Montgomery Grant advertisement for various Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga and Commodore PC computers and peripherals from the December 1988 issue of Commodore Magazine.
Source: Commodore Magazine – December 1988
Pictured above is an ad from the December 1988 issue of Commodore Magazine. Montgomery Grant was one of several popular mail order establishments for Commodore and other computer equipment. Featured in this ad are the following:
- The Commodore 64C which was the “new” version of the Commodore 64. This was primarily a cosmetic update to the original Commodore 64 and was released a year or so earlier.
- The Commodore 128D which was a Commodore 128 with built-in disk drive. The original Commodore 128 was also still being produced at this time but does not appear in this ad.
- Various disk drives, including the 1541-C, 1541-II, 1571 and 1581. The 1541-C was just the standard drive you would get for the Commodore 64 but updated to match the styling of the 64C. The 1541-II was a slightly newer model with an external power supply. The 1571 was a faster double-sided drive designed for the Commodore 128 (though it would also work with the Commodore 64, albeit more slowly), and the 1581 was a 3.5″ disk drive. The 1541-II is definitely a better buy here than the 1541-C. It’s only a few dollars more but it comes with an external power brick instead of a built-in power supply which made for a cooler running more reliable drive.
- Various computer packages that included things like the disk drive, monitor and printer (though there is one Commodore 64 package that apparenly comes with a monochrome monitor which is pretty dumb).
- Monitors, printers and various other peripherals.
- The Commodore Colt which was one of Commodore’s PC/XT compatible machines. I think they lost more money than they made on their PC compatibles though it didn’t cost all that more than a complete Commodore 128D system.
- And if you look close, you can see prices for a couple of hard drives just below the computer packages. $1169 for a 40MB hard drive! Which, according to a converter I used that adjusts for inflation would be equivalent to $2445 today!
