In 1985, eighteen months after he survived a titanic board room struggle, Chairman Jack Tramiel of Commodore International took the step forward that he had been fighting tooth and nail for, announcing the release of the 900 model (pictured), a 16-bit microcomputer based on the Zilog Z8000 CPU that would take the competition to the Apple and IBM during the late 1980s.

Commodore 900A Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor, Tramiel had promised "computers for the masses, not the classes". To achieve this goal, he had driven Commodore to the edge of bankcrupcy, offering budget priced machines distributed through retail channels rather than authorized resellers. Following on from the success of the PET, the Commodore 64 was selling at the staggering rate of 400,000 units per month, and in fact a key issue for the company was finding a suitable successor to this runaway success. That would be the 900 model.