Hi people!
Somebody brought my web page to the attention of ex-Commodore engineer
George Robbins (as seen in the "Deathbed Vigil" video ;) ), and he had
something interesting to say about the Hyperion:
GR> Commodore actually bought rights to the Hyperion design and there were
GR> a couple floating around West Chester. The design served as the basis
GR> for the first 8088 based PC-clones that Commodore manufactured, though
GR> they ended up in normal desktop cases. The next generation was based
GR> much more directly on the IBM PC's (probably for 100% compatibility)
GR> then we started making our own customer chips/asic to get the cost down
GR> before switching to industry standard "chipsets" for 286-486 designs.
GR> In the end it was cheaper to just buy and resell clones from HK.
GR>
GR> On of my tasks at Commodore before the Amiga stuff took over was to
GR> make a comparison of the Hyperion design and our current PC design to
GR> "prove" that we weren't using any of the Hyperion proprietary design
GR> features and there was no reason we should continue paying them
GR> royalties on every PC we sold. 8-)
As for the Commodore Hyperion in Jim Brain's Canonical List of Commodore
Computer Equipment, Mr. Robbins was only able to say that maybe Commodore
Canada sold Hyperions with the Commodore label as part of the deal. He
has no direct knowledge of Commodore selling Hyperions in the form that
Dynalogic made them.
Does anyone on this list have a Commodore-branded Hyperion?
--
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/