From Amiga Report 2.16 (http://www.amigareport.com/ar216/p1-2.html):

Friday April 29, 1994, at 4:10 PM, Commodore announced that:

"C= International Limited announced today that its Board of Directors
has authorized the transfer of its assets to trustees for the benefit
of its creditors and has placed its major subsidiary, C= Electronics
Limited, into voluntary liqudation. This is the initial phase off an
orderly liquidation of both companies, which are incorparated in the
Bahamas, by the Bahamas Supreme Court"

April 22, 1994 15 people where dismissed from West Chester, and the
Commodore Semiconductor Group was closed. On the 26th of April
engineering closed. Only a skeletal staff of about 22 remains.
3 people at the UK operation. 2 in Germany, 3 in the Phillipines.

New York Stock Exchange has de-listed Commodore Int (CBU)

CEI will contine to distribute Amigas to dealers, and should be able
to meet demand, and continue full service and support. Distributers
in other regions have reported sufficient stock to continue shipping
to dealers.

Rumors reamin! One being that Commodore will simply be selling off
technology to creditors, the second being that there is a possibility
that an Asian company will buy the technology from Commodore and
continue production and developement of the Amiga line. No official
announcement by Commodore has been made.


I was 9 years old back then, played games on our A500. However, I learned this sad news one year later, when I read my first Amiga magazine.

@pavlor

I was 24 and living in south-west Texas back then.

Bookstores were still full of Amiga magazines (some of them I still own).

I was a proud owner of an A2000HD with Janus XT board, ready to upgrade to a more powerful Amiga system, when suddenly .....

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@pavlor

i am really supriced its 20 years by now.... and it is also a huge suprise that OS4 is now over a decade old....

i can still remember the day C= empire fell, the BBS's community was the news portals for me then and it was glowing red (same with my phone bill...) ..

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@Toaks

It was a very sad day, here's my memories and info on what C= was planning next (most on this board will know though)

http://youtu.be/MyLMGkS7AVc

@pavlor

I saw the Amiga Format edition with the death of Commodore on it as a young 13 year old and was absolutely gutted. I was planning on asking Mum & Dad for an A1200 for Christmas when Commodore fell to bits. There was very little stock during Christmas 1994 and I actually missed out on an A1200 as Special Reserve sold their last one to someone else while we were trying to buy it on the phone! We got a CD32 and SX-1 Super AmigaCD pack instead which was awesome but the fact Commodore was already dead kinda spoilt the party ;-(

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@pavlor

No, uff, first new that I have, I was thinking "humm, the Amiga 5000" the time it takes to launch Commodore.

@pavlor

I was trying to post about this earlier but this website keeps telling me my ip address is restricted..

Had a reminder set in my meeting calendar and everything.
Anyway, I was in the UK, Letchworth to be precise and was outside the computer room at school when my friend John (who I hadn't seen for many years until last August when he visited me in my new home in Texas) told me.. I must have been 15 years old.

Sad day, knew the Amiga wouldn't be the same again and in truth it hasn't been. But it's a testament to the love for the platform that many of us are still here years later.

I think my love affair with the platform though has all but ended, no time anymore and the precious little time I do get, I find other things to do. Shame, great, great computer.

Rude!

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@thread

I remember I was devastated. No technology news prior to that point affected me as much, but as it it turned out it was the first in a series of devastating technology events over the next two decades.

Apart from Escom/Amiga Technologies and Gateway killing me slowly, there was also the fall of Be Inc. and BeOS, the fall of Silicon Graphics a.k.a sgi, the disappearance of Psion and later Palm, the buyout of DEC, the ongoing legal battle between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, the grounding of the Concord, Apple's decision to move to intel, the sale of Sun Microsystems to Oracle, and the end of the Space Shuttle Program.

Though each of these decisions made fiscal sense at the time, some more so than others, the net effect is that the human race is poorer for having these technologies gone.

Honorable mentions: Nokia, RIM/Blackberry, Atari, SEGA's game console business, and TechTV.

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@agami

You don't expect us to reach a future where Multinational Companies are more powerful than whole countries and where we glean our mineral resources off far flung planets in mining vessels like the Nostromo unless technology is mass produced and devoid of fun and aesthetic appeal do you?

Commodore had no place in a grim future of tech brands caring more about IP and litigation than innovation and technology that actually makes life better for people. Steve Jobs was probably like the Peter Weyland character in the Prometheus film. He started Apple on the path to greatness but made them a faceless money grabbing 'phone & widget' company rather than a computer company. Just wait for the Apple medical, pharmaceutical and military divisions to open up (they already own PA Semi which makes the PA6T that's in the Joint Strike Fighter)

Commodore were always on the brink of collapse as they didn't keep a war chest for either R&D or the lean years. All it took in 1994 was a $10 million piece of litigation against them over a hardware sprite patent (wrongly brought) to stall the U.S. launch of the CD32 and topple a once mighty tech company.

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@Rudei

If I may ask as an Amiga newbie (compared to people like you :P): what exactly "isn't the same" about Amiga now vs then (besides a different company backing it)? The hardware? The software? Features don't count (at least, that's not what I'm after).

Last edited by Vistaus on 30-Apr-2014 at 11:03 AM.

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@agami

Blackberry still exists.

But yeah, it's sad that Palm is gone. I loved webOS so much (even under the HP regime) but then it all fell down thanks to Apotheker. And now LG webOS isn't the webOS I came to know and love. Sad, really...

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@Vistaus

Quote:

If I may ask as an Amiga newbie (compared to people like you :P): what exactly "isn't the same" about Amiga now vs then (besides a different company backing it)? The hardware? The software? Features don't count (at least, that's not what I'm after).

Back then the Amiga was a mainstream platform, you could walk into any electronic store on the high-street/malls (at least here in the UK you could) and see Amigas everywhere. The Amiga was more popular and outselling anything Apple made here in Europe.

Pretty much everyone at my school had an Amiga 500/600/1200 between 1991-1995 and Amiga software had front-of-store place in games shops etc.

So yeah, it's nowhere near the same now - world's apart in fact.

Last edited by danwood on 30-Apr-2014 at 11:42 AM.

Commodore had been falling for years before 1994 and the Amiga division was not the cause, it was the victim.

my reply
Video ... i think is the more appropriate to all and everything


@toRus

if the AAA was exit 1 year before probably the history will be different :(

Last edited by tlosm on 30-Apr-2014 at 12:09 PM.

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David Pleasance posted on the amiga facebook group

David John Pleasance
Hi Ian, just like to put the record straight. Colin Proudfoot and I with the valuable assistance of Coopers & Lybrand planned to buy the worldwide assets/rights of Commodore International Limited (the holding Company where I was General Manager 1990 - 1992) Colin Proudfoot was/is an absolute genius Financial guru (he was joint MD with me at Commodore UK looking after the Finances whilst I dealt with pretty much everything else) We had developed a comprehensive Business Plan to take the remnants of the old Commodore into a completely different direction and grow it substantially. We had (correctly ) calculated it would take $50 million US to get to the point where we would be self sufficient. This figure was not plucked from mid air, instead we knew that because CIL had gone bankrupt owing millions to the main suppliers, nobody would give the new Company any credit terms (and who could blame them) so we calculated we could buy the worldwide assets for less than $10 million US but we would would need an additional $40 million to fund ourselves (paying suppliers up front for quite a long term) We had with Coopers & Lybrand pulled together a consortium of investors, which included a Chinese manufacturing Company called New Star Electronics, who up to that point had been making rip off Sega and Nintendo products which they sold in China. In our consortium they were providing 50% of the funding ie $25 million US. However 48 hours before the Auction, which was held in New York, New Star changed camps, joining Escom and abandoning us. We had no way of replacing that $25 million in 48 hours, so we had no option but to withdraw from the bidding. Yes we were right that the assets were bought for less than $10 million in fact it was (from memory) $6.4 million. However we were proven totally right with our calculations, and Escom (who by the way dumped New Star immediately after they bought the Commodore assets) did not have anywhere near enough financial resources and subsequently went bankrupt themselves. I can not say with any certainty that we would have achieved all our goals with the new Company had we been successful in our endeavors to buy the assets, but I can say we would have given it considerably more effort than the (my opinion) morons who ended up with it.

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@rats

Quote:

David Pleasance posted on the amiga facebook group...

Wow! Its amazing to see all the things that were going on "behind the scenes" to obtain the rights to the World's Greatest Computer - the Amiga.

Scott

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Being a loyal C= user since years, not only with the Amiga, i was quite "devastated" too when the end was approaching.
I had subscriptions to both Amiga Format and Amiga Shopper and i started to feel bad when they closed Amiga Shopper and also some italian magazines (though here in Italy we had one of the longest running printed Amiga mags, up until years later).
I read about Pleasance's plans on those UK mags and i really hoped for them to succeed, i never liked Escom and all subsequent entities

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@rats

[QUOTE]David Pleasance posted on the amiga facebook group[/QUOTE]

What exactly was their midterm plan for C=? 40 million $ was not exactly a lot if money to go compete against Apple, let alone MS in the early 90s...

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sad times, I got my first Amiga christmas of 93 and so it was only 6 months later that Commodore went under I dont think at that age I didn't really care or realize what that meant, I was just more annoyed by the fact that Amiga systems suddenly did go quite a bit cheaper after that and I just spent my saving on one. if I recall correctly however I remember new software and games still being in the shops till mid to late 96, after that is when i really started to read up and follow what the owners where going to do to save the Amiga, no answer came and now where just a hobby platform, I still have faith as I still believe there a better way to computing than the Windows, Mac or Linux way. I just feel its a dam shame that the Amiga had so many owners including Commodore who did'nt care about lets make this all it can be, but how much money can we make off this.

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@WolfToTheMoon

It would have got them to the point of self sufficiency i.e. manufacturing A4000T and A1200 models and make a profit to reinvest in R&D and get a few new models out including an A1200 with CD-Rom built in. Their medium to long term success would have been based on sales and market confidence something that was achievable in 1994.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
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