Anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on January 16, 2020 7:33 pm wrote:
> Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on January 16, 2020 6:27 pm wrote:
> > Almost certainly MOS has a business plan where the 6502 would be profitable
> > at much lower volumes that those it would eventually achieve.
> > There's no indication that immediately after launch MOS was producing the 6502 in huge numbers
> > needed to achieve extremely low production cost and selling them at marginal prices.
>
> Low volume at $25? Come on...
>
> And you are right, MOS didn't starting producing 6502 in large numbers, that's
> why they were sold to Commodore in 1976, but then, shipments skyrocketed.

At $25 it was cheap.

But to become the runaway success it was it would become even cheaper.
In a couple of years they were selling it to Atari for less than half of that.

I see no evidence that MOS has a business master for the 6502 which only made because MOS has a crystal ball and the foresight to realize the 6502 would end up being used in million of personal computers, consoles, kit and caboodle.

The 6502 was largely the brainchild of former 6800 designer Chuck Peddle.
He though there was some kind of market for a cheaper 6800 and ended up leaving for MOS where the management was more receptive.


>
> > And that's the bet IBM would have to make.
> > Not only to develop a chip that could be made at low cost but to make in advance a large
> > financial bet in high volume production and low margins on the hopes that their new
> > personal computer product would eventually sell enough to recoup all of this.
> >
> > And that was a bet IBM was almost assured to lose.
>
> When IBM released PC, they essentially shipped a machine very similar but better than their System/23
> for 1/10 the price, I am sure not everyone at IBM believed in this bet, but was a big bet.

That's not the kind of bet I was referring to.

As cheap as it was the IBM PC was sold at profit out of the gate.
The off the shelf components were cheap enough for that because the suppliers of said components had volume and market to amortize their costs.

If the PC was developed in house by IBM, IBM would have needed either to sell it at much higher price to make a profit OR sell it as a loss leader until volume enables lower production costs.



>
> > Because if the IBM PC hadn't been cloned against IBM's wishes, we would not be having this conversation.
>
> Why would anyone clone IBM PC to start with?
>
> IBM PC was already very popular (and the most capable personal computer for one year or two),
> softhouses start making software for it, clones appear to profit from the huge ecosystem.

People cloned the IBM PC because there were lots of users and it was possible to clone it.
And the PC had lots of users because soon the clone manufacturers started offering better deals than IBM.