I suppose the change from bulky valve products to dinky transistorised ones still frightened people who thought they were too delicate. Gear just looked it that's all, though much budget stuff really was trash.
As it happens, valve equipment was most likely to fail.
COMMODORE USER, November issue.
Lots of talk about damage in 1985. But the Commie's still here.jpg (125.36 KiB) Viewed 12006 times
And a word from Commodore themselves wouldn't go amiss...
This (and the other videos down the side) also look a goldmine. Much to download and be glad of that people had video recorders: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kTYb6O0lVI
An automatic violin player with its musical data played from paper rolls. The principle was already there before computer music was ready. It even sounds like a synth or sampler!
Look at episode one of The Computer Programme. Rex Malik said the PCs of 2002 would be so powerful that most of the time they'd just sit idle, 'like a car on the kerb', as if software wouldn't considerably advance after 1982. I love how these people foresaw the horsepower yet had no inkling of what we'd do with it.
Oddly, the BBC were imaginative in predicting how computers could integrate peripherals (like the Laserdisc system for Encarta-style text and video). Yet even with Fairlight and other clues, they didn't see how computers beyond the workstations could do the same jobs themselves.
