http://www.elektor.com/news/welcome-back-commodore-c64.1514707.lynkx?utm_source=UK&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

Probably old news but it finally made the pages of Elektor.

_________________
Andrew Jacobs
6502 & PIC Stuff - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/
Cross-Platform 6502/65C02/65816 Macro Assembler - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/dev65/
Open Source Projects - https://github.com/andrew-jacobs

http://www.commodoreusa.net/home.html

There current site. I have thought that with a LCD it would make a good workbench computer due to its low profile, but for now I will have to avoid the expense.

Dimitri

A PC in a Commodore case?

Did you know the operation is run out of a house?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... .62,,0,5.1

There is a lot of talk about this on Natami.net , Amigaworld.com , etc.

Thing is, unless they are producing their own motherboards etc, the easiest way for them is to do it by either A) out of a house, or B) out of a undisclosed warehouse/office space.

Thing is, if your making a bunch of these, even say 5,000 of them a year. You only really need 2 people to make, err assemble them.

10 per day, is equal to 500 days required, 2 people put the requirement down to about 250 days. Which is the number of working days in a year (2 days a week off, and 2 weeks a year vacation).

It is probably smart for them to do it out of a house for the time being, if they built less "capable" systems, of say office class computers, they'd probably be selling more. Don't need much more then netbook internals to please corporate customers looking for a cheap and inexpensive computer.

Dimitri

It isn't what I would expect. Commodore did sell PCs but I want a Commodore product like a C-64 or a C-65.

The prices when I quoted them are higher than DELL.

There is no guarantee they will be around tomorrow.

Users are basically saying there is no hope for the return of the Intellectual Property that they have come to know and love and that this new company basically destroyed a lot of their hopes.

They could be millionares for all I know but the appearance is less than desired and if he wants to call it a Commodore then he/they shouldn't put a PC inside.

This is how I feel and I'm not directing my frustration at anyone but the news is not what we all want to gladly hear.

Chuck,

I get what your saying, but even Apple caved into the x86 line of computers.

I doubt its a wise move to jump the gun and criticize them. About the only other thing they could have done, is go with a custom CPU and ran a modified version of Linux, and hoped every user of theirs is capable of compiling their own Linux binary's for the target system from source.

Dimitri

The problem is that a 6502-based piece of hardware will not sell. A C64 is a home computer, and people expect home computers to connect to the Internet, display web pages with Javascript (and sometimes even Java) support, you'll need flash plug-ins so people can play their online games, etc. Even a 65816 won't keep up with that.

Putting a PC inside the case makes a ton of sense from both a business and value proposition perspective.

Concerning prices being higher than Dell's, that's to be expected when you have small sales volume. 5000 units a year versus how many million for Dell?

If the new products aren't to your liking, so be it. However, examining the products Commodore was producing previous to going bankrupt, it's pretty clear they were heading down the PC path anyway. From Amiga motherboards in the engineering pipeline with PCI and IDE connections to their heavier emphasis on their PC lineup, it doesn't take long to realize Commodore was eventually going to divest itself of its proprietary lines in reasonably short order.

So it sounds like the new Volkswagen bugs, which are not bugs at all. The attraction, to me, of the older-type bug was not the shape, but the mechanical simplicity for do-it-yourselfers.

There is a C-64 accellerator out there and I've seen it. It is a card version that runs off of a computer's internal slot and I believe it had ethernet. I know ethernet was available for the C-64.

They're interfering by buying the rights to the name which also extends to keyboard Amiga computers. Amiga users are still writing programs and still using their computers to this day.

Here is the problem. Courts sold the Amiga and Amiga IP to two different companies. One was called Eyetech. It went out of business and then it eventually became Amiga (Amiga Delaware). Amigakit owns all of the old stock and they still sell Amigas on the net. On the side, there are these new machines like the Minimig, and different versions of SAM computers which run the Amiga operating system.

Hyperion Entertainment was contracted by Amiga to write an operating system and then it was time to make the final payment and Amiga was either late or didn't make the final payment and Hyperion said,"You don't have a license." It went to court and after spending two years there, the court found in favor of Hyperion granting them rights to the Amiga name.

Here you have some company in Florida buying the name to keyboard Amigas. There is a good chance they might be in court over the name because Hyperion won the right to use Amiga which is a trademark and here you have some start up company buying the name that Hyperion has the rights to. If Hyperion can't sell the Amiga operating system because some other company has the trademark then Amiga users lose. If Hyperion sues Commodore USA then all of you who bought the Commodore P64 all lose.

How much computer does a person need? Most people buy a throwaway computer every two or three years. That is a waste.

We've had discussion on microcontroller forums about getting VGA video from displays and the problem is that a lot of manufacturers are different. That is why Windows is bloated and why it is needed to have 50 different drivers. It is why most PC's are slow and ours is sick and takes fifteen minutes to boot. It is bloated because every program you load has to be loaded into the operating system and it is why Windows has to wait for Yahoo Messenger, Tom Tom Home, Malwarebytes, Quicktime, and other programs to load. I don't need a modern computer to run the newest web app. Just give me a computer with basic compatibility and is easy to use. Give me a computer with a 32GB SD card and that is more than I'll need.

My stepbrother is a programmer and he said that it would take two years to learn the PC architecture to program in C. Most computer clubs have stopped teaching programming because you're supposed to go out and buy the program. Let someone else do the thinking for you because you can't compete with someone in a room coding for 365 days a year. We're stuck with one size fits all vanilla programming when I want to code in multi colors. I've said enough because I've already been booted by PC forums where the programmers protect their jobs by getting rid of people who would let public domain programs compete for their paycheck.

I work with PC's and the processor is 90% idle and my computer is frozen most of the time. I've seen it a lot with Windows XP. It isn't confined to one computer. I'll be on the net and I have to hit Control Alt Delete for the program manager to come up because Internet Explorer is constantly frozen. It is horrible.

You only lose if the company you purchased the product from folds. IP-related lawsuits rarely result in companies folding. The only losers would be the companies conducting the IP-licensing infractions.

I think we need to wait and see how this plays out. As far as I am aware, back when I worked for Amiga, at least, Hyperion had the rights not to Amiga, but to AmigaOS, as a trademark. Things might have changed since then; after I left Amiga, I left the scene completely.

They're using the trademark and another company is infringing on it.

OK, so I was right. They don't have the exclusive trademark rights to Amiga. They have the trademark rights to AmigaOS. It says so plainly in the legalese.

IANAL, but I do know that Amiga != AmigaOS in the word of the law.

But, I agree with you here, that Commodore-Amiga shipping with AROS and then having a separate vendor responsible for AmigaOS which is wholesale incompatible with the Commodore-Amiga platform is just plain braindead.

This is one of the many reasons I left the scene.

Too too bad they didn't go with a PowerPC based computer... Only reason I'd buy one today is to tear it apart to see how it worked. That's basically what I did when I was younger anyway! But using an Intel x86 CPU? Sounds like boring, retread material.

_________________
65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

The Amiga One series are PowerPC-based computers. You won't find much of anything special with them. Since day one, all CHRP and PReP (IIRC) motherboards are essentially PC motherboards equipped with PowerPC processors and a PowerPC-specialized Northbridge chip. Southbridge and everything else is the same.