Commodore rises from the ashes

Commodore - one of staples of the early 80s and much beloved of those around at the start of the PC revolution - may be about to get a second lease of life. The Commodore brand name has been bought by a digital music company.

Commodore's parent company, Tulip, has sold the brand for €24m to the US firm Yeahronimo.

Yeahronimo, which sells online music as well as running a media distribution arm, says it intends to develop a worldwide entertainment concept around the brand that spawned the Commodore 64. It will also help the company to "speed up" the production of its own tablet PC line.

The deal also gives Yeahronimo the ability to sell Commodore hardware - digital music players and the like - through the commodoreworld.com portal. Yeahronimo is also planning to use the portal to distribute digital movies in the future.

To mark the phoenix-like rebirth of the Commodore, silicon.com will be re-running its "Technologies Time Forgot" series, taking a look back at the machines that started off the 80s home computing boom.