An exciting story with a most unfortunate ending

books:


	• On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore Brian Bagnall Variant Press, 2005 - 548 pages average customer review:based on 66 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Run. Stop. Restore?

"We need an effort like we've never seen before... again!"

Like many computer geeks my age, I grew up using the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64. But I was far too young to be reading the Wall Street Journal and the Forbes 500 reports to learn how the well the company was or wasn't doing. I was also too young to realize what a technological leap was born at Commodore and at MOS Technology. So this book was perfect for me; it offers a nice balance between the small picture (geeky hardware stuff) and the big picture (the corporate boardroom decisions).

Although Commodore began business in 1954, the book gives only a cursory description of its early days. The evolution of a typewriter then calculator company is glossed over so that we can get to the good stuff: the creation of MOS Technology's 6502 microprocessor. With the creation of the 6502, the book takes us on the journey from the Commodore PET to the VIC-20 to the Commodore 64. Unsuccessful sequels to that famous computer are detailed. The story of the Commodore 128 is given a lot of time and it's a fascinating tale in its own right. Parallel to the later events is the development of a family of computers that would eventually become known as the Amiga.

While all this is going on, the book also goes behind the scenes at the management side of the story. Corporate practices and goals are discussed. Insane deadlines are proposed and sometimes met. Massive managerial blunders are shown with the sad benefit that hindsight affords.

It will be no surprise to people in the computer industry, but as interesting and as groundbreaking as the technology itself was, a lot of the drama comes from human personalities and character flaws. I knew nothing about the people behind the computers, so this was all eye-opening stuff for me.

It was fascinating for me to read about company founder Jack Tramiel, a survivor of Auschwitz, who knew relatively little about technology but was fanatical in support of his slogan: "Computers for masses, not the classes." The book also offers us what appears to be the two extremes one encounters in the computer science field. On one hand we have the professorial Chuck Peddle, designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, who gives sober and reasoned assessments. And at the other end we have the hard-drinking, hard-living Bil Herd - a system designer who during the course of his stint at Commodore punches both a) a hole in an office wall and b) the face of his company president.

The book is written in a very dry style. I didn't find this distracting in the least because the story being told is interesting enough in its own right. The bulk of the information comes from modern interviews with the main subjects; contemporaneous magazine articles, newspaper clippings and interviews make up the rest. Author and researcher Brian Bagnall does a great job of balancing the more technical details with the business plans.

As informative as this book was (and I learned a heck of a lot) it was also a fantastic exercise in nostalgia for me. It was great to relive many of the memories of those old machines and to finally know the reasons behind several of the systems' features. I hadn't thought about some of those games and applications in decades and I'm still struggling to remember if my four-year-old self ever managed to win at Lunar Lander before giving up.

The only thing this book lacks appears to be something that will appear in the upcoming (October 2008) "second edition". As I was reading this, I thought to myself that it would have been great to see some of the type of in-depth interviews with someone like Jack Tramiel (who comes across as a fascinating, but enigmatic figure) that we do with Chuck Peddle. It turns out that the second edition will do just that and is advertised as having interviews with founder Jack Tramiel, marketer Kit Spencer and some more engineers. That should prove very interesting.

The story of Commodore is the collection of a lot of little intriguing stories that gradually become more frustrating and depressing as the end of Commodore draws near. Still, all of these stories are interesting, and many of them are hilarious. One of my favorites involves Jack Tramiel snookering a young Bill Gates into a deal that would result in Microsoft losing out on literally millions in royalties. The battle over the size and location of the parking lot speed bumps will ring true to anyone familiar with large organizations.

Even if you're a computer geek who didn't own or love a Commodore machine, then you should get this purely for learning about how much influence Commodore had and still has in the field today. And if you were, in fact, a Commodore kid like me, then the information and stories in here are invaluable.

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An exciting story with a most unfortunate ending

Commodore didn't have to die, at least so young, had management got their act together. But, we know they didn't. And it's a terrible shame. At least we'll always have the memories.

This is an excellent read, especially for computer geeks. Be prepared to feel nostalgic!

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Inspiring engineering, hilarious mismanagement

On the Edge, by Brian Bagnell, tells the history of Commodore, from their entry into and development of the personal computer industry, to their massive collapse just 15 years later.

Told mostly through new interviews with company engineer, this is a fascinating story of the good and bad management (mostly bad), internal politics, technology design, and short-sighted business practises that built Commodore up into a massive industry force, and yet led to its ultimate demise.

The book also describes how Commodore engineers created the new computers. Commodore was in the unusual position of owning a chip manufacturing company: "vertical integration" is how then CEO Jack Tramiel put it. This allowed the engineers to rapidly prototype new chip and board designs, which meant their product cycles were extremely low: entirely new systems were being created in 3 or 4 months before being demoed at CES conferences. Unfortunately, this rapid development would bake in bad architectural decisions, which following product teams would struggle with.

In some ways this is a very inspirational story. The development teams at Commodore were tiny: five or six core engineers would work on a system, and create entirely new chips, boards, enclosures, and peripherals -- like the famous SID sound chip of the Commodore 64. And they would do it in extremely short time frames.

These small teams created the PET, the VIC-20, the Commodore 64, and the Amiga.

The book makes extensive use of interviews with Commodore employees; many chapters are almost entirely quotes. This, and the relatively light touch by the author, makes for an engaging and fast read. But it's not great literature by any means.

The author does a good job of showing the differing accounts and memories of his subjects, and it is very interesting to see how differently people remember the same series of events.

The book makes a point of showing that Commodore, and not Apple, should be considered the creator of the personal computer. The case presented is good, but comes across somewhat too fervently, and makes the author seem a bit nutty at times.

This is a great read, and one that made me nostalgic for my old C-128D. Recommended.

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Blast from the past

A must rtead for anyone who owned a Commodore computer, or someone that wants to know how C= influenced modern PC's

In depth, but dry...

As a teenager, I saved a summer's worth of lawn mowing money, to purchase my first computer, a Commodore 64. So, I was excited to read the book on the computer that formulated my career. However, I'm in the minority here, by thinking this book is good, but not great.

I take off two stars for a couple of reasons. First, the content of this book needs to be ruthlessly cut. It weighs in at about 500 pages; it could be cut down to 300, and be just as interesting and informative. For instance, I really didn't need to know about the earthquake resistant characteristics of Jack's new office. Second, the book suffers that most of the sources are from the engineering team. While certainly a needed perspective, the business and marketing viewpoints are left short, which are just as vital to the story as well. Third, there's a tendency to proclaim people as the real, unknown, hero of the computer revolution. While this book properly details Commodore's (and its designers) contributions to the computer revolution, it's overstated. Fourth, finally, the book is a dry read. It goes on from one biographical event to the next, lacking drama and interest that would tie it all together.

On the good side, the book is the most researched and developed book on Commodore. Many interesting stories are brought up.

So, I didn't regret reading this book, but it didn't hold my full interest.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Between 1976 and 1994, Commodore had astounding success in the nascent personal computer business. Amid the chaos and infighting, Commodore was able to achieve some remarkable industry firsts. They were the first major company to show a personal computer, even before Apple and Radio Shack. They sold a million computers before anyone else. No single computer has sold more than the Commodore 64. The first true multimedia computer, the Amiga, came from Commodore. Yet with all these milestones, Commodore receives almost no credit as a pioneer. Commodore was one of the only companies with the ability to make silicon, and the results were obvious. They had more creativity, more color, and more character than the competition. While Apple and IBM charged exorbitant prices, Commodore was able to reach the masses with affordable computers while remaining profitable. The Commodore 64 cut a path of destruction through the early industry, knocking Tandy, Texas Instruments, Sinclair, and Atari out of the computer business and badly hurting Apple and even IBM. While other companies received more press, Commodore sold more computers. Yet Commodore never reached a comfortable position. They were always on the verge of blinding success or abysmal failure. Commodore?s volatile founder, Jack Tramiel, lived on the edge, and he made sure his employees lived there too. On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore tells the story through over 44 hours of interviews with former engineers and managers: Chuck Peddle, the digital God who created a revolution with the 6502 chip and designed the PET computer. Al Charpentier, the chain smoking architect of Commodore?s revolutionary graphics chips. Bob Yannes, the frustrated musician and synthesizer aficionado who designed the Commodore 64 and the SID sound chip. Bil Herd, the unruly engineer who created the maligned Plus/4 and later sought redemption with the C128. The Amiga engineers, who created the first true multimedia system even before the word multimedia existed. Irving Gould, financier and majority shareholder who rescued Commodore in the sixties, then allowed it to wither.

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