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u
The Commodore 64
from
On The Edge:
The Spectacular Rise and
Fall of Commodore
by Brian Bagnall
Part IV
The engineers also brought
prototypes of the P and B series
computers, as well as the Max Machine.
Commodore hid these in a small office
within the booth and showed them to
journalists, software developers, and
sometimes even trusted acquaintances
from competing companies. "We had a
couple of backroom things going on for
special customers," says Winterble.
Although marketing created the
Commodore 64 presentation at the last
moment, it was an impressive
demonstration. "It was a rather fancy
booth," recalls Winterble. "We had a
bunch of stations showing different
aspects and different parts with a
skilled person at each space. One guy
was showing a game demo, one guy was
showing something else. We had them
scattered all around this booth."
One Commodore 64 demonstrated the
capabilities of the SID chip using
John Feagans music program. The
beautifully strange music filled the
air, acting as a siren call for
technophiles. "They were lined up,"
says Winterble.
Mostly, the presenters just let
Fred Bowen's demonstration program
show off the features. "It was really
impressive for only having the machine
in his hands for a short period of
time," says Winterble. "He wrote a
'Welcome to Commodore 64,' that came
out with a big splash. Then this
little man walked across the screen,
turned around, and started doing
things. It was a great little demo
using the sprites."
As Robert Russell recalls, the
burgeoning computer press industry
helped fuel interest. "There was
starting to be a whole press industry
around personal computing," says
Russell. As word got out about the new
computer, the lines to enter the booth
grew longer. "It was a huge sensation.
Everybody and their brother were
stopping by."
Yannes was also thrilled at the
positive reception of his computer.
"The C64 just kind of blew everybody
out of the water because it came out
of nowhere," says Yannes. "There was
no expectation of it, it was very
reasonably priced, and it had 64K of
RAM which was a magic number at that
point in time because nobody else had
64K of RAM."
The computer even impressed Chuck
Peddle, who never missed a CES show.
"The C64 was an enormously successful
machine," says Peddle. "It was a great
game machine; not because of the 6502
and not because of the memory that was
in it. It was a great game machine
because of the work Charpentier did."
Perhaps the most impressive aspect
of the computer was the proposed price
by Commodore. Before the show, Jack
decided on a retail price of $595.
Competitors reacted to the
announcement with skepticism and
shock. "We got their attention," says
Winterble. "The guys from Atari came
by to look at it and said, 'They can't
do that. It's impossible for the
price.'"
From the reactions, Charles
Winterble felt the new computer might
even outsell the VIC-20. "When we left
CES, we knew we had a fantastic
product," says Winterble.
It was an incredible leap in
computing power from their previous
efforts. Never before had a computer
company gotten everything so right in
one package. "It was such a big hit at
the show," says Yannes.
Press was good but not as
prominent as Commodore received in
earlier years. David Thornburg of
Compute! magazine mentioned the
VIC-40, reporting, "For sheer impact,
Commodore stole the show with the
announcement of two new color
computers!"
However, Byte magazine reported
nothing on Commodore. By now,
Commodore had a reputation of
announcing products such as the
ColorPET and TOI and not releasing
them, so Byte was weary. Byte seemed
far more interested in the low cost
VIC modem, which made its debut at the
Winter CES.
The meaning of the Commodore 64
debut was obvious to Jack: he finally
had his Apple II killer. Now all he
had to do was deliver the crushing
blow. He wanted to get the machine
into production quickly.
[Dave's Note:] Now get the BOOK! As
you can see, the writing is superb,
the people come alive, and as far as
I can tell, ON THE EDGE is the most
complete and accurate book written
about Commodore. A big thanks to
Brian Bagnall for doing a job that
has been long needed -- and for
graciously allowing us to publish
these sections.
DMM