R.I.P. Commodore 1954-1994
Posted: 2/16/2003 7:24:46 AMBy: Comfortably Anonymous
Times Read: 3,123
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Topic: Alternative Operating Systems
A look at an innovative computer industry pioneer, whose achievements have been largely forgotten
Tom R. Halfhill / Byte magazine August 1994
Obituaries customarily focus on the deceased's accomplishments, not the unpleasant details of the demise. That's especially true when the demise hints strongly of self-neglect tantamount to suicide, and nobody can find a note that offers some final explanation.
There will be no such note from Commodore, and it would take a book to explain why this once-great computer company lies cold on its deathbed. But Commodore deserves a eulogy, because its role as an industry pioneer has been largely forgotten or ignored by revisionist historians who claim that everything started with Apple or IBM. Commodore's passing also recalls an era when conformity to standards wasn't the yardstick by which all innovation was measured.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, when Commodore peaked as a billion-dollar company, the young computer industry wasn't dominated by standards that dictated design parameters. Engineers had much more latitude to explore new directions. Users tended to be hobbyists who prized the latest technology over backward compatibility. As a result, the market tolerated a wild proliferation of computers based on many different processors, architectures, and operating systems.
Commodore was at the forefront of this revolution. In 1977, the first three consumer-ready personal computers appeared: the Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80, and the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor). Chuck Peddle, who designed the PET, isn't as famous as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the founders of Apple. But his distinctive computer with a built-in monitor, tape drive, and trapezoidal case was a bargain at $795. It established Commodore as a major player.
The soul of Commodore was Jack Tramiel, an Auschwitz survivor who founded the company as a typewriter-repair service in 1954. Tramiel was an aggressive businessman who did not shy away from price wars with unwary competitors. His slogan was "computers for the masses, not the classes."
In what may be Commodore's most lasting legacy, Tramiel drove his engineers to make computers that anyone could afford. This was years before PC clones arrived. More than anyone else, Tramiel is responsible for our expectation that computer technology should keep getting cheaper and better. While shortsighted critics kept asking what these machines were good for, Commodore introduced millions of people to personal computing. Today, I keep running into those earliest adopters at leading technology companies.
Commodore's VIC-20, introduced in 1981, was the first color computer that cost under $300. VIC-20 production hit 9000 units per day--a run rate that's enviable now, and was phenomenal back then. Next came the Commodore 64 (1982), almost certainly the best-selling computer model of all time. Ex-Commodorian Andy Finkel estimates that sales totaled between 17 and 22 million units. That's more than all the Macs put together, and it dwarfs IBM's top-selling systems, the PC and the AT.
Commodore made significant technological contributions as well. The 64 was the first computer with a synthesizer chip (the Sound Interface Device, designed by Bob Yannes). The SX-64 (1983) was the first color portable, and the Plus/4 (1984) had integrated software in ROM.
But Commodore's high point was the Amiga 1000 (1985). The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody--including Commodore's marketing department--could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it's obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video. Nine years later, vendors are still struggling to make systems that work like 1985 Amigas.
At a time when PC users thought 16-color EGA was hot stuff, the Amiga could display 4096 colors and had custom chips for accelerated video. It had built-in video outputs for TVs and VCRs, still a pricey option on most of today's systems. It had four-voice, sampled stereo sound and was the first computer with built-in speech synthesis and text-to-speech conversion. And it's still the only system that can display multiple screens at different resolutions on a single monitor.
Even more amazing was the Amiga's operating system, which was designed by Carl Sassenrath. From the outset, it had preemptive multitasking, messaging, scripting, a GUI, and multitasking command-line consoles. Today's Windows and Mac users are still waiting for some of those features. On top of that, it ran on a $1200 machine with only 256 KB of RAM.
We may never see another breakthrough computer like the Amiga. I value my software investment as much as anyone, but I realize it comes at a price. Technology that breaks clean with the past is increasingly rare, and rogue companies like Commodore that thrived in the frontier days just don't seem to fit anymore.
Tech stuff
CPU: 6510, 0.985 MHz (PAL) and 1.02 MHz (NTSC).
ROM: 20 Kbytes.
RAM: 64 Kbytes.
Sound: SID 6581, 3 channels of lovely sound. The chip is very impressing for it's time.
Display: VIC-II, 16 colours, text resolution at 40 x 25. Graphics resolution at 320 x 200.
Storage: Tape interface or a 5 1/4" floppy drive that can store 170k/side.
Keyboard: Non-standard ASCII, 66 keys.
Other:
Cartridge Expansion slot.
`User' connector.
Two joystick ports.
TV connector (RF modulator, also transmits audio to the TV).
RGB/composite monitor connector (includes sound output).
Serial port for connecting printers and floppy drives.
SID
The 6581 Sound Interface Device (SID) is a single-chip, 3-voice electronic music synthesizer/sound effects generator compatible with the 65XX and similar microprocessor families. SID provides wide-range, high-resolution control of pitch (frequency), tone color (harmonic content), and dynamics (volume). Specialized control circuitry minimizes software overhead, facilitating use in arcade/home video games and low-cost musical instruments. Please note that the SID is not a FM-based synthesizer, like the Yamaha OPL series!!
The Display
Handled by the VIC-II chip (the enhanced version of the VIC, used on the Commodore VIC-20). 16 colours, text resolution at 40 x 25. Graphics resolution is 320 x 200. Smooth hardware-supported sprites with collision control, hardware scrolling, etc.
"320 x 200 is only in `hires' mode, where the system is restricted to 2 colours from the 16-colour palette per 8x8 block. This comes from a single colour map whose location can be user-defined." "An extra mode called `multicolour' can do 4 colours per 8x8 block using bitpairs (but this halves the horizontal graphics resolution i.e. double length pixels).
There are at least three additional video modes that can be addressed by multiplexing the VIC-II chip, but these are timing-critical and modes that work well with PAL may not work on NTSC (and vice versa). Some of these extra modes include FLI, IFLI, MCI and IMAP (IMAP being one of the few that is both PAL and NTSC compatible without modifications in the display routine). These routines are very CPU-intensive, and naturally aren't built into the VIC-II. Their enhancements vary, but most are able to break the number-of- colours-per-8x8-cell requirement.
You can read more about graphic modes in "A Brief Description Of Graphic Modes" under the Gallery section of area64
Storage
The speed of the tape drives (pic to the right) is 300 baud.
The floppy drives (1541, the pic at the top of the page) can only read one side at the time (one side is 170Kb) (There are also 3.5" 1.66Mb disks and HD's>1Gb which still is available for order)
Note:
"On the C64, the tape port (and drive)'s actual read rate is 1100-1200 baud. Data is written twice, and is accompanied by a CRC checksum code. This slows down the process to give or take 300 baud. CBM was the first (and last) computer company to have this feature in tape drives. This process has a drawback, however, and that is that the whole process is very intensive, and so all unnecessary functions are temporarily terminated. There no longer is a screen write, sound write, keyboard read (limited solely to the scan of the RUN/STOP key), and the jiffy clock (TI; TI$) is also stopped, which can wreck a program's tape load execution. Because of this, the more expensive disk drives became popular, and contrary to popular belief, they weren't popular only because of faster loading times for more data... even though that should have been the reason."
Tom R. Halfhill / Byte magazine August 1994
Obituaries customarily focus on the deceased's accomplishments, not the unpleasant details of the demise. That's especially true when the demise hints strongly of self-neglect tantamount to suicide, and nobody can find a note that offers some final explanation.
There will be no such note from Commodore, and it would take a book to explain why this once-great computer company lies cold on its deathbed. But Commodore deserves a eulogy, because its role as an industry pioneer has been largely forgotten or ignored by revisionist historians who claim that everything started with Apple or IBM. Commodore's passing also recalls an era when conformity to standards wasn't the yardstick by which all innovation was measured.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, when Commodore peaked as a billion-dollar company, the young computer industry wasn't dominated by standards that dictated design parameters. Engineers had much more latitude to explore new directions. Users tended to be hobbyists who prized the latest technology over backward compatibility. As a result, the market tolerated a wild proliferation of computers based on many different processors, architectures, and operating systems.
Commodore was at the forefront of this revolution. In 1977, the first three consumer-ready personal computers appeared: the Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80, and the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor). Chuck Peddle, who designed the PET, isn't as famous as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the founders of Apple. But his distinctive computer with a built-in monitor, tape drive, and trapezoidal case was a bargain at $795. It established Commodore as a major player.
The soul of Commodore was Jack Tramiel, an Auschwitz survivor who founded the company as a typewriter-repair service in 1954. Tramiel was an aggressive businessman who did not shy away from price wars with unwary competitors. His slogan was "computers for the masses, not the classes."
In what may be Commodore's most lasting legacy, Tramiel drove his engineers to make computers that anyone could afford. This was years before PC clones arrived. More than anyone else, Tramiel is responsible for our expectation that computer technology should keep getting cheaper and better. While shortsighted critics kept asking what these machines were good for, Commodore introduced millions of people to personal computing. Today, I keep running into those earliest adopters at leading technology companies.
Commodore's VIC-20, introduced in 1981, was the first color computer that cost under $300. VIC-20 production hit 9000 units per day--a run rate that's enviable now, and was phenomenal back then. Next came the Commodore 64 (1982), almost certainly the best-selling computer model of all time. Ex-Commodorian Andy Finkel estimates that sales totaled between 17 and 22 million units. That's more than all the Macs put together, and it dwarfs IBM's top-selling systems, the PC and the AT.
Commodore made significant technological contributions as well. The 64 was the first computer with a synthesizer chip (the Sound Interface Device, designed by Bob Yannes). The SX-64 (1983) was the first color portable, and the Plus/4 (1984) had integrated software in ROM.
But Commodore's high point was the Amiga 1000 (1985). The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody--including Commodore's marketing department--could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it's obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video. Nine years later, vendors are still struggling to make systems that work like 1985 Amigas.
At a time when PC users thought 16-color EGA was hot stuff, the Amiga could display 4096 colors and had custom chips for accelerated video. It had built-in video outputs for TVs and VCRs, still a pricey option on most of today's systems. It had four-voice, sampled stereo sound and was the first computer with built-in speech synthesis and text-to-speech conversion. And it's still the only system that can display multiple screens at different resolutions on a single monitor.
Even more amazing was the Amiga's operating system, which was designed by Carl Sassenrath. From the outset, it had preemptive multitasking, messaging, scripting, a GUI, and multitasking command-line consoles. Today's Windows and Mac users are still waiting for some of those features. On top of that, it ran on a $1200 machine with only 256 KB of RAM.
We may never see another breakthrough computer like the Amiga. I value my software investment as much as anyone, but I realize it comes at a price. Technology that breaks clean with the past is increasingly rare, and rogue companies like Commodore that thrived in the frontier days just don't seem to fit anymore.
Tech stuff
CPU: 6510, 0.985 MHz (PAL) and 1.02 MHz (NTSC).
ROM: 20 Kbytes.
RAM: 64 Kbytes.
Sound: SID 6581, 3 channels of lovely sound. The chip is very impressing for it's time.
Display: VIC-II, 16 colours, text resolution at 40 x 25. Graphics resolution at 320 x 200.
Storage: Tape interface or a 5 1/4" floppy drive that can store 170k/side.
Keyboard: Non-standard ASCII, 66 keys.
Other:
Cartridge Expansion slot.
`User' connector.
Two joystick ports.
TV connector (RF modulator, also transmits audio to the TV).
RGB/composite monitor connector (includes sound output).
Serial port for connecting printers and floppy drives.
SID
The 6581 Sound Interface Device (SID) is a single-chip, 3-voice electronic music synthesizer/sound effects generator compatible with the 65XX and similar microprocessor families. SID provides wide-range, high-resolution control of pitch (frequency), tone color (harmonic content), and dynamics (volume). Specialized control circuitry minimizes software overhead, facilitating use in arcade/home video games and low-cost musical instruments. Please note that the SID is not a FM-based synthesizer, like the Yamaha OPL series!!
The Display
Handled by the VIC-II chip (the enhanced version of the VIC, used on the Commodore VIC-20). 16 colours, text resolution at 40 x 25. Graphics resolution is 320 x 200. Smooth hardware-supported sprites with collision control, hardware scrolling, etc.
"320 x 200 is only in `hires' mode, where the system is restricted to 2 colours from the 16-colour palette per 8x8 block. This comes from a single colour map whose location can be user-defined." "An extra mode called `multicolour' can do 4 colours per 8x8 block using bitpairs (but this halves the horizontal graphics resolution i.e. double length pixels).
There are at least three additional video modes that can be addressed by multiplexing the VIC-II chip, but these are timing-critical and modes that work well with PAL may not work on NTSC (and vice versa). Some of these extra modes include FLI, IFLI, MCI and IMAP (IMAP being one of the few that is both PAL and NTSC compatible without modifications in the display routine). These routines are very CPU-intensive, and naturally aren't built into the VIC-II. Their enhancements vary, but most are able to break the number-of- colours-per-8x8-cell requirement.
You can read more about graphic modes in "A Brief Description Of Graphic Modes" under the Gallery section of area64
Storage
The speed of the tape drives (pic to the right) is 300 baud.
The floppy drives (1541, the pic at the top of the page) can only read one side at the time (one side is 170Kb) (There are also 3.5" 1.66Mb disks and HD's>1Gb which still is available for order)
Note:
"On the C64, the tape port (and drive)'s actual read rate is 1100-1200 baud. Data is written twice, and is accompanied by a CRC checksum code. This slows down the process to give or take 300 baud. CBM was the first (and last) computer company to have this feature in tape drives. This process has a drawback, however, and that is that the whole process is very intensive, and so all unnecessary functions are temporarily terminated. There no longer is a screen write, sound write, keyboard read (limited solely to the scan of the RUN/STOP key), and the jiffy clock (TI; TI$) is also stopped, which can wreck a program's tape load execution. Because of this, the more expensive disk drives became popular, and contrary to popular belief, they weren't popular only because of faster loading times for more data... even though that should have been the reason."
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By: Comfortably Anonymous
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Topic: Alternative Operating Systems
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Commodore Company history
Posted: 2/16/2003 7:29:04 AMBy: Comfortably Anonymous
Times Read: 1,999
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
Topic: Alternative Operating Systems
(taken from Project 64)
Birth of a Legend
Commodore International Limited was founded in 1958 by Jack Tramiel, a typewriter repairman from the Bronx, New York. It received much of its financing from Canada's Atlantic Acceptance Corporation and quickly grew to include typewriter manufacturing. However, Atlantic went bankrupt in 1965, threatening to take Commodore with it.
To save his company, Tramiel began hunting for a new source of funds. He found it in Irving Gould, a Canadian venture capitalist, who supplied the ailing company with $400,000 in exchange for 17% of the company and Tramiel's pledge of all the receivables.
Price War and the Lean Years
By the 1970's, Commodore Business Machines had grown further, branching into calculators and other office machinery. Business boomed until Commodore lost in a brutal price war with Texas Instruments. Commodore had been assembling pocket calculators with TI microprocessors. The chips cost Commodore about $50 per calculator, and the final product sold for about $100 each. In response, TI came out with a competing calculator of its own manufacture using the same chip that sold for only $49. Commodore lost $4 million on sales of $56 million and nearly sank.
Tramiel learned a valuable lesson. In 1976, Commodore bought MOS technologies, a failing semiconductor manufacturer, for $800,000, ensuring that it would no longer be dependent on outside vendors for needed parts.
Growth
Under Tramiel's deliberate guidance, Commodore grew into a $1 billion company, growing sevenfold from 1981 to 1984. It was one of the largest suppliers of home computers in the world.
Commodore 64 Era
By early 1982, Commodore had five new products in development, one of them being the infamous Commodore 64. Believing he had a winner, Tramiel took a gamble. He sidelined the other products and built up massive inventories of the C64. Then, he flew in the face of the computer industry by enlisting the same mass merchandisers (K-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Target, and others) that sold the Vic-20 to market the C64. By doing so, he proved that computer buyers didn't need to rely on the hand-holding of an elite class of computer-literate salespeople and their specialty store prices.
The C64 was rushed to market with haste bordering on recklessness, and about 1/4 of the machines shipped didn't work. Commodore's solution was a no-questions-asked policy on the exchange of defective machines. After several months, the defect rate had been whittled down to a more acceptable 4-5%.
By 1984, about 4 million Commodore computers were in use around the world, and 300,000 more were being sold per month. However, Commodore's leadership believed that market saturation was still a long way off, since only about 6% of U.S. households owned computers. This was far less than the 20-25% that owned video game players during the peak of the home video game craze.
Tramiel Leaves
Tramiel had been known for his iron-fisted style of management. He was involved with every aspect of the company and anything or anyone he didn't like was changed or removed. This led to a class action suit in November of 1983, which charged that Commodore failed to disclose information about its operations and did not build a strong management team.
According to a statement released in January of 1984, Tramiel said, "personal reasons prevent my continuing on a full-time basis with Commodore." Gould recruited Marshall F. Smith from Thyssen-Bornemisza NV, a conglomerate based in the Netherlands Antilles, to replace Tramiel.
At the time of Tramiel's departure, the home computer market was failing, causing Mattel and Coleco to leave the business. Another company that decided to leave the industry was Warner Communications, which sold Atari to the newly unemployed Tramiel for a pittance. Shortly thereafter, a stream of Commodore executives followed him.
Smith
In an effort to make Commodore profitable, Smith took to downsizing, cutting the payroll by more than 45%. Though the company had an impressive $339 million in 1985 holiday revenues, it made only $1 million for the quarter after paying off about 1/4 of its bank debt.
Commodore suffered through Fiscal Year 1985, losing $237 million, and getting into trouble with its creditors. The banks granted a much- needed one-month extension on Commodore's loans, and, with the success of the company's second-best Christmas sales ever behind them, Commodore defied the Gods of Bankruptcy yet again.
The Rattigan Years
In March 1986, Thomas J. Rattigan replaced Smith as Commodore's CEO. Rattigan was hired in April of 1985 with the understanding that he would replace Smith, who remained on as a director. Rattigan's objective during the first few months of his leadership was clear - cut costs in order to stabilize Commodore's position, allowing it to rebuild. Once again, the payroll was trimmed from top to bottom, and three plants were closed in five months. New controls were added in the finance department to prevent the sloppy reporting that had undermined Smith's leadership.
Commodore continued to sell respectable numbers of its $150 C64 throughout 1986. The Commodore 128, a successor to and more powerful machine than the C64, was selling for $300 at the time, also helping to keep the company afloat.
Rattigan's policies worked. By March of 1987, Commodore had caught up on its loans and posted a $22 million earning in the quarter ending December 1986. It also had $46 million in the bank, the most cash since 1983, its most profitable year.
Amiga
Commodore's next move was to release the Amiga line of home computers. Code-named 'Lorraine' during development, Amiga was quickly dubbed the "save-the-company machine." The Amiga was packed with computing power. At its center was a Motorola 68000, the same chip that powered Apple's original Macintosh. The Amiga had an additional set of three custom- designed chips, one to handle stereo sound, one for graphics and one for animation. The Amiga was also one of the first computers to mult -task, performing several different computing jobs at once - such as word processing and game playing.
The Post-Rattigan Years
On April 22, 1987, Rattigan was replaced by Chairman Irving Gould, the venture capitalist who had been involved with Commodore for over 20 years. It is unclear as to why Rattigan was replaced after turning the company around and posting $28 million in profits over the four quarters ending in March 1987. Rattigan himself claimed that he was forced out by Chairman Gould due to personality conflicts and that Gould was upset about Rattigan getting credit for the company's turnaround. Gould argued that the comeback in the U.S. was insufficient compared to its rebound in overseas markets, which accounted for 70% of its sales. In fact, despite its profitability, Commodore's U.S. revenues had declined by 54% in the same four quarters.
According to Gould's ideology, the North American operation was to be a sales and marketing extension of the company, rather than the unwieldy, semi-independent entity it had become. For the third time in Commodore history, a new leader began his term at the helm by drastically downsizing. Under Gould's reign, the payroll was cut from 4,700 to 3,100, including half the North American headquarters' corporate staff, and five plants were closed.
Current
On April 29, 1994, Commodore International announced that it had been unable to renegotiate terms of its outstanding loans and was closing down the business. The liquidation process lasted for months, owing largely to the far-reaching size of the corporation. In addition, the fact that the company was incorporated in the Bahamas while a large share of the creditors were from the United States made legal proceeding tense and drawn out. On April 20, 1995, almost a full year later, Commodore was sold to the German company ESCOM for approximately 10 to 12.5 million dollars.
Now the amiga rights is owned by Gateway 2000
Birth of a Legend
Commodore International Limited was founded in 1958 by Jack Tramiel, a typewriter repairman from the Bronx, New York. It received much of its financing from Canada's Atlantic Acceptance Corporation and quickly grew to include typewriter manufacturing. However, Atlantic went bankrupt in 1965, threatening to take Commodore with it.
To save his company, Tramiel began hunting for a new source of funds. He found it in Irving Gould, a Canadian venture capitalist, who supplied the ailing company with $400,000 in exchange for 17% of the company and Tramiel's pledge of all the receivables.
Price War and the Lean Years
By the 1970's, Commodore Business Machines had grown further, branching into calculators and other office machinery. Business boomed until Commodore lost in a brutal price war with Texas Instruments. Commodore had been assembling pocket calculators with TI microprocessors. The chips cost Commodore about $50 per calculator, and the final product sold for about $100 each. In response, TI came out with a competing calculator of its own manufacture using the same chip that sold for only $49. Commodore lost $4 million on sales of $56 million and nearly sank.
Tramiel learned a valuable lesson. In 1976, Commodore bought MOS technologies, a failing semiconductor manufacturer, for $800,000, ensuring that it would no longer be dependent on outside vendors for needed parts.
Growth
Under Tramiel's deliberate guidance, Commodore grew into a $1 billion company, growing sevenfold from 1981 to 1984. It was one of the largest suppliers of home computers in the world.
Commodore 64 Era
By early 1982, Commodore had five new products in development, one of them being the infamous Commodore 64. Believing he had a winner, Tramiel took a gamble. He sidelined the other products and built up massive inventories of the C64. Then, he flew in the face of the computer industry by enlisting the same mass merchandisers (K-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Target, and others) that sold the Vic-20 to market the C64. By doing so, he proved that computer buyers didn't need to rely on the hand-holding of an elite class of computer-literate salespeople and their specialty store prices.
The C64 was rushed to market with haste bordering on recklessness, and about 1/4 of the machines shipped didn't work. Commodore's solution was a no-questions-asked policy on the exchange of defective machines. After several months, the defect rate had been whittled down to a more acceptable 4-5%.
By 1984, about 4 million Commodore computers were in use around the world, and 300,000 more were being sold per month. However, Commodore's leadership believed that market saturation was still a long way off, since only about 6% of U.S. households owned computers. This was far less than the 20-25% that owned video game players during the peak of the home video game craze.
Tramiel Leaves
Tramiel had been known for his iron-fisted style of management. He was involved with every aspect of the company and anything or anyone he didn't like was changed or removed. This led to a class action suit in November of 1983, which charged that Commodore failed to disclose information about its operations and did not build a strong management team.
According to a statement released in January of 1984, Tramiel said, "personal reasons prevent my continuing on a full-time basis with Commodore." Gould recruited Marshall F. Smith from Thyssen-Bornemisza NV, a conglomerate based in the Netherlands Antilles, to replace Tramiel.
At the time of Tramiel's departure, the home computer market was failing, causing Mattel and Coleco to leave the business. Another company that decided to leave the industry was Warner Communications, which sold Atari to the newly unemployed Tramiel for a pittance. Shortly thereafter, a stream of Commodore executives followed him.
Smith
In an effort to make Commodore profitable, Smith took to downsizing, cutting the payroll by more than 45%. Though the company had an impressive $339 million in 1985 holiday revenues, it made only $1 million for the quarter after paying off about 1/4 of its bank debt.
Commodore suffered through Fiscal Year 1985, losing $237 million, and getting into trouble with its creditors. The banks granted a much- needed one-month extension on Commodore's loans, and, with the success of the company's second-best Christmas sales ever behind them, Commodore defied the Gods of Bankruptcy yet again.
The Rattigan Years
In March 1986, Thomas J. Rattigan replaced Smith as Commodore's CEO. Rattigan was hired in April of 1985 with the understanding that he would replace Smith, who remained on as a director. Rattigan's objective during the first few months of his leadership was clear - cut costs in order to stabilize Commodore's position, allowing it to rebuild. Once again, the payroll was trimmed from top to bottom, and three plants were closed in five months. New controls were added in the finance department to prevent the sloppy reporting that had undermined Smith's leadership.
Commodore continued to sell respectable numbers of its $150 C64 throughout 1986. The Commodore 128, a successor to and more powerful machine than the C64, was selling for $300 at the time, also helping to keep the company afloat.
Rattigan's policies worked. By March of 1987, Commodore had caught up on its loans and posted a $22 million earning in the quarter ending December 1986. It also had $46 million in the bank, the most cash since 1983, its most profitable year.
Amiga
Commodore's next move was to release the Amiga line of home computers. Code-named 'Lorraine' during development, Amiga was quickly dubbed the "save-the-company machine." The Amiga was packed with computing power. At its center was a Motorola 68000, the same chip that powered Apple's original Macintosh. The Amiga had an additional set of three custom- designed chips, one to handle stereo sound, one for graphics and one for animation. The Amiga was also one of the first computers to mult -task, performing several different computing jobs at once - such as word processing and game playing.
The Post-Rattigan Years
On April 22, 1987, Rattigan was replaced by Chairman Irving Gould, the venture capitalist who had been involved with Commodore for over 20 years. It is unclear as to why Rattigan was replaced after turning the company around and posting $28 million in profits over the four quarters ending in March 1987. Rattigan himself claimed that he was forced out by Chairman Gould due to personality conflicts and that Gould was upset about Rattigan getting credit for the company's turnaround. Gould argued that the comeback in the U.S. was insufficient compared to its rebound in overseas markets, which accounted for 70% of its sales. In fact, despite its profitability, Commodore's U.S. revenues had declined by 54% in the same four quarters.
According to Gould's ideology, the North American operation was to be a sales and marketing extension of the company, rather than the unwieldy, semi-independent entity it had become. For the third time in Commodore history, a new leader began his term at the helm by drastically downsizing. Under Gould's reign, the payroll was cut from 4,700 to 3,100, including half the North American headquarters' corporate staff, and five plants were closed.
Current
On April 29, 1994, Commodore International announced that it had been unable to renegotiate terms of its outstanding loans and was closing down the business. The liquidation process lasted for months, owing largely to the far-reaching size of the corporation. In addition, the fact that the company was incorporated in the Bahamas while a large share of the creditors were from the United States made legal proceeding tense and drawn out. On April 20, 1995, almost a full year later, Commodore was sold to the German company ESCOM for approximately 10 to 12.5 million dollars.
Now the amiga rights is owned by Gateway 2000
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