Posted By
JamesC
on 2005-04-01
15:58:09
|  Re: How many(roughly) were made?
What ruins the theory is that at West Chester, serial numbers were assigned as the units came off the line.
Let's say that one week's production is Plus/4, the next week is C16, the following week is C64. All the serial code tells us is the ORDER in which it was built, NOT the exact one out of the TOTAL NUMBER of that machine, because serial numbers in between may be for a different machine altogether.
There can be gaps of days, weeks, even months between production runs, depending on demand of other machines as well. I saw an Ebay auction last night for a C128 and the serial plate was shown. The C128's serial number was not that much higher than the serial number of the Plus/4 I posted last night.
And to top it off, when Commodore West Chester received a "defective" unit back, and it was repaired and resold, it was given a new serial number. I have NEVER found a Plus/4 marked "Remanufactured", but have seen several C64s marked that way. Commodore probably did this so that they could more easily determine when it was (last) sold at the wholesale level for warranty purposes if a sales receipt is not available.
A quick and easy way to know if that "new" NTSC Plus/4 is remanufactured: look at the accompanying manuals. Original machines have almost square manuals (height and width almost the same). Rebuilt machines have one or both manuals of a different size (taller than wider). Of course, if someone has been "switching manuals" to make one unit look more complete or less used than another, this method won't catch that.
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