Ars Technica reports that the Commodore is back. Many of us probably remember the Commodore 64, the "Volkswagen of computers" as being the first personal computers we ever used. I distinctly remember learning "BASIC" on them. In fact, some friends of mine at the time learned very early on that the program:
10 PRINT "so and so is a loser"
20 Goto 10
30 End
Followed by the "RUN" command...
produced a cascading effect, with "so and so is a loser" pouring down the screen, only to be stopped with the ESC key. This was devastating news for the "so and so" deemed to be a loser, especially if he or she didn't know how to get the screen to stop. If you don't remember that moment in time with the same historical clarity I do, you can relive it with an "I Rock at BASIC" t-shirt.
What I hadn't realized was that Commodore was a Canadian company, started in 1954 in Toronto by a former Navy general named Jack Tramiel. The company eventually moved to Pittsburgh and, after folding in 1994, now appears to be held by a Dutch company. Ars Technica reports the company plans to make gaming consoles for the European market. I, for one, think there are still Ph.D. dissertations to write in the area of the history of computing. A thorough treatment of the practice of cloning like the Commodore's cloning of the IBM PC, would be a fascinating study.
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