What would you do if you were the CEO of Commodore Computers?

[rje]

23 hours ago, StephenHorn said:

But I think AMD is a model of what C= needed to do to survive: Lean into the MOS/CSG side of their business and partner with the winners of the CPU competition [...]

This really seems correct to me.  Lean into your assets.  Yes.  Tricky doing it well I suppose, but MOS was an advantage.

[ZeroByte]

I think not pissing off Jack about mis-appropriating the company jet would've been a great start. He was the mastermind behind their success, and while some of his practices were shady to say the least (shipping known-flaky hardware for Xmas to lock in the sale), Commodore had a very sweet position of being both affordable AND performant with the C64. Jack had the vision to leverage that - whereas his successors didn't get it, and look at what the C16 line did w/o his market savvy.

I think the people talking about getting better business software are really on-point though. The era of the "killer app" was dawning. Desktop publishing was the killer app for MAC. Lotus123 was the killer app for PC. Amiga's killer app was video editing and processing. This was a bit too niche & high-end for widespread adoption. I think they could have partnered with a printer manufacturer to do color desktop publishing, and that would've given MAC a run for its money.

Gaming was obviously the killer app for Amiga in the UK. The Amiga was just a hair too expensive to truly dominate in that space, especially with the NES dominating gaming in the US. Nintendo didn't push as hard on Europe which is one reason Amiga fared so well over there, or at least so it seems to me. I think if Amiga had color laser desktop publishing + gaming, then it may have gotten more traction in the US.

[Guy.Brush]

For my first act as CEO, I would make everyone refer to me as "The Commodore", as if it was a military rank.  This would create confusion, with no one ever knowing if Commodore meant the computer, or me, or the company.  It would get people talking and put Commodore Computers back into the public conversation.  People would create memes, sharing them on floppy discs and over fax machines, laughing at the crazy new Willy Wonka CEO.  But since we have all of the C64 nerds sitting in front of their obsolete computers with nothing else to use them for, they would be able to make the bulk of the memes.  We would steer this meme into me as Willy Wonka saying pithy and sarcastic comments, gradually earning the respect and admiration of the MTV generation.  

Then we would put the word out about how Bill Gates wants to sterilize us all with vaccines, and that would eliminate competition from Microsoft.  Apple was dead in the water until they crapped out the iPod, so since I'm a CEO from the future I'll make sure to release all their successful products before them.  In keeping with that strategy, I would release the Commander X16 in time for Christmas 1991.  The marketing slogan: "This will eventually be retro, you'll buy it on purpose even though you'll have a more powerful computer in your pocket that can show you every movie in the world for free at any time."

And people will buy it, but they'll also start asking about this pocket computer with movies on it.  So I'll be like, "It doesn't have movies ON it, idiot.  It's called streaming.  Just make sure to buy Commodore or you'll never find out."

Anyway I'd make the Amiga CD32 more powerful than a PlayStation, and cheaper, and release it first.  It will support existing Commodore software as well as becoming the best home game console ever made.  But I'd put 2 analog sticks on the controller.  Then I would patent the new optical video disc format so Sony couldn't put it in their next console and use it as a loss leader for their home movie sales.  

In fact, most movies would be edited on Amiga, and they'd have to pay us royalties.  Then we would own Hollywood, and we would stop them from doing sexual misconduct all the time.  Again tying together Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein, all the worst people in society, and any computer company other than Commodore.  If your friend or neighbor bought an Apple or IBM compatible, we'd use another little technology from the future called "getting you fired by telling everyone you're a bad person and probably racist."

Other than that, I'd just wing it and hope for the best.  Maybe spend $500 million on R&D into trinary processors, just so the competition will get wind of it and try to do it too, and then I'll just shut it down and never mention it again.  Maybe I'll also tell people that quantum computers exist and can do things LOL.  

 

[SlithyMatt]

9 hours ago, Guy.Brush said:

People would create memes, sharing them on floppy discs and over fax machines

This reminds me of a stash of faxes from the 70s that were from my grandfather's desk at AT&T. They were totally memes, and early fax adopters did share them with their social network. Like, political memes from the 1972 election, but then they would have just called them cartoons.

Anyway, to get back on topic, if Commodore did the right thing and hired me (a grade school kid) to replace Jack, I would have made much better decisions. I mean, it would be hard to make worse decisions. First off, when the C128 failed to expand the 8-bit market, that would have been the end of it. Keep selling C64s and software and peripherals until the market dried up, just like Apple did with the ][ line, meanwhile concentrating R&D and marketing efforts on the Amiga. If they hadn't tried coming up with 50 different 8-bit platforms that nobody wanted, they could have made the investment that would have prevented PCs and Macs from overtaking the Amiga in capability in the early 90s. As I recall, the Amiga barely existed in the US -- I only knew it was still around because of magazine articles mentioning that certain games were also on Amiga (to only a slightly greater extent that Atari ST support). They should have been matching Apple's marketing budget dollar for dollar, and making sure the tech stayed just ahead of PCs as Apple did and managed to survive long enough for Jobs to refocus and reinvigorate the company. Who knows who the savior of Commodore could have been in the mid 90s (besides a now-adult me, of course), but I bet they could have pulled through if they didn't make half of the staggeringly bad choices they made in the late 80s and early 90s.

[Guy.Brush]

Faxes were also an early version of Snapchat, since the thermal paper eventually fades.  

[rje]

I'm veering off topic, but it seems like many companies just decide to die at some point, and the stakeholders take their profit and are done.

 

[Kalvan]

I would have tried to have gotten into the company earlier, so that I could gave made some good buddies in MOS Technology/Commodore Semiconductor Group.  Sometime around 1979 would have been just about right.

I would have either begun the R&D on the 6502 core followup, or else licensed the 65C02 from Western Design Center, doing it behind the Commodore board and Tramiel's back if necessary, and using the proceeds from betting on sports (using a World Almanac I took with me to the past) to keep it off Commodore's books.  I would base it on the Hudson HuC6280, and yes I'd keep it a CMOS chip.  I'd add a(default) low memory mode to maintain backward compatibility with 6502's addressing modes, double the tranche size of the high memory to 16K (using pin 23 as address bus bit 21, making the total addressable memory space 4 MB), change the functions of pins 13 and 14 to permit more than two possible clock speeds (may need an external clock chip) and, since surface-mount packaging is still under patent by IBM until 1987, use a crisscross DIP package to accommodate all the necessary pins without the need for multiplexing. While the first generation of this line will only be on a 3 micron process, I plan to leave off the controller interface logic and wavetable sound channels on this preliminary  version.  Besides, 6.144 MHz is still more than enough clock speed to stick on the ca. 1981 CBM series (successors to the PET) and leave the IBM PC, Apple III, and HP 95 series in the dust.  Okay, that means dropped support for the 6502 illegal opcodes with the backward compatibility issues that causes, but neither Commodore nor Microsoft ever used them in the first place.

I would initiate a stacked memory joint venture with Micron, philosophically similar to High Bandwidth Memory, but scaled up to then current process nodes.  Specifically, it would feature anywhere from two to eight DRAM dies (in the beginning) with an I/O die at the bottom and a refresh logic die either at the top or just below the I/O die, resulting in an extremely dense pseudo-SRAM package, perfect for pizza box and keyboard-console hardware form factors.  If I start work in 1979, it should bear fruit by 1982, just in time to put on the motherboard of either the original model of the 64, or its first revision.

My proposed follow up to Commodore 64 will have to wait for the next thread in my post.

[hardrockhero]

Well the first thin i would have done was stuck true to the original plan for the TED models.  The Plus 4 was, at least in my opinion, a failure of foolish business since.  With more complex OSs on the way, i think a hybrid DOS/Basic Computer would have been a smart move.  Or even a modular machine that could be combined into a dos/basic hybrid.  Would be a bit of a timing mess at first, but the ability to switch between the two could have made some interesting programs.  Probably science fiction but that would be the move that i think would have saved Commodore.

[Kalvan]

Continued from my previous post.

My followup to the Commodore 64 would have debuted at the 1984 Summer CES, as the Commodore 256.  It would have been based on the spec of the Commander X16, except as follows:

1: all the previous video modes of the PET, CBM Number Series, VIC, and VIC II

2: New Native Resolution Modes for VERA would be 288x224 ( 8 bit pixels, 256 Colors per CLUT), 320x224 (6 bit pixels, 64 Colors per CLUT), 576x224 (4 bit pixels, 16 colors per CLUT), 576x448 (2 bit pixels, 3 colors + transparency per CLUT), and 816x612 (Monochrome).  This is to maintain as close to 3:4 aspect ratio as possible, while keeping the addressing math fairly even and confined to 64K, and allowing more options for sprite and tilemodes.  VERA will be able do display a maximum of either 128 4-bit sprites, 96 6-bit sprites, or 64 8-bit sprites, or any combination in a ratio of 4-3-2, respectively, with free mixing between pixel densities onscreen in 288x224 resolution.

3: Scrolling registers for the bitmap, and better integration of the bitmap (at 6 bit per pixel or lower) with tilemodes.

4. Since Yamaha will not sell the YM2151/3012 combo for love or money in 1984, I will have to settle for the YM2203, YM2412, or YM2413.  I'll pick the middle: it's a four channel, four operator chip with eight possible waveforms and a fairly flexible tone generation system.

5: I will use the previously developed 6280 as the basis for the CPU core, with a max clock speed of either 8.195 or  8.925 MHz.

6: If Bob Yannes insists on leaving, I will put the 6280's wavetable channels back into the chip.  If I can get him to stay, I'll put in the DOC (Ensoniq ESS5503, used in the Apple IIGS, several Ensoniq keyboards, and the Ensoniq Dragon sound card, and the predecessor to the sound chip in the Advanced Gravis UltraSound card).  This is to compensate for there being no PCM source available.  (The Okidata MSM chips are rather dinky, except for the 6295, which is merely up to the capabilities of PAULA).

7: There will also be a SID II, with either 9 or 12 channels, and the octave range increased to 11 (to cover all complete tonal range of a piano).

8: The controller ports will feature native support for up to 16 digital and 4 analog inputs, with 2 new input to Atari CX-9 dongles packed in with the computer itself.

9: The base model will feature 128K System RAM and 128K Video RAM (Hence the Name).  I am toying with a horizontal upright or monitor tower form factor version with 512K and GEOS in ROM, a CPU Core based on the Nintendo SA-1 but with the addition of the 6280's mass move instructions, and a two or three button mouse for (much) less than $1,000, called the 640.

10:  It will feature BASIC 10, as rewritten to take full advantage of the new graphical and sound hardware, and a very well written sound stack, just in case the generation after this one I want to change Yamaha FM chip series.

 

also, @rje, what's so funny about my post?

[Scott Robison]

33 minutes ago, Kalvan said:

also, @rje, what's so funny about my post?

I'm not @rje and I haven't talked to him about it. I didn't *laugh* at your specs, but they seem overly optimistic to me for the technology that was available in the day for "consumer hardware" or effectively a game console.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my C=64 & C=128DCR back in the day. Wish I still had them. That's what appeals to me about the CX16. But I don't see any 8-bit being a realistic path forward for much past the C=128. I think they could have created upgraded C=128s that had more RAM and perhaps had a few more sales (I mean, 5.7 million C=128s were sold, that's not bad, it's only bad in comparison to how many C=64s were sold over the years in combination with the profit margin of the more expensive hardware). But the world was moving away from all in one computers other than for game consoles. By all in one I don't mean the modern definition, I mean "you get this one video chip and this one sound chip". The world was demanding expandable / upgradable hardware. That's why I think they had to focus more on 16 bit / 32 bit platforms. They just didn't know how to market anything that wasn't a toy, more or less.