Loadstar 246/246.d81/t.latimes

Text File | 2022-08-26 | 11KB | 381 lines

u
       LA TIMES COMMODORE STORY
              FOLLOW UP

Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:46:55 -0700
From: "Jones, Terril"
Subject: Commodore story in L.A.
         Times today June 27

    Hello to all who participated in
my look at Commodore computers, And
THANK YOU for spending time with me
and sharing your thoughts and
perspectives.

    Regretfully some of what I thought
were very insightful and engaging
comments were edited out, as the space
available for the story became
smaller, as often happens. I'm very
sorry that five Commodore users ended
up being dropped from the story
entirely.

    The story also evolved
considerably, starting out as a look
at the return of the Commodore brand
to the U.S., but shifting more to a
look at some of the people who keep
Commodore usage alive. I must say that
I was floored by the collective
knowledge you all pool together, and
you individual users are simply among
the smartest people with whom I've
spoken.

    Thanks once more, and I look
forward to the chance to interact with
you again.

Best regards,

Terril Jones
Los Angeles Times / San Francisco




     COMMODORE COMPUTER DEVOTEES
         TINKER WITH THE PAST


The company ruled the PC world in the
'80s. It's gone now, but devotees of
its machines are still coaxing life
out of their kilobytes.


         By Terril Yue Jones,
          Times Staff Writer
            June 27, 2006


FRESNO -- Robert Bernardo spent a week
this spring traveling the Pacific
Northwest, trying to save part of
yesterday's future.

    The high school English teacher
swung through Portland and Astoria,
Ore., and then on to Ethel, Wash., to
drop off a collection of antiquated
computers -- a PET8032, three VIC-20s,
an SX-64 portable and a Commodore
128D.

    Then on his way home to the
Central Valley town of Visalia,
Bernardo packed his white Crown
Victoria with three more SX-64s, boxes
of software and a couple of printers.

    With any luck, this agglomeration
of decades-old circuit boards and
dusty disk drives will allow Bernardo
to reboot a handful of computers made
by the long-defunct Commodore Business
Machines.

    In an era when a home computer's
power is measured in gigabytes,
Bernardo still counts kilobytes as a
devoted Commodore user 12 years after
the last machine was assembled.

    Once the largest personal computer
maker in America, the company behind
the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64
introduced millions of people like
Bernardo to the digital age. The
company went out of business in 1994,
but its legacy survives in dozens of
Commodore clubs around the country.

    Bernardo presides over the Fresno
chapter.

    Never mind that the VIC-20 has so
little usable memory -- just 3.5
kilobytes -- that it can store only a
couple of pages of text in its
buffers. Or that Commodore hardware
was notoriously clunky and buggy.
Bernardo still manages all his e-mail
on a 1980s-vintage Commodore 64.

    "I've never considered the
Commodore obsolete," Bernardo said. "I
can still do many things with it --
e-mail, browse the Web, word
processing, desktop publishing and
newsletters. I still do games on it:
new games that are copyright 2006,
ordered from Germany."

    Like classic car fans, Bernardo
and other Central Valley Commodore
devotees lug their gear every month to
the Pizza Pit restaurant and put the
hoods up, so to speak. For many, a
Commodore machine was their first
computer. They cherish their machines
the way some guys pamper their high
school hot rod.

    The tinker mentality pervades
American culture, from guys who fix
their lawn mowers to computer geeks
who build the next big thing in their
garages. Commodore clubs are "about
preserving a particular era in
computing -- just showing that you can
make it serviceable takes ingenuity,"
said Robert Cole, a professor emeritus
of technology management at UC
Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

    Commodore computers are
rudimentary enough that enthusiasts
with a little technical know-how can
repair them themselves. They also can
be programmed with relative ease using
the BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code) computer
language. Linus Torvalds, the creator
of the popular Linux computer
language, cut his teeth writing code
on a VIC-20 in the 1980s.

    "It wasn't just an appliance. I
liked it because it was open and it
invited you to play with it," said
Mike McDermott, a Commodore fan who
co-founded a website that ranks
building contractors. "You didn't just
do what it told you. It invited you to
tinker with it. They really did
encourage you to go write programs for
it."

    And that, in turn, made people
passionate about the quirky machines.

    Bernardo, who sometimes sports a
button that reads "I Adore My 64,"
says that every room but one in his
three-bedroom house contains Commodore
equipment. In the other is his "Star
Trek" collection. But there is
crossover between his dual passions.
His prized possessions include six
pieces of Commodore hardware and
software signed by "Star Trek" star
and former Commodore pitchman William
Shatner.

    If Bernardo and his ilk keep the
memory of Commodore alive, they also
may hold the key to its future. The
Dutch company that owns the Commodore
name is planning to resurrect the
brand in the United States with
devices that act as digital
entertainment centers.

    "The Commodore 64 was the
biggest-selling computer in the
world," said Patrick Olenczak, vice
president of global sales for the
company now called Commodore
International.

    But that fan base can have
drawbacks.


    "It's going to be difficult to
fulfill their expectations of being a
computer company because we're not,"
Olenczak said. "What we're doing is
bringing new forms of computing into
the living room. We are not into
computing the way we used to be."

    And Commodore used to be in
computing in the biggest way.

    Few companies illustrate the
ruthless evolutionary efficiency of
the high-tech economy better than
Commodore. Founded in 1959 as a
typewriter company by Polish immigrant
Jack Tramiel, it later moved into
adding machines and then calculators.

    Commodore purchased a small chip
foundry and built computers around the
processors it manufactured itself, the
first being the PET, Commodore's first
desktop, introduced in 1977. In 1981
came the VIC-20 that could do color
graphics and generate simple music.

    The company's biggest hit was the
Commodore 64, introduced in 1982 with
64 kilobytes of memory, high-
resolution graphics and an impressive
sound synthesizer. It was followed in
1985 by the Commodore 128 upgrade and
the Commodore Amiga, a desktop with
phenomenal graphics at the time.

    But in the late 1980s and early
1990s, IBM Corp.'s PC clones gained
supremacy.

    Tramiel was known for aggressive
advertising. But he also took
manufacturing shortcuts that sometimes
put dud computers on the market.

    "Jack encouraged the environment
where shortcuts were overlooked and
rewarded," said Bil Herd, the chief
engineer of the Commodore 128. "The
attitude was get it under the
Christmas tree -- there is always time
for them to return it for service in
January."

    Tramiel was ousted from Commodore
in 1984.

    Commodore found itself expanding
in too many unprofitable directions
without Tramiel's ironfisted
stewardship, and although the company
had a few subsequent hits, such as the
graphics whiz Amiga, it also had a
number of costly flops that forced
cuts in the workforce and closure of
plants.

    Reached at his home in Monte
Sereno, near San Jose, Tramiel, now
78, would not comment on the business
while he was running it or afterward,
but allowed in a brief conversation
that he was "very happy" that
enthusiasts kept the Commodore name
and machines alive.

    "Today's computers are definitely
more advanced than Commodores,"
Tramiel said. "But at the time it was
the best computer for the money,
because I was building a computer for
the people at a price everybody could
afford."

    Commodore dissolved in 1994, and
its name went through a succession of
owners. In its place rose Apple
Computer Inc., Dell Inc. and
Hewlett-Packard Co., and industry
experts don't think