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Commodore Plus 4 Found in Thrift Store

K

Ken Vaughn

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Jan 16, 2010
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138
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Colorado, USA
I stumbled onto this in a thrift store over the weekend. Marked $10, but with my 50% senior discount, I picked it up for $5. Came in a box with manuals, power adapter, and TV connection cables.

http://home.comcast.net/~kvaughn65c/img_1109.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kvaughn65c/img_1110.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kvaughn65c/img_1113.jpg

A Google search tells me that the Plus 4 was successful in Europe, but not in the US. It was introduced in 1984, selling for $300US, and discontinued in 1985. The unit is compact, well built, with a nice keyboard, cursor keys, and I/O ports on the back. Serial bus, user port, and video port (monitor) are claimed to be compatible with the C64. My C64 disk units and printer, and my monitor should work. Datasette and joysticks (and I believe the cartridge slot) are not compatible with C64. Don't care about the Datasette, but would like to find a joystick that will work, or make an adapter -- there are specs on the internet to do this.

The Plus 4 came with 64K -- 59KB available to Basic. The Plus 4 referred to 4 applications in ROM -- word processing, spreadsheet, database, and graphing -- I suspect these are pretty minimal by todays standards.

Additional Plus 4 specs can be found here.

http://scacom.bplaced.net/Collection/plus4/plus4en.html
 
You paid money for a Plus/4? I picked one up left as junk, with 1541 drive in original packaging and apparently never used. Tried to flog it here; eventually gave it away for shipping.
 
Chuck(G) said:
You paid money for a Plus/4? I picked one up left as junk, with 1541 drive in original packaging and apparently never used. Tried to flog it here; eventually gave it away for shipping.
Click to expand...

Five dollars didn't break the budget -- I'll get my money's worth playing with it. Some of us don't have your resources.
 
Ken Vaughn said:
Five dollars didn't break the budget -- I'll get my money's worth playing with it. Some of us don't have your resources.
Click to expand...

Not meant as a snipe, but rather as an example of the capriciousness of the vintage market.

I was excited about it when I received it, but it was pooh-poohed here. Apparently if the Plus/4 had a SID chip in it, I would have had no problem getting offers.
 
It took me a while to get a working one in a box, the ted chips and cpus on these die if you even look at the thing funny.

I have 1 boxed example of the vic, c16, +4, c64, 64c, and 128. Yes the computer flopped but it still has a place in the history of commodore. (it's place being one of the larger screwups that made it to market)

later,
dabone
 
The claim about the Plus/4 was "successful in Europe" is not entirely honest. While it sold in decent numbers on some West European markets, where it really did take off big was in East Europe, particularly Hungary where Commodore simply dumped surplus Plus/4 computers on the market for far less than any, even domestic computer could compete. To put it in other words, instead of sending a warehouse of Plus/4 to landfill and bulldozers, they practised some kind of home computer goodwill and sold them in Hungary for a price many people could afford. Perhaps not $10 as new but clearly below the RRP elsewhere.
 
Well, I consider it a good find. They're not as common as their superior brethren but it's fun to find vintage computers that are boxed. A working one is worth a little btw, they're pretty common as far as the broken ones go ;-)

I think they're interesting little systems aesthetic and historically where you can see the design sway from what they had done and then continued to do. Vic-20 and first Commodore 64 shared basically the same case. The latter Commodore 128 (I think there was a c-64c that had the case too) I find interesting since that was the design behind Amiga 500 and even later Amiga 1200 design. So this little glitch in the market with them trying to predict the use of their systems and offer built-in software/productivity bundle is pretty interesting. It failed obviously and they took a few steps back to their old design an moved on.
 
Carlsson, that's good insight on the Plus/4 in Eastern Europe. I understood it sold better in Hungary than here, but didn't know why. And that makes sense; dump them in Hungary where the 64 wasn't going to sell in large numbers anyway, create a market where one didn't exist, and hopefully recover some of those costs. I remember here, closeout specialists sold the Plus/4 for $79 US for a while. If I remember right, the 64's retail price was $149-$199 at the time.

The Plus/4 is indeed compatible with C-64 serial bus peripherals. They changed the connectors on the cassette and joystick ports to make them less prone to shorting out chips inside, at the cost of compatibility.

The CPU and TED chips are prone to overheating, so if you plan to use it much, it's a good idea to heat-sink those chips.

The built-in software was, at best, entry-level grade in 1984. They don't hold up well to modern standards. Popular opinion is that Commodore would have been better off leaving it out, because it discouraged third-party development. Nobody wanted to compete with free.

The 64 had better sound capability and it had sprites, so the Plus/4 wasn't a significant improvement over the machine it was intended to replace. It did have 128-color graphics, which was very impressive for 1984, but the lack of sprites was hard to overcome. The Plus/4 was more like the VIC-20 than the 64 in architecture and philosophy, using a single chip (the TED) for graphics and sound.

I own one, and my grade school had a couple. They weren't bad for school environments, as the built-in software was available instantly without having to wait for software to load off the 1541, and the software was good enough for teaching basic word processing, spreadsheet, and database concepts.

I think the main significance of the Plus/4 is that it illustrates what an accidental success the VIC-20 and 64 were. Commodore knew they had a hit in those two machines, but I don't think the decision-makers in the company understood why. The Plus/4 project was a good insurance policy to keep in their back pocket in case the 64 didn't take off, but once the 64's success was clear, they should have shelved it.
 
Regarding the Plus/4 -- I didn't have any expectations as to its usefulness and I don't plan on using it much. I own a C64 with a great deal of software and peripherals, but haven't explored most of them. I'm not really a collector, but at $5 I had to see if it would work, which it does. I didn't know anything about the Plus/4 when I found it, and considering that it was introduced in 1984, I'm not surprised that it was not a big seller. By then the IBM PC was very popular.

My IMSAI PCS 80/30 with two Northstar DD Disk Drives is far more capable, much faster, and runs 3 different operating systems (DOS, CP/M 2.2, UCSD). I bought it in 1977 and used it constantly until I bought my first IBM 5150 in the fall of 1981. By then I had written a full screen editor, a procedure file processor, and a higher level language processor running on the 8085 processor in the IMSAI.
 
I thought the main reason to change the cassette and joystick ports was to reduce competition from 3rd party manufacturers. :lol: Yes, and to save space on the board since these originally were meant to be very small, see the Commodore 116. When it comes to the joystick, I wonder if Commodore ever got a license from Atari to use the same pinout, or if everyone back then just used the same pinout before Atari had patented it. I haven't looked up if and when Atari filed a patent, but if they did that would be another reason for Commodore to at least temporarily use a different type of connector even if the signals are the same.
 
I don't think Atari ever patented their 9-pin joystick connector. Commodore, Coleco, and Sega all copied it, and I'm sure there were others I forgot about. Commodore even shamefully cloned the familiar Atari joysticks, just changing the color of the base to white. Atari did sue them over that, so then Commodore switched to the slightly elongated design with the elongated button in the center. If you ever see what appears to be a white Atari 2600 joystick, it's Commodore.

I'd forgotten about the side effect of the connectors taking up less space on the board. That may very well have been part of the consideration too. I've never seen the 116 (it wasn't sold here in the States and considering how much flack Commodore gave IBM over its chicklet keyboard, it probably was afraid to) but it looks like the Plus/4 used the same case, just with a full-travel keyboard? The Plus/4 was noticeably smaller than a 64 or VIC.
 
Plus 4 is always a good find - and for $5. working, you can't go wrong!

Plus 4 is always a good find - and for $5. working, you can't go wrong!

The Plus 4 - disliked by many, revered by some, like me. I 'always' liked the Plus 4. I have one in super nice condition along with it's companion dataset. I wouldn't part with it for the world, and the world wouln't offer me much for it either - but that's ok :)
I've had most of the Commodore line, VIC-20, C-64, C-16, C-128, but the Plus 4 is my favorite.

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Part of the reason why I dislike the TED line is my strong like for the VIC-20, which it was supposed to replace. While compatibility never should be taken for granted, the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 differ too much from the VIC and C64 to fit in as entry models for those who couldn't afford a C64. I think an improved VIC-40 with a video chip cable of "emulating" the 22 column display of the VIC-20 would have been a more logic solution, but perhaps in the spring, summer of 1983 it wasn't viable to produce an ultra cheap VIC-20/40. Actually from what I've read, the C64 was supposedly cheaper to produce despite more custom chips.

It should be remembered one of the original ideas behind the TED line was to get really cheap, perhaps rubber keyboard Commodore computers to be sold to us Europeans, both UK and mainland Europe where Jack Tramiel saw the ZX Spectrum etc taking significant market shares. During the development, the TED computers gained more and more features so the budget broke and it shifted focus slightly, in the end said to be replacements for the VIC model, perhaps companions to the C64 for those businesses who neither run on PET/CBM-II, Apple II, CP/M nor IBM PC compatibles.
 
Atari didn't invent the 9 pin d-shell connector they used, so they really couldn't complain about it. :)

g.
 
Hm, you mean there is neither copyright nor patents to make on a particular pinout/use of a general purpose item like a connector?

Here is a list of different DB9 controllers as far as I know them:

Fairchild Channel F (August 1976) - predating the VCS and has additional types of movement (rotate left/right, pull lever), so it couldn't possibly copy Atari's design.

Atari VCS (October 1977) - the de-facto standard, whether it is was licensed or not

Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (June 1979): pinout, joystick adapter

Odyssey2 / Videopac G7000: pinout (starting from its 3rd revision, about 1980 ??)

Vectrex (1982) - it has an analog stick so the Atari pinout would not really have been suitable

Of course the TI handles two joysticks in one port so perhaps that was a reason good enough as any why they simply didn't copy the Atari VCS. However the question is why Magnavox/Philips used their own pinout once they shifted from hard wired to detachable controllers, since the machine came with those included anyway and I don't know if they sold any upgrade joysticks for die-hard gamers who wanted to get the most out of the blocky experience.

Some of the "early adoptors" however seems to have been Commodore VIC-20 in 1980 (Japan)/81 (US/Europe) and ColecoVision (1982). I may have missed some console or computer predating the VIC which was not made by Atari, but I can't imagine which one that would be. Apple didn't at least natively include a DB9 joystick port on their Apple ][, and I'm unaware if any S-100 or CP/M systems would have those either.

Sorry to have gotten a little out of topic, but this is an issue that has itched me for a few years. Of course post 1982, a flood of systems used the "Atari standard" DB9. Some systems with analog controllers used their own connectors, and then came machines like the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 where the DB9 was replaced with mini-DIN in order to save space and make it more safe to plug in joysticks if licensing was an non-issue.
 
...don't certifications still call it db-9 and db25 or am I misremembering? Hm.. reading your article it does seem to be DE-9 from the size of the connector.
 
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