30 years ago: When the C64 and Amiga pioneer Commodore went bankrupt
30 years ago today, the home computer era came to an end with the bankruptcy of Commodore. For fans of the cult computers C64 and Amiga, it is a day of mourning
Commodore lettering on the hall of the former Commodore plant in Braunschweig.
(Image: Joho345, CC BY-SA 4.0)
April 29, 1994, was a sad day for many computer nerds. With the insolvency of Commodore, a pioneer disappeared from the market, a company that shaped the home computer sector like no other with computers such as the C64 or Amiga. It was the end of a slow decline and the result of many wrong and inflexible decisions - Commodore often reacted too late to market developments and had no suitable response to the shift towards PCs and modern consoles.
Jack Tramiel founded Commodore. Born Idek Trzmiel in Poland, he was a Jewish child who survived the concentration camp in Auschwitz and forced labor in Ahlen near Hanover. After the war, he moved to the USA. In 1948, he learned basic technical skills in the US Army, which he later deepened as a typewriter mechanic in New York.
(Image: Babylon4, CC BY-SA 3.0)
He moved on to Canada and founded the Commodore company in 1954. It sold typewriters, which it imported cheaply from Czechoslovakia in individual parts, assembled and sold under license. After low-cost Asian manufacturers entered the market at the end of the 1950s, Commodore switched to calculators.
Investor Gould joins Commodore
The Canadian businessman Iving Gould not only helped when Commodore was in difficulties in 1965, but also bought up over 17 percent of Commodore shares (worth over 400,000 dollars). Through several further financial injections, Gould became Commodore's largest investor over time.
When the Asian suppliers also put pressure on the calculator sector, Commodore expanded its portfolio to include pocket calculators. Tramiel had seen the then new devices on a trip to Japan and came back with the idea of bringing them onto the market himself. Commodore purchased the corresponding processors from Texas Instruments - when TI, of all companies, brought its own calculators onto the market at dumping prices, Commodore was determined to become less dependent on suppliers.
(Image: Markus Will)
This was achieved with the takeover of chip manufacturer MOS Technologies in 1976. Commodore not only acquired a supplier for pocket calculators, but also the developers of the important 8-bit chip MOS 6502. Chief developer Chuck Peddle immediately suggested building their own computer. Commodore's first computer, the PET 2001 PET = Personal Electronic Transactor), made its debut at CES 1977. With a 6502 chip, monochrome monitor, cassette drive and 8 kilobytes of memory, it was a first success for the company. And not only that: with the MOS 6502, Commodore was now the supplier of one of the most important CPUs, which ran in many 8-bit systems such as those from Apple or Atari.
Home computers for the masses
Commodore launched the first low-cost computer on the market in 1981 with the VC 20: for 300 dollars, the device offered a 6502 processor, 5 kilobytes and rudimentary color graphics, which was the entry point into the computer world for many. In 1982, it was the best-selling home computer and the first Commodore computer to exceed one million units sold.
This success was only followed by the Commodore 64, which was released in September 1982 and turned the 8-bit market on its head: with an estimated 17 million units sold, it is considered the most successful home computer of all time. In the shadow of this success were devices such as the Commodore 128 or the Commodore 246 series, which did not sell nearly as many units.
(Image: Evan-Amos, Bearbeitung: Markus Will)
Tramiel was a tough and feared businessman. His understanding of business had to be followed by the staff and endured by the trading partners. When Jack Tramiel was not allowed to bring one of his sons into management and had a falling out with Irving Gould over the company's direction, he left Commodore in 1984, taking some of the best developers with him. Tramiel bought the Atari company and openly went into battle against Commodore.
Commodore, in turn, had now lost its boss and some of the C64 developers. Although the Commodore 64 dominated the 8-bit market, they had no access to the emerging 16-bit wave. This came with the purchase of a small company called Amiga. Under the leadership of developer Jay Miner, who was already in charge of chip development for the Atari 400/800, a small team of developers had wanted to develop the best home computer ever since 1982, but there was no major investor behind the project and they were constantly struggling to survive. Although the presentation of the Lorraine prototype at the 1984 CES was a success, it did not attract any investors.
A loan almost turned the Amiga into an Atari
Instead, Amiga obtained a loan of 500,000 dollars from Atari – well before the takeover by Jack Tramiel – to continue developing its project. When Tramiel's Atari takeover talks later leaked out, the Amiga developers panicked. They were still smarting from a takeover meeting in which Tramiel had wanted to take over the company at a dumping price months earlier. If Amiga didn't pay back the 500,000 dollars by August, he would probably have become their boss.
At the last second, Commodore bought Amiga for 27 million dollars and paid Atari off. Tramiel, still in takeover negotiations, had no idea what the 500,000 dollar check meant and later sued Commodore, which ended in a settlement a few years later. With Commodore behind them, the Amiga engineers developed the Amiga 1000, which celebrated its premiere in New York on July 23, 1985.
(Image: Markus Will)
With the Motorola 68000 with 16 (internally 32) bits and 7.16 megahertz, four-channel sound and up to 4096 simultaneous colors, the Amiga was graphically far ahead of the competition at the time. The AmigaOS was also the first widespread home computer with an operating system that was capable of preemptive multitasking. However, the Amiga was not yet positioned correctly: With a remote keyboard, it looked more like an office computer and was still too expensive for the children's room, while Atari already had a keyboard computer with the same processor on the market with the Atari ST.
The Amiga's breakthrough came with the Amiga 500, released in 1987. It was a keyboard computer similar to the C64, but with the performance data of the Amiga 1000 and also significantly cheaper than the first version of the series. Games such as Turrican, Defender of The Crown, Shadow of The Beast, Settlers and Lemmings demonstrated the Amiga's outstanding capabilities and led to Commodore overtaking Atari in terms of sales over time.
Later, more professional Amigas and CD versions appeared
The Amiga 2000, also released in 1987, was intended to appeal to more professional users. It had a separate keyboard and a spacious housing for additional cards. In 1990, the CDTV, an Amiga 500, was released as a CD console: very stylish, but unfortunately otherwise with technology that was now five years old. The Amiga 3000 was again intended for professional users. It was not until 1992 that two Amigas appeared with the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000, whose graphics capabilities were able to compete with the emerging VGA PCs. However, they came too late to turn the tide.
Amiga 500 Plus was supposed to replace the Amiga 500 in 1991, but brought hardly any improvements and instead incompatibilities. The Amiga 600, which appeared in 1992, was also not a real further development, as the performance data remained more or less the same. It had more compact dimensions due to the omission of the numeric keypad, the design was based on the Amiga 1200, but the processor was still the 68000 with 7.16 megahertz. As an alternative to its own Amiga series, Commodore successfully offered IBM PC-compatible computers, occasionally with the PC 10 to PC 70.
The Commodore 65 almost came onto the market as the successor to the C64 in 1992, until the planners at Commodore realized that new 8-bit computers were no longer in demand. The last product, the Amiga CD32, came too late as a CD console to save Commodore from insolvency. On April 29, 1994, the time had come: Commodore was bankrupt.
The German PC distributor Escom then took over the rights to the Amiga and continued to distribute the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 until 1996, when they themselves had to file for bankruptcy independently of the Amiga. Since then, the rights to the Amiga and Commodore names have passed into different hands.
Today, an active nerd community takes care of Commodore's legacy: enthusiasts continue to supply the systems with software and expansions. C64 has a huge fan base. It was even re-released four years ago in an FPGA version in its original size and with technical innovations. On the Amiga, you can also play via FPGA on the Amiga 500 mini-console, or you can play on the original device with an SD card partition. Lovers of classic devices can also meet at exhibitions such as the recent Retro Computing Festival in Paderborn.
(mawi)
