The Commodore 64 was a commercial success from the very beginning. But Jack Tramiel was concerned about the cheaper machines appearing in large numbers in the market — mainly Sinclair and Texas Instruments machines. There was much room for improvement in the Commodore 64, as its built-in BASIC interpreter lacked many useful commands. Furthermore, the 64's complex design with many specialized chips drove up production costs.

So Commodore began designing a new machine built around a new custom chip called TED. TED stands for Text Editing Device, but despite its name, it handled not only graphics but also sound and I/O. The chip offered the same maximum resolution as the 64 — 320×200 pixels — but featured a palette of 121 colors (15 colors with 8 shades plus black without shade), far wider than the 64's 16-color palette. However, one very important concept was missing: sprites.

This, combined with genuinely weak sound capabilities — just two square-wave channels, or one square-wave plus one white noise channel — showed that TED could not be considered an upgrade to the VIC-II and SID.

The Original Concept of the 264 Series

The initial concept of the 264 series machines — as all TED-based machines were called — was a small machine with rubber keys and a compact, nicely designed case. These devices were meant to sell at a very low price of just $49.

Despite its dimensions, the machine had many ports: two joystick ports, a cartridge port, cassette port, serial port, composite and RF connectors, and even a reset button. This machine is what later became known as the Commodore 116, sold in Europe as a cheaper version of the Commodore 16.

The real beginning of the TED concept was this: an inexpensive machine that outperformed the Timex/Sinclair machines. The Commodore 116, with its small size and rubber keys, was very close to the Sinclair Spectrum design concept — and that was exactly what Jack Tramiel really wanted to achieve.

The prototypes of the 264 series were the Commodore 264 and Commodore 232 machines. As their names indicated, they had 64 and 32 kilobytes of RAM respectively. These machines were intended for business use, so the key was to embed the required office software as ROM in ICs on the motherboard.

Initially, the idea was to let customers choose which software titles they wanted. A word processor and the LOGO programming language were initially planned to be available, but eventually things changed and the Commodore 264 shipped with a bundle of 4 built-in programs: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, and a charting program. The machine was renamed because of this software bundle, and the "Commodore Plus/4" was born.

The Commodore 232 did not receive much interest. However, a machine with less memory was eventually designed and called the Commodore 16 — a computer with only 16 kilobytes of RAM intended as an upgrade to the VIC-20, which had been discontinued in 1984. Essentially, the Commodore 16 was the same as the Plus/4 but with only 16KB RAM and no built-in software. It used a dark gray case with the same shape as the VIC-20.

These machines featured a new BASIC interpreter: BASIC version 3.5. Despite its name, it was far more advanced than BASIC 4 found in CBM machines. BASIC 3.5 offered commands for graphics and sound control. Disk commands were also available. A machine language monitor was built in.

The Commodore 264 was planned for retail at $79, but before the TED machines reached store shelves, Jack Tramiel had left Commodore. Because of this, the TED project changed, and Commodore began thinking of these machines as true successors to the Commodore 64 — not a new line of low-cost machines.

Design and Appearance

The Commodore Plus/4, like the Commodore 264, had a dark gray case with a small and elegant size, white keys, and no numeric keypad. A beautiful look for a home computer — though perhaps not entirely suitable for an office and business machine.

Another prototype also existed: the Commodore V364. It was similar to the Plus/4 but designed with a larger numeric keypad. It had a built-in third-party speech synthesizer chip — hence the "V" in its name — and was meant to ship an improved version of the Magic Desk software. This machine was supposed to be the high-end device of the TED line. The project never saw the light of day. Only two or three prototypes were built, and they are of course extremely rare.

So initially, the TED line was meant to offer these machines: a cheap device for home use — the Commodore 116 at $49; a better machine with built-in software in ROM — the Commodore 264 at $79; and finally an advanced device with advanced office automation software and a speech synthesizer — the V364. Low price, better BASIC than the 64, and built-in software were the keys to success. But unfortunately, things turned out differently.

Why Did They Fail?

The Plus/4 was released in 1983 and the Commodore 16 in 1984. Later in Europe, the Commodore 116 was sold as a cheaper version of the 16 — mainly in Germany. In the United States, these machines were a complete commercial failure. Prices were far too high: the Plus/4 cost more than the Commodore 64! This positioned the machine as an upgraded successor. But a successor should be better. How could the TED chip compete with the advanced graphics and sound of the 64? A nicer palette was not enough.

The built-in software was disastrous. The programs were genuinely bad and completely unsuitable for serious office use. The word processor offered only 99 lines of text. It was an 80-column display, but since the Plus/4 displayed only 40 characters per line, it was difficult to see what you were actually writing. The cursor response was also very slow. The spreadsheet was slightly better but very limited. The database was simple, and the charting software did not use the TED bitmap graphics — it simply used text characters to draw points.

As a result, the Plus/4 did not offer interesting software for offices. Furthermore, the software only used the disk drive for saving data, and home users with tape drives could not save their work. The idea of built-in programs was right — the Plus/4 was actually the first computer to have this feature — but with those weak programs, nothing went well.

Incompatibility and Peripherals

The TED machines were not compatible with the Commodore 64, so users could not use the large 64 software library. Worse, the joystick connectors were non-standard and used mini-DIN connectors. A mini-DIN connector was also used for the tape drive. This meant people with Commodore or Atari devices had to buy another joystick for the TED. 64 owners could not use their tape drives. Adapters later allowed standard joysticks, but they were not available at first. Commodore built a joystick for the Plus/4, 16, and 116 called the T1341, and a new cassette drive called the 1531 — exactly like the 1530 but with a different connector.

The TED machines were not meant to compete with the 64, which is why they had their own peripherals. Incompatibility was not considered a problem by the designers. The non-standard connectors were part of the original 116 design, and the main reason was the machine's size — there was no other way to fit all the ports. Then, due to commercial choices, they were used on the other machines. However, the Plus/4 and 16 could have had standard joystick ports without any problem.

Since the Plus/4 was priced higher than the 64, people were disappointed. Due to weak built-in software, 40-column video, and the slow 1541 disk drive, it was not great for office use. And as a home computer at that price, it was no better than the 64. The 64 was a great gaming machine, and if you wanted to program in BASIC, you could easily extend the old interpreter with cartridges like Simon's BASIC. So the capable BASIC 3.5 in the Plus/4 did not seem crucial enough for success.

The machine did offer improvements over the 64: a faster CPU (MOS 7501, a 6502-based processor with a maximum speed of 1.79 MHz), better BASIC, and advanced memory management allowing 60KB of free BASIC memory. The 64 only allowed 32KB of free BASIC memory plus 4KB RAM for machine language programs. But 60KB of BASIC RAM in a 64KB machine could not really matter that much. With the slow serial protocol of the 1541, a large BASIC program could not load quickly.

Actually, a new drive was designed for the TED series called the 1551. It had a special connector that plugged into the cartridge port and provided parallel data transfer. But this drive was introduced late in these computers' life and, while three times faster than the old 1541, was never released.

Games and TED Limitations

If you look at games for the Plus/4 or Commodore 16, they are not as good as their 64 counterparts. The lack of hardware sprites forced programmers to use programmable characters. As a result, these software sprites usually did not move smoothly and collided with backgrounds also made of programmable characters. The processor could not run at full speed during I/O operations, meaning real-world speed was not much different from the 64. So games could not use the better CPU speed to overcome TED's limitations. Of course, excellent programming techniques could enable higher-quality games, but that required enough time for developing big games — an opportunity these beautiful machines never got.

The sound chip was also not very good and seemed disappointing compared to the excellent SID. Game music was really weak. Actually, you can make good music with TED, but it takes a lot of effort.

Since the Plus/4 and 16 were the same machine, developers did not bother writing separate games for each and only programmed 16K games that ran on both. This sacrificed the Plus/4's larger memory, which could have delivered better games than the 16. Plus/4 titles using its full memory are rare.

Summary

The Plus/4 was priced far too high to be an attractive home computer. People kept buying the Commodore 64 because it could do similar things, its 16 colors still looked good, its BASIC could be extended, and it was a great gaming machine with a huge existing software library. And you could use standard joysticks. The TED machines did not sell well for business either, as they were not advanced enough for office use. As a result, they had no commercial success in the United States.

Ironically, by the time these machines were introduced, Texas Instruments had already retired from the market, and Timex/Sinclair was not selling well in the US. So the TED computers did not even have competitors to race against. The Commodore 16 met the same fate. A 16KB machine was a strange choice for 1984. Compared to the VIC-20, it was a good upgrade, but due to incompatibility with VIC-20 software and most peripherals — including the VIC modem — it was hardly a good VIC-20. So it did not sell in the US either.

Despite these facts, these machines had intelligent designs. They were smaller than previous Commodore machines, had fewer chips, but still retained many features with some improvements. TED was truly advanced. But Commodore management saw these machines as a way to improve profitability. They tried to sell them at high prices, which could have generated significant revenue given their cheaper design compared to the 64. But buyers could not forget the machines' shortcomings when told the prices.

If these machines had been priced more appropriately, they could have succeeded in the United States. In Europe, they were sold at reasonable prices and found success in various countries: Italy, Germany, England, Finland, Sweden. They did not sell enormously, but they achieved some success.

These machines were not perfect. The custom TED, CPU, and PLA chips were truly fragile and prone to failure. These chips tend to corrode and have a high probability of damage. From experience, the most common chip to fail is the CPU. It is a custom processor and cannot be directly replaced with a 6502 or 6510. Now you can understand how difficult it is to repair a TED machine — you might find the problem in minutes, but you have no spare parts for it. Read about hardware maintenance for these machines in the exclusive AmigaStore article.

But make no mistake — TED machines are truly good and powerful. These computers can do great things. The image above shows an expanded Commodore 116 with 64KB RAM running an advanced Plus/4 demo. Yes, that is the famous Amiga ball moving very fast — movement and speed that the Commodore 64 cannot easily achieve.