-=> Andreas Kohlbach wrote to Dave Drum <=-

 > Jack, who dumped CBM in favour of Atari (nee Tramiel Technology Ltd.)
 > was just as much about money as Irving (Gould) and Medhi (Ali) who came
 > after him at Commodore and busted it out for fun and (especially) profit.
 >
 > ... Amiga made it possible. Commodore made it dead.

 AK> Wasn't it Commodore offering a cash back of some sort in the early to
 AK> mid 1980s? You would send in your existing non-Commodore computer and
 AK> get a discount of some $199 of a price of $249. Some people bought a
 AK> brand new Timex Sinclair 1000 for $99, sent it to Commodore to receive
 AK> a Commodore 64. To make some $50. That was a very aggressive marketing
 AK> strategy by Commodore. I only learned about this reading some 1980s
 AK> BYTE magazines as PDF which also contained to contemporary
 AK> advertisements. --
 AK> Andreas

I missed that. At the time the C=64 appeared I had a TRaSh-80 that I had
got at a whacking great discount by owning Tandy shares (10). The discount
saved me more than I had spent on the stock. It never paid a ca$h dividend
but it kept getting split into more shares and automatically got me stock
in spin-off companies. As well as share-holder discounts at Tandy Leather
and Radio Shack stores (all long gone). When I did sell up - long after 
I peddled the TRS-80 I got over 10X what I had originally spent on the
stock. It was enough I had to list it on my income taxes.

And in the middle of all that I bought my first C=64/1541/1702 monitor
for under U$500. Still have the 1702 monitor as it is a great editing
monitor for video tapes.  Bv)= 

... Computers run on smoke. They stop when it leaks out.
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