What links the post-obit? #1: a best-selling dwelling house computer, #2: one of the most beloved non-panel gaming machines of the 80s and 90s, and #3: the first personal figurer to sell over i million units.

A lot of people over thirty volition probably name a Commodore motorcar as the first estimator they ever used, be it a Commodore PET in the tardily seventies, a VIC-20 or Commodore 64 from the 1980s, or fifty-fifty ane of the Amiga line in the early on nineties. Some will have played their first game on i or wrote their first plan in BASIC, possibly leading them to a life-long career in the tech manufacture—I'm one of many who owe a debt of gratitude to the company.

The Commodore PET

The story begins in 1954 when Commodore was founded by Jack Tramiel, a Smooth American who had survived Auschwitz and exam past infamous nazi Josef Mengele. The company originally made calculation machines and electronic calculators, but everything changed in 1977 when it released the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Translator), its commencement mass-market personal computer.

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel at CES 1984

Out of the box, the PET featured a keyboard with a numeric pad—something nearly unheard of then—along with a 1MHz MOS Technology 6502 processor, 4KB of retentiveness, and an operating system burned onto a ROM chip that loaded when the car booted.

Early models came with integrated cassette decks. Holy!

It as well featured a ix-inch 40 x 25 monitor and cassette deck integrated into the white chassis and included Microsoft'due south Bones in ROM. It cost $495, which is equivalent to ~$ii,116 in today'south dollars. After versions were even more expensive, making their modern-day prices over $6,000! Despite the expense, the machine, forth with the Radio Shack TRS-fourscore and Apple tree Ii, helped paved the way for the personal calculator revolution.

Commodore released many successors to the original PET. In the 1980s, 4000-series PETs with their improved Bones 4.0 became the latest iteration of the machine and proved very pop in schools, partly thanks to their sturdiness and power to share printers and disk drivers on uncomplicated LANs.

A mutual sight in many schools

VIC-20

While the PET series was a success for Commodore, the eighties saw a real nail for the company.

It began at the start of the decade, three years after the launch of the original PET. Wanting a abode computer that was more affordable, Commodore came up with the VIC-xx, which used the same MOS 6502 CPU and upped the RAM by a whole kilobyte to 5KB -- though this was expandable using a Super Expander Cartridge. There was no integrated monitor or tape cassette, simply the price was just under $300 at launch, making it around $940 in today's money.

Nib Shatner, pulling off the all-beige await with ataraxy

The VIC-20's 22-cavalcade text display made it less than ideal for most business use. Still, the color graphics, sound capabilities, and power to connect to an Atari joystick, combined with the low price, made it a hit -- the machine became the outset abode reckoner to sell i one thousand thousand units, and 2.5 one thousand thousand were shipped beyond its lifetime. Commodore fifty-fifty had William Shatner appear in its commercials.

The Commodores

While the VIC-xx sold well, what came next was something exceptional. In 1982, Commodore introduced the Commodore 64, a name derived from the calculator'due south 64K of RAM. The machine cost $595, around $one,600 today, and as Commodore had bought MOS Engineering science'southward semiconductor fabs, it was able to produce many parts in-house; a C64 was estimated to cost effectually $135 to make.

The best-selling home computer of all time

The Commodore 64 had to compete with the Atari 8-bit 400, Atari 800, the Apple 2, and IBM machines, merely past 1983 it was selling around the same number of units equally Apple tree and IBM combined. In addition to its great audio, graphics, and around 10,000 software titles, the majority of which were games, the C64 was bachelor in regular retail outlets rather than just specialist reckoner and electronic stores. This all helped it enter the Guinness Book of world records as the best-selling single computer model of all time, with an estimated 10 million to 17 meg units sold.

Imagine carrying this around all solar day

Another version of C64 followed: the SX-64, which came with an integrated color 'monitor' and disk drive. It was supposed to be a portable incarnation of the computer, but the 23-pound weight and massive size meant it wasn't exactly like shooting fish in a barrel to carry around. It didn't sell very well and was discontinued in 1986.

The Commodore 16 - most every bit popular as the plague in the The states

Commodore released more than computers in 1984, including the entry-level VIC-20 replacement, the Commodore sixteen, which died in the US market, and the higher-terminate Plus/4, whose name referred to the four congenital-in office apps. With IBM dominating the business cease of the computer market, it also flopped in America.

The fugly Commodore 128

1985 saw the launch of the Commodore 128. Information technology offered a few technical improvements over the 64, including double the RAM and an 80-column brandish, but it was nonetheless an 8-scrap reckoner at a time when the 16/32-bit machines were on their way.

The Amiga Years

1984 marked the year that founder Tramiel quit Commodore over clashes with board chairman Irvine Gould. He later on used his new company, Tramel (no "i") Technology, to buy Atari'due south Consumer Division.

In February, Commodore bought a pocket-size startup chosen Amiga for $25 million ($67 1000000 today). The acquisition turned out to be a shrewd move.

An Amiga 1000 pictured with the Powerplay Cruiser joystick

On July 23, 1985, Commodore introduced the Amiga g, the first in a series of Amiga computers that were adored by many gamers of the belatedly 80s and early nineties, peculiarly in Europe. Boasting 256KB of RAM and a xvi/32-chip Motorola 68000 CPU, it cost $1,295, or $i,595 if yous wanted the 13-inch analog monitor. That works out at a pretty hefty $3,840 in today's money.

Commodore's Amiga was going against a car that would be the series' master competitor for years to come up: the Atari ST. Theirs would be a rivalry to match Apple and Samsung, Sony and Microsoft, and AMD and Nvidia.

The Amiga 500 - Commodore'due south most pop Amiga figurer. Awesome at the time

A number of Amigas followed the get-go model, including the Amiga 500, which, unlike the 1000, was sold in retail outlets and not just computer stores; a render to the VIC-20 strategy. The 500 was the acknowledged Amiga, moving between 4 and 6 one thousand thousand units.

New and more than advanced models arrived -- this writer owned an Amiga 500, 500+, 600, and finally a 1200. They were vivid game machines that never establish the same level of popularity in the United states of america every bit in Europe, sadly. Titles such as Sensible Soccer, The Anarchy Engine, Speedball 2, Cannon Provender, Syndicate, and Monkey Island 2, which came on 11 disks, helped boost sales and led to several magazines dedicated to the home computers.

End of an Era

Despite success at the start of the 1990s, things were not looking practiced for Commodore. PC compatibles were becoming the preferred option for enterprise and productivity users, especially as many programs for this segment were existence written with MS-DOS in mind. Sega and Nintendo, meanwhile, were dominating the gaming industry cheers to their consoles, and with 3D graphics arriving on PCs, the Amiga'south days were numbered; it seem few preferred Gloom over Doom.

There was a terminal throw of the dice with the Amiga CD32, a CD-ROM-based panel that had some notoriously bad games. Commodore famously positioned the machine to take on Sega in the UK with ads that read: "To get this good will have Sega ages," the kind of hubris it before long regretted.

Sega still thinks about this advertising and laughs

The CD32 quickly ran into supply bug and money issues, pregnant the console was never officially sold in the United states of america considering of legal reasons. It really moved 100,000 units in Europe and Canada, merely it wasn't enough to save Commodore and the money wasn't there to make more.

On Apr 29, 1994, Commodore appear that it was bankrupt. The company'due south failure to movement with the times played a large part in its downfall. The demise spelled the stop of the CD32, but eight months after launch.

Both the Commodore and Amiga names lived on for many years after the former went bust, but they passed between companies and faded into obscurity. For those who owned a car from the Commodore stable, yet, the memories will alive on forever. And if y'all weren't alive dorsum so, cheque out one of the modern reimaginings of the C64 consoles.

Epitome credit: Masthead by arda savasciogullari, C64 by Thomas Trompeter, Amiga 1000 via Andy Taylor, Amiga 500 by Grzegorz Czapski