Amiga
Jay Miner joined Atari in the 1970s and led development of the Television Interface Adaptor for the Video Computer System. His team created sophisticated chips like CTIA, ANTIC, and POKEY that formed the basis of the Atari 8-bit computers. When management at Warner Communications refused to fund a new Motorola 68000-based system, Miner left the company in 1979. Larry Kaplan founded Activision in 1979 and later hired Miner to run hardware for Hi-Toro in 1982. The system was code-named Lorraine after company president Lorraine Morse. By late 1983, a breadboard prototype was largely complete and shown at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. A further developed version appeared at the June 1984 CES but found little interest during the video game crash of 1983. In March 1984, Atari expressed tepid interest in Lorraine for potential use as a console or home computer. Talks progressed slowly while Amiga ran out of money. A temporary arrangement in June provided a $500,000 loan from Atari with terms requiring repayment by month's end or forfeiture of the design. Commodore offered to purchase Amiga outright after Jack Tramiel resigned from Commodore in January 1984 to form Tramel Technology.
The first model announced in 1985 became known retroactively as the Amiga 1000. Machines were first offered for sale in August but only 50 had been built by October, all used internally by Commodore. Quantity production began in mid-November causing the product to miss the Christmas buying rush entirely. By year-end, sales reached 35,000 units before severe cashflow problems forced withdrawal from the January 1986 Consumer Electronics Show. Bad marketing and stability issues limited early 1986 monthly sales to between 10,000 and 15,000 units. Total reported sales through 1986 reached 120,000 machines. Thomas Rattigan became CEO in February 1986 and implemented plans including cancellation of outdated lines like PET and VIC-20. New designs released in 1987 included the high-end Amiga 2000 and cost-reduced Amiga 500 which became the best-selling model. The line sold an estimated 4,910,000 machines over its lifetime with about 1.5 million sold each in the UK and Germany. North American sales reached approximately 700,000 units while European markets embraced it as a home computer for video games. Beginning in 1990, the Amiga overlapped with European release of the 16-bit Mega Drive then Super NES in 1992. Commodore UK's Kelly Sumner credited Sega and Nintendo marketing campaigns spending over millions on promoting video games overall.
The custom chipset consisted of several coprocessors handling audio, video, and direct memory access independently from the central processing unit. Two distinct bus subsystems existed: the chipset bus allowing coprocessors to address Chip RAM and the CPU bus providing addressing to conventional RAM and expansion slots. This architecture gave performance edges particularly for graphics-intensive applications and games. Most popular models used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor offering full suite of 32-bit operations but addressing only 16 MB physical memory through 16-bit arithmetic logic unit. Later models like Amiga 2500 and 3000 used fully 32-bit processors with improved performance. The original chipset appeared in three generations: Original Chip Set launched with A1000 in 1985 followed by Enhanced Chip Set in 1990 and Advanced Graphics Architecture in 1992. All systems could display animated planar graphics with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 colors or up to 4096 colors using HAM Mode. AGA chipset models added non-EHB modes supporting 64, 128, 256, and 262144 colors plus palette expanded to 16.8 million colors. Sound chip named Paula supported four PCM channels with 8-bit resolution each and 6-bit volume control per channel. The sound hardware allowed playback without CPU intervention using direct memory access reading arbitrary waveforms from system RAM.
AmigaOS became one of first commercially available consumer operating systems implementing preemptive multitasking introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. John C. Dvorak wrote in PC Magazine in 1996 about its unique capabilities combining command-line interface and graphical user environment called Workbench. Multi-tasking kernel named Exec acted as scheduler providing prioritized round-robin scheduling enabling true pre-emptive multitasking within 256 KB free memory. In late 1980s platform became particularly popular for gaming, demoscene activities and creative software uses. First music tracker written for Amiga made it popular platform for music creation. Three-dimensional rendering packages including LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces originated on system. Third-party Video Toaster released in 1990 made Amiga comparatively low cost option for video production. Season 1 and part of season 2 of Babylon 5 television series rendered in LightWave 3D on Amigas. Online archive Aminet created in 1991 until late 1990s was largest public archive of software art and documents for any platform. Commodore initially released documentation relating to both OS underlying software routines and hardware itself enabling programmers to poke hardware directly.
Commodore shut down Amiga division on the 26th of April 1994 and filed for bankruptcy three days later. Assets purchased by Escom German PC manufacturer who created subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. They re-released A1200 and A4000T models introducing new 68060 version of A4000T. Amiga Technologies researched and developed Amiga Walker prototype presented publicly at CeBit before Escom went bankrupt in 1996. Some Amigas still made afterwards for North American market by QuikPak Pennsylvania-based firm manufacturing units for Escom. After reported sale to VisCorp fell through Gateway 2000 eventually purchased Amiga branch and technology in 1997. Gateway worked on brand new Amiga platform likely encouraged by desire to be independent from Microsoft and Intel but this did not materialize. In 2000 Gateway sold Amiga brand to Amiga Inc without having released products. Amiga Inc licensed rights to sell hardware using AmigaOne brand to Eyetech Group and Hyperion Entertainment. In 2019 Amiga Inc sold intellectual property to Amiga Corporation. Commodore's last offering before filing bankruptcy was Amiga CD32 released in 1993 as 32-bit CD-ROM games console produced until mid 1994 meeting moderate commercial success in Europe.
Long-time developer MacroSystem entered clone market with DraCo non-linear video editing system appearing initially as tower model then cube version. DraCo expanded upon earlier expansion cards including VLabMotion Toccata WarpEngine and RetinaIII into true Amiga-clone powered by Motorola 68060 processor. In 1998 Index Information released Access Amiga-clone similar to A1200 fitting into standard drive bay featuring either 68020 or 68030 CPU with AGA chipset running AmigaOS 3.1. Former employees John Smith Peter Kittel Dave Haynie and Andy Finkel formed PIOS company renamed Met@box in 1999 until folding. NatAmi project began in 2005 designing motherboard enhanced with modern features using Motorola/Freescale 68060 and inscribed custom chipset on programmable FPGA Altera chip. Minimig personal project of Dutch engineer Dennis van Weeren announced in 2006 using Xilinx Spartan-3 development board reproducing custom Denise Agnus Paula and Gary chips plus CIAs. Design released as open-source the 25th of July 2007. Italian company Acube Systems began selling Minimig boards February 2008. Clone-A system announced by Individual Computers shown in development form mid 2007 with FPGA-based boards replacing chipset mounted on Amiga 500 motherboard. Genesi sold PowerPC hardware under Pegasos brand running AmigaOS and MorphOS while Eyetech sold AmigaOne brand from 2002 to 2005 running AmigaOS 4. A-EON Technology Ltd manufactured AmigaOne X1000 released December 2006 through partner Amiga Kit providing end-user support assembly worldwide distribution.
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Common questions
When was the Amiga 1000 first announced and when did sales begin?
The first model known as the Amiga 1000 was announced in 1985 with machines offered for sale starting in August. Quantity production began in mid-November causing the product to miss the Christmas buying rush entirely.
Who designed the custom chipset used in the original Amiga computer models?
Jay Miner led development of the Television Interface Adaptor and his team created sophisticated chips like CTIA, ANTIC, and POKEY that formed the basis of the Atari 8-bit computers before founding Hi-Toro. The Amiga custom chipset consisted of several coprocessors handling audio video and direct memory access independently from the central processing unit.
What were the total reported sales figures for the Amiga line through 1986?
Total reported sales through 1986 reached 120,000 machines after bad marketing and stability issues limited early 1986 monthly sales to between 10,000 and 15,000 units. By year-end sales had reached 35,000 units before severe cashflow problems forced withdrawal from the January 1986 Consumer Electronics Show.
When did Commodore shut down the Amiga division and file for bankruptcy?
Commodore shut down the Amiga division on the 26th of April 1994 and filed for bankruptcy three days later. Assets were purchased by Escom German PC manufacturer who created subsidiary company Amiga Technologies.
Which operating system features allowed the Amiga to support preemptive multitasking in 1985?
AmigaOS became one of first commercially available consumer operating systems implementing preemptive multitasking introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. Multi-tasking kernel named Exec acted as scheduler providing prioritized round-robin scheduling enabling true pre-emptive multitasking within 256 KB free memory.