HN Books @HNBooksMonth

If you want an excellent book about Commodore:

http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/...

⬐ Syssiphus

Or a great DVD about it's end - The Deathbed Vigil: http://www.frogpondmedia.com/dbv/video.html

⬐ vidarh

Note that there's a second edition that's split into two volumes. The first covers the "8-bit era". The second, covering the "Amiga years" has just had a successful kickstarter [1] and should be ready by end of year hopefully. It greatly expands on the original.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore-th...

I've been really interested in early-80s to present PC history recently. There's actually a fair amount archived on it, but you'll sometimes have to approach things from the point of view of a historian rather than just a reader of history. My recent bent has been studying Atari, but there's lots of other resources available if you look. For whatever reason, videogames seem to have the lions share of work being done right now. I'd say that the archival and research phase is currently happening right now, with histories finally starting to be really written.

For anybody interested in business (like the HN readership) I really recommend studying not only about the history of Apple, but the history of its early competitor Atari. Equally as interesting and represents a kind of alternate universe where the Google of its time failed spectacularly. The reasons why are complex and very informative, especially the Tramiel years.

Some samples:

There's not many books looking back, but there are a few and they're quite good:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Was-Here-Commodore/dp/02620...

http://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Complete-History-eb...

http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/14516485...

Classic magazines:

https://archive.org/details/computermagazines

There's also plenty of old shows both archived, and made more recently, some with a stunning number of important interviews

https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Dr+Sparkle...

https://archive.org/details/thescreensavers

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrGameSack

https://www.youtube.com/user/tezzaNZ

https://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8

And there's a vast retrogaming/retrocomputing podcasting phenomenon going on right now, often with even more amazing interviews

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/

http://www.retronauts.com/

and a larger list https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8544576

What's nice is that this all happened recently enough that you can actually go to the primary sources and read/listen/talk with these events as they happened, but can now look back informed by decades of the aftereffects.

If you want Commodore, there's On the Edge by Brian Bagnall http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/... and its half-a-second-edition Commodore: A Company on the Edge .

⬐ hansjorg

Deathbed Vigil by Dave Haynie might also be interesting, the last days of Commodore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QKnGTEiJo

"On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore" by Brian Bagnall covers quite a bit of the Amiga development.

http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/d...

However, the rewritten / "second edition", "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" stops with the 8-bit machines, as there were plans to have two volumes - one for the 8-bit systems, and one for the Amiga days:

http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-Bagnall/d...

The second edition, "Commodore: The Amiga Years" has been unfortunately cancelled, but is still listed on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Amiga-Years-Brian-Bagnall/dp...

How does Maher's book on the Amiga compare to Bagnall's first edition?

⬐ vidarh

Maher's book takes a very different approach. It focuses on presenting an outsider view on the technology and its impact on computing, rather than on the company and all the drama surrounding Commodore and its people.

There were times reading Maher's book that I was annoyed that he seemed to me to miss the point, though I'd say probably with the best of intentions (there were no issues that were so egrerious to me that I still remember the specifics), but it is relatively even-handed and worth a read, and presents a very interesting counter-point to Bagnall's book(s).

For those interested, On The Edge by Brian Bagnall (http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/...) does a good job recounting the life and death of Commodore. The management of that company was definitively rocky.

After reading this book about Commodore: http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/d...

and a few other good accounts of the period, it really annoys me that Apple get the credit for inventing the personal computer. They were not even the most popular personal computer of the 80s (or 70s). I have a hard time finding anyone who own a Apple II but most of the people I work with were Commodore 64 owners.

⬐ stan_rogers

The winners get to write the history -- and in the end, more people had more to do with Pagemaker, Illustrator and Photoshop (which were, in practical terms, Mac apps) than they did with the far-more-spectacular (for the time) Video Toaster and Caligari (Amiga). It's never been the machine; it's what people can do with it. If prosumer video was more accessible and lit more imaginations at the time, we'd be singing a different song today.

Must recommend this book again...

On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/d...

As I recall the responsibility of getting the 1541 working with the C64 was the responsibility of one of their more crazy, drunken, hard working employees. His name escapes me...Bill....