History of
the Amiga
Adapted from an
article in CU Amiga, 1996
1982
The
year was 1982, and the Atari VCS was the
game console of choice. The stubby
joysticks, the version of Space
Invaders with 99 variations; we lived
in excitingly technological times as we
waited for our 16k ZX Spectrums.
Meanwhile,
in America three dentists had $7 million
burning a whole in their white pockets
and wanted to invest in the crazy video
games business that they heard was making
so much money for companies like Atari.
They formed a company called Hi-Toro,
which later changed to Amiga, and took on
Jay Miner and Dave Morse. Jay was the
brains behind the custom chips in both
the Atari console and home computer: he
knew that a fancy processor wasn't
enough. RJ Mical, an ex-employee of
Williams (the arcade games people behind
Defender), joined the team to handle
software.
The
plan was to create the ultimate games
console, code-named Lorraine. The design
specifications were simple. Lorraine was
to include graphics and sound effects
which were state-of-the-art In Silicon
Valley, while Amiga built joy-sticks as a
cover, the designers got busy.
However,
something wonderful happened an somewhere
along the line, this killer games console
started to sprout some odd additions. A
disk drive on a games machine? A keyboard
connector? Parallel and serial ports? A
modem? There was even a hardware PC
emulator and digital telephone answering
machine in the pipeline.
1983
Although
the custom chips hadnt been
finished and only existed as a pile of
stock chips and wiring, the heart of the
machine was ready to be shown at the CES
Show in January 1984. Although hidden
behind a partition, visitors passing up
nearby escalators saw a glimpse of an
amazing machine: the "Boing"
demo was unlike anything anyone had ever
seen before.
Unfortunately
this all happened at the tail end of the
First Home Video Game Boom. Even Atari
had made a few expensive mishaps and had
been bought by an ex-Commodore employee
Jack Tramiel. Amiga too was in trouble,
and needed external investment. The
decision to add computer interfaces to
the original Lorraine now looked like a
masterstroke: the First Home Computer
Boom was only just beginnin.g
Ataris
Jack Tramiel wanted a home computer and
could see what the Amiga team were
capable of. He lent Amiga half a million
dollars while they negotiated share
prices. However, Tramiel knew Amiga was
in trouble and didnt want to play
fair, Amiga wanted $2 a share, Atari
offered half that. Amiga wanted $1.50,
Atari offered half again
With
only a matter of days before they would
have to accept the Atari offer, the Amiga
team were in despair - until out of the
blue came a call from Commodore Business
Machines. Commodore bought the shares at
$4.25. and invested over $25 million In
Amiga.
1985
Commodore-Amiga
made some changes to the Lorraine (the
modem vanished, memory was doubled to
265K and double sided disk drives
included as standard), and in June 1985
the Amiga 1000 was launched at the
Lincoln Center in New York, with the aid
of Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol.
The
Amiga 1000 was an amazing machine. Gone
was the pretence of a games machine, this
was a workstation. With a modern PC-style
case which could house the external
keyboard underneath and that rainbow
coloured tick badge, it looked special.
There was a two button mouse, a 14MHz
Motorola 68000 processor, 256K memory
expandable to a whopping 512K and a
graphics display which could not only be
genlocked but also offered a dazzling
4096 colours on-screen at once. And as
for the operating system, no-one had seen
a graphical orientated multitasking
interface like it. and still today there
isnt anything like it. Heck, the
Amiga even came with digital sound and
speech synthesis. So by September this
$1000+ machine was shipping to wide
acclaim.
1986
The
Amiga 1000 was cool, but it was also
expensive. Work started on the successor,
the A2000. Two teams, one in America and
one in Germany had designs, but the
German A2000 version was the one that
succeeded.
The
Vic 20 and Commodore 64 were popular in
the UK, although there were hundreds of
other contenders for the title best
home computer including the Amstrad
CPC, Memotech MSX, Sord M5, Dragon, Lynx,
Enterprise, Jupiter Ace and even the
Spectrum was still going strong.
1987/88/89
The
A2000 and A500 were launched .The A2000
came in a huge box with many
internal expansion slots, aware of the
growing dominance of the IBM-PC clone. It
was even possible to fit a special
bridgeboard and use PC style expansion
cards.
The
A500 was launched in the UK on the 12th
June, and did away with the expansion
slots (besides a trapdoor
memory and an expansion port on the side)
to form a complete, single box unit. It
sold for £587, and against its deadly
rival the Atari ST it looked over-priced,
but extremely well tooled-up.
All
through 1987, and for a few years after,
the Amiga /ST wars raged. The STs
processor was slightly faster, but the
Amiga had the custom chips which gave it
the edge. Initially Amiga games software
were simply Atari ports, which gave the
false impression that both machines were
identical, but the ST was cheaper.
Eventually,
as more games were specially written, and
the first of the unique graphics and
sound utilities came along, it was
recognised that the Amiga was the better
machine. Sales shifted in the Amigas
favour, and the Atari despite
various updates to the ST lost the
war.
The
first Amiga virus programs started to
appear, although at first many refused to
believe they existed.
1990/91
Overdue
it may have been, but the A3000 was
launched with the all-new Workbench 2
operating system. Out went orange and
blue and 68000 chips, in came blue and
grey and 68030s. The A3000 was the first
32-bit Amiga, and it was packed with
features, like the SCSI interface and the
ability to use standard SVGA monitors. It
was fast, sleek and many Amiga users
today still rate it as the best Amiga
ever made.
The
CDTV also first saw the light of day. At
a staggering £699, the CDTV was a 1Mb
A500 and CD-ROM player in an extremely
smart black box. Ahead of its time it may
have been, but "overpriced and
lacking in software" was the most
popular description.
The
VideoToaster appeared, and the A2000
would never be the same again. Offering
untold power to American video users, the
Toaster did things to NTSC TV production
that would have cost ten times as much
without it. One of the great Amiga
injustices is that a PAL version for the
European market never appeared.
1992
What
was going on? Some Amiga
owners were irritated when they found out
that the "new" A500Plus, which
Commodore had sneaked into Cartoon
Classics packs over Christmas '91, would
not run some games. The A500+ appeared as
a "Iimited edition" for a short
while, with Workbench 2, but in May the
A600 was launched for £399. It offered
less expansion than the A500 and lacked a
numeric keyboard and was greeted with a
universal cry of huh? It sold
quite well to a lot of new users and a
misguided few looking to upgrade their
A500, but three months later the price
was dropped to £299. The A600 did boast
some important clues about what was to
come:the PCMCIA port was intriguing, and
the internal IDE hard drive more than
interesting.
Featuring
the AGA chipset and 16 million colours,
the A4000 was the first Amiga to use the
powerful Motorola 68040 processor,
although a cheaper 68030 version was also
available. It was far from perfect
though; the internal IDE interface and
lack of A3000-type flicker fixer did
not go down well. The hardware design was
also criticised. The enhancements to
Workbench 3.0 were minor at first glance,
although substantial improvements were
made under the cover.
1993
The
A1200 started to appear on shelves. The
A1200 was one of the best Amigas
designed, taking the A500 approach but
cramming in as much as possible. A 68020
processor was fitted as standard, the IDE
interface was now starting to look like
quite a good idea, and the new Workbench
was showing Windows users what a bit of
intelligence and some custom hardware
could do. A1200 expansions are continuing
to appear, many running considerably
faster than the A4000with 68030 Perhaps
surprisingly, the A1200 could well be
remembered as the "Ultimate
Amiga" rather than the A4000
A
miracle of cost control, the CD32 games
console had the makings of a world beater
as it included the internals of an A1200
and a double-speed CD-ROM drive at a
sensible price. Launched in the middle of
1993 at a bash featuring Bruno Brookes
and ginger whinger Chris Evans, it never
really caught on.
1994
- Present
1994
saw launch of Workbench 3 1, offering a
few minor tweaks. Commodore celebrated by
going bust.
And
then it went quiet. Dave Pleasance and
Colin Proudfoot wanted to lead a
management buyout, but couldn't match any
other bids when the company was sold off
a year and a half later. Commodore had
been bought out by German PC manufacturer
Escom, who formed Amiga Technologies and
began selling Amigas in Escom stores
throughout Britain. However, people had
been moving onto PCs in the absence of
any new Amiga models and the A1200 looked
a bit pathetic, while the A4000T was way
overpriced. Within a year Escom were
bankrupt.
The
rights to the Amiga were bought by a
little known American company Viscorp,
but after a few months they sold the
rights to PC manufacturer Gateway 2000.
And
that brings us to today and Gateway 2000.
For Months, the speculations went on,
that there new Amiga would be relased by
the end of 1999. However, recent sources
report that this Super Amiga will no
longer be released - So what happens next
? - Only time can tell..........
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