8 Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars

Tomaso Walliser's documentary is the first major release from the “Growing the 8 Bit Generation” project, an ambitious effort to depict the giddy early computer/information technology and video game industry during the 1970s and ‘80s. While this is hardly a new subject, conventional narratives have tended to focus on the mythic Steve Jobs/Bill Gates rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. Here, the hero is Jack Tramiel, a Polish Holocaust survivor turned typewriter and calculator salesman who masterminded the Commodore computer. Commodore's VIC-20—which competed with the popular but pricey and complicated Apple II—is held up here as the first true home PC, one that lived up to Tramiel's credo of data power “for the masses, not the classes.” Tramiel especially enjoyed destroying Texas Instruments, an old nemesis, when that company sought to enter the home PC field. But when the irascible Tramiel was ousted from the top by elderly corporate hacks with no computer-culture sense, the Commodore company floundered (although there is no mention of the later Commodore Amiga PC and its breakthrough graphics). Also covered are the notorious, U.K.-originated Timex-Sinclair 1000—with its “membrane” keyboard—that broke the $100 price-tag barrier, and the Atari gaming line. For viewers who fancy exotic old chipsets and the creative use of minimal kilobytes, this will be gossipy business history and nerdcore nostalgia rolled into one. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)