The Commodore-64 coming back?
Ok, so apparently, my news is late, and this was announced a while ago. Now, there’s an issue with using the name…
From the article:
When the Commodore 64 returns from the dead, it may not be called the Commodore 64.
In mid-March, a company calling itself Commodore USA unveiled what appeared to be a new incarnation of the iconic early-80s machine. “You fell in love then. Fall in love again,” the site said as it dissolved from an image of the original Commodore 64 to a slightly-less-retro machine with, yes, a built-in keyboard. According to the site, this apparent reincarnation of the Commodore would include not a mere 64 kilobytes of memory, but a 64-bit quad-core processor – plus Gigabit Ethernet, a DVD-RW drive, and a 500GB hard disk.
The site – which has a retro look of its own – said the machine would debut in June, and according to Barry Altman, the man behind the company, it’s still set for a June arrival. But when Altman originally launched the site, he didn’t have the rights to the Commodore name. And now he says the company has merely secured the temporary right to use the name as he negotiates a more complete deal. And if he does secure the rights, he’s not quite sure the machine will be called the Commodore 64.
“We’re still toying with that,” Altman told The Reg today. “We could call it a Commodore 64, ’cause of the 64-bit processor. Should we or not? I don’t know.”
Altman says he slapped the Commodore name and logo on his site in an effort to, well, locate the rights holder. That way, he could negotiate a deal that would allow him to slap the name and logo on his site. “It’s such a convoluted entanglement of corporations and subsequent corporations and sell-offs and resales of that trademark over the years, it was very difficult to determine who the real trademark owner was – or is,” Altman explained.
“We wanted to go to the dance. We didn’t have a partner. In order to entice whoever that legal entity was or is, we just put the logo up on our website.”
Sadly, I doubt it will include a SID chip, unless they emulate one, which would be fantastic. Anyone who would be interested in making some classic C64 SID tunes, should check out reFX’s QuadraSID.