Commodore is a computer company. It's called ``the house that Jack built'' because it was started by Jack Tramiel.
How Commodore began
Jack began his career by being in the wrong place at the wrong time: he was a Jew in Poland during World War 2. He was thrown into the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he learned to view life as a war to survive. When he escaped from the camp, he moved to Canada and started an aggressive, ruthless company called Commodore, whose motto to survive was, ``Business is war!''.
At first, Commodore just repaired typewriters; but it grew fast and started manufacturing pocket calculators.
War of the chips
In Commodore's calculators, the CPU was a microprocessor chip manufactured by MOS Technology, a company with a troubled past:
Back in 1974, the most popular microprocessors were the Intel 8080 and the Motorola 6800. But one of the 6800's inventors, a guy named Chuck Peddle, quit Motorola in 1975 and started a new company with his friends. That start-up company, MOS Technology, began manufacturing the 6501 microprocessor, which resembled Motorola's 6800.
When Motorola threatened to sue, MOS Technology stopped making the 6501 and switched to the 6502, which Chuck Peddle designed differently enough to avoid a suit. That 6502 chip became very popular and was used in many devices, including Commodore's calculators. Commodore was one of MOS Technology's biggest customers.
Though the 6502 was legal, Motorola sued MOS Technology for its illegal predecessor, the 6501. The suit dragged through the courts for two years and cost MOS Technology many thousands of dollars in lawyers' fees. Finally, in 1977, Motorola won $200,000. The lawyer fees and $200,000 put MOS Technology in financial trouble.
MOS Technology wanted to be bought by some company having lots of cash. Commodore, rich by then, bought it.
Just before that sale, Canada's tax laws changed. To duck taxes, Commodore moved its headquarters (in theory) to the Bahamas. That's how MOS Technology became part of ``Commodore Limited'', a Bahamanian company, and how Commodore found itself running a company that made chips. Commodore had entered the computer business.
Dealing with competitors
At MOS Technology, Chuck Peddle had sold a 6502 chip to Steve Wozniak for $25. Steve used the chip to create the Apple computer. When Commodore saw Apple computers becoming popular in California, Commodore offered to buy the Apple Computer Company ___ and almost succeeded. Apple wanted $15,000 more than Commodore offered, so the deal never came off. If Commodore would have offered just $15,000 more, Apple would today be part of Commodore!
After failed negotiations with Apple, Commodore hired Chuck Peddle to design a ``Commodore computer'', which Commodore hoped to sell through Radio Shack's stores. Radio Shack said, ``Great idea! Finish designing your computer, and tell us more.'' Commodore finished designing it and showed it to Radio Shack. Radio Shack said, ``Your argument for selling low-cost computers was so convincing, we decided to build our own. Thanks for the idea.'' That's how Radio Shack got the idea of manufacturing computers!
Pet
Rebuffed by Apple and Radio Shack, Jack Tramiel decided to fight back by building a computer better and cheaper than anything Apple and Radio Shack had. Commodore called its new computer the Pet, because Commodore's marketing director was the guy who invented the Pet Rock. He reckoned that if folks were stupid enough to buy a Pet Rock, they'd really love a Pet computer! He was right: folks loved the idea of a Pet Computer. Sales skyrocketed.
Commodore told the press that ``Pet'' was an abbreviation for ``Personal Electronic Transactor''. Actually, Commodore invented ``Pet'' first and later made up what it stood for.
Commodore announced the Pet in 1977 and said its $495 price would include everything: the CPU, RAM, ROM, keyboard, monitor, and tape recorder. The ROM would have a good version of BASIC. The screen would display capital letters, lower-case letters, punctuation, math symbols, and many weirder symbols also (such as hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, curves, circles, and rectangles).
Other microcomputer manufacturers were scared because Commodore's price was far below everybody else's, Commodore's computer offered more features, and Commodore was rich enough to spend more on ads & marketing than all other manufacturers combined.
Many computer magazines called the Pet ``the birth of a new generation'' in personal computers. The Pet's designer, Chuck Peddle, was treated to many interviews.
Disappointments Commodore raised its price from $495 to $595 before taking orders. To order the Pet, the customer had to send $595, plus shipping charges, then wait for Commodore to deliver. Many folks mailed Commodore the money and waited long, but Commodore didn't ship. Folks got impatient. Computer stores that had advertised the Pet got worried: customers who'd prepaid complained to the stores, but the stores couldn't get Commodore to ship.
Meanwhile, Radio Shack entered the market with its TRS-80 model 1 priced at $599 ___ about the same price as Commodore's Pet. Radio Shack was kinder than Commodore:
Radio Shack asked customers for just a 10% deposit; Commodore required payment in full. Radio Shack didn't charge for shipping; Commodore did. Radio Shack set up repair centers throughout the USA; Commodore's only repair center was in California. Radio Shack delivered computers fast; Commodore still wasn't delivering!
Finally, Commodore admitted that the $595 Pet would NOT be delivered anytime soon! Commodore would deliver instead a $795 version that included 4K of extra RAM. So if you already sent $595 to Commodore and wanted a computer soon, you'd have to send an extra $200. That was a rip-off, since 4K of extra RAM was NOT worth an extra $200; but customers were so desperate that they sent the $200 anyway.
Radio Shack shipped its computers on a first-come, first-served basis; if you ordered a Radio Shack computer, Radio Shack gave you an accurate estimate of when you'd receive it. Commodore gave preferential treatment to its ``friends''; if you ordered a computer from Commodore, you hadn't the faintest idea of when it would arrive, since you didn't know how many ``friends'' were on Commodore's list.
Radio Shack's computer came with a 232-page manual that was cheery and easy. Commodore's computer came with just 10 loose pages that were incomplete and hard to understand.
After announcing a low-cost printer, Commodore changed its mind and decided to sell just an expensive printer. Commodore announced a low-cost disk drive but then reneged and decided to sell just an expensive unit containing two disk drives. Those lies lowered public confidence in Commodore.
At first, the Pet was the world's best-selling computer; but all those disappointments made its popularity drop to #3, below Radio Shack (#1) and Apple (#2).
Commodore developed a souped-up Pet, called the Commodore Business Machine (CBM), but it wasn't enough to let Commodore rise above the number 3 spot. As Commodore's fortunes dipped, Chuck Peddle and his friends quit. Apple hired them but treated them as second-class citizens, so they returned to Commodore.
The problem with RAM Commodore came out with several Pet versions, each containing a different quantity of RAM. If you bought a cheap version and wanted to increase its RAM, Commodore refused to install extra RAM: instead, Commodore insisted you buy a whole new Pet.
Some customers tried buying extra RAM from chip dealers and installing the chips themselves. To stop those tinkerers, Commodore began cutting a hole in the PC board where the extra RAM chips would go. Commodore was an asshole.
The problem with tape Commodore changed the Pet's tape-handling system. The new system was incompatible with the old: tapes created for the old Pet wouldn't work on the new Pet. Commodore d
