Amiga Corporation

Last updated
Amiga Corporation
Industry Computer
FoundedSeptember 1982 (as Hi-Toro)
DefunctAugust 1984
FateBecame a subsidiary of Commodore International
Successor Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
Headquarters Santa Clara, California, United States
Key people
Jay Miner (founder)
Products Amiga
Website amiga.com
The 1985 logo Amigalogo16.png
The 1985 logo

Amiga Corporation was a United States computer company formed in the early 1980s as Hi-Toro. It is most famous for having developed the Amiga computer, code named Lorraine.

Contents

History

1982

In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari staffers, became fed up with management and left the company.

In September 1982, [2] they set up another chipset project under a new company in Santa Clara, California, called Hi-Toro (which meant "high bull" to them, [3] later renamed to Amiga), where they could have some creative freedom. The new company's first headquarters was located in Building 7 in a business park at 3350 Scott Boulevard in Santa Clara. [1] They started to create a new 68000-based games console, codenamed Lorraine, that could be upgraded to a full-fledged computer. The initial start-up financing of Amiga Corporation was provided by three dentists in Florida, who later regained their investment once Commodore bought the company.

To raise money for the Lorraine project, Amiga designed and sold joysticks and game cartridges for popular game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, as well as an input device called the Joyboard, essentially a joystick the player stood on.

1983

During development in 1983, Amiga had exhausted venture capital and was desperate for more financing. Jay Miner approached his former employer, Atari, which then paid Amiga to continue development work. [4] In return Atari was to obtain one-year exclusive use of the design. Atari had plans for a 68000-based machine, code-named "Mickey", that would have used customized chips, but details were sparse.

During this period a downturn started in the video game business that turned into the Video game crash of 1983. By the end of the year, Atari was losing about $1 million a day, and its owner, Warner Communications, sought to sell the company. For some time, no one was interested.

1984

Meanwhile, at Commodore International a fight was brewing between Jack Tramiel, the president, and Irving Gould, the primary shareholder. Tramiel was pressing the development of a 32-bit machine to replace their earlier Commodore 64 and derived machines, fearing a new generation of machines like the Apple Macintosh would render the 64 completely obsolete. The fighting continued until Tramiel was dismissed on January 13, 1984. [5]

Tramiel formed a holding company, Tramel Technology, Ltd., (a phonetic spelling of "Tramiel" [6] ) and visited various US computer companies with the intention of purchasing a company for manufacturing and possible technology acquisitions. Tramiel visited Mindset (run by Roger Badersher, former head of Atari's Computer Division), and Amiga. Amiga's talks eventually fell through as Tramiel told Amiga staff that he was very interested in the chipset, but not the staff. In the meantime, he had set his chief engineer (former Commodore engineer Shiraz Shivji) the task of developing a new low-cost, high-end computer system.

Tramiel's design for his next generation computer was 95% completed by June (which only fueled speculation that Shivji and other engineers had taken technology with them from Commodore). Tramiel discovered that Warner Communications wanted to sell Atari, which at that point was losing about $10,000 a day. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for his new computer, he approached Atari and entered talks. After on again/off again negotiations with Atari in May and June 1984, Tramiel had secured his funding and bought Atari's Consumer Division (which included the console and home computer departments) that July; Tramel Technology, Ltd. became Atari Corporation. Commodore filed an injunction against Tramiel and Atari, seeking to bar them from releasing their new computer.

One of Tramiel's first acts after forming Atari Corp. was to fire most of Atari's remaining staff[ citation needed ] and cancel almost all ongoing projects in order to review their continued viability. It was during this time in late July that Tramiel's representatives discovered the original Atari Inc./Amiga contract.

BYTE had reported in April 1984 that Amiga "is developing a 68000-based home computer with a custom graphics processor. With 128K bytes of RAM and a floppy-disk drive, the computer will reportedly sell for less than $1000 late this year". [7] It turned out that Amiga was supposed to deliver the Amiga chipset to Atari Inc. on June 30, 1984, or forfeit the company and its technology. With the deadline fast approaching and still not having enough funds to finish development, the Amiga crew went on alert after having heard rumors that Tramiel was in closed negotiations to complete the purchase of Atari in several days. Remembering Tramiel's visit that Spring during their investor campaign, they began scrambling for another large investor. So, at around the same time that Tramiel was in negotiations with Atari, Amiga wound up entering into discussions with Commodore. The discussions ultimately led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga outright, which would (from Commodore's viewpoint) cancel any outstanding contracts — including the contract given to the now defunct Atari Inc. So instead of Amiga delivering the chipset to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $500,000 to Atari Corp. on Amiga's behalf (right about the time they were discovering the contract), in effect returning the funds invested into Amiga for completion of the Lorraine chipset.

Acquisition by Commodore August 1984

Seeing a chance to gain some leverage, Tramiel immediately used the situation to countersue Commodore through its new (pending) subsidiary, Amiga, which was done on August 13, 1984. He sought damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with that technology. The suit tried to render Commodore's new acquisition (and the source for its next generation of computers) useless and do to Commodore what they were trying to do to him.

Meanwhile, at Commodore, the Amiga team (according to conversations by Curt Vendel of Atarimuseum.com directly with Dave Needle of Amiga and also with Joe Decuir of Amiga) was sitting in limbo for nearly the entire summer because of the lawsuit. No word on the status of the chipset, the Lorraine computer system or the team's fate was known. Finally in the fall of 1984 Commodore informed the team that the Lorraine project was active again, the chipset to be improved, the OS developed and the hardware design completed.

From this point on the former Amiga Corporation was a division of Commodore. Over the next few years many employees felt Commodore's management proved to be as annoying as Atari's, and most of the team members left, were laid off, or were fired. Meanwhile, Atari used this time to finish and release the Atari ST computer just months ahead of the release of the Amiga.

Both lawsuits themselves were laid to rest in March 1987, when Commodore and Atari Corp. settled out of court in a closed decision.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amiga</span> Family of personal computers sold by Commodore

Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari ST</span> Line of home computers from Atari Corporation

Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's 8-bit home computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color graphical user interface, using a version of Digital Research's GEM interface / operating system from February 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari</span> Video gaming brand

Atari is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French company Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 2600</span> Home video game console

The Atari 2600 is a discontinued home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. The VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge—initially Combat and later Pac-Man. Sears sold the system as the Tele-Games Video Arcade. Atari rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in November 1982 alongside the release of the Atari 5200.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 7800</span> Home video game console

The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one of the first consoles with backward compatibility. It shipped with a different model of joystick from the 2600-standard CX40 and included Pole Position II as the pack-in game. Most of the announced titles at launch were ports of 1981–1983 arcade video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amiga 1000</span> 1985 personal computer

The Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced graphics and sound systems in its class. It runs a preemptive multitasking operating system that fits into 256 KB of read-only memory and was shipped with 256 KB of RAM. The primary memory can be expanded internally with a manufacturer-supplied 256 KB module for a total of 512 KB of RAM. Using the external slot the primary memory can be expanded up to 8.5 MB.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Commodore International</span> Bahamian home computer and electronics manufacturer

Commodore International Corporation was a Bahamian home computer and electronics manufacturer with executive offices in the United States founded by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), was a significant participant in the development of the home computer industry in the 1970s to early 1990s. In 1982, the company developed and marketed the world's best selling computer, the Commodore 64, and released its Amiga computer line in July 1985. Commodore was one of the world's largest personal computer manufacturers, with sales peaking in the last quarter of 1983 at $49 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Miner</span> American electrical engineer

Jay Glenn Miner was an American integrated circuit designer, known primarily for developing graphics and audio chips for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit computers and as the "father of the Amiga".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 8-bit computers</span> 1979-1991 home computer series

The Atari 8-bit computers, formally launched as the Atari Home Computer System, are a series of home computers introduced by Atari, Inc., in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The architecture is designed around the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 CPU and three custom coprocessors which provide support for sprites, smooth multidirectional scrolling, four channels of audio, and other features. The graphics and sound are more advanced than most of its contemporaries, and video games are a key part of the software library. The 1980 first-person space combat simulator Star Raiders is considered the platform's killer app.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Tramiel</span> American businessman and Holocaust survivor (1928–2012)

Jack Tramiel was a Polish-American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 are some home computers produced while he was running the company. Tramiel later formed Atari Corporation after he purchased the remnants of the original Atari, Inc. from its parent company. He was one of 6 people spotlighted when the computer was denoted "Machine of the Year" by Time magazine in 1982.

The Motorola 68000 series is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors. They were best known as the processors used in the early Apple Macintosh, the Sharp X68000, the Commodore Amiga, the Sinclair QL, the Atari ST and Falcon, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Genesis and Sega CD, the Philips CD-i, the Capcom System I (Arcade), the AT&T UNIX PC, the Tandy Model 16/16B/6000, the Sun Microsystems Sun-1, Sun-2 and Sun-3, the NeXT Computer, NeXTcube, NeXTstation, and NeXTcube Turbo, early Silicon Graphics IRIS workstations, the Aesthedes, computers from MASSCOMP, the Texas Instruments TI-89/TI-92 calculators, the Palm Pilot, the Control Data Corporation CDCNET Device Interface, the VTech Precomputer Unlimited and the Space Shuttle. Although no modern desktop computers are based on processors in the 680x0 series, derivative processors are still widely used in embedded systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VIC-20</span> 1981 home computer by Commodore

The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units, eventually reaching 2.5 million. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mindset (computer)</span> 1984 personal computer

The Mindset is an Intel 80186-based MS-DOS personal computer. It was developed by the Mindset Corporation and released in spring 1984. Unlike other IBM PC compatibles of the time, it has custom graphics hardware supporting a 320×200 resolution with 16 simultaneous colors and hardware-accelerated drawing capabilities, including a blitter, allowing it to update the screen 50 times as fast as an IBM standard color graphics adapter. The basic unit was priced at US$1,798. It is conceptually similar to the more successful Amiga released over a year later. Key engineers of both the Amiga and Mindset were ex-Atari, Inc. employees.

Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communications sold the home computing and game console assets of Atari, Inc. to Tramiel. Its chief products were the Atari ST, Atari XE, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx and Atari Jaguar.

Amiga, Inc. is a company that used to hold some trademarks and other assets associated with the Amiga personal computer.

The Amiga is a family of home computers that were designed and sold by the Amiga Corporation from 1985 to 1994.

Shiraz Shivji was the primary designer of the Atari ST computer for Atari Corporation, which was developed in five months and released in 1985, and one of the engineers who developed the Commodore 64.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari, Inc.</span> American video game developer (1972–1992)

Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.

Atari AMY was a 64-oscillator additive synthesizer implemented as a single-IC sound chip. It was developed by Atari, Inc. as part of a new chipset, codenamed "Rainbow" that included a graphics processor and sprite generator. Rainbow was considered for use in the 16/32-bit workstation known as Sierra, which existed in prototype form circa 1983, but the Sierra project was bogged down in internal committee meetings. Rainbow development continued up until Atari's CED and HCD divisions were sold to Tramel Technology, which became Atari Corporation. For a time, AMY was slated to be included in the Atari 520ST, then an updated version of the Atari 65XE, the 65XEM, but development was discontinued. The technology was later sold, but when the new owners started to introduce it as a professional synthesizer, Atari sued, and work on the project ended.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari Sierra</span> Unreleased computer design

Sierra was the code name for a 16-bit/32-bit personal computer designed by the Sunnyvale Research Lab (SRL) of Atari, Inc. starting around 1983. The design was one of several new 16-bit computer systems proposing to use a new chipset from Atari Corporate Research.

References

  1. 1 2 Bagnall, Brian (2006). On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore (1st ed.). Winnipeg: Variant Press. ISBN   9780973864908.
  2. Chira, Susan (August 29, 1984). "Amiga's High-Tech Gamble". New York Times, August 29, 1984. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
  3. DeMaria and Wilson (2003) ""High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games" p.109 ISBN   0-07-223172-6
  4. "TOP SECRET: Confidential Atari-Amiga Agreement". Atari Historical Society. November 1983. Archived from the original on 2019-10-23. Retrieved 2006-07-23.
  5. Christina Erskine. "History of Computers: Part 2" p.39 CU Amiga, (September 1992)
  6. Vendel, Curt; Goldberg, Marty (2012). Atari Inc.: Business Is Fun . Syzygy Press. p.  743. ISBN   9780985597405. OCLC   820011527.
  7. "Microbytes". BYTE. April 1984. p. 10. Retrieved 22 October 2013.