For one thing, Commodore were big when being big in the computer industry was a rare thing. They were one of the big three in early home computing, along with Apple and Atari. They had always had a line up of "serious" machines such as their business PeeCees (where do you think Commodore Business Machines comes from?), and "toy" computers, such as the C64 and latterly, although I and no other Amiga owner thinks of them as toys, the Amiga.
If you don`t know it already, here`s how CBM and Amiga came to have their double barelled name.
A trio of dentists saw Silicon Valley was booming, and put up $7m for the original Amiga design team to create a new computer. The dentists ran out of moolah, Commodore bought them out.
The first mistake of Commodore was its management. The proverbial headless chicken springs to mind. Being a youngster, I wasn`t aware of the full goings on, but from references in Amiga journals, Medhi Ali, former CEO of CBM, seems to be the most hated man on the planet.
The way that the 500 became the 500+, which became the 600, which were all made obsolescent by the 1200 and new AGA chipset, was a disaster.Almost no development notes were given to developers about ECS or AGA. It was a shambles, and the cracks were beginning to show.
CBM USA was the first to go end up. It wasn`t pulling it`s weight. The other Commodores followed, Commodore Australia, Europe, so on, until only the UK was left, when it eventually sucumbed. One wonders whether if CBM USA hadn`t been there, if CBM could have gone on longer, or whether it would always be destined for the great computer scrapheap in the sky
So, I decided to look up the history of our machine, and mail Medhi Ali while I was at it. Fun , yes/no?