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US Company Buys Commodore Brand For $33 Million
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 really a US company ? Looks like a EU company or did I miss something ?
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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
That Jeri Ellsworth chick is already selling exactly such a device through the home shopping channel. It's got Impossible Mission and Summer Games and other old chestnuts built in, and looks quite hackable too.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The Commodor 64 had 64k of RAM. the 20K of system rom was "over" the last 20K of RAM, and the 16K of RAM before that could be banked out so a Cartridge ROM could reside there. The 6510 had the ability to look at several address in zero page memory and use that information to "bank" certain ROM and memory mampped I/O out so that the RAM underneith could be used.
vi +
The company making the new Amiga hardware is Eyetech Group, Ltd.
The company making the new Amiga Operating System is Hyperion Entertainment
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 --- Thats right! You can already buy it!!!!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
So I think, somewhere, that story is garbled. The reading I've always heard, including that article on IBM's site linked to from /. that was about important processors the other day, was that IBM had the right to produce 8088s.
I suspect though the fact that the 808x series was source code compatable with the 8080, the then market leader and the only platform CP/M was available for, also played a part. Ironic really, considering CP/M then was dropped in favour of at-that-time vapourware from Microsoft.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Commodore was started in Canada, and stayed alive because of a Canadian investor, but a "Canadian Icon"? By the time it reached prominence in the PC industry with the VIC20 and C64 it was only Canadian in a nominal sense. Also something to keep in mind is that the corporate behaviour of some of the early Commodore bigwigs would make an Enron executive blush.
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.