What happened to the unsold CPC664s?
Donated to schools?
ended up in landfill?
Quote from: dcdrac on 19:07, 02 November 15
What happened to the unsold CPC664s?
Donated to schools?
ended up in landfill?
Goodness me, this is Amstrad you are talking about.
They were sold. Simple as that. Amstrad were not a company who donated or dumped stock in landfills. Even the disastrous Pen Pad got had the entire stock sold to Tandy (Radio Shack) who sold them for less than it cost for Amstrad to make them.
The Winter '85 Amsoft catalogue still lists the CPC 664 as a current product. Amstrad would have let the remaining stock go for a price somewhere between the cost of 464 and 6128. Remember the 664 never had a Christmas to itself either so Amstrad would have never done a big Christmas production run for it. The production run for Christmas 1985 was 464's and 6128's.
Anyone got a 664 to check the date codes in them? Pretty sure no date code would be beyond June 1985 for any of them.
You may be certain that they were'nt taken out of the shops before they had been sold up to the last one.
While the 6128 was sold as the new "profesional" model (first CP/M plus home computer), the 664 was still a good bargain for christmas 1985.
EDIT : wooops... chinnychill10 has passed me on the line !
There's a lovely story told by David Pleasance of Commodore that around '85 a distributor came to him wanting to buy the ENTIRE UK allocation of C64's for that Christmas.
Obviously that would be a stupid thing to do. You'd piss off your entire supply chain and you'd never sell a computer to anyone else ever again.
So what did he do? Well he sold the distributor his entire stock of Plus 4's! In fact every Plus 4 Pleasance could get his hands on. A few million quids worth!
And we ALL know what happened to the Plus 4, a machine doomed from the start. A nice bit of business from Commodore UK, dumping the entire stock of the doomed computer onto someone who apparently wanted them!
And then a few weeks later they came back and wanted all the matching peripherals as well. Tape decks, tape recorders the lot!
Nice little earner Rodney, nice little earner!
Yup, now we just need to dig a new landfill for all the failed 664 membranes :D
Bryce.
Quote from: chinnyhill10
Anyone got a 664 to check the date codes in them? Pretty sure no date code would be beyond June 1985 for any of them.
100% they would have sold them all off.
I remember a schoolmate picked one up when the 6128 was already out (but was a bit more expensive).
As Chinny said, I think they just priced it between the 464 & 6128.
I have a Schneider 664 with a date code of April 1985 and two Australian delivered (Awa) 664's both May 1985.
Cheers,
Shane
Let's not forget that that 6128 was on the cards right from the beginning, so I bet Amstrad didn't produce that many of the 664s.