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20th May 2012

IN MEMORIAM
JACK TRAMIEL

Brian Grainger

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brianATgrainger1.freeserve.co.uk


 

As time marches on there are more and more announcements of deaths of noted people in the home computer world, be they famous or the not so famous, but important, people within the ICPUG community.

Not so long ago Steve Jobs, part of the double act that founded Apple, died and it was all over the news. It should have been. He was a very important figure right up to the time he passed away.

Just recently, Easter Sunday, there was another death but there were no announcements on the BBC or in the papers I read. It even took a while to spread on the web. In the 1980s he was, arguably, more influential than Steve Jobs. To ICPUG, or IPUG (Independent PET Users Group) as it was then, he was the most important man on the planet. Without him there would not have been a Commodore PET and no IPUG.

That man was, of course, Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore Business Machines.

I am not going to write a potted history of the man here. There is now more than enough reports on the web and I point readers to the following link as one of the best:
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/jack_tramiel/jack_tramiel.htm

I am just going to mention a few points that seem pertinent to me.

Jack was a survivor of Auschwitz although his parents were not. He was well known as a bruiser of a businessman and it didn't do to cross him. He had dealings with both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He tried to buy Apple in the early days but didn't quite bid enough dosh.

My favourite story, which may be apocryphal, relates how he was one of the few to get the better of Bill Gates. When Commodore wanted Microsoft Basic as the operating system for the PET, Bill Gates offered it at a royalty of $3 per machine sold. Tramiel is reputed to have said 'I am already married' and offered $25000 for perpetual rights of use on Commodore machines. Bill accepted and later admitted this was one of his worst business decisions ever. All the Commodore machines used Microsoft Basic and the Commodore 64 became the biggest selling computer ever. Curiously, the web site above credits Chuck Peddle, the designer of the PET, with making the deal of the century, (http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/chuck_peddle/chuck_peddle.htm). However, I doubt whether the designer would be allowed to haggle about price. That would be Jack's territory and the story fits with his reputation!

Amazingly, Commodore did not have to grant Microsoft any recognition for the BASIC and it was called Commodore BASIC. Another story is that Bill, in order to give some clue of its provenance, hid within the BASIC code a reference to Microsoft. If the user gives the following instruction:
WAIT 6502,0
the screen fills with the word Microsoft! repeated over and over. This only works with the 2nd version of BASIC that Commodore released. It was not until the advent of the Amiga, when Jack had left Commodore, that Bill had the opportunity to reclaim his BASIC and on that machine it was known as Microsoft BASIC.

The PET was very successful and, as previously stated, the Commodore 64 was the highest selling computer ever. Jack Tramiel maintained that he sold 'computers for the masses and not the classes' - a reference to the fact that the price of Commodore's machines was such that they fed the mass market and not the niche market like the, at the time, Apple II. And so it was that the PET sold like hot cakes in the UK and IPUG was formed to provide independent support for the machine's users.

After the 8-bit days Jack fell out with his backer, (Irving Gould), and Jack left Commodore, bought Atari and turned its fortunes round with the Atari ST series.

Jack certainly knew what the 'masses' wanted and we in ICPUG are all deeply indebted to the man.

Addenda

1) You can test the authenticity of Bill's coding talents mentioned above by running the VICE Commodore emulator on a PC (see http://vice-emu.sourceforge.net/index.html). Run the PET version of the emulator and select 3032 as the PET setting. Give the WAIT instruction et voila!

2) There is an 'Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel' available to read as a pdf file. Written by Michael S. Tomczyk, it is called 'Home Computer Wars' and is available here, http://www.stonan.com/dok/The.Home.Computer.Wars.pdf.


 

 

 

 


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