Commodore on the move again

Big Comdex Splash

Commodore on the move again

Richard Doherty
Electronic Engineering Times

December 5, 1988

West Chester, Pa. - Commodore Computer demonstrated its commitment to the latest technology by showing off its 68020- and 68030-based multi-operating-system Amigas, as well as a forthcoming Transputer-based Amiga, at last month's Comdex/Fall.

This aggressiveness can be attributed to none other than Max Toy, who became Commodore's president just over a year ago.

Toy assumed the reins at Commodore after stints at IBM Corp. and Compaq Computer. Two of his predecessors as company president, Jack Tramiel and Thomas Rattigan, left troubled staffs in the wake of their departures.

That is a heritage Toy doesn't plan to repeat. Rattigan's contract is still in legal dispute after his abrupt dismissal last year.

"I told Irving Gould [Commodore's chairman and founder! that the day we needed a contract was the day I wasn't doing my job here," Toy said.

Under his leadership, Commodore recently trotted out the 68020-based Amiga 2500 and a new hard-disk version of the Amiga 2000, the 40-Mbyte 2000HD. Commodore also took the covers off its first 80286-based machine, the PC-40 III, a 12-MHz small-footprint addition to its bread-and-butter PC line.

The high-end PC-40 III will offer VGA graphics and 13-ms access times for a hard disk, Toy said. He added that he expects the machine to be tough competition for IBM's new PS/2 Model 30 286 system.

The Amiga 2500 comes with 3 Mbytes of RAM, expandable to 9 Mbytes. Commodore has just added new Kickstart ROM protocols to the Amiga operating system, along with printing and multitasking enhancements. These enable the Amiga 500 and 2000 systems to be booted from either hard disk or RAM disk.

Commodore took the opportunity at Comdex to show prototypes of a Transputer-based Amiga system. It also displayed-to selected parties-a 68030-powered system.

Aside from the doings at Comdex, Toy has other reasons for good cheer. Commodore netted $56 million on revenue of $861 million for the last fiscal year-up slightly over 1987 performance.

More than 9 million Commodore 64 systems have been shipped. The company's 8088-based PCs are selling well, while the 68000-based Amiga is taking on more and more professional tasks.

Most of Commodore's product pizzazz comes from the three-year-old Amiga series. The Amiga 500, a low-end (under $1,000) color computer version, is selling well. That machine helps attract major software developers to a growing base of consumer software (including educational, productivity and entertainment titles).

On the other end of the performance spectrum, the Amiga 2000 is presently the undisputed champion in the fledgling desktop video market.

Toy used Comdex as the forum for demonstrating the power of Amiga desktop video. Using the machine's interlaced video and high-resolution graphics, users can translate their computer graphics directly to conventional TV screens, or to videotape. With the aid of third-party video digitizers, users can grab conventional video scenes for editing and embellishment.

Toy said the company's new TV commercials promoting the Amiga series, running on the MTV cable network, were created using the Amiga's own video graphics and video overlay capabilities.

He said the commercials would have normally cost more than $500,000 to produce. Using Amiga gear, however, the cost was trimmed down to about $75,000.