Commodore

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What Does Commodore Mean?

Commodore was a collection of companies that provided many of the first high-tech products to the American market as personal and home computers and devices became more sophisticated throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Founded by entrepreneur and Holocaust survivor Jack Tramiel in 1955, Commodore sold successive generations of home computers as well as video game consoles.

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Techopedia Explains Commodore

After pioneering the PET microcomputer in the late 1970s, Commodore continued to innovate with a series of VIC-branded computers offering color graphics, competitive RAM, and modem capabilities. The Commodore 64, named for its 64 KB of RAM, was also a best-selling computer, followed by the Commodore Amiga in 1985. A subsidiary called Commodore Business Machines also produced a line of computers specifically for commercial use.

In addition to developing computers, Commodore also developed video game systems, notably, the Commodore 64 video game console. These were also prominent Commodore-branded products. Eventually, the video game industry weakened, and Commodore lost ground to IBM and Apple in the personal and business computer markets.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.