Editing Commodore CBM-II (section)

==History==
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 the P-series had not then been certified by the [[FCC]], Commodore were threatened with legal action and were forced to recall them. It was rumored that all recalled P-series machines were destroyed, however a handful of them are known to exist 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 low-profile '''B128'''{{ref label|not-c128|1|a}} (called the CBM 610 in Europe), 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 order]] dealer based in [[Chicago, Illinois]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.insectria.org/b128/dusk.html|title=Commodore B Series The Dusk of the Day}}</ref> The Protecto ads for the B128 bundle, including a dual disk drive, monitor and printer, appeared in various computer magazines for several years.

The CBM-II line sold poorly and ended up being extremely expensive to manufacture, as well as difficult to develop software for. Commodore did not release any sales figures or an official discontinuation date, however the B128/600 is the most common model in the lineup. Production ended at some point during 1984 and Commodore liquidated their remaining inventory in 1985. CBM-IIs were still being sold in Germany up to 1987. The exact number of CBM-IIs produced is unclear, however serial numbers indicate that at least 10,000 B128s were shipped along with a few dozen to a few thousand of the other models. It is believed that Commodore produced at least 5000–6000 of each machine.

After discontinuing the CBM-II range, Commodore handed its documentation, schematics, and all other information over to CBUG, the Chicago B128 Users Group.

Among these materials was a prototype motherboard using an [[Intel 8088]] processor, which hints at the possibility the line could have been made [[IBM compatible]] if production had continued.{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}}

CBUG went on to develop a library of software for the computers. Its library, however, paled in comparison to the large software libraries enjoyed by the Commodore 64 and [[VIC-20]].

The rounded case design of the high-profile CBM-II series would later be used in redesigned versions of the original PET/CBM computers, (such as the CBM8296) that the CBM-II line was designed to replace. In addition, the memory banking scheme of the CBM-II would be reused on the Commodore 128 with a few slight modifications.