Commodore surprises with an AT compatible

Press, 14 October 1986, Page 24

Commodore surprises with an AT compatible

By

DAVE KING

in

Auckland The American Commodore company, which produced the world’s biggest selling home micro computer, the Commodore 64, surprised a lot of people in Auckland last week by launching an IBM PC-AT compatible personal computer.

The still factory-fresh Commodore AT arrived in New Zealand last Wednesday and was unveiled at a press conference for computer journalists less than 24 hours later.

It was brought into the country personally by a vice-president of Commodore Business Machines International, Mr Nick Bessey, who paid a brief visit to Auckland last week.

The new machine is based on the 16-bit Intel 80286 processor. Although detailed technical specifications were not available at Thursday’s press conference, Commodore New Zealand’s PC products manager, Mr David Sherry, said it had IMb of RAM. The Commodore AT also had a I.2Mb floppy disk drive, a built in 20Mb hard disk drive, and came with the PC-DOS 3.2 operating system. Describing the new machine as being “fully AT configured,” Mr Sherry said it had six AT expansion slots, two PC slots, and parallel and serial ports.

And he claimed that when a user purchased an IBM PC-AT he built his way up to that standard.

The Commodore AT is expected to be available in this country either next month or in December. It

will cost about SNZ7SOO with a monochrome screen.

Mr Sherry said he was reluctant to make predictions but forecast, nonetheless, that by this time next year Commodore ATs would be overhauling the sale of the ordinary PCs.

“The speed of these things (Commodore ATs) is incredible,” he said. He emphasised, however, that the advantage to the local company of the new AT was its usefulness as the nucleus of a network. The Commodore PCs had proved themselves very reliable as work stations in a network but the company had lacked a file server.

“With this machine (the AT) we have got full configuration so now we can do a network ' from start to finish,” said Mr Sherry.

With the advent of its AT, Commodore now has a full range of microcomputers extending from the übiquitous Commodore 64 to the new top-of-the-line 80286-based business machine.

It is a range which also includes the Macintoshlike Amiga, a high quality colour and sound micro. Commodore New Zealand claims that 500 of the $NZ4295 Amigas have been sold in this country since the machine was launched three months ago.

According to Mr Sherry, however, “we haven’t started to see the Amiga yet.” It was going to be a really powerful machine. “It is going to overhaul these (AT) machines eventually there’s no two ways about it, but they (the ATs) have still got

their day,” said Mr Sherry.

The Commodore international vice-president attending the launching of the new AT, Mr Bessey, said the corporation was overcoming its recent financial difficulties. It had been restructured, finance had been arranged for further expansion, and at least three new CPUs (central processing units) would be announced within the next

12 months. Answering questions, Mr Bessey said the supply problems faced by distributors were being resolved as the corporation reorganised its manufacturing facilities. Commented the general manager of Commodore Business Machines Australia, Mr Tony Serra, who was also at the launching: “We’ve got off Cloud 9 now and we’re a proper corporation.”