Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Is Commodore poised for a comeback?
ZDNet ^ | December 16, 2005 | Ina Fried

Posted on 12/16/2005 2:15:21 PM PST by nickcarraway

It may be time for a Commodore comeback.

No, Lionel Ritchie isn't signing up with his old band. We're talking about Commodore, the venerable computer brand.

A Dutch consumer media company is hoping it can tap the power of the VIC 20, the PET and the Commodore 64 to launch a new wave of products, including a home media center device and a portable GPS unit and media player.

Yeahronimo Media Ventures, which has offices in Los Angeles and Baarn, the Netherlands, acquired the rights to the Commodore name late last year in a deal worth just over $32.7 million. Earlier this year, it took on Commodore as its own corporate moniker. The rebranded company already has some products available on its Web site, but hopes to make a bigger splash at the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

"We are excited to be launching our initial offerings at this year's CES," Commodore CEO Ben van Wijhe said in a statement. He said that the three new products will both advance the well-known brand as well as "uphold the world-class quality of yesteryear's Commodore products."

The company has said it plans to launch three products at the show. The Commodore MediaBox is an all-in-one home entertainment box with an Internet connection, digital TV tuner and hard drive for playing music downloads, games or on-demand video. The Commodore Navigator is a Windows CE-based portable device with a 20GB hard drive for music and video storage as well as built-in GPS and a 3.6-inch touch screen.

"Never before has a brand come out of hibernation and truly reinvented itself to position competitively in an ever-evolving digital media marketplace," van Wijhe said.

This is far from the first attempted comeback in tech, however. The Amiga, Commodore's onetime PC brand, has had its own decades-long history as fans tried to preserve both the computer's operating system and brand despite the lack of strong corporate backing.

Gateway had hopes of reinvigorating the Amiga PC when it bought the name and technology in 1997, but eventually scrapped its plans and sold the brand in 1999. Efforts to keep the computer's OS alive, however, have continued into the current decade.

Another '80s game name, Atari, bounced among several owners before making a comeback earlier this decade. Gamemaker Infogrames acquired Atari's name and game titles in 2001 and began using Atari as its own corporate name in May 2003. Meanwhile, Atari's classic games have also found new life in low-end TV consoles and cell phones.

Napster is perhaps one of the best-known recent transformations, with an authorized music subscription service taking on the brand built as the first of many rebel peer-to-peer file sharing systems.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 80s; amiga; business; c64; commodore; commodore64; computers; netherlands; pet; vic20
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 141-153 next last

1 posted on 12/16/2005 2:15:22 PM PST by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
Commodore?

What the heck are they going to run on their media box, anyway? AmigaOS 4? Windows?

2 posted on 12/16/2005 2:19:24 PM PST by Reactionary (The Stalinist Media is the Enemy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

In 1985, the Amiga was the best personal computer on the market. Period. Best graphics, sound, OS, could multi-task. It was at least 10 years ahead of its time in terms of technology. Still amazed that it never really took off.


3 posted on 12/16/2005 2:19:47 PM PST by iPod Shuffle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

While the commodore 64 was a great little platform and im sure the Vic 20 is still plenty useful, this sounds like a flop to me


4 posted on 12/16/2005 2:20:05 PM PST by mylife (The roar of the masses could be farts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Commodore 64, 2 floppy drives, expansion module, printer = $800 in 1984. 300K connection rates if I was lucky.

Sold for $25 when I bought a 386 w/ a 10 gig HD.


5 posted on 12/16/2005 2:20:29 PM PST by listenhillary ("Mainstream media" is creating it's own reality~everything sucks)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Ahh, the VIC 20, with its trusty "3583 bytes free" greeting at startup. Those were the days ...


6 posted on 12/16/2005 2:20:36 PM PST by TenaciousZ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Commodore games are available in one of those plug-in-to-your-TV units. Really cool stuff, Paradroid and Impossible Mission 1 and 2 (plus a bunch of other stuff) for 20 bucks. It would be nice to see them comeback, they were the best desktop game environment.


7 posted on 12/16/2005 2:22:18 PM PST by discostu (a time when families gather together, don't talk, and watch football... good times)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: iPod Shuffle

I owned an Amiga 500 and an Amiga 2000. Awesome machines. They were used to create Max Headroom for crying out loud!


8 posted on 12/16/2005 2:23:52 PM PST by spower
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: TenaciousZ
Ahh, the VIC 20, with its trusty "3583 bytes free" greeting at startup.

We were laffing the other day about the AN/UYK 20 computer (military) with its 64k boards of core memory. It was all very high tech ;)

9 posted on 12/16/2005 2:24:45 PM PST by mylife (The roar of the masses could be farts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: iPod Shuffle

Second computer I ever owned (first being a Timex Sinclair) and I loved it. You had to make some accomodations but that was part of it's charm.


10 posted on 12/16/2005 2:25:58 PM PST by CaptRon (Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: iPod Shuffle
In 1985, the Amiga was the best personal computer on the market. Period. Best graphics, sound, OS, could multi-task. It was at least 10 years ahead of its time in terms of technology. Still amazed that it never really took off.

I was completely amazed at the Amiga's power even up until 1990 or so. It could do more with less CPU horsepower than any other PC before or since. One wonders what their engineers could have done with a 64-bit Opteron, 1 GHz Hypertransport and 16 gigabytes of DDR RAM. :-)~

It just proves again what Microsoft and Intel have continued to prove repeatedly:

Better marketing beats better technology.

11 posted on 12/16/2005 2:26:49 PM PST by TChris ("Unless you act, you're going to lose your world." - Mark Steyn)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: spower

And the special effects for Babylon 5.


12 posted on 12/16/2005 2:26:49 PM PST by Eurotwit (WI)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Anybody interested in an old Kaypro or a Coleco Adam??


13 posted on 12/16/2005 2:27:42 PM PST by Old Professer (Fix the problem, not the blame!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Old Professer

Ahhh Kaypro, another world class leader L0L


14 posted on 12/16/2005 2:28:56 PM PST by mylife (The roar of the masses could be farts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

I remember back in the mid 80's I had a friend who was really in to computers. He had a Commodore 64.


15 posted on 12/16/2005 2:30:08 PM PST by yarddog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Old Professer

16 posted on 12/16/2005 2:30:17 PM PST by MarkeyD (Cowards cut and run. Marines finish the job. I really, really loathe liberals.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

The article's a little unsettling, because whatever else you can say about Commodore, it was never known for its quality control.

I remember the Amiga. Even tried to develop software for it. It was the most crashy computer I've ever seen before or since. Even early Windows looks half-decent by comparison. The screen would slide down and a big red box would appear with a "Guru Meditation" number.

The multitasking worked great, but of course if one application crashed so did the whole environment. That made the multitasking less than useful since you couldn't do anything in the background without having the foreground application crash and kill the machine :-(.

So I can't be too nostalgic for the Amiga, I'm afraid. And I don't see how it would make a Windows CE computer anything other than, well, a Windows CE computer.

D


17 posted on 12/16/2005 2:31:20 PM PST by daviddennis (;)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway
Gadzooks! I have many, many fond memories of my Commodores taking me from the typewriter to the digital age...

I had the VIC 20, 64 & 128. Matter of fact, I still have the 128 in its box within the confines of my Fibber McGee closet!

Someday, I will get up the courage to open the closet door...

18 posted on 12/16/2005 2:32:34 PM PST by Bender2 (Even dirty old robots need love!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

LOAD"*",8,1


19 posted on 12/16/2005 2:33:17 PM PST by listenhillary ("Mainstream media" is creating it's own reality~everything sucks)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

But will it read my old floppies?


20 posted on 12/16/2005 2:33:33 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 141-153 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson