31. Epic fail

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Time for another episode of Amiga Flashback, the show that takes you back to the 80s and 90s. There is failure and there is epic failure. On today's show, it's about the computers that didn't make it. Some of them were great, but the timing was wrong. Some of them were worthless and well, people didn't want them. Irregardless.They were not meant to win.

Andromeda of KFMF and Noise Reborn 60s. So failures then? Well, the list of failed computers is so long that I would not be able to fit them within this program. So let's just talk about the Commodore SX64, the Atari Falcon, Amiga 600, Commodore 16, Texas Instrument TI-99 slash 4A,and the IBM PS2. Although they were failures, there was a lot of things to know and a lot of things to understand about why they failed. We can actually win something by understanding one thing, and that is that Hindsight is indeed 2020. So we have our first failure coming up after this song.

Falcon and Nicolette. Today's first exhibition object is the Atari Falcon. It was released in 1992, but discontinued in late 1993 and it was the end of Atari as a home computer manufacturer. It went up against the Amiga 1200 and was to a certain degree the better computer. It had a 68030clocked at 16 MHz, a bit faster than the 68020 that the 1200 had. It also had a true 16 bit sound card and it had a graphics adapter with some sort of 16 bit color mode, but it wasn't supported out of the box, you had to kinda buy some expansion for it. And a bus that could have been 32 bit like the Amiga 1200 one.was only 24 bits so it couldn't really realize the speed that it was designed to have. The CPU could not fully be utilized that is. So it only sold 60 000 units before it was discontinued as I said. And yeah, that means that it's mainly a footnote in history as the Commodore 64 sold somewhere in between10-20 million units and the Amiga a number of million units through the years. But still, one can wonder, the hardware was interesting and promising and could have meant something. But yeah, the time was up. The home computer era was over and the PC had gone from work only to work play, it could be any girl you wanted it to be. And the home computer era, yeah well...It had no reason to be anymore.

K.O. 0X. We are flying. But the Commodore 16, our next object on this shopping blotch, it did not fly. It was a computer stripped bare and with nothing to show for it. It was meant to compete with other cheap computers like those from the Timex Corporation, Mattel, and of course Texas Instruments. Released in 1984,It was kinda like a C64, only it was crap because everything good was less of it or stripped out. Nobody really wanted it. And trying to compete with computers less than $100 is probably not a recipe for success. Commodore has always have a good way of getting good stuff for cheap prices. The Amiga was built this way.as it could give almost the same performance and sometimes better for a much cheaper price, but the C16 had nothing to offer when the C64 was all the rage. So there we are, it was simply not meant to be. I mean the VIX-20, as simple as it was, was the real deal although it was getting a bit long in the tooth.But the C-16, yeah, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Peckis with Winter Soul. Alright, if you're a CEO, that's a chief executive officer, and you're sitting with your new brand beautiful Executive 64 from Commodore, maybe you shouldn't have it connected to the wall socket when you're sitting beside a watery pool. Yeah, well, that wasn't the only stupid thing with the Executive 64 and that CEO.Commodore know that the Commodore 64 were meant for one thing and one thing alone. It was meant to take on IBM and become this cool office computer. But history taught them otherwise or would have if they actually listened to history. No, people use the C64 for computer games. But the Executive 64 was Commodore's stab at getting an IBM killer. It was a C64. That was a laptop.If by laptop you mean a lag-able oscilloscope that you can carry around. Yeah, it looked like one. That wasn't a totally... well, it was quite common way of doing it back then. But just think about it. None of the executives wanted it. It was IBM because nobody has ever been fired for choosing IBM. Okay? And the gamers couldn't afford it because it was super expensive and the screen was small.so you couldn't see the text when you were playing some of the games or the graphics were simply very hard to use with that really minuscule display. It was a cool idea and I own one of them actually. have it behind my head here in the studio. 9000 units were sold and eventuallyWell, jeez surprise, Commodore did shut it down. There is a rumor there is a newer one called DX64 which would have had two diskette drives for pretty obvious reasons, it was never created and released.

It's time to face the day and fight along your way It's time to break the chains and take whatever gain Take a chance, whatever it takes Even if it's no piece of cake Break the limits and get awayIf you feel like you've been compromised, go show them that you're alright. This is the moment before it gets away.

It's time to find a way, no matter what they say It's time to be a hero and prove them you're not a zero Take a chance, whatever it takes, even if it's no means a cake Break the limits and get awayIf you feel like you've been compromised, go show them that you're right. This is the moment before it gets away.

Okay, Jose, it's time. But time was not on Commodore's side when they decided to release the Amiga 600, a computer that not even David Plessons wanted to hold in his hand. The year was 1991 and the Amiga 1200 was still a year away. So they needed to release something here and now. A stopgap measure if you want to, okay? So they...decided to release the Amiga 300. But someone pointed out that the old machine that everybody knew was called Amiga 500. So 300 sounded like it was a less computer, a worse computer if you want to. So they changed that to Amiga 600. All good and well until they actually unveiled the design. First of all, if you had an Amiga 500 or this infamous Amiga 500 Plus.You probably upgraded it a number of times. You had a hard drive, a little bit of extra chip RAM. Maybe you installed super Denise, the better display card, so to speak, or some other stuff. You upgraded the kickstart. This is pretty much what the Amiga 600 was. It was a 500 with all those extra do hickeys plugged in. Okay. It removed the numeric keyboard.which was a bad mistake because some games actually needed that. Try to play F18 without a numeric keyboard, no fun. And they also supplanted the Sora port on the side with a PCMCA port which couldn't stack, which meant one expansion unit only. Okay, no surprise that computer was shunned by people and actually if you look athow the financial catastrophe unfolded. Actually the tipping point is 1991, probably due to the CDTV and the Amiga 600 alone. It is possible that the Amiga 600 single handedly or with the help of the CDTV as I said brought the whole company down.

youErik Zalitis

Awesome laid back number four a new one. We don't have this on the station until now obviously Well timing is the key to success and failure It kind of helps if you understand the market the customers and the trends and for Commodore that was no no and Hell no, they had no clue Their research was lacking for a number of reasons that I don't have time to talk about todaythey had absolutely really crappy idea of what the market demanded. And yes, the customers were treated badly and actually Commodore was infamous for treating the resellers and the repair places badly as well. And there was a group of people that actually was shareholders, were shareholders in Commodore and they actually started a organization to try totake Commodore to task, but eventually they had nothing to deal with as Commodore went under. And this is true for many other corporations, organizations that fail to see what's going on. Then again, hindsight as I said previously is 20-20, so yeah, you know, there is that.

youErik Zalitis

Carlos of Mandula, Beep Breeze. And the song is called, I'm not kidding you, Kia Brandalton. Okay, you're trying to make this hard for me. Yeah you are. So let's talk about the CDTV. What is it meant to be? Don't ask, we don't know either, says Commodore.Well, ok, we spoke about it in a previous episode, so yeah, I will not go into deep, but it was known as the Commodore Dynamic Total Vision. And it was released in 1991, it seems like everything went pear-shaped for Commodore that year. Ah, yes, and it was... Yeah, I don't know what it was. It was an Amiga 500 with a CD-ROM. No keyboard, no mouse. They had to be bought as an aftermarket option.Geez. Anyway, they could show stuff from a dictionary or something like that and you know, that's no fun. They could play Amiga games, which you could with the 500 and yeah, they also had some sort of option for CD games, not with full motion video though, and the games were crap.And also it was a set-top box, so you put it on top of the computer, sorry, the TV. And that's kinda useless, isn't it? So yeah, you bought whatever that was for an exorbitant price and you couldn't even use it fully. Pretty obviously not even Mike Dubois, also known as Swullo here in Sweden, couldn't sell this because I don't think he knew what the heck it was about anyway.

Well, we have had no failure since Commodore failed, right? Well, no. No, no, no, no. We have had a number of them and they keep on coming. The IT industry kills a lot of its inventions. Well, most industries do, but it's been a lot of experimentation and don't forget about the IT crash in 2000. A lot of IDs.just crashed, burned and died that part of the decade. It kinda put a really, really large shadow over the whole early noughties, so to say. Sometimes it's not viable anymore. What was cool back then is no longer. You can probably remember the I don't know, CPU replacements for Intel like Cyrix andAMD's early experiments, can also remember stuff like the 3D cards that really went nowhere and was bought up and yeah, that's how it is. I mean, selling anything is a big gamble, but what kind of right do you have to complain if you don't try? I'm sorry, and you are also a crash test dummy because you buy stuff that could go out of business tomorrow.I'm sorry that's part of the experience I guess, but I must say all the successes and everything that Amiga taught us and any other computer that failed. Well it's been worth it if you ask me. I would not want it to be in way that you were always guaranteed success, would be just no fun.

Alright, that was Jule with expressions and the song is also known as Jessica and sometimes you find really depressing stuff in the instrument list. Here is Jule's comment about Jessica and he hopes that he will get to know her again. It seems like they had some kind of break up or something. It's in Swedish and he says I hope that Jessica says hello sometimes and eventually give me a hug and a kiss as well.yes, the instrument list can be really sourced for a bit of drama every now and then.

Blögg Dunaev Snow is falling, this is Amiga flashback and lets raise a toast to all those lost in the war. IBM PC-Unior 84 Commodore Plus 4 also 84 Sinclair QL oh yeah 1984 Apple Lisa 83Commodore 12885, next computer, know, Jobs little dream, 88. And that's a very incomplete list, you know it. So what killed them? Well, 1984 is not just Orwell's nightmare, it was a nightmare for computers as the gaming market crashed, it totally bottomed out so to speak.It was because it was flooded with inferior games and people didn't trust the platforms or the games. When everything had recovered, a number of brands went under. Interesting enough, Nintendo's CEO, he learned from the lessons. So when the Nintendo Entertainment System, you know, the classic Nintendo, when it came out, he had a demand and said, Hey, I will never ever allow you to release a game from this console.before I have signed off of it. In short, he had to play the game and then say, yep, it's good enough. That was part of his duties as a CEO for Nintendo. Now that is a story, isn't it?

We are getting closer and closer to the end, but we have a time for another story. IBM PS2. It was quite a piece of something, wasn't it? Now, actually, it was a really cool computer architecture because some of the stuff that later becomes standard everywhere else was founded with that computer. I don't have time to talk too much about it, but I can tell you that it's very well,

The noogs of flip, a return to reticence. And before that it was Drax promises. Okay, one last computer because time is almost up. That would be the Texas Instrument TI-99AH. Only the good died young. It actually was discontinued in 1984. You see the pattern here, right? And for pretty much the reasons we spoke about. Well...I won't say anything else than it was a really cool hardware and I would have liked to see it being developed, but it was a very eclectic machine in many ways. So that is as much as we can do today. I'm leading you out of this podcast or radio show by saying LaSong will be Edses and Auricamand related memories and then Jule and Malmen one way heart, yep the same Jule who was lamenting his former girlfriend earlier on or what it was. Anyway this is DJ Demon saying bye bye now and we'll be hearing from each other in a week.