US Company Buys Commodore Brand For $33 Million 410
inKubus writes "Tulip Computers International BV -- which has held the rights to Commodore since 1997 -- said Thursday it will sell the once-mighty Commodore computer brand to U.S.-based Yeahronimo Media Ventures Inc. for 24 million euros, or $33 million. A company spokesman said they would "take actions" against possible copyright infringements of the Commodore name in the United States as well as release a new MP3 player and rerelease classic games."
Is this a U.S. company (Score:3, Informative)
Sports & Events
E-mail: info@yeahronimo.com
Yeahronimo Media Ventures Inc.
Ms. Roxanne Pons
Public Relations
Tel: +31 35 543 05 07
E-mail: press@yeahronimo.com
Company Address Europe (Operational Offices)
Hermesweg 15
3741 GP BAARN
The Netherlands
Company Address USA
Yeahronimo Media Ventures Inc
433 N. Camden Dr., Suite 600
Beverly Hills, Ca. 90210 USA
Phone: +1 213 379 0540
Fax: +1 310 362 8608
Re:Oh cool. (Score:4, Informative)
It was on slashdot a couple weeks ago.
More likely, this Yeahanomorinono Media Venture Concern (is that REALLY a US company?!) will sue her ass into a hole.
Anyone know whats up with her or Commodore One? Is she using the Commodore name legally?
Too bad this company has no vision. To hell with mp3 players and re-selling old games, I'd love to see them update the Amiga, a la the G4 Mac and OS/X.
That I'd pay for.
Memory Banking (Score:5, Informative)
So what their profit making plans are: (Score:3, Informative)
2) Decry copyright infringements about defunct company (that nobody knew existed anymore)
3) Sue people
4) Make Profit!!!
Hey I was able to complete all the steps...sound's like a familiar tactic from our favorite companies.
Re:After all... (Score:2, Informative)
Wow! now the Commodore 64 will flourish!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:After all... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:After all... (Score:3, Informative)
Almost certainly, yes, but not necessarily. MIDI interfaces were available for the C64, and Commodore themselves even made a MIDI keyboard, the MK10. I still have one.
Re:After all... (Score:4, Informative)
The company making the new Amiga Operating System is Hyperion Entertainment [hyperion-e...inment.com]
And an example of one of the dozen or so online stores that currently sell the new Amiga Hardware coupled with the new Amiga operating system as well as Classic Amiga Hardware and Software is Vesalia Online [vesalia.de] --- Thats right! You can already buy it!!!!
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:After all... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:M.U.L.E (Score:2, Informative)
Traders [the-underdogs.org]
TZ-Colony [the-underdogs.org]
and
Subtrade:Return to Irata [the-underdogs.org]
They dont add much though.
The original is still the best.
Not just a lack of marketing... (Score:3, Informative)
- It was a CEO making 10+ million a year when his company was going down the tube.
- It was paying $800,000 a month for a huge factory building in West Chester, PA when most of manufacturing had long ago moved overseas.
- It was C= snubbing of third parties like Newtek (Video Toaster guys), until it was WAY too late.
- It was C= thinking they could sell crappy PC's under their name better than their own original product. They lost MILLIONS on those.
The fact that they lost the MHz war meant little as the Amiga relied on co-processing for most everything PC's were using the main processor for. However, C= delayed the production of the AA and AAA graphic chipsets far too long. By the time the 1200/4000 series was released, it was already all but old.
Re:After all... (Score:2, Informative)
Not unless the MIDI was included on a data CD packaged with one of Duran Duran's albums. MIDI files aren't recordings; they're re-interpretations, and I believe they're considered "fair use"
Commodore's heritage (Score:4, Informative)
Commodore was founded by Jack Tramiel, who was a Polish-born American citizen, established Commodore in Canada to circumvent stricter import/export regulations in the US (some of Commodore's early office products and parts were imported from eastern Europe and relations between US and nations within the Soviet sphere of influence were obviously cooling). Co-founder CP Morgan might've been Canadian but I'm not sure. In any case, CP Morgan's company went bankrupt and the SEC thoroughly investigated Morgan for less-than-honest conduct. Later, Canadian Irving Gould invested in Commodore and kept it alive, but he was ultimately responsible for ousting Jack in the 80s. Gould was also noted for his not-quite-honest business practises. If I recall, Commodore International was incorporated offshore to avoid taxation, although the physical offices were in Canada.
So....the "Canadian Icon" Commodore was founded by an American Citizen (a remarkable one who survived Auchwitz and had quite an acumen for business, but not Canadian) and incorporated offshore. The early Canadian investor (Morgan) had a minority stake and went bankrupt and nearly pulled Tramiel into a legal quagmire with his corporate hanky-panky. The next Canadian that stepped into the picture (Gould) outed the founder and let Jack take some of Commodore's best people with him over to Atari, then subsequently squandered the prize they snatched from Jack at Atari (the Amiga--which was a fantastic machine that was mismanaged into the ground).
Since the Bankruptcy, what was left of Commodore never came back to Canada--it existed solely in Europe.
As a Canadian myself, I think I'd find another Icon to be proud of.
Re:Let Me Get This Straight... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:uh? (Score:2, Informative)
correction of correction (Score:3, Informative)
The main difference between the MOS 6510 and the original Rockwell 6502
MOS created the "original" 6502 design and licensed it to others--Rockwell probably being the biggest of those (I think they supplied Atari for a time? Cannot remember). The MOS6510 was harware enhanced, whereas the ROK6502 was software enhanced. The ROK6502 didn't have the I/O port, but Rockwell defined ALL the "undefined opcodes" in the base 6502 design.
The "undefined opcodes" are binary numbers that do not represent an assembly-language operation and their behaviour is unpredictable and may change between chip revisions. The 6510 did not enhance the instruction set in any real way (and Commodore warned in its user manual ominously about "not being responsible for the use of undefined opcodes"). Some hackers found that the most popular 6502s had some opcodes that did neat things and ignored Commodore's advice. Rockwell officially "defined" some of those and added more opcodes (mostly to support a new addressing mode). Rockwell defined almost all 255 possible opcodes, andas such the ROK6502 has the largest instruction set of any 6502-variant ever produced.
This was all amazing and cool stuff, until a sharp young high-school dropout put all of it in a single FPGA chip as a hobby and made some money selling it in a retro-looking joystick.
C64 DTV on QVC - no lawsuit in sight (Score:3, Informative)
They can't "sue those people" because they are "those people" [wards.net].
Re:After all... (Score:3, Informative)
No, they aren't, and the Amiga computer died a decade ago.
OTOH, what is happening is that Hyperion Entertainment [hyperion-e...inment.biz] are porting and updating AmigaOS to version 4 on licence from Amiga, Inc. [amiga.com], a company formed in 2000 by a marketing exec from the previous Amiga-owners Gateway. AInc in turn has allegedly switched owners twice since then, during litigation.
AmigaOS 4, and beyond, are meant to run on third party PowerPC hardware. Nobody is designing or even specifying standards for any hardware specifically for AmigaOS.
One controversial decision that bothers many current and prospective AmigaOS users [petitiononline.com] is that the hardware market will have to be separated from "the rest of the world". Despite the inexistence of any Amiga hardware and AInc's irrelevance to the hardware market, AmigaOS must only be sold bundled with hardware, and only from vendors who have acquired a licence from AInc. These hardware bundles must also provide some form of hardware/vendor-licence verification mechanism ("anti-piracy measures"), which currently is supposed to consist of added code to the firmware.
The only licenced hardware today is sold by the single existing licensee, Eyetech, which is the same company that was "consulted" when these AmigaOS distribution policies were formed. Currently they sell Mai Logic Teron series motherboards [mai.com], with their exclusively licensed (owned?) stickers saying "AmigaOne", plus a 60% heftier price tag.
For more on this, please see my homepage.