Rating:
(79 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Brian Bagnall Page
ISBN : 0973864907
New from
Format: PDF
Download for free books On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore Free Download from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
Review
"[F]ascinating and improbably hilarious." —J. Edward Keyes, Philadelphia City Paper
From the Back Cover
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.
See all Editorial Reviews
Direct download links available for On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore Free Download
- Hardcover: 548 pages
- Publisher: Variant Press; First Edition edition (September 14, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0973864907
- ISBN-13: 978-0973864908
- Product Dimensions: 1.4 x 6.1 x 8.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore Free Download
Brian Bagnall has packed incredible detailed information in this book which spans the history of Commodore from the early days of transitioning from calculators to microcomputers to the glory days of the Commodore 64 and all the way into 1994 when the company went bust. It's almost too much for those of us interested in the early, often forgotten days, before the IBM PC.
Commodore, during the Chuck Peddle era, was a force that brought many people into personal computing. Speaking of Peddle, it's clear that the author got extensive interviews with the man who created the 6502 processor AND created the Commodore PET microcomputer. I found the stories about just how they made those early chips, doing a physical layout of the whole thing, to be fascinating. I had a chance to hear a talk by Chuck Peddle in which he told some of the same stories that are in this book, about how loads of the early chips simply did not work. In 1975, a 30% chip yield (the number that actually worked) was considered good. When Peddle was with MOS Technology, he and his attractive wife Shirley presided over a barrel of chips at the Wescon show in San Francisco (actually in a hotel suite, where people were directed from the show). Having a barrel of chips made it look like they could produce them in quantity. The dirty little secret was that only the ones at the top of the barrel actually worked!
The year 1977 was a turning point for personal computing, with three important microcomputers appearing on the market (Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET), giving computer enthusiasts a choice beside building their own from a kit.