Commodore : The Inside Story by Commodore CEO David John Pleasance

Neil79 · 13 Mar 2017 at 11:03

Here we have a brand new Kickstarter campaign for the Commodore : The Inside Story book, which is actually being told by one of the Commodore legends 'David John Pleasance', who was a former UK Managing Director of that famous company!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/469255657/commodore-the-inside-story/description

This one deserves its own thread, especially for any retro gamer out there! Sure we've had lots of books before but this one is actually from the "was" UK managing director of Commodore, and spent a year in America heading up that department as well. Watch the video, interesting stuff re : PC

Jono · 13 Mar 2017 at 11:05

OOooh cool

!bluetonic! · 13 Mar 2017 at 11:10

Thanks for posting. I enjoyed the kickstarter video for Viva Amiga.

My Amiga 1200 is still going strong.

jsmoke · 13 Mar 2017 at 11:17

Check out Micro Men also if you missed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM

TheMightyTen · 13 Mar 2017 at 12:08

He always struck me as one of those gutsy enough to stick his head above the parapet and take the incoming in the press during Commodore's death throes, he kept a high profile in the tech press and seemed absolutely gutted when the ship finally sank. I think I'll be in on this one.

Fishbait · 13 Mar 2017 at 13:06

First thing I ever saw on an Amiga in shop window was this...

Been hooked on both Amiga & gfx ever since

Boing!

lokiss · 13 Mar 2017 at 13:33

Guy puts himself out there on a regular basis in the world of podcasts.

Without doubt there's more in the book, he illuded to it on last weeks 'amigos' podcast while letting one more thing slip he was going to save for the book

. That said, if you've an interest in the fella, dig those casts out.. Dan Woods has a epic long video interview on youtube.

NeoWave · 16 Mar 2017 at 09:10

The demise of Commodore still makes me sad/angry. Such a waste. My A1200 with an 030 is currently living in digital form on my PC - the hardware still works like!

peterwalkley · 16 Mar 2017 at 10:06

A kickstarter for a book. Seriously ?

Subject material sounds cool, I loved the Amiga as well, but writing a book isn't exactly a huge outlay of capital.

TheMightyTen · 16 Mar 2017 at 10:18

peterwalkley said:
A kickstarter for a book. Seriously ?

Subject material sounds cool, I loved the Amiga as well, but writing a book isn't exactly a huge outlay of capital.

You don't know how broken and corrupt the publishing world is do you

It's one of the reasons people do book kickstarters to do it idependently and avoid the nonsense.

peterwalkley · 16 Mar 2017 at 12:22

TheMightyTen said:
You don't know how broken and corrupt the publishing world is do you It's one of the reasons people do book kickstarters to do it idependently and avoid the nonsense.

I do, but the author I know publishes under a pseudonym and very much want to keep their privacy. Most authors write in their spare time and the day job pays the bills.

naefeart · 16 Mar 2017 at 13:39

Surprised a book hadn't come out sooner.

I'm only more surprised at the continued love people seem to have for Amigas after all these years.

Funnily enough, I have 3 sitting in my spare room just now. Recovered from my parent's loft at the weekend, where they have been for the last 12 years; two A600s and a late Escom A1200. Found a big box of games too - I didn't even realise I had them.

Not sure what I will do with them, at the moment I'm playing old games and buying CF cards and scart cables. Good times.

Fishbait · 16 Mar 2017 at 14:29

naefeart said:
Surprised a book hadn't come out sooner.

I'm only more surprised at the continued love people seem to have for Amigas after all these years.

Funnily enough, I have 3 sitting in my spare room just now. Recovered from my parent's loft at the weekend, where they have been for the last 12 years; two A600s and a late Escom A1200. Found a big box of games too - I didn't even realise I had them.

Not sure what I will do with them, at the moment I'm playing old games and buying CF cards and scart cables. Good times.

The obvious thing to do, would be to send them to me

Or better still, stick them in one of those huge Eyetech EZ towers & add a PPC accelerator card & a PPC gfx card, assuming they can still be found anywhere.

lurkio · 16 Mar 2017 at 14:53

just watched the video

Defo going to buy this

Such regrets I gave away my commodore 64 + 1541disk drive
An amiga A500 + 512kb ram expansion + 20MB HD + external 3.5floppy drive .... all were working

Skiddley · 16 Mar 2017 at 15:51

Pint of Stella at a press conference? Looks totally out of place. Is he an alkie now?

gettothechopper · 16 Mar 2017 at 16:04

jsmoke said:
Check out Micro Men also if you missed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM

Micro Men is so good

I love the way Sinclair is portrayed

also that ending with the c5 and the music - amazing

robgmun · 16 Mar 2017 at 16:19

NeoWave said:
The demise of Commodore still makes me sad/angry. Such a waste. My A1200 with an 030 is currently living in digital form on my PC - the hardware still works like!

Althrough i still don't think the Commodore brand would be alive today in any meaningful way. It should have lasted a lot longer than it did. If they made the right decisions, we should have easily seen a 32-bit generation of Commodore home computers and be successful to the point where it would have put off people jumping to the PC platform as early as they did. And kept up with the Saturn/Dreamcast in terms of gaming. But the combination of Sony Playstation and Intels Pentiums in the early 2000's would have killed them off anyway.

Still, i would have loved to see what a 32-bit Amiga would have been like

Quartz · 16 Mar 2017 at 16:30

When a computer-mad teenager I literally bumped into Tramiel on a staircase. Like an idiot I just said, "Excuse me." and moved on.

Hades · 16 Mar 2017 at 16:50

Good timing. I installed an Amiga emulator on my phone today. A few days ago I watched an interesting documentary about the Amiga. Apparently Commodore UK tried to buy the rights to it when the rest of Commodore sank. They lost out to Recommend and that caused Commodore UK to fold as well.

The Amiga was far more popular in Europe than in the US and was selling very well here. If they sold to CBM UK then it would have lasted much longer.

Duke · 16 Mar 2017 at 21:09

naefeart said:
Surprised a book hadn't come out sooner.

I'm only more surprised at the continued love people seem to have for Amigas after all these years.

Funnily enough, I have 3 sitting in my spare room just now. Recovered from my parent's loft at the weekend, where they have been for the last 12 years; two A600s and a late Escom A1200. Found a big box of games too - I didn't even realise I had them.

Not sure what I will do with them, at the moment I'm playing old games and buying CF cards and scart cables. Good times.

There have been a few already although not solely aimed at the inside story, more just general hardware/software/manufacturing etc - I've backed two in the last couple of years