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Comment by CmdrKrool | Hacker News Reader

Coincidentally this video just popped up in my Youtube feed: "Before Amiga: The Story of the 16-bit Commodore 900" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OpI87v6OqA

It asserts that the 900 was an initiative by the German wing of the company, and that the Zilog CPU was considered a strange choice, in the circumstances.

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I was employed by Commodore Denmark in 1984 to become their UNIX wizard for the CBM900, and I'm part of datamuseum.dk.

The 900 was very much a US project, Germany wanted the PCs.

The C900 prototypes were manufactured in Germany however, but that was simply because they had the facilities for the large PCB's from the 8xxx series.

Come to think of it, I was employed by Commodore (Danmark) A/S precisely 35 years ago this week.

So the Germans took the case and created the Amiga 2000 (?)

To be totally honest, I have no idea what order things happened in there, but it would be very Commodore like to reuse the molds for the plastic that way.

We have never compared the C900 physically to the A2000 in datamuseum.dk, we should do that some day.

I believe the case design came from Commodore's PC range, which was largely a German initiative. The A2000 was designed in Germany and never launched in the US - Commodore US designed their own system around a slightly reworked chipset which ended up as the B2000 (which used the same case)

Commodore had done other Z80 products I seem to recall some expansions that allowed running CP/M as well as that native PET OS

Apple Had a z80 card for the Apple ][ as well I rembered

The C128 had a z80 and could run CP/M.

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