Welcome to VintageAmiga.com
Amiga was actually a start up company founded by former Atari engineer, Jay Miner. In the beginning, the company was incorporated as Hi-Toro, but later changed its name to Amiga Inc.
Miner had an idea for an advanced home computer while he was working for Atari in the early 1980s. However, Atari was not interested so Jay along with several other employees left to formt he new company. This would later come back to haunt Atari as it would be faced to compete against Jay's dream computer.
Atari was used to selling computers below the US$999.99 and the Amiga would cost significantly more than that. The main processor and memory required to run the computer was significantly more than that for contemporary computers and very expensive at the time. Miner knew that by the time the computer was ready for full-scale production, the cost of parts would no longer be an issue.
The Motorola 68000 was the central processor, or CPU. The 68000 offered the same level of performance not seen outside of mainframes. The 68000 was easy to program and very powerful and a perfect candidate for the new "super home computer."
When Miner could not get Atari to see his vision, he started Amiga Inc where he developed the Amiga, code-named Lorraine, in secret. As the Amiga would take several years to complete, the company sold video game devices for all the popular game consoles of the time to provide and steady stream of revenue.
Miner was an experienced chip designer. While at Atari, he saw the advantage to developing custom chips to offload the load from the processor. The result was a computer that could perform functions much faster than that of a stand computer and off much greater features. Adaptng this way of thinking to the Amiga, with a much more powerful processor would have a dramatic effect and increase competition in the home computer market.
Miner developed several custom chips, each one responsible for graphics, sound and I/O. And, continuing in the tradition of Atari, Miner gave each chip a codename: always named after a women. These code names also helped them protect against anyone listening on their phone calls and stealing trade secrets. The first Amiga was named Lorraine and accompanied by Paula, Denise and Agnes. Future models would also include Gary and Fat Agnes, with the proposed AAA chipset having the names Lisa and Monica.
The Amiga included a blitter chip which added the ability to move large amounts of video RAM around the screen independent of the main processor, which is considered basic design in today's graphics boards but was revolutionary back in the early days.
Another revolution was to allow thousands of colours on the screen at the same time. At the time, this was a costly task and require significant processing. Keep in mind that most Wintel machines had no more than 4 colours and most operated on a black and white screen most of the time. In working with flight simulators, Miner knew how to adapt Hue, Saturation and Luminosity of each bit and reduce the burden on the machine. This graphics mode was called HAM: Hold and Modify.
Miner also added a copper chip that could open multiple screens at the same time in different resolutions all on the same monitor. The Amiga could also access the display areas of the other chips and perform special effects without any lag.
The result of all these innovations was that a 7MHz machine with only 1MB could play stereo sound, display full colour backdrops while displaying multiple independent rendered animations with their own sound channels and then transition to another display using a wipe, fade or other transition. Nothing else on the market could do this. Oh, and the computer could also speak!
All these function would be enough to set it aside from anything on the market for years. But the Amiga team was not finished. Car Sassenrath was responsible for developing the pre-emptive multitasking operating system. It would take Windows until 1995 to offer a workable pre-emptive multitasking system and Mac until 1999.
All these features were being developed in the early 1980s and would later debut in 1985.
January CES Show
Miner brought the Amiga to CES in the hopes of making a deal that would secure funding for the Amiga and of course make them all rich. Dispite being at least ten years ahead of the competition, few companies showed any sort of interest in the Amiga. Perhaps part of the lack of interest was that the Amiga was not complete and was made up of several breadboards with literally thousands of wires that tended to become lose now and then, which could take hours of stress getting them back in place.
Perhaps the Amiga was too far ahead of its time for vendors to understand how far ahead it was. In the end, Amiga left CES without any interested buyers. A 68000-based computer with five custom chips, three for graphics, one for sound and one for IO. It had a graphical/windowed user environment and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system, but had no buyers...
Amiga left the trade show without any deals.
Troubles at Amiga
1984 saw the collapse of the video game industry at a time when Amiga was nearing the end of it's development. And with the collapse, funding opportunities dried up for Amiga.
As advanced as the Amiga was, only Atari was interested. Jack Tramiel knew that Amiga was in trouble and was a screwd business man. He gave Amiga a bridge loan that had to be paid in full at the end of the month or turn the company over to Atari. Tramiel knew full well that Amiga could not pay, and having recently left Commodore, he saw the new technology as a way to get back at Commodore.
The 8-bit computer market was collapsing. Tramiel saw the Amiga as an opportunity to get a new advanced technology without spending any money on research and development. However, Tramiel's need to get Amiga for a steel would be it's undoing.
With less than a month before Atari was to take posession of Amiga, Commodore snapped up Amiga by giving them the funds needed to repay Atari and purchase all the shares. Amiga was now a division of Commodore.
Tramiel was infuriated with the deal as it forced Atari to build a competitive computer with off the shelf parts from scratch. While the first Atari ST was half the price of the first Amiga, it did not come close in terms of features, but it did take an early lead in sales: beating the Amiga 2:1.
The Beginning of the End
Shortly after buying Amiga, Commodore ran into financial troubles. Commodore was haemorrhaging money and the Amiga 1000 was not selling. As a result, research into the Amiga was scaled back.
The result was the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 being released without any significant or even minor changes to the hardware after more than two years after the Amiga 1000 was released.
Commodore next major Amiga release was the Amiga 3000 in 1990. While an impressive machine, the graphics chips had few changes. It was still limited to 4096 colours and sound was still limited to 8-bit.
However, the Amiga 300 was a major improvement over the previous Amigas. It had a full 32-bit architecture and a new and improved operating system. It also came with some powerful software for presentations and authoring.
Commodore engineers were hard at work developing the 3000+ The A3000+ had 24-bit colour and a 16-bit sound processing chip. However, Commodore was focused on their PC line and cost cutting. While they would release an improved A3000, A4000 tower and several promising entertainment devices, Commodore would file for liquidation in April of 1994.
Footnote
Commodore managed to get the Amiga for a fraction of the development costs needed to develop the system for themselves. The technology was ahead of the competition by at least 10 years. Yet Commodore failed to capitalise on the technology or even see its true potential. Technology in the A3000 should have been released in 1987 and should have been aimed at the graphics and video markets.
While the Commodore died in 1994, the technology continues today in the hopes that a new operating system and improved hardware will arrive.
Amiga Inc is still around, but as a shell of the existing company with ex Gateway employees running the show.
Hyperion released Amiga OS 4.0 in 2007 but is now in litigation with Amiga Inc for rights.
AROS is an open source development based on OS3.1 that continues to build momentum.
Despite all these products, hardware and an operating system to run on it are still unresolved.
The Amiga story continues to this day.
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