Posted By
Chicken
on 2007-03-22
11:57:03
 |  plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
I'm just curious. Does anyone have a plus/4 with a serial number above 100000?
In which number range are most plus/4s in Hungary? Some sources say that around 50000 plus/4s where sold to Hungary.
I'm always amazed how inaccurate the numbers on plus/4 and C16 sales are almost everywhere. And the usual "This machine was a total flop" is just untrue. Yeah, sounds like conspiracy theory  But all those C64 oriented press never really cared about the C16 anyway. Therefore, people who create sites about homecomputers just quote those magazines and always repeat the same stuff: "Big flop, no games, no sprites, no SID, good basic."
Even the better books on the topic are usually badly researched (if at all), eg 100 games published for this system. That's probably the number of type-in games alone.
I'm not saying the plus/4 was a hit but a "flop" is something different, for starters take "Tatung Einstein" and the like. Not meeting the expected sales and making it a cheap starter computer actually increased sales a lot and for quite some time.
Keep in mind that the C16 was the first "ALDI-Computer" (ALDI is a huge discounter chain) and the plus/4 was the second one. Also lots of other discounters (eg RATIO and VOBIS) sold the C16 and plus/4.
Even in my small hometown back then 5 people had a plus/4. There was a C16-only Magazine (Compute Mit Sonderheft) and if you check out old adds you can see that almost all hardware sellers (GUSS, DELA...) had some kind of C16 equipment listed. They wouldn't have produced hardware for a market that doesn't exist.
I'd be interested in what the real numbers are... I have some old (German) RUN magazines that stated some numbers from Commodore and I was mildly surprised.
Maybe we could gather some FACTS and eventually add those to existing wikipedia articles and such or even rewrite them.
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Posted By
IstvanV
on 2007-03-22
12:03:01
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
I have one with the serial number "DA4 130140".
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2007-03-22
12:38:50
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
We have figured out a while back that the serial numbers were generic for all Commodore products made/sold at the time, so it is next to impossible to derive the actual number of 264 units manufactured. If we knew the actual production numbers of all other models (C64, C128 etc.) then possibly...
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2007-03-22
13:25:59
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Commodore16.com has a serial number database: http://www.commodore16.com/serials.htm If you look closely at the serial numbers reported for Plus/4s, C16s, and C116s, you can see that they are intermixed.
However, I suspect that each Commodore computer was built in small "batches". It wasn't profitable to build 20,000 of a machine and have them sitting in a warehouse for months at a time. (Well it might have been done for the initial roll-out in late 1984, but subsequent productions would be smaller.)
Let's just say that a chain store such as ALDI ordered 10,000 C64s and 10,000 C16s. If manufacturing was currently running a batch of C64s and enough parts were on hand to assemble ALDI's C64 order, they'd go ahead and assemble those, leaving the C16s for another day.
However, if there's only enough parts on hand for 2,000 C64s but there's enough for 5,000 C16s, they'd build what they could while waiting on sub-assemblies (cases, motherboards, chips, etc) to come in.
If it helps any, the best I can figure on serial prefixes is:
AA xxxxxxx = acquired product (mainly disk drives from Japan)
CA xxxxxxx = West Chester (North America) production
DAy xxxxxx = German production (y = year, xxxxxx = sequential production that year)
EAy xxxxxx = English production (y = year, xxxxxx = sequential production that year)
HAxxxxxxx = Hong Kong acquired product (disk drives, modems)
I have also seen, on disk drives, a B or a D in place of the second letter. Since all of my Japanese and Hong Kong built drives have 7 digit serial numbers (not a year + 6 digits like German production), I suspect that the second letter designates a particular source or factory within that country... maybe specifying a city?
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2007-03-22
13:39:29
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
More things to keep in mind when studying serial numbers:
- Rebuilt machines may have been assigned a new serial number. In the US, any item that has been returned to the manufacturer because of a defect, and then resold, has to be marked as "remanufactured" or "refurbished" so that the customer knows that this unit is not new. Commodore may have gone around the law by disassembling units, then reassembling (with new 8501s and 8360s) under a new serial number to avoid the law. Who would pay a new price for a used computer?
- Unsold NTSC machines are known to have been resold ("dumped") in Eastern Eurpoean countries. This is why a lot of American people didn't like the Plus/4 and C16 -- we couldn't get software because Commodore was sending all their software to Europe. Software houses here would look at the American market, and say "Commodore isn't selling any software for this, they're supporting the 64, so we will too."
It was a catch-22 for us. We didn't want to buy a machine with no software support, and with no software support from the manufacturer, other software houses didn't want to support it either (thinking that there's no software because nobody was buying the machines).
- I once emailed one of the owners of Tri-Micro for an interview. She never has sat down and answered the questions I sent for that, but in another email I asked her to verify the amount of royalties paid for Three-Plus-One. She stated that royalties were collected for about 300,000 machines. (It was this person who gave me the idea that Commodore may have sold rebuilt machines as new, to avoid making more ROMs and incurring more royalties.)
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2007-03-22
13:44:50
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Gaia:
That's interesting and I wasn't aware of it.
I'm not sure if Commodore produced those C16 and plus/4s for ALDI. I rather think ALDI bought already existing stock that wasn't sold when the 264 line was introduced. The "ALDI C64" came out much later and yes, that one was made for ALDI.
Some article said that there was some kind of demand for C16s and plus/4s later on so that those machines were produced again. I will look those numbers up next time...
Most of the plus/4s I have seen have a serial number in the (DA4) 3xxxx range, though, the slightly different looking one mentioned in the other thread is a 8xxxx one.
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2007-03-22
13:53:39
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
JamesC:
Well... also in WESTERN Europe (to be more specific: Federal Republic of Germany) NTSC plus/4s were dumped. I think "Völkner Elektronik" used to sell them back then.
That the plus/4 was not a success in the US seems to be true... I can live with that
Most machines of that era had strong markets and were unpopular in other countries.
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2007-03-22
14:18:20
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
JamesC said:
"I have also seen, on disk drives, a B or a D in place of the second letter. Since all of my Japanese and Hong Kong built drives have 7 digit serial numbers (not a year + 6 digits like German production), I suspect that the second letter designates a particular source or factory within that country... maybe specifying a city?"
One of my 1551 drives (made in Japan) has a serial number "AD4 006xxx", so maybe that second letter, in this case "D", represents the market for which it was built?
My other 1551 (made in Germany) has a "DA4 xxxxx" serial number.
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2007-03-22
16:04:55
 | Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
One of my plus4: EA4 113455 Made in England
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2007-03-22
17:17:52
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Chicken: I have a 1551 with serial AD4 009662, made in Japan, and a 1551 with serial DA4 10200, made in West Germany. This particular one has a white serial tag with a code 'BSW' just before the words "Made in W. Germany".... the first one has a black serial tag with code 'IKA' on it.
I also have a 1570 (240v/50Hz) with serial DA4 20933, also made in West Germany, with no code on it.
There are two more 1551s here, plus a LOT of 1541s, 1571s, etc that I can give serial numbers and countries for..... but I stand by my theory in that the second letter is a manufacturing location code.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2007-03-22
17:20:01
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Well... also in WESTERN Europe (to be more specific: Federal Republic of Germany) NTSC plus/4s were dumped. I think "Völkner Elektronik" used to sell them back then.
Did those units come with an NTSC Kernal? I don't see why they would, as you probably couldn't use them unless you had a multi-format television, which was pretty expensive in the mid-80's.
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Posted By
russnet
on 2007-03-22
17:24:11
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
For those interested. Mine says EA5 179137
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2007-03-22
17:50:24
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Thanks y'all!
Russnet... wow, that's the highest serial number so far 
JamesC:
Yes, those plus/4s came with NTSC Kernals. I don't have one of these but I remember that it was talked about how to turn them into PAL machines because those dumped NTSC ones were really cheap.
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Posted By
Sidius
on 2007-03-23
04:49:42
 | Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
...and this is one of my Plus/4: CA1080708 from West Chester (North America).
It's a canadian +4 !
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Posted By
SVS
on 2007-03-23
08:35:03
 | Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Hi all,
mine is serial EA4 182636 
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2007-03-23
15:03:45
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
Csio's machine is here at me with the following sn: DA4 06329 W-Germany
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Posted By
Crown
on 2007-03-23
17:20:25
| Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
There is a couple of serials here:
http://www.commodore16.com/serials.htm
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Posted By
C16 Chris
on 2007-03-23
17:25:07
 | Re: plus/4 serial numbers above 10000? How many machines sold?
I own follow Plus/4 machines:
DA4 00 552
DA4 10 894
DA4 16 749
DA4 45 945
DA4 46 488
DA4 53 021
DA4 56 308
DA4 72 955
DA4 80 329
DA4 81 452
DA4 83 950
DA4 91 756
DA4 99 244
DA4 104 518
DA4 105 103
DA4 106 909
DA4 117 396
DA4 118 166
DA4 132 354
DE4 148 967
CA 1 090 150
CA 1 136 052
CA 1 169 904
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