The History of Commodore Pt 4

TCW Podcast Episode 247 - The History of Commodore Pt 4 The final chapter of our Commodore series covers the company’s chaotic decline. After early success with the Amiga line, internal conflict grew under President Tom Rattigan, who wanted to focus on the low end with the Amiga 500 while Irving Gould pushed for high end systems like the Amiga 2000. Missed deadlines and a failed boardroom challenge led to Rattigan’s firing and Gould taking direct control. When IRS tax issues forced Gould to step back, Mahdi Ali became President and began reorganizing engineering. Ali hired Bill Sydnes from the IBM PC team, who also had a hand in the failure of the PC Jr, to evaluate and streamline development. Gould continued to cycle executives in pursuit of short term stock gains, which weakened Commodore as it chased conflicting markets. Cost cutting turned the popular Amiga 500 into the poorly received A600, though the later A1200 fared better. Ali moved manufacturing to the Philippines after shutting down facilities in Hong Kong and Germany, but production was disrupted by the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption. Commodore finally collapsed and went bankrupt in 1994, ending one of the most turbulent stories in personal computing. Pepsi Challenge: Pepsi Challenge 1978: New Coke Conspiracy: Amiga 1000 & Sidecar: Amiga 2000: Amiga 2000 HD Professional Demo: Amiga 500 Bundles: Amiga 500 Batman: Amiga 500 Overview: Commodore C65: Leonard Nimoy Laserdisc: Amiga 3000: History of the Amiga 1992 Documentary: Amiga 600: Amiga 500 vs Amiga 1200: Amiga CDTV: Mount Pinatubo: Planer Computer Graphics: Amiga CD32: New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month! TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: Alex's Video Game History Blog: Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: Copyright: Attribution:

You can listen to The History of Commodore Pt 4 online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The History of Commodore Pt 4 is an episode from They Create Worlds by Alex Smith, and Jeffrey Daum.

This episode is 93:46 long.

This episode was published on Dec 1, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from They Create Worlds when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.