Was Commodore forced into bankruptcy by the banks?

[ajlwalker]

What country was this in? In 1994 after Commodore went out of business the Amiga shops around central FL dried up faster than spit on a sidewalk in summer and not a single one of them ever carried a CD32 or an A1200 that I saw.

The UK for one.

In the space of about 3 months, the CD32 went from nowhere to more than 50% of the UK CD-ROM based software market.  I'm sure the charts were regularly shown in the UK Amiga magazines of the time.

I'm fairly certain the CD32 for all its faults actually brought in some money (if you discount the hundreds of thousands manufactured for the North American that never made it out of the Philippine factory).

And not to be pedantic but, digiman was kinda referencing the run up to Commodore going bankrupt, not after.

[ajlwalker]

By the end ie Fall of 93 to April 94 it was clear to everyone that Commodore in Europe alone was a viable business and this is what bugs me.

The A1200 sold well even on first production run in the UK, many people bought it with no AGA software as such to even showcase the machine. At this time a 386DX 33/40mhz would cost about £1000 here and still couldn't play Super Stardust or Lotus II in equivalent quality to be honest. Sure it played Wolfenstein better but that's just one genre and all the crap you had to ensure with loading DOS drivers high and UMB and god knows what other rubbish I've gladly forgotten about putrid MS OS designed by Sinclair ZX81 lovers.

The point was not only was Commodore a viable business (David Pleasance and Colin Proudfoot? wanted to basically win the bid and run it as a European operation as this was more than profitable enough).

If you look at the deals that were done for Warner's Atari to Jack Tramiel and then look at how they ripped Commodore to shreds and made it an incredibly long drawn out procedure that it effectively killed off the wounded company for any would be buyer you have to ask yourself why?

End of the day whilst turning over they were paying their debts slowly, if you shut them down when even only half the company is profitable you're either doing it for a reason or just have zero financial savvy about the world of business.

It makes no sense, it's like someone telling the bank they have just got a job and need a month more to start paying back the backlog and take up payments and then the bank saying no and repossessing the house and making a massive loss on the sale price of property vs loan amount.

So what I want to know is are there legal factual records I can look at somewhere on the web or request records of for disclosure to put a spot light on this ridiculous situation. The magazine facts are not what I want, I need exact figures and copies of contracts and activated clauses used to shut down Commodore. Only then can we get them looked at with a legal eye and get a legal point of view of "this is standard practise for the 90s" or "this is just insane and makes no sense" that's all. Facts are a powerful thing and well sod UFOs for me if there is something covered up about this bankruptcy it has to come out into the public domain

If anyone knows what happened to the MOS/CSG building with all that EPA bollox it only adds fuel to the fire as to how this was like a firestorm operation of military precision to take out every trace of Commodore.

(yeah I know, slim to zero chance of us finding out but hey it's worth asking on a snowball's chance in hell)

I seem to recall Commodore were selling 5000 A1200 a week in the UK and hopeful of selling double that in the run up to Christmas.

The Amiga really was a non-story in the US. Except perhaps big box Amigas, which actually had a few niche uses that some North American businesses found useful.