Why C128 did stay longer than 1989?

[Casey]

The 1571 can read and write MFM formatted disks, of which MS-DOS is one type.  I know there were programs made for the 128 that would allow you to read/write to MS-DOS disks (Big Blue Reader is one).  Somewhere buried in my mind I used a procedure involving CP/M to do this, but I have no recollection of how to do it, or where I found it.

 

COMPUTE! magazine published an article that contained a program that would copy PC disks on a 128 with a 1571.  A google search found a page where a person used this utility program to make something that will make MS-DOS boot disks for PCs using a Commodore 128, a 1571, and an SD2IEC device that contains an image of the DOS boot disk.  Rather impressive!

 

Edit: I think the 1581 can do this also

Edited January 2, 2021 by Casey

[+hloberg]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

The 1571 can read and write MFM formatted disks, of which MS-DOS is one type.  I know there were programs made for the 128 that would allow you to read/write to MS-DOS disks (Big Blue Reader is one).  Somewhere buried in my mind I used a procedure involving CP/M to do this, but I have no recollection of how to do it, or where I found it.

 

 

Really! I never knew it could also read MS-DOS. If I known that back then I might sold a couple more. ?

 

 

[RobertB]

On 12/31/2020 at 2:00 PM, carlsson said:

In that case, Commodore must've made about 1000-1500% profit on the C64 in the very end.

At the end, C64's were being sold for $90 at Toys 'R Us.

 

     Happy New Year!

     Robert Bernardo

     Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

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[carlsson]

So close to 1700% profit then: 90 / 5 = 18. If you sell something for twice the cost of manufacturing it, you have 100% profit. If you sell it for thrice the manufacturing cost, you have 200% profit and so on.

 

Of course that doesn't take distribution, any remaining marketing and most importantly the reseller's margin since Toys'R'Us would not sell those without any profits at all. Now I still doubt $5 manufacturing is correct unless accounting tricks were utilized but probably manufacturing $25, distribution $10, resellers margin $25 and Commodore's own margin $30 which would be healthy even if the sales volumes were very low.

 

 

[+hloberg]

43 minutes ago, carlsson said:

So close to 1700% profit then: 90 / 5 = 18. If you sell something for twice the cost of manufacturing it, you have 100% profit. If you sell it for thrice the manufacturing cost, you have 200% profit and so on.

 

Of course that doesn't take distribution, any remaining marketing and most importantly the reseller's margin since Toys'R'Us would not sell those without any profits at all. Now I still doubt $5 manufacturing is correct unless accounting tricks were utilized but probably manufacturing $25, distribution $10, resellers margin $25 and Commodore's own margin $30 which would be healthy even if the sales volumes were very low.

 

 

if the C64 sold for $90 retail then Sears was buying it at around $45. Most items that sale in retail have around 100% mark up. That way you could constantly have it on sale and still maintain a profit. So if they were selling the C64 to Sears around $45 then they probably were making them ~$20 each or less. Maybe that $5 price was for the motherboard or the 6510 chip set? That sounds realistic. 

[Krebizfan]

3 hours ago, hloberg said:

if the C64 sold for $90 retail then Sears was buying it at around $45. Most items that sale in retail have around 100% mark up. That way you could constantly have it on sale and still maintain a profit. So if they were selling the C64 to Sears around $45 then they probably were making them ~$20 each or less. Maybe that $5 price was for the motherboard or the 6510 chip set? That sounds realistic. 

I had read that Commodore had been stripping out boards from the 64GS and placing them in spare c64 cases. That process may well have cost less than $5. 

[R.Cade]

On 1/1/2021 at 11:14 PM, carlsson said:

CP/M had been popular at least up until just a few years ago. The urban legend says that Commodore had no plans for it until a sales rep told a customer that the new computer would be compatible with the CP/M cartridge for the C64 (which itself didn't work on every C64 model). It turned out the cartridge would not run on the C128 prototype which was one reason to integrate it.

 

 

I never really understood why they did this. There were no C128 cartridges that I know of... They could have just designed it so that if a cartridge (any cartridge) was inserted, it went into C64 mode. The Z80 and the boot process is needlessly complicated.

 

[krslam]

51 minutes ago, R.Cade said:

I never really understood why they did this. There were no C128 cartridges that I know of... They could have just designed it so that if a cartridge (any cartridge) was inserted, it went into C64 mode. The Z80 and the boot process is needlessly complicated.

 

The 128 will automatically boot to 64 mode if there's a C64 cart installed that has the proper boot code, though as mentioned the 64's cp/m cart doesn't work (it doesn't even work on many C64s).

 

There were also a few C128 specific carts: Partner128 and Mach128 come to mind.  There's also an after-market 128 diagnostic cart.

 

[Serguei2]

Ok.

 

Does CP/M have other use than reading/writing disks on all CP/M computers?

[krslam]

16 minutes ago, Serguei2 said:

Ok.

 

Does CP/M have other use than reading/writing disks on all CP/M computers?

Well, sure.  CP/M had Wordstar, Perfect Writer, dBase, and a number of other early productivity packages, all of which I thought were superior to whatever was offered in either C64 or C128 native mode.  It had Turbo Pascal, which was a terrific development package.  Several of the early Infocom text adventures exist in that format, though you could also run these in native mode. There's a ton of cp/m software, though not so much games outside of text-based stuff.

 

Nowadays, the productivity packages have all been surpassed so if the question is 'Why use CP/M today?" then there aren't a lot of reasons.

 

[+hloberg]

CP/M was revolutionary for it's time. It was the 1st computing system that the average small business owner could even dream about owning. You could go down to your local computer retailer and get a computer, printer and monitor with some really powerful business software like Wordstar or Multiplan or Dbase for under $5000 (that be $10,000 now, whoa). Suddenly a business owner could have one secretary do what used to been done by half dozen typist, filest or calculators (people not the machines) and usually getting it done in fraction of the time. 

CP/M also almost became the standard IBM choose for the IBM PC but they couldn't come to terms. So an upstart Microsoft promised IBM they could make an operating system just like CP/M but better and cheaper. And the rest, as they say, is history.

[krslam]

Microsoft couldn't  even do that. They had to buy 86DOS from Seattle Computer Products and rename it. They can take credit for later changes, but the original MS/PC-DOS 1.0 isnt their creation and is really just a cp/m variant.

[+hloberg]

10 hours ago, Krebizfan said:

I had read that Commodore had been stripping out boards from the 64GS and placing them in spare c64 cases. That process may well have cost less than $5. 

Good point. I also heard they were savaging parts from old and recycled C64 too. So they could have zeroed out the stuff they were reusing so, technically, the price could been as little as $5, on paper anyway.

[+hloberg]

1 minute ago, krslam said:

Microsoft couldn't  even do that. They had to buy 86DOS from Seattle Computer Products and rename it. They can take credit for later changes, but the original MS/PC-DOS 1.0 isnt their creation and is really just a cp/m variant.

very true.

[Casey]

2 hours ago, R.Cade said:

I never really understood why they did this. There were no C128 cartridges that I know of... They could have just designed it so that if a cartridge (any cartridge) was inserted, it went into C64 mode. The Z80 and the boot process is needlessly complicated.

 

There were 2 issues that Bill Herd stated was the reason for the Z80 in the 128.  1 was the CP/M cartridge.  The 64's CP/M cartridge wouldn't run on the 128 when it was in development as was stated before.  And the Magic Voice (speech synthesizer) cartridge would crash the 128 when it was plugged in.  They utilized the Z80 to look for the Magic Voice cartridge and properly initialize 64 mode before booting.

 

One thing I've always read but never fully believed.  The 128's boot process was stated as using the Z80 to check for the presence of a CP/M boot disk before launching 128 mode.  That seems backwards to how it appears to work.  If you stick a CP/M disk in a 1571 and turn on a 128 - the first thing that happens is Commodore BASIC starts and it checks track 1 sector 0 for the boot sector.  Finding none, it returns to the command level with READY.  If it finds a boot sector, it initiates whatever the boot sector tells it to.  In the case of a CP/M disk, that would switch the Z80 back on and load CP/M - but something in that boot sector has to initiate that.  I feel like that's done via the 8502 and not the Z80.  Does anyone know for sure?  I've always been curious.

[+hloberg]

45 minutes ago, Casey said:

There were 2 issues that Bill Herd stated was the reason for the Z80 in the 128.  1 was the CP/M cartridge.  The 64's CP/M cartridge wouldn't run on the 128 when it was in development as was stated before.  And the Magic Voice (speech synthesizer) cartridge would crash the 128 when it was plugged in.  They utilized the Z80 to look for the Magic Voice cartridge and properly initialize 64 mode before booting.

 

One thing I've always read but never fully believed.  The 128's boot process was stated as using the Z80 to check for the presence of a CP/M boot disk before launching 128 mode.  That seems backwards to how it appears to work.  If you stick a CP/M disk in a 1571 and turn on a 128 - the first thing that happens is Commodore BASIC starts and it checks track 1 sector 0 for the boot sector.  Finding none, it returns to the command level with READY.  If it finds a boot sector, it initiates whatever the boot sector tells it to.  In the case of a CP/M disk, that would switch the Z80 back on and load CP/M - but something in that boot sector has to initiate that.  I feel like that's done via the 8502 and not the Z80.  Does anyone know for sure?  I've always been curious.

in an interview on Youtube Bill Hurd said that when developing the C128 he found it was easier to let the Z80 bring the system up then had it off to the 128. I also remember him saying something about that? I believe it was an interview with the 8-bit guy but I can't seem to find it again. Anybody else remember that interview?

[Hwlngmad]

On 1/3/2021 at 1:13 PM, hloberg said:

in an interview on Youtube Bill Hurd said that when developing the C128 he found it was easier to let the Z80 bring the system up then had it off to the 128. I also remember him saying something about that? I believe it was an interview with the 8-bit guy but I can't seem to find it again. Anybody else remember that interview?

Yes, Bill Hurd went over the C128 in one of the 8-bit Guy's Commodore History episodes.  Definitely check out the episode as it was really good.  He also discussed the TED chip in another along with Plus 4 and C16 computers.

[Hwlngmad]

The short and sweet answer is money.  While the 128 series of computers sold well, the C64 continued to sell very well and it was refreshed in 1986 that had a similar look to the C128 and had GEOS bundled with it (at least in North America).  While the C128 was a good computer, it just cost too much to manufacture relative to profits, especially when the A500 and A2000 came out.  With those machines Commodore had the low, mid, and high end computing angles covered.  There wasn't really a need for a machine like the C128 anymore.

[+hloberg]

1 hour ago, Hwlngmad said:

The short and sweet answer is money.  While the 128 series of computers sold well, the C64 continued to sell very well and it was refreshed in 1986 that had a similar look to the C128 and had GEOS bundled with it (at least in North America).  While the C128 was a good computer, it just cost too much to manufacture relative to profits, especially when the A500 and A2000 came out.  With those machines Commodore had the low, mid, and high end computing angles covered.  There wasn't really a need for a machine like the C128 anymore.

And selling them long ago at Sears, although I like the C128, I really couldn't justify it to a customer. Why get a C128 when you could buy a PC clone for not much more (and tons of productivity software) or get a C64c for a whole lot less. Even worse for the Plus4. 

About the only people, that I remember, buying the C128 where Commodore fan boys who just wanted the next great thing. (of which there were enough to keep it on the shelf).

[Hwlngmad]

1 hour ago, hloberg said:

And selling them long ago at Sears, although I like the C128, I really couldn't justify it to a customer. Why get a C128 when you could buy a PC clone for not much more (and tons of productivity software) or get a C64c for a whole lot less. Even worse for the Plus4. 

About the only people, that I remember, buying the C128 where Commodore fan boys who just wanted the next great thing. (of which there were enough to keep it on the shelf).

Yep, the continued success and sustainability of the C64 helped to sink the C128, not to mention the release of the A500 too.  Still, the C128 is one heck of a machine and a bit underrated imo. 

[Hwlngmad]

On 1/3/2021 at 1:13 PM, hloberg said:

in an interview on Youtube Bill Hurd said that when developing the C128 he found it was easier to let the Z80 bring the system up then had it off to the 128. I also remember him saying something about that? I believe it was an interview with the 8-bit guy but I can't seem to find it again. Anybody else remember that interview?

Here is the video.  It is good stuff for sure. 

 

[+hloberg]

5 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

Yep, the continued success and sustainability of the C64 helped to sink the C128, not to mention the release of the A500 too.  Still, the C128 is one heck of a machine and a bit underrated imo. 

I never bought a C128 (was saving all my money for college) but loved playing with it. I don't remember us ever selling the Amiga? May be I left for college just before Sears got it, not sure. Oh, and we had at least one SX-64, I think it was old stock. I remember thinking, my gawd, how can anybody see anything on that tiny screen. ?

[Hwlngmad]

13 hours ago, hloberg said:

I never bought a C128 (was saving all my money for college) but loved playing with it. I don't remember us ever selling the Amiga? May be I left for college just before Sears got it, not sure. Oh, and we had at least one SX-64, I think it was old stock. I remember thinking, my gawd, how can anybody see anything on that tiny screen. ?

Yeah, the SX-64 has a crazy tiny screen.  But, then again, so did the Osbourne 1 and that one sold really well, as did other luggables which had tiny screens.  That being said, it didn't sell well at all and it was quickly discontinued.

[R.Cade]

The SX was designed (probably not on purpose) for "copy parties". You hooked it to a monitor when you wanted to use it at home. 

 

[carlsson]

It is true that the Osborne 1 (1981) has a 5" mono screen just like the SX-64 (1984) but in colour. However the Osborne Executive (1982) had 7" mono, the Kaypro II (1982) had 9" mono just like the Seequa Chameleon (1983) did.

 

Compare with the Educator 64 (1983) which had a 14" (or perhaps it is only 12"?) mono monitor. Certainly it is not luggable in the same way the SX-64 is, and I can understand the desire to show off the colour capacities of the C64, but we should also remember that early on Commodore announced two models in January 1983; the monochrome SX-100 with a single drive and the colour DX-64 with dual drives, which blended together as the SX-64. I believe if the SX-100 had happened with a 5" mono screen in a time where all the competitors already boasted 7-9" screens, it would have been a laughing stock.