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In the United States, the CBM-II had two incarnations, the P series and the B series. Similar machines were released in Europe, but the model numbers were sometimes different. The P series was intended for home use, while the B series was intended for business use. Both used a MOS Technology 6509 CPU, an enhanced version of the venerable 6502 that was capable of addressing up to 1 megabyte of RAM via bank switching, and the same MOS Technology SID sound chip that was used in the popular Commodore 64. The P series also used the MOS Technology VIC-II video chip from the C64. The B series used a MOS Technology 6845 video chip in place of the VIC-II to give an 80-column monochrome output more suitable for word processing and other business use than the VIC-II's 40-column display. An optional Intel 8088-based coprocessor board allowed the CBM series to run CP/M-86 and MS-DOSMicrosoft's disk operating system, MS-DOS was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC. It was originally released with the PC in 1981 and had seven major versions before Microsoft stopped development in 1995. It was the key product in Microsoft' 1.25; however, the computers were not IBM PC Compatible and very little, if any, software taking advantage of this capability ever appeared.
Like the PET series, the CBM-II featured an IEEE-488The Hewlett-Packard Instrument Bus HP-IB , is a short-range digital communications cable standard developed by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the 1970s for connecting electronic test and measurement devices (e. digital multimeters and logic analyzers) to control parallel bus for use by disk drives and printers and was completely compatible with the drives and printers for the PET line. Additionally, the CBM-II had an industry-standard RS-232RS-232 (also referred to as EIA RS-232C or V. 24 is a standard for serial binary data interchange between a DTE ( Data terminal equipment) and a DCE ( Data communication equipment). It is commonly used in personal computer serial ports. History This stand interface.
Due to the popularity of the C64, the P series was cancelled in the United States before it could be officially released; however, a few dealers who received preproduction units sold them. As these computers had not received approval from the Federal Communications CommissionThe Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, created, directed, and empowered by Congressional statute. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 as the successor to the Federal Radio Commi, this caused legal problems for Commodore. The units were recalled and destroyed, but a very small number exist today, in private collections. At least one model, the P500, was commercially released in Europe but only sold in small numbers.
The most common of the B series was the B128, which had 128 kilobytes of RAM. The B128 did not sell well, and ultimately Commodore's inventory was liquidated by Protecto Enterprises, a large Commodore mail orderMail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. See also mail order bride External link . dealer based in Chicago, IllinoisThis article is about the city, for other uses of the term see Chicago (disambiguation : Hog butcher for the world,Tool maker, stacker of wheat,Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler;Stormy, husky, brawling,City of the big shoulders. Carl. The Protecto ads for the B128 bundle, including a dual disk drive, monitor and printer, appeared in various computer magazines for several years.
After discontinuing the CBM-II series, Commodore handed its documentation, schematics, and all other information over to the Chicago B128 Users Group, who developed a library of software for the series. Its library, however, paled in comparison to the large software libraries enjoyed by the C64 and Commodore VIC-20The VIC-20 was a home computer made by Commodore Business Machines with 5 KB RAM and a MOS Technology 6502 CPU, similar in physical shape to the later Commodore 64 and C16. The VIC-20 was released in June 1980, 2¾ years after Commodore's first personal co.
The design of the CBM-II series was revised, made compatible with the C64, and ultimately became the much more successful Commodore 128.