Commodore LCD Commputer Specification
Commodore LCD Computer Internal Specification

Bob Russell brought this in a few years ago, it shows some of the early specifications for the not-released Commodore LCD computer.

Commodore LCD Specification PDF

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Too bad that this computer was not produced. I don't know if the "spiral disk" was a good idea, but the huge ROM with MMU, and details like that the spreadheet program can use calculated fields as inputs for other calculations, which was not possible with Visi Calc according to the spec document, sounds like a good idea. And of course, the integrated display.

A Ram file system would have made the Commodore LCD a virtual machine.  It would be like running a computer on batch files or programs that could be swapped in and out.

I don't know yet whether the spiral disk made it to the prototype.
The specification in the pdf doesn't match Bil Herd's hardware.
 

What I'm most impressed with, is the idea to include business software in firmware.

 
Was that idea still valid later in the project?

 
I had a Amstrad notepad computer. This spec look similar to a Amstrad NC100. It had a built in word processor, but not a spreed sheet program.

 
But if we look at the pictures of the commodore LCD, it didn't have a 3.5” disk drive. I guess it was to make it small to skip things like that.

 
If it would have memory backup battery for the RAM to save files on RAM disk, and connector for an external disk drive. Then it would have come away with it.

 
So if it was bundled with a disk drive, and had battery back up for RAM. Then I'm quite sure that it would have been the biggest selling computer of all times. It would have been a killer business machine.

Just a few points of clarification surrounding this machine:
1) The "spec" shown here is not what we tried to build. While I may have seen this document 30 years ago, I have zero recollection of it.
2) The machine most definitely had a Ram Disk.
3) I don't recall that Bil had that much to do with the hardware. The hardware lead was Jeff Porter. I was the system software lead. There was a cast of many folks involved in the custom chips, the various applications (word processor, spreadsheet, etc).
4) It worked with the commodore serial bus floppy drives of the day.

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