Re: MAURICE RANDALL! I'M CALLING YOU OUT!!!!!!!!!!!

On Oct 7, 3:37 pm, Macintosh Dragon <sc...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The ONLY thing that Commodore hardware needs to sell is to be 1)
reasonably priced and 2) reliably available for purchase.

On Oct 7, 3:37 pm, Macintosh Dragon <sc...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The ONLY thing that Commodore hardware needs to sell is to be 1)
reasonably priced and 2) reliably available for purchase.

I have to disagree here.
1) Because of the economies of scale original C= Hardware is always
going to be more expensive than it's PC counterpart, and a tough sale.
Even with 10 million units produced, how many are actually
functioning? I have 3 C=64 and 2 128's and a 128D. Divide that 10
million by just my 6, and you really have only 1.7 million C= units in
the hands of real people. Even that is outrageously optimistic.
How many C= have died and/or gone to landfill?

I would estimate that world wide there are only about 5000 active C=
users left. If you could reach every single one of them, and get them
all to buy a product for say $30... you still only talking about
$150,000 total income. That means you can spend a max of $100,000 if
you have NO hope of making a profit.
Who is going to invest the time and effort to make products for so
little return.

If you want a new market for C= peripherals, you have to figure out
how to make new C=64's. The DTV's offered hope, but evidently didn't
sell well enough to STAY in production, and outside of hard core
hackers, was purposefully made hacker unfriendly.

I DO think that given the amazing historical popularity of the C=64,
there is a huge potential market for the DTV chip on a motherboard
that encourages hacking and modding. Think off all the places you
could stick a little C=64 to do certain off jobs. In my apartment
building we have a pretty standard 3 button door buzzer system. Add a
small NTSC display, with a C=64 doing overlay and you've got enormous
potential for a very cheap, and powerful system to tell you all kinds
of data. With the DTV's expanded graphics, it might even allow viewing
of who rang your bell and when even while you're out.

With cheap NTSC displays all over the place that were made to go on
top of modern game consoles, Case modders could have a field day with
C=64 DTV's that could be made to display case temperature, or play
back little animations. Imagine a home made synthesizer made from
emulated SIDs in a dozen C=64 chips.

As a low power throw away utility chip, a C=64DTV go on for another 25
years.

Add in a VGA compatible VDC style interface from the 128, and a
flashable ROM. who knows.

But until we start adding C=64 compatible units to the user base,
we'll never see a market grow powerful enough to support peripherals.

.

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