honest..

 

https://www.stuff.tv/news/25-most-iconic-computers-ever

[Faicuai]

I actually prefer this list to be honest..

 

https://www.stuff.tv/news/25-most-iconic-computers-ever

That would be a list for those who... knew rather little about this industry...

 

ha!!! The tiny Epson... before that really crippled portable (which I personally remember testing and selling), the Epson QX-10 was A MILLION times much more "iconic"! In fact, that's how Epson was really known into the world of personal Computing (for productivity / office !)

 

Not to mention the audacity of leaving the Apple II ENTIRELY OUT (!) In other words, leaving the starting point of a personal-computing as a "packaged and finished" product *completely out*, while actually being the MOST iconic 8-bit machine in history (!!!)

 

After all, this thread seems to finally be getting funny...

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Faicuai

[shoestring]

I was just a little disappointed that the first list left out the AA ( Acorn Archimedes ) completely. I mean, it definitely deserves a mention. Look at all your modem day handheld devices.

 

The ARM250 was innovative for 1992, a complete computer system fits on a single chip. ( MEMC, VIDC, IOEB and IOC ).

Edited November 1, 2018 by shoestring

[Stefan Both]

I was just a little disappointed that the first list left out the AA ( Acorn Archimedes ) completely. I mean, it definitely deserves a mention. Look at all your modem day handheld devices.

 

The ARM250 was innovative for 1992, a complete computer system fits on a single chip. ( MEMC, VIDC, IOEB and IOC ).

Yeah, no RISC no fun... Sophie Wilson

Funny and interesting story too.

 

Stefan

[shoestring]

Quite interesting. There’s definitely an Amiga 1200 in the background behind her.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxThgLTLyk

[Sugarland]

One of my first impressions of the C64 was trying to load Spy vs Spy. It took five freaking minutes to load. I was already fully familiar with the A8 version. When the game fiiiinnaaallly loaded, the game filled less of the screen and the music to me sounded like the adults talking in the Peanuts cartoons. I couldn't stand how the music sounded so bad. Sure the SID is superior in many ways for music but in this game it was lazily implemented IMO. Many other games I later found out the same thing.. Lazy music programming using the same lame instruments in uncreative ways. Or faking game effects with musical instruments instead of how Atari games can do explosions and distortions so easily. I didn't learn about Rob Hubbard until the 2000's and well finally heard some SID music done very, very well. I absolutely love watching the waveforms of his SID music. He is/was a true musical genius, and his pokey tunes are also fantastic.

 

Then I disliked how the 1541 was so physically long compared to the 1050. My good friend who had one showed me how if you rubbed your hands on the grill in the back of the 1541 it made a squeak or screech sound. LAME. It just screamed poor quality and poor design. I didn't like how the keycaps were raised so high off the case and I didn't like the recycled 1970's case which looked decidedly older and more primitive than the 800. The cheap ass rainbow badge on the top screamed lipstick on a pig to me. It didn't fix the ugly ass case and yes it's ugly, but distinctive too.

 

After trying Spy vs Spy we tried basic and quickly found out that moving the joysticks scrolled characters across the screen. My friend Andre and I laughed as we made a game of both of us moving the joysticks as fast as possible to scroll text across the screen. We were laughing and having fun but more at the computer and how lame it was. Not kidding. We laughed hard. Spy vs Spy was slower, the music sucked compared to Pokey (I was acclimated to it) and the disk drive was awful. Oh and it didn't know how to boot a disk. The BASIC DOS was very lame.

 

To top it all off.. Almost every C64 owner I met knew thought C64 was the best system but at the same time knew nothing about A8. They didn't know the system's strengths and weaknesses. Understandable since the home computer industry was just starting. They didn't know any better and that's how I saw it.. Ignorance.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Sugarland

[carlsson]

I worked at Sears in the office supply department when the C64 came out. Until then it was a no contest battle between the Ti99/4A and the newly released 800XL. The 800XL was leading sales against the TI on price alone until the C64 came out cheaper.

 

Surely you mean Atari 800 above, not 800XL? The 1200XL was released in the fall of 1982, in parallel with the C64. The 600XL and 800XL models didn't appear until spring/summer 1983 as far as I remember. The TI-99/4A was history by the summer of 1984 or so, which gives a window of perhaps one year where all three were on the market, and Commodore tried all they could to kill off the TI by price wars and very generous discounts. Also the 99/4 model that predated the 99/4A didn't have the same ability to be hooked up to a TV set using a RF modulator, so it was bundled with its own TV at a very high price. While the 800 wasn't cheap either, in the choice between the two it must've been fairly easy to see the Atari was better and a computer with a stronger future and 3rd party support (while TI aggressively tried to prevent the same, probably one of their many bad moves).

 

Edit: Or maybe you mean there was a month or two between the release of the 800XL and the big price war in the summer of '83, a space for the 800XL to sell a lot on price while the C64 still was at the $595 level, before they dumped it to $395.

Edited November 1, 2018 by carlsson

[Stefan Both]

Quite interesting. There’s definitely an Amiga 1200 in the background behind her.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxThgLTLyk

Yes of course, and behind the Amiga there

is a sixteen bit Atari. I don't know the location,

but it looks like a nice collection.

 

And the most interesting thing is, she didn't get rash!

And there is no second guy who is fighting against her

calling names like Apple Atari Amiga or even Sinclair,

what would be the most disgusting thing of all...

To me, it looks almost like there are people, able to

make peace with their history...

Unbelievable!

 

Stefan

[shoestring]

C64 deserves to be on the top 25 list on sales alone. However, those sales were driven entirely by price.

 

 

 

 

 

It took a year or so before c64 sales really started kicking in and this was due to reliability issues and lack of software at the time. Not purely due to price.

 

People are smart enough to realise what they're going to get before paying for it. There were other affordable machines ( eg.. ZX Spectrum series which did very well in the U.K ) available at the time retailing for less than the c64 but weren't quite as successful in sales. Commodore really got behind the c64 and provided developers with documentation and technical info so they could write better titles for it and because of that, software houses saw the potential in the machine and what the platform could offer... it really took off from that point on.

 

 

He actually told her that there wasn't much software for the Atari because Atari was going out of business.

 

Well, he was kinda right wasn't he?. I mean without Jack Tramiel stepping in and buying the company.

[Faicuai]

The bottom-line is that the C64 takes the crown for (non-sustainable) Sales and Marketing innovation, and for bringing personal computer closer to the masses, at the lowest possible price they could.

 

...As for engineering and innovation leadership, definitely not the place for the C64, as the heavy lifiting was already done (mainly) by Apple, Atari (both companies connected in history), and later IBM, when they finally validated what Jobs and Woz. saw in 1976-1977...

 

IBM itself went after the A800 as their OEM home-computer product, but Atari was not organized / structured for such undertaking.

[Heaven/TQA]

[Peers nervously into necrobumped thread with dodgy-looking title]

 

Oh dear Rassilon...!

 

Most of my week is going to be spent concentrating on C64 demo code for X'2018, why doesn't everyone just work as a group and put something together for Silly Venture rather than grind over the same, tired old ground for the Nth time...?

Me submitted 2 demos to Silly Venture and delivered a part in our X2018 demo...

 

Ah yes... i Stick to talk less code more in 2018

Edited November 1, 2018 by Heaven/TQA

[+mytek]

IBM itself went after the A800 as their OEM home-computer product, but Atari was not organized / structured for such undertaking.

 

Wow I didn't know that! Do you have a link to some of the back story on that? Love to read about it .

[Mr Robot]

From here, I got this...

 

 

 

The machine that would become known as the real IBM PC begins, of all places, at Atari. Apparently feeling their oats in the wake of the Atari VCS' sudden Space Invaders-driven explosion in popularity and the release of its own first PCs, the Atari 400 and 800, they made a proposal to IBM's chairman Frank Cary in July of 1980: if IBM wished to have a PC of its own, Atari would deign to build it for them.
Far from being the hidebound mainframer that he’s often portrayed as, Cary was actually something of a champion of small systems—even if "small systems" in the context of IBM often meant something quite different from what it meant to the outside world. Cary turned the proposal over to IBM's Director of (data) Entry Systems, Bill Lowe, based out of Boca Raton, Florida. Lowe in turn took it to IBM's management committee, who pronounced it "the dumbest thing we've ever heard of." (Indeed, IBM and Atari make about the oddest couple imaginable.) But at the same time, everyone knew that Lowe was acting at the personal behest of the chairman, not something to be dismissed lightly if they cared at all about their careers. So they told Lowe to assemble a team to put together a detailed proposal for how IBM could build a PC themselves—and to please come back with it in just one month.

 

Which suggests completely the opposite of what Faicuai was saying.

[_The Doctor__]

nope that's a bit of fancy and fun put together years later, a retrospective C.Y.A

Atari in the year 1980 proposed that it act as oem for an IBM microcomputer. IBM was aware that the company needed to enter the market quickly as even the schools in Broward, outside Boca Raton, purchased Apples in July 1980. Lowe met with Opel, Cary, and others on the important Corporate Management Committee. Lowe demonstrated the proposal with an industrial design model based on the Atari platform, and suggested acquiring Atari "because we can't do this within the culture of IBM". IBM wanted it all and Atari didn't sell out.

Cary understood the IBM business model and about that culture, observing IBM would need "four years and three hundred people" to develop its own personal computer. Since Atari wouldn't sell. IBM decided to do it itself. So Lowe promised a home computer in a year if done without traditional IBM methods and using methods like Atari used. The game was on. Instead of acquiring Atari, the committee would form an independent group of employees deemed the Dirty Dozen, led by engineer Bill Sydnes which Lowe promised could design a prototype in 30 days. The crude prototype barely worked when he demonstrated it and Lowe presented a detailed business plan. It proposed that the new computer have an open architecture, use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, more like Atari's idea and contrary to IBM practice.

The committee went with Lowe's thoughts and decided it was the most likely to succeed. With Opel's strong support it was approved later in October making the group into another I.B.U. It was code-named as "Project Chess" and was to develop the elusive "Acorn" from which the product tree would grow. Unusually large funding was used to help achieve the goal of introducing the product within one year of an August demonstration. Lowe gets promoted and Don Estbridge became the head of "Chess". January 1981 was the first demonstration of the computer within IBM. -Other key members noted include Sydnes, Lewis Eggebrecht, David Bradley, Mark Dean, and David O'Connor. Many of whom were already hobbyists who owned their own computers as even Estridge himself admitted he had an Apple. They expanded to about 150 workers by the end of it. The chess game was won as IBM outplayed Atari and ran to market utilizing their strengths and indeed Atari's strengths against Atari. They had it all in true IBM fashion. So IBM outplayed Atari in this game of Chess didn't they?

 

certainly people need to dig deeper...

 

and so it goes... the intrigue ... a game of chess... a dirty dozen of engineers and reverse engineers... it sounds like a movie...

 

now wrap your head around IBM manufacturing Jaguars years later... of course the rf switch and a major chip somehow got bodged.... making things difficult for programming.. Atari should have realized from long ago IBM was not exactly a friend....

Edited November 1, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[Faicuai]

Wow I didn't know that! Do you have a link to some of the back story on that? Love to read about it .

There you go:

 

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-almost-was-atari-ibm-pc

 

A more eclectic compilation of accounts in this matter... It seems IBM truly considered the idea, and was not far fetched from the target market they originally had in mind.... Until Don Estrdige (the TRUE responsible for making it happen) built the team and the machine, right here in Boca, Florida, and under sponsorship of IBM's CEO who loved coming here... and drink orange juice!

 

Don Estridge VOLUNTEERED to the project, as he was in the penalty box for System-1 failure... and in 11 months they had a fully built machine working, out of a team of about 14 people. Don was native of Jacksonville, which basically means, the IBM PC and the ensuing industry catapulted by it were actually born in Florida!!!

Edited November 1, 2018 by Faicuai

[shoestring]

...As for engineering and innovation leadership, definitely not the place for the C64, as the heavy lifiting was already done (mainly) by Apple, Atari (both companies connected in history), and later IBM, when they finally validated what Jobs and Woz. saw in 1976-1977...

 

 

 

The "heavy lifting" was done by MOS Technologies via the introduction of the 6502. But of course there was no innovation there too right ? Because the company that built the chip was part of Commodore

 

This thread has become ridiculous to say the least.

 

Even Woz remarked that the c64 was a truly "ground breaking" system.

 

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/commodore-pioneer-jack-tramiel-dies-wozniak-industry-and-tech-pros-react/

[Geister]

 

Surely you mean Atari 800 above, not 800XL? The 1200XL was released in the fall of 1982, in parallel with the C64. The 600XL and 800XL models didn't appear until spring/summer 1983 as far as I remember. The TI-99/4A was history by the summer of 1984 or so, which gives a window of perhaps one year where all three were on the market, and Commodore tried all they could to kill off the TI by price wars and very generous discounts. Also the 99/4 model that predated the 99/4A didn't have the same ability to be hooked up to a TV set using a RF modulator, so it was bundled with its own TV at a very high price. While the 800 wasn't cheap either, in the choice between the two it must've been fairly easy to see the Atari was better and a computer with a stronger future and 3rd party support (while TI aggressively tried to prevent the same, probably one of their many bad moves).

 

Edit: Or maybe you mean there was a month or two between the release of the 800XL and the big price war in the summer of '83, a space for the 800XL to sell a lot on price while the C64 still was at the $595 level, before they dumped it to $395.

You are absolutely correct. The 800 was on display with an 810 when I started and I took it home with a deep discount when we removed it to set up the 1200XL. I was a little wary about the 1200XL because of the rumors of incompatibility, but Atari was quick to produce the translator disk and it helped us sell the 1200XL. It took too long to get the 1050 drive in so we had to put another 810 on display and people weren't happy about that. The 1050 only became widely available once the 800XL came out. We had the 1010 in abundance much sooner.

 

When the 800XL came out the 1200XL was retired quickly and sold to a kid that came in every day to play on it. I made sure he got the employee discount because he sold as many Atari's as I did.

 

I remember the TI being taken off the shelf without much fan-fair and I don't recall what happened to it. Maybe another employee took it home for his kid.

 

The biggest fiasco was the Christmas when the Coleco Adam came out. People were wild to get their hands on them and we got all of three. All three were returned right after Christmas too, all broken. They made the early 1541's look durable.

 

The only Atari that ever came back was the 800XL I sold to the woman who returned it. Guess who took that home.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Geister

[Mr Robot]

nope that's a bit of fancy and fun put together years later, a retrospective C.Y.A

Atari in the year 1980 proposed that it act as oem for an IBM microcomputer. IBM was aware that the company needed to enter the market quickly as even the schools in Broward, outside Boca Raton, purchased Apples in July 1980. Lowe met with Opel, Cary, and others on the important Corporate Management Committee. Lowe demonstrated the proposal with an industrial design model based on the Atari platform, and suggested acquiring Atari "because we can't do this within the culture of IBM". IBM wanted it all and Atari didn't sell out.

Cary understood the IBM business model and about that culture, observing IBM would need "four years and three hundred people" to develop its own personal computer. Since Atari wouldn't sell. IBM decided to do it itself. So Lowe promised a home computer in a year if done without traditional IBM methods and using methods like Atari used. The game was on. Instead of acquiring Atari, the committee would form an independent group of employees deemed the Dirty Dozen, led by engineer Bill Sydnes which Lowe promised could design a prototype in 30 days. The crude prototype barely worked when he demonstrated it and Lowe presented a detailed business plan. It proposed that the new computer have an open architecture, use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, more like Atari's idea and contrary to IBM practice.

The committee went with Lowe's thoughts and decided it was the most likely to succeed. With Opel's strong support it was approved later in October making the group into another I.B.U. It was code-named as "Project Chess" and was to develop the elusive "Acorn" from which the product tree would grow. Unusually large funding was used to help achieve the goal of introducing the product within one year of an August demonstration. Lowe gets promoted and Don Estbridge became the head of "Chess". January 1981 was the first demonstration of the computer within IBM. -Other key members noted include Sydnes, Lewis Eggebrecht, David Bradley, Mark Dean, and David O'Connor. Many of whom were already hobbyists who owned their own computers as even Estridge himself admitted he had an Apple. They expanded to about 150 workers by the end of it. The chess game was won as IBM outplayed Atari and ran to market utilizing their strengths and indeed Atari's strengths against Atari. They had it all in true IBM fashion. So IBM outplayed Atari in this game of Chess didn't they?

 

certainly people need to dig deeper...

 

and so it goes... the intrigue ... a game of chess... a dirty dozen of engineers and reverse engineers... it sounds like a movie...

 

now wrap your head around IBM manufacturing Jaguars years later... of course the rf switch and a major chip somehow got bodged.... making things difficult for programming.. Atari should have realized from long ago IBM was not exactly a friend....

 

That mostly ties up with the ARS article which just focusses more on the PC bit than the Atari bit which is mentioned but skimmed over.

 

Fascinating stuff!

[Faicuai]

The "heavy lifting" was done by MOS Technologies via the introduction of the 6502. But of course there was no innovation there too right ? Because the company that built the chip was part of Commodore

 

 

Antic, Pokey, Pia, GTIA, etc., have much less in common with MOS (and Chuck Peddle) than what they have with National Semiconductor, where some key players of J. Miner team came from (including himself, if I am correct).

 

The Atari 8bit creation is A WHILE LOT more than the 6502... I should not even be in the position or need to point out something so essential and basic, at this height of the game...

Edited November 1, 2018 by Faicuai

[Geister]

 

 

It took a year or so before c64 sales really started kicking in and this was due to reliability issues and lack of software at the time. Not purely due to price.

 

People are smart enough to realise what they're going to get before paying for it. There were other affordable machines ( eg.. ZX Spectrum series which did very well in the U.K ) available at the time retailing for less than the c64 but weren't quite as successful in sales. Commodore really got behind the c64 and provided developers with documentation and technical info so they could write better titles for it and because of that, software houses saw the potential in the machine and what the platform could offer... it really took off from that point on.

 

 

 

Well, he was kinda right wasn't he?. I mean without Jack Tramiel stepping in and buying the company.

At the time when he made his prediction, the 800XL had just been introduced and the Atari was talking about releasing a whole slew of other computers ie. the 1400 series. So it was probably just as well he sold his computer store because maybe he had a future as a fortune teller. I think he was just a dick. I did him the favor of sending over a paying customer and he stabbed me in the back in return.

[_The Doctor__]

let me get this right,

a long time semiconductor company makes a cpu and other product for many years.. one year after the 6502 is already out... commodore buys the company...

That does not make commodore the creator of the 6502 !

 

are you purposely setting them up so I can knock them down or are you truly incapable of following timelines and publishing the truth?

 

do your homework! you can't be this inaccurate by mistake.. stop posting such distortions, I know you don't want to dig for facts, that's okay... but you are making yourself look very bad.

MOS born 1969

1975 we had 6502's in our hands which gets them sued by motorola (6800)... 1976 Commodore essentially take over MOS via equity purchase...

1983 Commodore finally bites the bullet and CSG is born some other silliness unfolds 1989...

eventually MOS breaks free of Commodore and becomes it's own company again 1994?

2001 It's a big deal in the news industrial accident, bad press, ground water contaminated... boom coffin nails on the way.. but it stills sort of lives on... who can tell us where our 6502 still lives? and all the other things around it... hint, I posted about what's in a certain box, and extracting keys from it...

Edited November 1, 2018 by _The Doctor__

[shoestring]

Antic, Pokey, Pia, GTIA, etc., have much less in common with MOS (and Chuck Peddle) than what they have with National Semiconductor, where some key players of J. Miner team came from (including himself, if I am correct).

 

The Atari 8bit creation is A WHILE LOT more than the 6502... I should not even be in the position or need to point out something so essential and basic, at this height of the game...

 

 

 

as the heavy lifiting was already done (mainly) by Apple

 

Yet Woz couldn't get his computer to work. Chuck drove over the garage and helped them getting the 6502 to work in the Apple 1.

[Mr Robot]

 

The "heavy lifting" was done by MOS Technologies via the introduction of the 6502. But of course there was no innovation there too right ? Because the company that built the chip was part of Commodore

 

 

 

 

Wasn't the 6502 base design 'borrowed' from the Motorola 6500?