On Sun, 3 Mar 2013, Chris Tofu wrote: The REAL collector item would be the 4004 based Busicom.

On 03/03/2013 10:26 AM, Chris Tofu wrote: keys, some red, some blue IIRC. Green display IIRC. 1000$ to the first/last bidder (make that a Pay it Right Now). Mostly for the distinct pleasure of exhuming it from my time capsule. Alright I'll take 950$. I'm not a hard man. No, Commodore had several models to choose from. Two data points: (1) Sometime around 1974, I was proudly shown a calculator constructed in a plywood box by an ex co-worker who'd moved on to Commodore. It was her pet programming project--Commodore's first scientific calculator. I don't know what model that prototype eventually turned into. Her twin sister worked for GE and devised the "Jello test" for determining microwave oven radiation patterns. It was unnerving when the two of them were together. One (the programmer) was sweet and cheerful, while the other (the engineer) was acerbic with a very hard edge, having learned to compete in the male-dominated engineering community. Second data point: In the San Jose Town & Country shopping center, in the 70s, there was a store called "Mr. Calculator", who dealt in calculators and the then-new digital watch. I still have the San Jose Mercury News ad offering the watch for something under $20 and that they sold Commodore calculators (note the plural). --Chuck

Chris Tofu wrote: White first/last pleasure of hard man. Commodore sold a lot of different models of calculators, but interestingly, only toward the end of its calculator business did the company actually make its own machines. Early on, the company imported calculators from Casio in Japan, put Commodore badging on them, and sold them as Commodore machines throughout Commodore's distribution network in North America. It appears that the earliest machine that Commodore sold this was the Casio 101-E (the Export version of the Casio's second calculator, the 101), which Commodore sold as the model 500E (http://oldcalculatormuseum.com/commodore500e.html). This relationship with Casio continued for quite some time, but eventually Commodore hooked up with American IC manufacturer AMI, which had developed some low-cost calculator chipsets. Machines made with these chips would be less expensive than importing calculators from Japan. AMI had started up a company called Unicom that manufactured calculators based on the AMI chips, and Commodore signed up as an OEM customer, and the AMI/Unicom-made machines ended up being sold under the Commodore brand. These machines used blue-green, individual vacuum-fluorescent display tubes, and had colorful keycaps (for example, the Commodore C110, http://oldcalculatormuseum.com/commc112.html). Eventually, Commodore ended up buying MOS Technology, an IC maker that had developed some inexpensive single-chip calculator ICs, and built their own facilities for making calculators, but that all happened right about the time of the calculator market shakeout in the mid-1970's, and Commodore just couldn't compete price-wise with the huge glut of cheap calculators made possible by the introduction of Texas Instruments' very inexpensive single-chip ICs. This is when Commodore decided that the calculator business was a sinking ship and moved their product focus to other areas (personal computers). $950 for one of the VF tube Commodore-badged Unicom-made machines is...um...optimistic. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com