Jack Tramiel, dead.

[easysurfer]

Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore computer dies.

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dies at 83 | Games Blog - Yahoo! Games


Brings back memories of browsing the Popular Electronics magazines in the library about these things called personal computers. The VIC-20 and Commodore 64.

[sheehs1]

I remember that computer. Had not seen this. Thanks for posting it.

[Htown Harry]

Interesting.

I found this timeline for the Commodore 64, holder of the world's record for most sales of single model of computer.

Commodore.ca | Chronology of Commodore Computer History, Jack Tramiel

You can still buy one (sort of), with a Dual Core 2.13GHz D2700 Atom processor, USB ports and other modern features:

Commodore 64x

[samclem]

I owned a Commodore 128, and it gave good service for years. That's the machine I first used to go online (dialup to Compuserve. You payed by the minute, so it was a quick download of the boards, read the comments offline, then upload any replies).

There was even software (GEOS) that gave the C-128 a GUI, so it handled like a (very low-end) Mac. Cool!

So long, Jack. Your tempestuous time at Commodore led to a lot of great things, even for folks without much money.

[tomz]

RIP, Jack. I worked for Commodore in the 80s when the Commodore 64 was introduced and met Jack a few times. He was quite a character. The followup to the 64 was called the Plus 4. It had built in software in ROM and was supposed to be Commodore's answer to Lotus 123. It flopped. The built in spreadsheet, word processor, and database was crap. I helped test it and wrote the user manual. We wanted to delay it, but Jack was adamant. At the time, Commodore had a prototype IBM PC clone that they could have sold for 1/2 of what IBM was charging, but Jack didn't want to make it because he didn't want to buy chips from Intel. I left the company in 1983 and Jack left shortly thereafter.

[ls99]

I had one of those 'puters.