David Pleasance - Commodore the Inside Story: The Untold Tale of a Computer Giant

Ive had an almost symbiotic relationship with Commodore and Amiga computers.

My first computer was a Commodore PET CBM 4032, which arrived the same week as my eldest daughter, Emma. At the time, I was the technical applications manager at the company I worked for and was tasked with supervising the hardware and software development team as we added real-time data acquisition minicomputer systems to our well-site geological and engineering services.

I knew virtually nothing about the evolving microcomputer craze, so I decided to build my own Sinclair ZX80 and teach myself the rudiments of computing. Fortunately, one of my hardware engineers convinced me to look at a real computer like the Commodore PET or Apple II, and after reviewing all the microcomputer magazines of the day, I rejected the Apple II and chose the Commodore PET. Commodore was very well supported in the UK at the time and I was soon writing BASIC programs and PEEK-ing and POKE-ing with the best of them. It was the start of my Commodore addiction.

The PET was replaced by a Commodore 64, which I bought in 1983 having seen a demo of International Soccer playing in the window of a computer store in Aberdeen, Scotland. (This also coincided with the birth of my second daughter, Rachel. Fortunately, the link between my acquisition of new computers and the birth of children stopped at this point!) I then upgraded the C64 to a Commodore 128 and, in early 1986, I was transferred to Houston, Texas, to restructure a failing division of our parent company. After the relocation, I replaced the C128 with a Commodore 128D.

My transfer to Texas also resulted in my move to the Amiga, although not quite in the manner you might expect.

During a particularly violent late-summer storm in 1988, my Commodore 128D, which was connected to the phone line by a 1200 baud modem, was zapped by a lightning strike. With the insurance cheque, I purchased an Amiga 2000.

Shortly afterwards, I started my own company and relocated to Cyprus. From that time onwards, I used a series of big-box Amigas in my business for video and graphics work, and to create technical manuals and sales brochures for our growing international business. In 1990, I added the newly released Amiga 3000.

When I moved back to the UK in 1992, I purchased several Amiga 4000s for my business from Commodore UK, and in 1994, I bought a couple of Amiga CD32s for my children (honest). Actually, I had a running joke with my daughters that I really wanted an Amiga 5000 but, as history shows, it was not to be. Commodore International was in a death spiral and, despite releasing the Amiga CD32, declared bankruptcy that April.

After the bankruptcy, David Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot kept the UK business afloat and put together a creditable but ultimately failed bid to purchase Commodores assets in a management buyout attempt. Like most Amigans, I had followed the Amigas fate after Commodores fall and crossed my fingers that the buyout would be successful. Unbelievably, under their joint stewardship, CBM UK survived for 14 months after the parent company went under; but after ESCOM acquired most of the Commodore and Amiga assets in 1995, they both left the Commodore and Amiga scene for good. Despite Commodores demise, my company continued to use Amiga computers for all our technical manual and publicity needs up until the turn of the century.

Eventually, I sold my business in 2004, and after 30 years working and travelling around the world, I was looking forward to a relaxing break. I reacquainted myself with the Amiga scene and discovered the Amiga next-generation evolution.

I purchased a Micro-A1-C (A1-c) and Pegasos II in 2005 and began collecting Commodore and Amiga computers. In 2007, I started writing the Amiga Retrospective series of articles for Total Amiga magazine, which later transferred to Amiga Future magazine.

The articles ran for 20 issues until 2010, by which time I had co-founded A-EON Technology to develop a new range of next-generation AmigaOne computers. The first model, the AmigaOne X1000, was released at the end of 2011, and I finally got my A5000 wish when the AmigaOne X5000 was commercially released in 2016.

Keeping it in the family, my youngest daughter Rachel wrote the boot sound for the AmigaOne X1000 and X5000, as well as the music and sound effects to several AmigaOS 4 animations and demos, while my oldest daughter Emma produced artworks for an Amiga graphics package. Its really no surprise as both my daughters were brought up using Amiga computers. At the time of writing, a new entry level machine, the AmigaOne A1222, is currently under beta test.

I met David in person for the first time in 2015 at the Amiga30 event in Amsterdam, celebrating 30 years of the Amiga. Since then, we have met up at several Amiga shows around the world, including in the UK, Germany and Poland, and have become good friends and business partners through our shared interest in FriendUP. He has shared many of his personal inside stories about his time at Commodore while chatting over a few drinks into the early hours of the morning stories such as dealing with Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali, the failed buyout attempt, and what really caused the decline and fall of a company which even in 1992 had almost $1 billion in sales.

I found Davids tales about the inner workings at Commodore fascinating and managed to convince him and Colin to let me interview them both for an Amiga Future article, which was published in two parts in 2016. As an executive producer for both Zach Weddingtons Viva Amiga movie and The Commodore Story documentary by Steven Fletcher, I knew Davids Commodore revelations would appeal to a wider audience, and when he told me he was thinking of writing a book about his experience I encouraged him to put pen to paper.

Most books written about Commodore and the Amiga naturally tend to focus on the groundbreaking hardware and the talented young developers who underpinned Commodores contribution to the microcomputer revolution. Since the Amiga 30th anniversary celebrations, I have been fortunate enough to spend time with many Commodore legends such as RJ Mical, Carl Sassenrath, Dale Luck, Glenn Keller, Dave Haynie and the late, great Dave Needle, among many others. Their stories have become folklore among Commodore and Amiga enthusiasts; however, little has been written from an insiders perspective about the company itself, which during the 1980s was more successful than Apple, creating the best-selling personal computer of all time with the Commodore 64, and going on to release the pioneering Amiga, with its custom chipset and pre-emptive multitasking operating system.