Commodore: Full Circle | VCFMW 20 (2025)

In this presentation from Jim Drew, we learn about Jim's history with Commodore - where he started and where he is back again after a whole lot of years!

Jim started out in 1977 with a Commodore PET, destined to be an inventory system for a museum with a million items. Not possible at the time, but the experience set him on a path toward developing Commodore products. In 1983, he briefly worked for Commodore before starting his own company, where he spent the next two decades creating products for Commodore machines as his full-time profession. In 2000, he changed careers, but around 2012 was drawn back in, this time as both a hobby and a business. In early 2025, he was approached by a group to be part of the revival of Commodore, and became a shareholder as well as the exclusive provider of keyboards for the new Commodore 64 machines. In many ways, he had come full circle. He spoke about the journey, the challenges of producing products on a mass scale, and answered questions about the new Commodore products being offered, along with the new releases he introduced in support of the machines.

Links: https://www.cbmstuff.com/

Speaker Bio:
Worked for Commodore's educational support division and west coast service center from 1983-1984.
Developed products for Commodore machines from 1984 to 2000 as my day job. This included more than 60 commercial products, including the EMPLANT board for the Amiga.
Developed products for the paintball industry, and played professionally from 2000 to 2005.
Got back into Commodore in 2012 due to someone mad that I didn’t ship them a disk from an ebay sale that occurred - which was a rip off of one of my original products.
Developed guidance control and weapons systems for the UAV/UAS industry from 2005 to 2025.
Current - Commodore launch team, share holder, and official license holder for world-wide IP rights to Commodore branding.
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Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is a free-to-attend, volunteer-run show for the vintage computer hobbyist community. For more information about Vintage Computer Festival Midwest, or to donate to the 501c3 non-profit organization that puts on the show each year, visit http://www.vcfmw.org/ for more information.