BY TODD GARBARINI
The
technology that we all know and use today has become so ingrained in our
everyday lives that it’s virtually impossible to recall how we all survived
without them. Cell phones, portable computers, tablets, realistic-looking video
games, Global Positioning Systems, and access to extensive news media on a
24/7/365 basis were pipe dreams just twenty years ago. The computing power that
we all take for granted now started somewhere,
but most of the present-day users of techno gear weren’t even zygotes when the
home computer revolution was just getting off the ground. Yours truly was there
when my mother’s uncle worked for the federal government. He was the first to
get the really cool gadgets, mostly because he had the disposable income to
spend on them. I recall being in his basement in 1977 and playing Atari’s Pong
and being wowed by it. I was thrilled to watch movies on Wometco Home Theater
(WHT) on his rear-projection TV that he built out of a Heathkit two years later.
My mother’s second cousin had the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS‑80 Model I
in 1978. Santa Claus delivered an Atari 2600 to me in 1981 (one of the most
frustrating aspects of owning one would unquestionably be that the actual 8-bit
games themselves couldn’t live up to the excitement depicted on the cover
artwork). I was given a TRS-80 Coco (Color Computer) II in early 1984 and wrote
programs in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). In 1989 I
did desktop publishing in Pagemaker on an Apple Macintosh SE. In 1995 I purchased
a 100MHz Pentium Packard Bell IBM-compatible computer. Where did all of these
electronic gadgets come from?
Tomaso
Walliser’s 8-Bit Generation: The Commodore Wars is an entertaining and informative
documentary that attempts to answer that question. However, it really feels
geared towards those like myself who are in the know. I do feel, however, that
anyone who isn’t would not only be
lost but ultimately frustrated by this film as it assumes familiarity with its
subject which it tackles with rapid-fire editing and has an annoying habit of accentuating
the onscreen interviews (depending upon the subject being discussed) with strains
of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the
Mountain King and Richard Strauss’s Also
Sprach Zarathustra overused to the point of annoyance.Those shortcomings
aside, it’s also an insightful look at how modern business is conducted (that
is, cutthroat) and how the dominant factor in just about every business decision
boils down to two syllables: “money†(and sometimes, “revengeâ€).
The
film, which was shot between 2010 and 2012, primarily focuses on Jack Tramiel,
an Auschwitz survivor who saw the darkest side of humanity but was lucky enough
to come out of it. His success as a business man following his liberation from
the camp is a testament to his human spirit, business acumen and tenacity. He
went from selling reconstructed typewriters to calculators to personal
computers. Through interviews with Mr. Tramiel and many colleagues who worked
with him and for him, we learn about the founder of Commodore International, the
company that produced The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic
Transactor), the Commodore VIC-20, and the Commodore 64. I never owned any
of these computers, but the story behind their inception, rousing and
unprecedented success and ultimate failure is very intriguing. In addition to
Mr. Tramiel, we hear from his son Leonard, MOS Tech engineer Chuck Peddle, Nolan Bushnell (the founder of Atari), Commodore engineer Bil Herd (who also
narrates), and a whole slew of others too numerous to list.
The
fact that this film about hi-tech is available only DVD and not Blu-ray is not
lost on me and is quite ironic. DVD is now looked upon by some as a legacy
technology despite being around for 21 years, not unlike the very systems
depicted and discussed in the film itself. If you are interested in seeing it,
you would do well to read this next bit of info very carefully prior to making
a decision. The film is available in three different varieties:
-
Available here on DVD on Amazon.com (which has a 14-minute TEDx Talk Segment with Leonard Tramiel that can also be seen here on Youtube). Kino
Lorber has put together a very professional package for this release.
- Available as a high definition download in a deluxe edition
at this link with many extras not on the DVD.
-
Available as a high definition download in a Jack Tramiel edition at this link which contains everything in the
deluxe edition, plus a one-hour interview with Mr. Tramiel.
I’m
still waiting for a documentary on RCA’s Select-A-Vision Capacitance Electronic
Disc (CED) system…