@Grumpy Old Fred I knew my last missive would provoke at least one or two interesting (if not informative) responses. Yours was no exception, and I thank you for it.
For one, I hadn't known that CP/M was written originally to the 8080.. I'd always assumed it originated on the Z80. And I don't doubt that RS / TRS-80 held a large share (until 1982 or so..) of the home computer market. At the time, I was in my (almost) young teens - and at least in the circles I traveled, the TRS-80 / Osborne and Kaypro were viewed as boring, stodgy machines without any redeeming entertainment qualities - no color graphics, no sprites, poor or nearly non-existent audio, expensive joysticks and so on. The ability of the machines to serve multiple roles - for both 'serious' work and video gaming / music - was a huge selling point in the early days. This is one of the reasons that the C64 was so massively successful - it pretty much had something for everyone, as the saying goes. That, and the price of the base machine was just amazingly low for the time. Ditto for the VIC-20. On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 10:04 PM, Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com> wrote: > We all hang out with people who are smart enough to see things the same > way that we do. Accordingly, our choices in computers, cars, cellphone > providers always look to us like the MAJORITY. They are the BEST, and > certainly the MOST POPULAR [among everybody that WE hang out with], but not > necessarily the best selling. > > If the world were just, and the BEST outsold the worst, then we would all > be using Amiga :-) > > > On Thu, 22 Dec 2016, drlegendre . wrote: > >> "The Z80 had more players and more names than all the rest" >> And yet it was essentially a bit-player in the days of the 'home computer' >> revolution - at least in the US. CBM, Apple, Atari - the three big names >> in >> home computers, all went with the 6502 family. And perhaps even more >> importantly, so did Nintendo, in the NES. >> > > And yet, somehow, z80 was outselling 6502! > > http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137 > > Radio Shack, TRS-80, WAS one of the "three big names". It had a > not-insignificant share of the market, and until 1982 was the best > selling. Don't ignore the impact of having incompetents peddling in > thousands of store, in every city and town! > Atari took a while longer to get market share. > http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-the-top-selling-computer/ > > At the same time. > Depending on how you define "first" ("first" to show V "first" to ship V > "first" to be available for shelf purchase) will define whether Apple, > Commodore, or Radio Shack was "the first". It is trivially esay to select > a definition of "first" to make it your choice of those. Apple was the > first of those announced and shown. > I bought a TRS-80 ($400 (or $600 if you wanted their composite monitor and > cassette player)) because it was the first one [by multiple months] that I > could walk in the door of a local store and buy one. The more appealing > Apple, which had been announced earlier that TRS-80, was hard to come by > for several more months. > > That time differential of months seems inconsequential 40 years later, but > it mattered to me right then. And, for most rational measures, Apple, > TRS-80 and Commodore initial releases were a tie. > (Was the photo finish by a nose, a whisker, or a hoof?) > When the 5150 came out in August 1981, it was months before I could > actually get one. > > AFTER the 5150 came out, people relized that TRS-80 was doomed, and in > 1982, Apple 2 finally started to outsell TRS-80. It was LESS obvious that > Apple 2 was doomed. But, within Apple, they knew there were troubled times > ahead, and came out with the disastrous Apple 3, and disastrous [from point > of view of SALES] Lisa. > > 'Course IBM poisoned the market for everything else, and nothing else sold > like IBM. On August 12, 1981, I said "In 10 years, 3/4 of the market will > be IBM PC and imitations of it." > It is amazingly impressive that Apple (Mac) survived IBM! > (If you think that Mac outsold PC, then you are looking at YOUR circle, > and need to look at actual sales numbers) > But, by the time that the Mac came out, TRS-80 was finally becoming that > "bit player" that some assume that it was, or should have been. > > The main use of Z80 in US home >> computing was in the absurdly small Timex / Sinclair ZX80 series - with >> their awful cramped membrane keyboards and seriously limited sound & >> video. >> > Which was years later, and WAS a bit player and absurdly small. It was > NEVER the main use of Z80 in USA home computing. TRS-80 outsold them more > than 100 to 1. > Was that really a membrane keyboard, or was it just a PICTURE of a > keyboard as a recommendation, like the "part of this complete breakfast". > > The Z80 also showed up in the Osborne, Kaypro and TRS-80 models.. mostly >> due to the fact that CP/M was written to it. Commodore also put one in the >> C128, but by then, it was almost a dead letter. >> > > CP/M was written to 8080. Z80 was simply the "hottest" 8080 compatible > processor available. > Osborne and Kaypro were literally years later, and they did, indeed simply > build clever, innovative CP/M machines. > > I've never been sure how much market share CP/M had, since that was a > different circle than I was hanging out in. I'm sure that WITHIN that > circle, it would seem like it was MOST of the market. > > Commodore's Z80 in the 128 was due to unnecessary fear that they might > lose market share to CP/M, when IBM should have been their big worry. > I don't know all of the details of the ST/Amiga technology swap, but BOTH > were too late, if the primary goal was competing with IBM. > > What percentage of Apple 2's had Z80 cards added to them? > (once estimated at an unbelievable 20%, and reputed to be why IBM thought > that CP/M was a Microsoft product!) > > > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com >
