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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