Is This The Last Commodore Computer Ever?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- #commodore #vintagecomputer #c64 Is a humble 486 clone the last official model of computer Commodore ever 'made'? This is the obscure story of a deal made between Commodore of Canada and a wholesaler of Taiwanese PC Clones called 3D Microcomputers to keep Commodore's name in the home PC market as the company focused its dwindling resources on the Amiga CD32.
Just As Soon by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommon...
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The companion video will be out asap - we had some audio problems and I finally broke down and invested in a Rode Wireless Go II microphone kit to re-record.
Is this the last Commodore computer? Let me know what you think!
My brother bought a 586 (Cyrix) Commodore branded computer around this time. It was in Sweden. I remember being with him in The store when he bought it, saying: "Of cource it's great, it's a Commodore" ... It was not great.
Yeah. By the 586 era that was probably Escom or whoever bought Commodore's trademarks. Those were hit and miss quality wise.
My first home built computer was a Cyrix 5x86. It was bad. Or was it a 6x86, I don't recall. They came out at almost the same time, the 5x being a cheaper version of the 6x.
Anything with Cyrix was bad, basically.
I love videos like this that explore the larger historical context. Bonus points for including Canadian content!
man what a way to take a generic boring clone and come up with something very interesting...your research and back story drove this video home for me.
my high school in around 1999 had a 486 commodore in a desktop style case. they only seemed to have one pretty much everything else they had were ibm ps/2 and a bunch of no name systems with celron 300 chips. they did a remodel in 2001 and replaced everything with dell oplex systems with 600mhz p3 chips.
Our lab was about 20 Sanyo MBC 8088s and 1 generic 286 connected to a Novell server. I've been looking for an MBC of the type they had (drives are in the center) but no dice.
I remember reading about this in some computer paper in Toronto in 1994 or so; but that was after they'd already declared bankruptcy in April. A PC clone isn't really a Commodore model though. I consider the Amiga 4000T to be the last.
The Computer Paper! Loved reading that back in the day. Earliest reference I could find to this deal was September of 1993 with the deal between 3d and Commodore being completed in December of 93. I suspect my machine was just a carryover until the legal rights to Commodore IP were sorted out.
I think the last Commodores to be made and sold were the CD32 that UK C=ommodore bought from Singapore I think, Asia anyway. That were being held until payment was made for them. If you watch Dave Haynie Deathbed Vigil at Commodore, you'll get a better picture of the end of C=ommodore.
@@yesitreallyisme I did see Haynie's video once. It was nice to see that AAA did exist though it was unfinished.
WHOA! Campus Computers was a huge clone maker in the early-mid 90s Greater Vancouver area, I even sold some of their machines in A&B Sound alongside Compaq, AST, Packard Bell and other mainline PC clone makers of the time. Mind blowing that they had re-badged their PCs to the Commodore name during the time I was grieving for the death of Commodore thanks to Medhi Ali and Irving Gould sucking every last remaining dollar out of Commodore into their pockets and leaving the empty husk to die at various different times around the world, with Commodore Canada living the longest. THANK YOU for this video, I have to link it to some other old friends who were Commodore die-hards like myself now!
After bankruptcy, the Escom company in Germany took over the Commodore name and continued to sell PCs under this brand until the end of the 1990s.
Then they went bankrupt themselves.
I had a "Commodore" Pentium 90 back then.
@Ali Cuntë Then neither is this so called last Commodore. But a machine is a Commodore when you own the brandname. No matter what you say or think… 😊
It should have been called the commodore 486.
Commodore had the amiga team and the means to make chips. And made use of none of them.
We had "commodore" branded PCs in Argentina in early 2000s. Of course they were clone PCs with some type of licensing.
Yes those likely would have been Escom or Tulip clones.. post bankruptcy.
I attended the auction where the original Commodore sold *everything* in their building. The craziest thing were people paying good money for certain desks. The auctioneer didn't bother to empty the desks, so some of these were FULL of great stuff. My friend bought a desk that was stuffed with Amiga schematics and technical details, and picked up CAD drawings and files another desk purchaser dumped onto the floor. I, personally, purchased boxes of chips, software, and Commodore signs (all of which I later sold for a massive profit). As I recall, there was a guy there who said he represented the purchasers of the intellectual property, who was forced to bid against everyone else for tooling and molds used to produce then-current models.
In comparison, the Franklin Computer (maker of Apple 2 clones) sale was a free-for-all flea market with the company selling all of its own stuff. I left there with my car completely stuffed full. I got wire wrapped prototypes of many of its products, over 1000 6502's, over 200 Z80's, boxes of other chips, and a whole trunk of Z80 plug in boards and CP/M software. I should have kept the prototype boards, but someone made me an offer that was so completely outrageous at the time that I couldn't refuse. I was selling those Z80 boards for years. They worked, according to the buyers, better than the Apple product.
Was that auction in Toronto? I know they had a big warehouse there and people walked out with some rare stuff including some of the C64DX prototypes. If I'd been more into collecting then I totally would have been all over that. Man what a mess that was! I actually didn't know Franklin liquidated.. I thought after the Apple lawsuit they retooled and kept going. Did you have any pictures of the prototypes? Those would be amazing to see!
@@TechTimeTraveller The Commodore auction was at the corporate HQ in West Chester, Pennsylvania. It was a 2 or 3 day auction. They sold engineering prototypes, production samples, components, and even check stubs from the accounting office. It was a poorly thought out and run auction.
I should have taken pictures, or just kept, the Franklin stuff. I had several versions of their CP/M Z80 board, video card, various plug in cards, and even a mock up of their motherboard, all wire wrapped with engineering test notes attached to them. I paid less than $10 each for them, and sold them for between $50 and $200 each. Those were the days when history didn't mean anything because everything was moving so fast.
Franklin pivoted out of personal computers. They started a line of handheld devices like the spelling bee, which takes phonetically spelled words and shows you the correct spelling. The "going out of business" flea market was at their Pennsauken, NJ warehouse/office, which was the base of operations for the Apple 2 clones. Shortly after the flea market, they closed up that location. A friend went there to dumpster dive, and found an ill tempered security guard. Apparently, he wasn't the first one who tried that.
@@TechTimeTraveller I was not in Toronto at the time, but I do recall hearing stories that the Toronto Commodore offices and warehouse were similarly auctioned off the way West Chester was. But the situation in Toronto was a bit different. Commodore Canada and Commodore UK both remained in business longer then any of the other subsidiaries / parts of Commodore. The story that I heard was that they were still making money and able to continue business for a brief period of time using existing inventory. That very well might explain the continuation of the licensing agreement for a period of time after Commodore International had declared bankruptcy.
@@lornetyndale7974 Yep , in once interview David Pleassance the CEO of commodre UK said that at the time of bankruptcy of the parent company the UK division had £6 million of tax credit from the UK government meaning they could make up to 6 million in sales before paying any tax
I had a Vic 20, COmmodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 before finally moving into Atari ST and then Pentium
well we have the Commander X16 comin' up ;)
I have one of the Commodore made A4000T machines. It was given to me when my friend passed away. Still runs great. He had it configured as a Video Toaster 4000 machine. He had installed an 060 card and a bunch of ram. I still use it to this day. I would love a Commodore branded 486 from this company though. They look super neat.
I worked for FMG in 1990 testing commodore pc-10 and pc-20 towers with 10-20Mb hdd and 256 colour EGA graphics running dos. Thanks for helping me remember... 😎👍
Are you sure that it was a 256 colour EGA adapter? I thought they only could display 64 colours.
@@xXTheoLinuxXx i was only 16 at the time and it seems my memory is a little corrupt. I thought 256 but must have been 16. Also, i believe they were giant desktops rather than a tower case. We used to load up an image of a colourful bird to test the graphics, i cant believe that was only 16 colours... 🤔😄
Hi, The PC5 was a 256 + 256k extra ram card but just a hercules card.
The PC-10 was the same but with 512k on the mother board, however the video card was a dual type - ATI CW16800-A
You can spot them as they have dual connectors at the rear and the top right corner has about 5-8 bright red dip switches
I bought a complete system new on markdown, and carried 4 large boxes home, PC, 13inch green screen monitor, keyboard and manuals - plus my briefcase
15 min walk to train station, 2 trains home, then about 20 mins walk home - oh all the boxes hard string around them
About 10 mins from home a elderly man asked me to take a break, and he games me the junk local paper to wrap around the string so it does not cut my hand - yeah it hurt
At the end it did not work i got scan lines only on the monitor - took the base back and they placed a green screen and the same - i went back a few hours later and saw it working with a commodore colour monitor - the video card was se up for colour - the sales rep was very cranky as he spent almost 2 hours
My answer was - i read the instructions - but was also told not to open the case as it will void warranty - " I did exactly as instructed - plus i am not a PC tech "
That machine lasted about 4 years and i sold it for about 70-805 of the purchase price, had it upgraded with 10meg hdd and a adlib card and a real time clock
The managers running Commodore at the end were clueless. 🤦♂️
@ssgtmole8610 Yep , releasing dumb products like the Commodre CDTV and the commodre 64 game system in 1990 and 1991 sure didn't help
Stunts!! Love that game. The best thing was the glitch where you would suddenly be yeeted half a mile straight up into the air. And you could save the replay!
8:35 yes those sockets are for L2 cache and tag RAM.
My guess is the "MT" in the name is for Mini tower, because this was a substantial amount smaller than a full tower.
Very interesting Trident video card, that's an awfully large feature connector along the top and some very weird cased VRAM.
Also a very interesting optical drive, usually the controls are at the bottom if you didn't know.
Main reason for "weird" hard disk sizes was because they were relying on physical geometry - heads, cylinders, sectors. Wasn't as simple as "rounding up" sometimes, because adding an extra cylinder could often be physically impossible, heads even more difficult, and adding extra sectors or changing their sizes could occasionally break compatibility with some machines.
So incredibly depressing. Just goes to show that there are no guarantees in life and that your success today is no guarantee for tomorrow. Thanks for this video!
Commodore messed up so badly.. they were the king back in the day. Such a shame.
@scality4309 Yep , releasing dumb products like the Commodre CDTV and the commodre 64 game system in 1990 and 1991 sure didn't help
Here is my vision; if it runs a generic OS (dos/cpm) than it is not a real Commodore. When it runs their own os, it is. (c64/128/Amiga)
There were some Commodores in 1996.
A German computer manufacturer called Escom bought Commodore International in April 1995, and started selling PCs with Commodore Branding. They went bust in July 1996.
From memory, they were Pentiums with OS/2 pre-installed. I think some may have had Windows as well, certainly the Escom branded machines had Windows.
I had a friend who had a Commodore IBM compatible PC that was purchased in Europe. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1 It was a desktop, not a tower.
Kinda makes you wonder about the illicit stuff the previous owner had on that HDD, , ,
Can you do a video of the replacement for the PET, the "CBM II" series? These were supposed to be serious business computers but achieved only bomb-level sales figures, even worse than the "TED" series. All swept aside when Commodore decided to just buy up the Amiga technology from its original developer.
I can.. but I tend to favor doing videos of machines I can actually demonstrate. Right now I have an incomplete B610 and a P500 case.. lol. But I've been thinking about stuffing a raspberry pi running a P500 emulator.. that might be enough..
Huge mistakes: Forcing out Jack as he understood the market, with the failure of the plus4 showing how middle management screwed up the idea. And driving out the Amiga team, with the overly expensive 2000 and cancellation of the AAA graphics leaving Amiga too far behind IBM.
@keyboard_g Some Some of the people who developed the 3D0 used to work for amiga before it got bought out by commodre so if they stuck around maybe something similar to the 3d0 hardware could have been in the amiga machines by 1993. Also I always thought that for a company whose machines (c64/amiga) were mostly popular for games they kinda screwed up by not making many 1st party games besides a few on the c64 like jack attack and international soccer, that really bit them in the ass when they released the amiga CD32.
They should have presented accelerator cards, CD-Drives and harddrives that didnt cost a fortune to buy! In 92-93 the games had more than 10 discs and CD games were coming! Amiga never really leaped beyond floppy discs and 68000 for most users. A 68030 card at the time did cost about the same as a PC.. My friend had a 486 in 91, the feeling that gave was something different. The games run better.. the software.. well .. no comment.
The windows logo on it suggests windows 95 tbh
Nice video. I consider a good choice for the hardware configuration of this computer: Intel 486 DX4 100 MHz, 500 MB hard drive, MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. Consider that to install Windows 95 it must be done on a Pentium 1: 100, 120, 133, 166 Pentium Pro 188 or 200 MHz mmx.
I would love to have a computer with those features in my collection.
Ahh Stunts. Got it from a friend, didn't have the book. But I knew: When driving through the *LOOP*
Man that brings back some memories! My first PC was an IBM XT Clone which looked EXACTLY like that one! Same motherboard, no hard drive though... Just two 5¼ floppy drives with DOS 6.2 disks. I got it from an Air Force Reserve chaplain who was upgrading to a 386 with preinstalled Windows 3.1 on tiny hard drive. Mine had a Hercules monochrome graphics card and a green screen CRT monitor. I did have a 2400 baud dial up modem, but at the time (1988) there wasn't a lot to connect to (maybe a couple BBS bulletin board systems and mIRC chat rooms) I did have chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator though! A vector graphics flight simulator that came on floppy disc and had an ingenious anti pact feature built into it! The game asked technical questions on boot up about military aircraft or flying in general. They were printed I the user guide, so legitime program buyers just open the volley and answer the trivia to complete bootup of the executable, whereas people who copied the floppy wouldn't have known to copy the owners manual with all those floppies and would give up on trying to get it to work
It's only Commodore in name just like my keyboard with specters has a commodore logo wish I still had it..
I actually owned that computer it lasted more then 10 years before it died it was a really good PC
"SECONDRAY HDD" @ 8:35 haha
PC Chips, hahaha, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Didn't they have to change their company name a couple times to get away from their reputation!
So clean...
I just got an Amiga 1200 on my bench that was manufactured in week 35 of 1995 or later, according to chip datecodes, by ESCOM. It's officially not a Commodore anymore I guess, got the amiga logo instead on the case. On the other hand it's clearly a Commodore product compared to the licensed generic stuff...
Great vid. Anyone remember SKYPIX?
Cream colored computers are very peaceful in appearance, I think that is why people want them back a little, they don't always want stare at devil-looking dark PCs with random lights on them all the time.
Cool clip of C64s being put together. Is there any footage of Amiga computers being assembled?
hey hey hey now... pc chips made some of the most rock solid not to mention fastest 16 bit motherboards you can find, in fact the fastest 286 ever benchmarked ran on a pc chips mb.
4D BOXING! I had a demo of that on my very first PC!!! Haven't seen it in over 2 decades, though. :)
I'm kinda triggered by the "SECONDRAY" HDD port :D How can such stuff slip into production lol
I must assume that English was not the native language in the factory.
Not it wasn't the last legit commodore pc, commodore licenced their brand to an Argentinian company call Drean in the early 80s to produce the 64 for South American Market, ti's licence was for 30 years and Drean continue to produce pc clones branded commodore till the early 2000s.
Wow cool tale from the past and nice to see that pc working well
Who remembers having a commodore Colt pc clone
This PC looks the they sold in Italy late 1990's computer discount
If I owned a company that made 11% on a Billion dollars in sales, I skip all the way to the bank. Considering profit comes after expenses so everyone's pay including mine would have came out of the principle, 110 million Dollars profit is Amazing!
They made good products at that time
Thought you'd enjoy the history outlined in this "report".
486dx4 nice ;) probably best 486 ever
I'd have to disagree that we weren't using the internet in 1995. At least I'm pretty sure I was accessing it thru AOL at the time.
True. Note I didn't say 'we' though. I used the singular 'you' as that was just a random example of a Win 3.1 user. Most people I knew, including myself, didn't have internet in early 95. I did encounter it at University and used it there, but not at home. I don't actually remember when I got my first dialup.. it was through the owner of a popular BBS.. im thinking late 95 or early 96 as it really entered the public consciousness. I seem to recall the big push for internet happened after Win 95.. when MS took aim at Netscape with IE. I don't recall anyone using internet under Win 3.1, at least where I lived.. but I'm sure there were some as you said using it through other services.
That CPU socket looks like it might allow an upgrade to a Pentium.
💪😎👌
P.S. If you are interested in Atari vs Commodore comparision, please be my guest... 🎬
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I had a Commodore branded P166 MMX.
Commodore definitely could have found a good market with the Amiga line, but they would have needed to have pivoted in that direction by 1990. The Amiga line was far ahead of every other design when it came out, but Commodore had incompetent leadership, and didn't know how to take advantage. By the early 90s they were too far gone to right the ship, unless a competent company bought them out. It's sad, but their collapse was well earned.
Amiga was an overpriced, proprietary toy. To think they managed to release it after PC/AT and WIndows 2/286? Its headline video overlay function was useless outside of the analog NTSC TV.
Woah. What's with the xp logo on the windows flash screen.
Not sure.. I think I must have downloaded that onto that hard drive from a DOSbox site or something. I noticed afterwards the Windows ME background.
10:31 for anyone trying to locate the reference.
Your Commodore PC is definately not the last Commodore. Commodore International was purchased in 1995 by German computer company Escom for 14 million dollars and they made computers with the Commodore brandname. Later Commodore was sold to Dutch computer company Tulip. They also sold computers with the Commodote brandname. And they used the brandname until march 2005. All Commodore brands worldwide after 1995 were licenses to companies but not really Commodore computers. Because they weren’t made by Escom or Tulip. Those were only manufactured in Germany and The Netherlands.
I realize I was splitting hairs there.. but what I meant was 'last Commodore produced before Commodore went bankrupt'.. ie with their knowledge and consent. I don't really count post bankruptcy as to me that's the same as say, an RCA tv right now.
Commodore was not so much a line of products as it was a philosophy of product development. Remember that Commodore started out making calculators before moving onto computers. The departure of Jack Tramiel was a significant blow to Commodore's ability to evolve itself. Had he stayed with Commodore, we can only speculate about where Commodore might be now. That guy Mehdi Ali who ran Commodore in its final stages was no comparison to Jack Tramiel, none whatsoever.
What games do you like and or recommend for a 486? I ended having working a HP vectra with a 486 mostly the audio is the thing I have to fix and maybe more storage.
Anything from the 486 period is good. I don't run many of my older 286 era games on them usually as they often run too fast.. but VGA games like Mean Streets, 4D Boxing, Test Drive 3, Stunts etc all seem to run well on it.
@@TechTimeTraveller thank you
Only the name what's inside other parts from other brand
They never improved the 64
They couldn't improve the Commodore 64. Any improvement would break software compatibility. For example, the Commodore 128 behaved exactly like a Commodore 64 when running Commodore 64 software (complete with slow load from floppy) because any change would break compatibility with timing loops and custom loaders (and disk copy protection).
The PC almost fell into the same trap due to games having timing loops made for 4.77Mhz until clone makers devised the turbo button which could limit the speed to 4.77MHz.
@@user-yg4kj2mf1p I think they could have with the 65816 CPU which had a 6502 backwards compatibility mode but I don't think it kept up with the pace of 16bit architectures like the 286 or 68000 well enough
'Sega blows whatever Amiga has been sucking!'
PC Chips were terrible. bottom of the barrel.
King royalty tax zero number up even builder school hire business build business owner investor
Awesome video. I wasn't aware of clone makers rebadging generic PCs with licensed logos. This would make a decent retro system. But yeah, a DX4 usually had at least a heat sink.
As for the 12 million sold number, I am pretty sure it was much more then that. I know the 12.5 million number is popular these days but multiple sources have stated closer to 17 - 20 mil. My reasoning on it is this: Publications and news items from that era shed much more light. For instance, an episode of Computer Chronicles that aired in 1987/1988 talked about the 64 and it was common knowledge then and reported in that episode that it had sold over 7 million in the USA alone up until that point, IIRC. That would mean that only 5 million sold in the rest of the world over its lifetime, including the next 7 years, which is just not realistic, IMHO. Also the C64C was only out for a year or less when those numbers were talked about and we know that the 64C which sold from 1986 - 1994 reportedly sold millions which is why there are so many available today. Yeah the numbers are fuzzy but I tend to think that logically it had to have sold closer to what Jack Tramiel and employees had previously reported 17 - 20 mil. Of course I could be wrong but there is tons of evidence that it sold well worldwide and if in the USA alone it sold 8 - 10 million in its lifetime, well it isn't hard to believe the higher number.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed this!
Yes I agree production numbers are kind of a mugs' game. I went through an argument about how many Apple II Pluses were made back in the day. 'Officially' a few hundred thousand but I have one serial number 588,xxx.. and I've seen them into the seven figures. No idea. If Tramiel said 20M for the C64 I'd believe him.
Still incredible to me that on much lower production Apple became a trillion dollar company while Commodore just buried itself in debt!
@@TechTimeTraveller For sure and Apple is still here today. Those margins on Apple tech are still up there today but man they made some good money off each Apple II and Mac sold while Commodore, LOL, didn't. They went for market share and Apple went for wealth, it seems. The few kids in High-school that had an Apple II used to let you know they had an Apple, haha.
@@RacerX- Honestly I only knew two or three families that had an Apple II. Saw many other computers in homes in the early to mid 80s but the II seemed to be the exclusive preserve of teachers, lawyers etc. Apple was kinda niche even then!