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1994

  • Commodore had a financial damage of $107 million dollars by the end of 1993. But the Amiga was still a very popular machine. In 1992, Commodore sold about 800.000 Amigas (17% more than 1991) and in 1993, it sold 20% less.
  • Big problems made Commodore lose all that money : Fall of Amiga periherals sales (Monitors,Printers etc.), the US $ and its price fall on the major economic markets and the president of Commodore.
  • March

    • Commodore, has announced that they were having financial difficulties which might result in bankrupty or liquidation. Commodore had lost $8.2 million. The stock fell to 0.75 per share. The New York stock exchange halted trading of Commodore stock!

  • April

    • Until the middle of April, Commodore was still producing A4000s, A1200s, and CD32s, and the engineers continued development of the new AAA chipset. AAA was meant to be a big improvement over AGA. 24bit Graphics [resolutions up to 1280x1024], 16bit CD quality audio and other interesting things. AAA was never truly finished.

  • During the second half of April the production of Amigas stopped. The Philippines factory closed, but left behind a big stock of Amigas. The Scotland factory also stopped the production. Many employees were told by the management to hunt for new jobs...
  • April,22 1994

    • 15 people were dismissed from West Chester (PA), and the Commodore Semiconductor Group was closed. 15 people were also dismissed from the Norristown factory.

  • April,26 1994

    • Engineering closed. The site in West Chester, once supported by 1000 employees, now had only 22 people left on it.

  • April,29 1994 (Friday) Commadore International filed for liquidation in order to be proteced from its creditors Friday April 29, 1994, at 4:10 P.M.

    • Commadore's official statement follows:

    "Commodore International Limited announded today that its Board of
    Directors has authorized the transfer of assets to trustees for the benefit
    of its creditor and has placed its major subsidiary, Commodore Electronics
    Limited, into voluntary liquidation. This is the intial phase of an
    orderly liquidation of both companies, which are incorporated in the
    Bahamas, by the Bahamas Supreme Court."

    "This action does not affect the wholly-owned subsidiaries which
    include Commodore Business Machines (USA), Commodore Buisiness machines LTD
    (Canada), Commodore/Amiga (UK), Commodore Germany, etc. Operations will
    continue normally."

    But how can the branches work without the head, of engineering that designs and builds the new hardware and software ?
  • April,30 1994

    • CEI announced that they would still supply and distribute Amigas and should be able to meet demand, something that today seems wrong, as there wasn't any stock available during the next months.

  • May 1994

    • Rumors, rumors and rumors. Samsung was interested in buying Amiga, but they dropped when they found out that other companies interested offered less money than they did.

  • June 1994
    • --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
|     Jay Miner, passed away June 20, 1994 at the El Camino Hospital In   | 
|  Mountain View. The actual cause of death was heart failure, but it was | 
|                the result of kidney complications.                      | 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  • Many ex-Commodore employees moved to work for other companies such as Scala (for example Dave Haynie that will oversee all computer related hardware research and development activities in Scalla offices).
  • CEI placed its bid for Commodore.
  • July 1994

    • Amiga Convention 94, took place in Quebec, Canada.

  • The liquidators had finally received four proposals to buy Commodore, Those being Amstrad, Philips, Samsung and Commodore UK. But the Bahamian court rejected the proposals to move the proceedings to New York City, that was closer for any company interested for Commodore.
  • August 1994
  • Commodore set 2 phone numbers for getting informations about the current proceedings of the liquidation.
  • September 1994-October 1994-November 1994
    Rumours about, Nestle, Atari, Sony and other companies willing to buy Commodore.
  • More rumours for the day that the liquidation will commence.
  • This day is continously jumped from month to month.
  • CEI seemed to be more interested than any others and that is represented by the online conferences held by Amiga Report, on Portal, BIX, and Delphi.
  • CEI finally offers a big amount of money as long as the liquidators give Commodore to them right away.
  • December 1994

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