Why Jack Tramiel not involved in the buyout of commodore in 1994?

[derringer3]

So after  many years of fight in 1994 when commodore went out from business, he could simply buy back his former company. But AFAIK Jack Tramiel/Atari doesn't intereset for commodore in 1994...

So anyone knows about this?

[Matt_H]

Maybe he didn't want to bail out Gould? Atari was at the end of their commercial viability around the same time, so the ~$10 million price tag for Commodore might have been too much.

[wrath of khan]

The second volume of the soon to be released 1st volume atari history book might cover some of this stuff.http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ataribook/atari-history-book-volume-1-beginnings-to-1984

http://www.atarimuseum.com/book/

[ChuckT]

So after  many years of fight in 1994 when commodore went out from business, he could simply buy back his former company. But AFAIK Jack Tramiel/Atari doesn't intereset for commodore in 1994...

So anyone knows about this?

Wasn't Jack running his own company at the time?  When you have to pay payroll, pay invoices and pay taxes, you don't extend yourself.

Did you ever consider why Jack left Commodore?  Who was Irving Gould and do you get that rich without being involved in organized crime?  Commodore wasn't paying their taxes so that speaks volumes about Irving Gould's ethics / behavior.

What would have Jack gained by buying Commodore back?  He already had intellectual property and he already knew how to build newer computers.  What would have Commodore added to his I.P. when he already could build a sophisticated computer?

How do you think Jack would have paid for a 10 million dollar loan when the Commodore 64 already had a pretty good run?  How long do you think the Commodore 64 would have paid for his loan?

The reason why Amiga went bankrupt was because someone didn't buy the machine one year.  Amiga failed.

I think Atari was having their own problems.

Would Amiga users buy Amiga I.P. today not knowing who owns it?  

I'm sure Jack had lawyers and intelligent finance people around him.  It wasn't in his interests.

[psxphill]

How do you think Jack would have paid for a 10 million dollar loan when the Commodore 64 already had a pretty good run?

Atari were already committed to their own projects, which didn't go great either. He could probably have raised money from investors, but he'd be buying a different company to the one he left. To Jack the Amiga was just an old competitor that wasn't going anywhere.
 
Commodore's problems came from wasting money, in europe the a1200 was selling well. Commodore UK carried on operating after the bankrupcy, although eventually they had nothing to sell.
 
Either gould had no idea how to save Commodore, or he thought bankrupcy was an easier way to get his money out.

[motrucker]

So after  many years of fight in 1994 when commodore went out from business, he could simply buy back his former company. But AFAIK Jack Tramiel/Atari doesn't intereset for commodore in 1994...

So anyone knows about this?

OMG! What possible difference would it make?

[ChuckT]

Once a computer is made, it becomes obsolete in three years.  In order for the Commodore I.P. to be valuable, you have to have products in the pipeline to make it valuable to a new owner.  When a computer company goes bankrupt it is because the product failed and there is a lack of funds.  You can buy back a computer that became a failure but then what?  What are you going to sell?

The C64 was upgraded a little as the C64C but it didn't have a faster chip like the 65C812S which Apple and Atari had.

Commodore was already like 300 Million in the hole from loans to develop the Amiga so while someone could have purchased the I.P. for 10 million doesn't mean they have the millions to develop the advancements they needed to compete.

If Commodore like computers are so valuable then why doesn't the Amiga community develop more hardware initiatives?  The answer is the same reason why Jack Tramiel didn't buy Commodore back.

I personally view Jack as someone who didn't want to spend a lot of money and typically small business owners pocket all of the cash of a company because they are comfortable and not willing to go out and get more business because it requires more energy, more time, more workers, risk and reduced cash flow.  Commodore went from the C-64 which had more memory to the C-16 with less memory.  The C-128 had 80 columns but they added CP/M and made it so expensive and it ran at 2 MHZ at the same time while Compaq came out with an advancement of 33 MHZ.  There really wasn't an advancement of the C-64 line and they were killing off the larger RAM expansion project when they could have just put 512K inside a Commodore 64.  Commodore wanted people to invest in the Amiga line and saw the C-128 as competing with the Amiga which is why the C-64 line didn't go far.

Commodore also forcibly removed their CEO from the premises because they wanted to go bankrupt.  Irving Gould purchased some kind of bankruptcy insurance prior to going bankrupt to protect him from paying people.  In other words, he could take investor's money but didn't have to pay people back.  Doesn't that strike anyone as kind of odd?  It is dishonesty in my opinion.

[runequester]

By 94, Atari had run their computer division into the ground as hard as Commodore had.