Commodore and its iconic all-in-one computers resurrected with new guts, including DDR3

Everyone familiar with the arc of personal computers knows Commodore. The calculator company that became a personal-computing powerhouse starting with the Commodore Pet 2001, which it introduced in 1977, rose to superstar status with the best-selling Commodore 64 (more than 30 million sold!) based on a derivative of the 6502 microprocessor. Commodore International later became famous for the Amiga, machine based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor that offered video capabilities well before its time. In fact, the capabilities were so advanced that the Amiga became ingrained in the movie and television industry as a cheap CGI machine and was responsible for creating effects for science-fiction shows such as Babylon 5 and Quantum Leap. Then Commodore International crashed and burned. It declared bankruptcy in 1994 leaving behind many, many fans.

Well, they’re back. A Fort Lauderdale company has licensed the name and branded itself Commodore USA and they’re bringing back PC versions of Commodore’s iconic AOI (all-in-one) computer in a keyboard. From photos displayed on the company’s Web site (http://www.commodoreusa.net/home.html), many of the machines appear to be existing Asian imports because the photos look darn familiar. However, one machine in particular looks to be a clone of the original Commodore 64 (for the nostalgic crowd, we suppose) and sports the following specs: an Intel Atom 525 CPU with NVIDIA Ion2 graphics, 4Gbytes of DDR3 memory, a1Tbyte HDD, HDMI, DVD/CD optical drive (Blu-ray optional), dual-link DVI, six USB ports, integrated 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 6-in-1 media card reader. Dare we say it: This ain’t your grandfather’s Commodore 64.