Posted By
MMS
on 2021-01-06
05:56:37
 |  Re: C264 Series Market Failure in Retrospect
Someone told (who was close to C= back in the early 90s) that the C65 project was never took really seriously, just made busy those (older) engineers, who were too expereinced to let them to go, but wwere useless in the Amiga projects.
Commodore PC compatibles were interesting ones.
AFAIK the Commodore LCD was again C= Management's failure :-).
It was showed on the next 1985 CES, and someone from an Tandy company convienced Commodore’s CEO, Marshall Smith , that the portables has no future
So this visionary computer was completely cancelled (was 3 years before Sinclair's Cambridge z88!), and the LCD business of Commodore sold.
(Tandy few years later they offered a wide range of laptops, and the offered the very first real PC compatible laptop in 1988  ).
Worth to compare them:
Tandy 1400 1988:
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-modern-practical-guide-to-tandy-1400.html
Commodore LCD 1985:
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_LCD
C116 expandability:
It is a long dispute here. C16 and C116 RAM upgarde was never officially supported by Commodore by any Cartridge, like in case of VIC-20.
Som HW experts say here, that if you connect a RAM upgrade to the "memory expansion"(!!! :-D ) port it goes against the inner RAM chips and it is unhealhty for the computer. So you need to cut a trace on the mobo to do a properly working RAM expansion for the C116. (there was a RAM Enable pin on the memory expansion port, never really linked to TED). So, I can say the C116 and C16 were not really prepeared for easy RAM upgrade.
As I see, the 16KB Spectrums were kind of prepared for the 48K upgrade, like the Rev B motherboard had socketed LS and RAM chips. So the kit you can order just require the swapping of few ICs. Back in the time the first REV A versions could be sent back to Sinclair to do the upgrade (C= never offered such a thing for the machines).
It is a five minutes job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4K6CihMEY
The upgrade of the 48KB Spectrums to 128KB has similar complexity as the Plus/4 RAM upgrade.
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