History of the Amiga
Encyclopedia
The following history of the Amiga documents the development and commercial history of the Amiga
, a home computer
product line manufactured from the middle 1980s
up to today.
during the end of the first home video game boom. Wary of industrial espionage, the developers codenamed the chipset "Lorraine" during development. Development of the Lorraine project were done using an Sage IV (m68k/8 MHz/1MB) machine, nicknamed "Agony". Amiga Corp. funded the development of the Lorraine by manufacturing game controllers, and from an initial bridge loan from Atari Inc.
while seeking further investors. The chipset was to be used in a video game machine, but following the video game crash of 1983
, the Lorraine was repurposed to be a personal computer. Steve Jobs
was shown the original prototype for the first Amiga and said there was "too much hardware". He was in the midst of work on the Macintosh
at the time and was reportedly worried that the Amiga would surpass his plans.
However, before Amiga Corp. could bring the machine to market, the company encountered financial difficulties.
. It was simply called the Amiga devoid of references to Commodore. Commodore marketed it both as their intended successor to the Commodore 64
and as their competitor against the Apple Macintosh. It was later renamed the Commodore Amiga 1000
.
At a relatively affordable base price of the Amiga could display up to , produce 8-bit stereo audio and run several applications concurrently. These qualities were unprecedented in a consumer-oriented computer and gave the Amiga 1000 a significant technical lead on its three main competitors (the Atari ST, the Macintosh and the IBM PC) that was not matched until after the Amiga faded from the mainstream market.
Poorly marketed, the Amiga 1000 was not an instant success. Commodore at first tried to distance itself and its reputation for making "toy computers" from the Amiga, asking that it be referred to as "The Amiga, from Commodore" by the press and designing new logos to replace its own iconic "C=" design. Commodore compounded the problem by marketing a new 8-bit computer
alongside the Amiga, confusing the general public about Commodore's direction and the Amiga's advantages. In 1994 Byte
wrote "The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody — including Commodore's marketing department — could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it's obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video." This marketing confusion would plague the Amiga throughout its lifetime, even as it changed hands between Escom, Gateway and other owners.
in the lower end of the segment, Commodore released the cost reduced Amiga 500
and the high end Amiga 2000
for the respective prices of US $699 and $2395 (this price included 1 MB RAM and a monitor).
With its lowered price, the Amiga 500 went on to become a successful home computer
and eventually outsold its main rival, the Atari ST.http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/12/total-share.ars/6 The Amiga 2000, thanks to its Genlock
and internal expansion slots, managed to carve out a market niche within desktop video
. This market was not as large as the office and publishing markets dominated by the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh and as a result the Amiga 2000 lagged these systems in sales. Also, Commodore had initially announced a price of $1795 for the 2000, resulting in widespread grumbling among their customer base when the higher price was made public. To a lesser degree this was the case for A500 which Commodore announced its price $595.95 but later released it at $699. The Amiga did see widespread use in the television and video production industry during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including on popular shows like Clarissa Explains It All
and Unsolved Mysteries
.http://wigilius.se/amiga/
In 1990, Commodore released the first true update of the Amiga platform, in the shape of the Amiga 3000
featuring an enhanced chipset (ECS) and the second release of its operating system, commonly referred to as Workbench 2.0.
Many users had criticised Commodore for letting the Amiga platform languish since its introduction five years earlier; this criticism did not diminish with the Amiga 3000. Commodore was unable to match the pace of PC advancement with their lower resources and economy of scale, and users complained that the custom ECS chipset failed to match the features of the PC and Mac display hardware at the time. Users also felt that the operating system (Workbench 2.0) only featured improvements taken from the user community. As Apple was the only other major user of Motorola
chips at the time, Commodore often had to wait for a new CPU technology until increased supplies allowed Motorola to sell chips to anyone but Apple.
On the plus side many users considered the Amiga 3000 the most well engineered Amiga model, and the Amiga 3000's integrated flicker filter made it painless to use inexpensive PC-style VGA monitors. This may in part be the reason Commodore went on to sell one million Amigas in just one year, which is equal to a third of all Amigas sold up to that time.
In the same year as the Amiga 3000, Commodore released the US $895 CDTV
, aimed to move the Amiga platform to the living room and a competitor to devices such as Philips
CD Interactive (CD-I)
. Commodore believed that there was a market for a system that could display animations, pictures and offer educational software and games on a television, and many game developers thought that interactive CD-based video games would become a popular market. The end result was a system that could be described as an Amiga 500 with a remote control replacing the keyboard and a CD-ROM replacing the floppy drive.
Considering that the Amiga 500 was cheaper, more versatile and had the promise of a future CDTV expansion few Amiga users had any interest in the Amiga CDTV. At the same time the general public preferred cheaper game consoles over both the CDTV and CD-I, and was not aware of or interested in the multimedia potential of these CD-ROM based systems.
Both Commodore and Philips tried to tempt users with promise of an MPEG-1
module capable of playing video from a CD-ROM. These Video CDs can be considered lower-resolution versions of today's Digital Versatile Disks (DVD
s), but without scene selection, additional features and with the inconvenience of having to change the disks during a full length movie.
The CDTV became Commodore's first Amiga based failure, one that allegedly cost them a significant amount of resources. Commodore made a last ditch effort in saving the system with the CDTV 2, but dropped that design in favor of the much more capable Amiga CD32
.
Commodore began 1992 early by introducing the Amiga 500+, a slightly updated and cost reduced Amiga 500, officially. This model had actually been introduced the year before to meet good sales of the Amiga 500. Viewed primarily as a game machine, especially in Europe, this model was criticized for not being able to run quite a few popular games (such as SWIV
, Treasure Island Dizzy
and Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge), and some people took them back to dealers demanding an original A500
.
By this time the Amiga 500 and 500+ were showing signs of obsolescence, even as a game machine. Instead of discontinuing the product Commodore envisioned it taking the place of the Commodore 64 in the low-cost segment. To make that possible Commodore set out to design the Amiga 600
, a system intended to be much cheaper than the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 itself would be replaced by Amiga 1200
, also under development.
Shortly after releasing the Amiga 600 Commodore announced that two new super Amigas would be released at the end of the year. In classic Osborne
style, consumers decided to wait for the new Amigas and Commodore had to close their Australian office in face of plummeting sales. At the same time, Commodore's foray into the highly competitive PC market
failed to bear fruit and Commodore was forced to bring it to a halt. This contributed to Commodore's 1992 profits falling to an unimpressive $28 million dollars, and made the need for a successful new Amiga launch all that more critical.
In October 1992, Commodore released the A1200
and the A4000
: Each featured the new AGA
chipset and the third release of AmigaOS
.
In 1993, Commodore marketed the CD32
, which was one of the earliest CD
-based consoles and was also the world's first 32-bit game machine, with specifications similar to the A1200.
The last Amiga released by Commodore was the A4000T
, in 1994.
s and Macs at the time. This factor helped to boost sales in the more price-conscious European markets, but it also continued Commodore's misfortune from the VIC-20 and C64 era of being viewed in U.S. markets as a producer of cheap "toy computers" and "game machines". This perception was furthered by the fact that most Commodore retail outlets were toy stores, and marketing campaigns were mismatched with the American public's needs and wants. Overall, the Amiga was very successful in Europe
, but it sold less than a million units in the U.S.
.
Another factor is that in the U.S. market, the IBM PC
was already a dominant market force, especially in the workplace. Potential buyers first question was often, "Is it IBM compatible?", allowing the user to "take work home" or more often take software home to install on their own machines. To satisfy these users, Commodore introduced a variety of PC-compatibility addons, such as the Amiga Sidecar
for the Amiga 1000, the Bridge Board for the A2000 and a 5.25" floppy disk drive to facilitate data exchange with PC disks. But as the PC's graphics drastically improved from the early mediocre CGA and EGA modes prevalent at the Amiga's introduction to VGA and SVGA which appeared to match or exceed the Amiga's abilities, consumers saw no advantage in the Amiga's "incompatible" technology. Commodore's attempts at interoperability did not persuade users concerned about IBM compatibility to buy an Amiga instead of one of the inexpensive PC clones that were beginning to flood the US market. As a result, US Amiga users tended to be technophiles enamored of the Amiga's software or hardware capabilities, Commodore loyalists upgrading from the C-64 or 128, iconoclasts who disliked IBM, and video or graphic arts enthusiasts (or professionals - the desktop video
market was one of the few areas where the Amiga would gain widespread adoption in the US outside of the home).
laws in May 1994. Chapter 11 US rules allow a firm to recover its debts and reorganize. Two times in the past Commodore was reorganized in various occasions and repaid by Irving Gould
without requesting filing for Chapter 11, but this time, as being controlled by US bankruptcy laws, the board of trustees, which was appointed by the court to oversee Commodore, decided to "liquidate" (sell) the company without proceeding to reorganization. The majority of Commodore's assets and name were sold to Escom
. Production was halted briefly, until it was restarted for a short time under Escom's Amiga Technologies. Though the machines had been upgraded and had plentiful hardware and software support, the lack of new Amigas meant that vendors sooner or later moved on. Most of the 'leading edge' technology hobbyists and productivity market moved to PC architecture, sometimes running Linux
or BeOS
in preference to Microsoft Windows
.
Due to the fierce loyalty of some Amiga fans, the 'scene' continued, many years even after the last original Amiga was sold. Inevitably, the PC eventually became the undisputed leading home computing technology, and the console wars also left the CD32 for dead.
The rights to the Amiga platform were successively sold to Escom and later Gateway 2000, but Escom almost immediately went bankrupt itself (due to non-Amiga related problems) and Gateway vacillated over what to do with its new acquisition. In 1999, an entirely new company called Amiga, Inc.
(no relation to the original Amiga Corporation) was incorporated in the US state of Washington, and received a license from Gateway to use Amiga-related patents and trademarks.
Minimig
is an open source hardware
implementation of the Amiga 500
with the custom chipset implemented using an field-programmable gate array
(FPGA), released under the GNU General Public Licence. It uses the MC68000 CPU chip from Freescale.
released final version of AmigaOS 4.0 in fall 2006, there were no machines currently selling that could run the OS, due to the production of AmigaOne machines ceasing some months earlier. In the same announcement, Hyperion stated that an undisclosed manufacturer would begin production of a new Power Architecture
based machine that could run AmigaOS 4.0 later in 2007.
and Linux
.
A version of AmigaOS 4.1 was released by Hyperion for Genesi/bPlan
Pegasos II
systems.
(Washington), began selling a small number of AmigaOne
s. The "AmigaOne SE" was based on Mai Logic's Teron CX POP (PowerPC Open Platform) reference design motherboard from 2001, and development to adapt AmigaOS 4
to this hardware began. The AmigaOne SE was succeeded by AmigaOne XE, which was based on the Teron PX reference board, a newer design with a replaceable CPU module which came in G3 and G4 flavors. In 2004, Eyetech began selling the Micro-A1, based on the Teron Mini, a mini-ITX model with a 750GX G3 CPU. Eyetech AmigaOnes are no longer being produced or sold.
is a PowerPC
-based computer dedicated to run AmigaOS 4
. It was announced by A-Eon and is expected by 2010. Its name is influenced by the original Amiga 1000
released by Commodore
in 1985.
is an open source re-implementation of AmigaOS. It runs on many x86 based systems as native or hosted flavors. AROS also runs on some 68k based Amigas and PowerPC systems. There is also a company selling AresOne systems dedicated to run AROS only. Unlike many other Amiga based solutions AROS is Amiga binary compatible only on 68k based systems.
is a closed source re-implementation of AmigaOS. It runs only on PowerPC based systems as native but can execute system friendly Amiga software. MorphOS runs on Efika
, Pegasos I/II and some PowerPC based Apple Mac models.
, which bought rights to the Commodore and Amiga brands, announced a relaunched and updated Commodore 64 model, and said they also planned to release updated Amiga models.
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, a home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
product line manufactured from the middle 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
up to today.
Amiga Corporation
The Amiga's chipset was designed by a small company called Amiga CorporationAmiga Corporation
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.-History:...
during the end of the first home video game boom. Wary of industrial espionage, the developers codenamed the chipset "Lorraine" during development. Development of the Lorraine project were done using an Sage IV (m68k/8 MHz/1MB) machine, nicknamed "Agony". Amiga Corp. funded the development of the Lorraine by manufacturing game controllers, and from an initial bridge loan from Atari Inc.
Atari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
while seeking further investors. The chipset was to be used in a video game machine, but following the video game crash of 1983
Video game crash of 1983
The North American video game crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. Beginning in 1983, the crash almost destroyed the then-fledgling industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing...
, the Lorraine was repurposed to be a personal computer. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
was shown the original prototype for the first Amiga and said there was "too much hardware". He was in the midst of work on the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
at the time and was reportedly worried that the Amiga would surpass his plans.
However, before Amiga Corp. could bring the machine to market, the company encountered financial difficulties.
1985-87, The early years
The first Amiga computer was released in 1985 by CommodoreCommodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
. It was simply called the Amiga devoid of references to Commodore. Commodore marketed it both as their intended successor to the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
and as their competitor against the Apple Macintosh. It was later renamed the Commodore Amiga 1000
Amiga 1000
The A1000, or Commodore Amiga 1000, was Commodore's initial Amiga personal computer, introduced on July 23, 1985 at the Lincoln Center in New York City....
.
Poorly marketed, the Amiga 1000 was not an instant success. Commodore at first tried to distance itself and its reputation for making "toy computers" from the Amiga, asking that it be referred to as "The Amiga, from Commodore" by the press and designing new logos to replace its own iconic "C=" design. Commodore compounded the problem by marketing a new 8-bit computer
Commodore 128
The Commodore 128 home/personal computer was the last 8-bit machine commercially released by Commodore Business Machines...
alongside the Amiga, confusing the general public about Commodore's direction and the Amiga's advantages. In 1994 Byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
wrote "The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody — including Commodore's marketing department — could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it's obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video." This marketing confusion would plague the Amiga throughout its lifetime, even as it changed hands between Escom, Gateway and other owners.
1987-90, Cost reduced and high end models
In 1987, faced with strong competition from Atari STAtari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
in the lower end of the segment, Commodore released the cost reduced Amiga 500
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...
and the high end Amiga 2000
Amiga 2000
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in 1986. It is the successor to the Amiga 1000.-Features:Aimed at the high-end market, the original Europe-only model adds a Zorro II backplane, implemented in programmable logic, to the custom Amiga chipset used in the Amiga 1000...
for the respective prices of US $699 and $2395 (this price included 1 MB RAM and a monitor).
With its lowered price, the Amiga 500 went on to become a successful home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
and eventually outsold its main rival, the Atari ST.http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/12/total-share.ars/6 The Amiga 2000, thanks to its Genlock
Genlock
Genlock is a common technique where the video output of one source, or a specific reference signal from a signal generator, is used to synchronize other television picture sources together. The aim in video and digital audio applications is to ensure the coincidence of signals in time at a...
and internal expansion slots, managed to carve out a market niche within desktop video
Desktop video
Desktop video refers to a phenomenon lasting from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s when the graphics capabilities of personal computers such as Commodore's Amiga, the Apple Macintosh II and specially-upgraded IBM PC compatibles had advanced to the point where individuals and local broadcasters...
. This market was not as large as the office and publishing markets dominated by the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh and as a result the Amiga 2000 lagged these systems in sales. Also, Commodore had initially announced a price of $1795 for the 2000, resulting in widespread grumbling among their customer base when the higher price was made public. To a lesser degree this was the case for A500 which Commodore announced its price $595.95 but later released it at $699. The Amiga did see widespread use in the television and video production industry during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including on popular shows like Clarissa Explains It All
Clarissa Explains It All
Clarissa Explains It All is an American teen sitcom that aired on Nickelodeon. Created by Mitchell Kriegman, it aired for five seasons for a total of 65 episodes from March 23, 1991, to December 3, 1994, and then went into reruns....
and Unsolved Mysteries
Unsolved Mysteries
Unsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack, from 1987 until 2002, and later by Dennis Farina, starting in 2008...
.http://wigilius.se/amiga/
1990-93, Height of popularity
Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, was the third major release in the Amiga computer family. Released in June 1990, it features improved processing speed, improved rendering of graphics, and a new revision of the operating system...
featuring an enhanced chipset (ECS) and the second release of its operating system, commonly referred to as Workbench 2.0.
Many users had criticised Commodore for letting the Amiga platform languish since its introduction five years earlier; this criticism did not diminish with the Amiga 3000. Commodore was unable to match the pace of PC advancement with their lower resources and economy of scale, and users complained that the custom ECS chipset failed to match the features of the PC and Mac display hardware at the time. Users also felt that the operating system (Workbench 2.0) only featured improvements taken from the user community. As Apple was the only other major user of Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
chips at the time, Commodore often had to wait for a new CPU technology until increased supplies allowed Motorola to sell chips to anyone but Apple.
On the plus side many users considered the Amiga 3000 the most well engineered Amiga model, and the Amiga 3000's integrated flicker filter made it painless to use inexpensive PC-style VGA monitors. This may in part be the reason Commodore went on to sell one million Amigas in just one year, which is equal to a third of all Amigas sold up to that time.
In the same year as the Amiga 3000, Commodore released the US $895 CDTV
CDTV
The CDTV was a multimedia platform developed by Commodore International and launched in 1991. On a technological level it was essentially a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer in a Hi-Fi style case with a single-speed CD-ROM drive. Commodore marketed the machine as an all-in-one home multimedia...
, aimed to move the Amiga platform to the living room and a competitor to devices such as Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
CD Interactive (CD-I)
CD-i
CD-i, or Compact Disc Interactive, is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard used by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was developed by Philips and Sony...
. Commodore believed that there was a market for a system that could display animations, pictures and offer educational software and games on a television, and many game developers thought that interactive CD-based video games would become a popular market. The end result was a system that could be described as an Amiga 500 with a remote control replacing the keyboard and a CD-ROM replacing the floppy drive.
Considering that the Amiga 500 was cheaper, more versatile and had the promise of a future CDTV expansion few Amiga users had any interest in the Amiga CDTV. At the same time the general public preferred cheaper game consoles over both the CDTV and CD-I, and was not aware of or interested in the multimedia potential of these CD-ROM based systems.
Both Commodore and Philips tried to tempt users with promise of an MPEG-1
MPEG-1
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting possible.Today, MPEG-1 has become...
module capable of playing video from a CD-ROM. These Video CDs can be considered lower-resolution versions of today's Digital Versatile Disks (DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s), but without scene selection, additional features and with the inconvenience of having to change the disks during a full length movie.
The CDTV became Commodore's first Amiga based failure, one that allegedly cost them a significant amount of resources. Commodore made a last ditch effort in saving the system with the CDTV 2, but dropped that design in favor of the much more capable Amiga CD32
Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32, styled "CD32" , was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based video game console released in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom on 16 July 1993, and was released in September of the same year...
.
1992-94, Trouble ahead
SWIV
SWIV was a 2D vertically-scrolling Shoot 'em up game originally released in 1991 for the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC home computer formats....
, Treasure Island Dizzy
Treasure Island Dizzy
Treasure Island Dizzy is a computer puzzle game published in 1987 by Codemasters for the Amstrad, Commodore 64, Spectrum, DOS, NES, Amiga and Atari ST....
and Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge), and some people took them back to dealers demanding an original A500
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...
.
By this time the Amiga 500 and 500+ were showing signs of obsolescence, even as a game machine. Instead of discontinuing the product Commodore envisioned it taking the place of the Commodore 64 in the low-cost segment. To make that possible Commodore set out to design the Amiga 600
Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600 , is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 was Commodore International's final model based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. It is essentially a redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, with the option of an internal...
, a system intended to be much cheaper than the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 itself would be replaced by Amiga 1200
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 , was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market...
, also under development.
Shortly after releasing the Amiga 600 Commodore announced that two new super Amigas would be released at the end of the year. In classic Osborne
Osborne effect
The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequence of the announcement of a future product ahead of its availability and its impact upon the sales of the current product....
style, consumers decided to wait for the new Amigas and Commodore had to close their Australian office in face of plummeting sales. At the same time, Commodore's foray into the highly competitive PC market
Commodore PC compatible systems
The Commodore PC compatible systems were a range of IBM PC compatible personal computers introduced in 1984 by home computer manufacturer Commodore Business Machines. Incompatible with Commodore's prior PET and Commodore 64 series, they were generally regarded as good, serviceable workhorse PCs...
failed to bear fruit and Commodore was forced to bring it to a halt. This contributed to Commodore's 1992 profits falling to an unimpressive $28 million dollars, and made the need for a successful new Amiga launch all that more critical.
In October 1992, Commodore released the A1200
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 , was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market...
and the A4000
Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models, the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030....
: Each featured the new AGA
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
chipset and the third release of AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
.
In 1993, Commodore marketed the CD32
Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32, styled "CD32" , was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based video game console released in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom on 16 July 1993, and was released in September of the same year...
, which was one of the earliest CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
-based consoles and was also the world's first 32-bit game machine, with specifications similar to the A1200.
The last Amiga released by Commodore was the A4000T
Amiga 4000T
The Amiga 4000T, also known as A4000T, was a tower version of the A4000 computer. Using the AGA chipset, it was originally released in small quantities in 1994 with a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 CPU, and re-released in greater numbers by Escom in 1995, after Commodore's demise, along with a new...
, in 1994.
Amiga in the United States
Mass-market Amigas were considerably cheaper than PCIBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
s and Macs at the time. This factor helped to boost sales in the more price-conscious European markets, but it also continued Commodore's misfortune from the VIC-20 and C64 era of being viewed in U.S. markets as a producer of cheap "toy computers" and "game machines". This perception was furthered by the fact that most Commodore retail outlets were toy stores, and marketing campaigns were mismatched with the American public's needs and wants. Overall, the Amiga was very successful in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, but it sold less than a million units in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Another factor is that in the U.S. market, the IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
was already a dominant market force, especially in the workplace. Potential buyers first question was often, "Is it IBM compatible?", allowing the user to "take work home" or more often take software home to install on their own machines. To satisfy these users, Commodore introduced a variety of PC-compatibility addons, such as the Amiga Sidecar
Amiga Sidecar
The Commodore A1060 Sidecar is an expansion hardware device developed by Commodore and released in 1986 for the Amiga 1000 computer. It features a complete PC XT system mounted in an expansion case which connected to the expansion bus on the right side of the Amiga 1000 computer, sitting beside it...
for the Amiga 1000, the Bridge Board for the A2000 and a 5.25" floppy disk drive to facilitate data exchange with PC disks. But as the PC's graphics drastically improved from the early mediocre CGA and EGA modes prevalent at the Amiga's introduction to VGA and SVGA which appeared to match or exceed the Amiga's abilities, consumers saw no advantage in the Amiga's "incompatible" technology. Commodore's attempts at interoperability did not persuade users concerned about IBM compatibility to buy an Amiga instead of one of the inexpensive PC clones that were beginning to flood the US market. As a result, US Amiga users tended to be technophiles enamored of the Amiga's software or hardware capabilities, Commodore loyalists upgrading from the C-64 or 128, iconoclasts who disliked IBM, and video or graphic arts enthusiasts (or professionals - the desktop video
Desktop video
Desktop video refers to a phenomenon lasting from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s when the graphics capabilities of personal computers such as Commodore's Amiga, the Apple Macintosh II and specially-upgraded IBM PC compatibles had advanced to the point where individuals and local broadcasters...
market was one of the few areas where the Amiga would gain widespread adoption in the US outside of the home).
Bankruptcy
Commodore management voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 under US bankruptcyBankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
laws in May 1994. Chapter 11 US rules allow a firm to recover its debts and reorganize. Two times in the past Commodore was reorganized in various occasions and repaid by Irving Gould
Irving Gould
Irving Gould was a Canadian businessperson credited with both saving and sinking Commodore. He gave the necessary funding to Jack Tramiel to keep Commodore running during several periods of financial problems...
without requesting filing for Chapter 11, but this time, as being controlled by US bankruptcy laws, the board of trustees, which was appointed by the court to oversee Commodore, decided to "liquidate" (sell) the company without proceeding to reorganization. The majority of Commodore's assets and name were sold to Escom
Escom
ESCOM, previously Schmitt Computer Systems Ltd., was a German computer company, best known in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands as the successful purchaser of Commodore International in 1995....
. Production was halted briefly, until it was restarted for a short time under Escom's Amiga Technologies. Though the machines had been upgraded and had plentiful hardware and software support, the lack of new Amigas meant that vendors sooner or later moved on. Most of the 'leading edge' technology hobbyists and productivity market moved to PC architecture, sometimes running Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
or BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
in preference to Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
Due to the fierce loyalty of some Amiga fans, the 'scene' continued, many years even after the last original Amiga was sold. Inevitably, the PC eventually became the undisputed leading home computing technology, and the console wars also left the CD32 for dead.
The rights to the Amiga platform were successively sold to Escom and later Gateway 2000, but Escom almost immediately went bankrupt itself (due to non-Amiga related problems) and Gateway vacillated over what to do with its new acquisition. In 1999, an entirely new company called Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc. is the company that holds the intellectual property associated with the Amiga personal computer , including the Amiga trademark.-Brief history of Amiga brand:...
(no relation to the original Amiga Corporation) was incorporated in the US state of Washington, and received a license from Gateway to use Amiga-related patents and trademarks.
New Amigas
Since demise of Commodore-Amiga there have been many attempts to create new Amiga hardware and solutions. All new Amigas are built from standard components without using the original Commodore custom chips.AmigaOS 3 compatibles
Only AmigaOS 3 compatible machines share the original Amiga heritage with the custom chip compatibility. While they do are not using the original chips as in original Amiga computers they implement compatible functionality in their FPGA.Minimig
Minimig
Minimig is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array .Minimig started in secrecy around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren...
is an open source hardware
Open source hardware
Open source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open source software . Open source hardware is part of the open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that...
implementation of the Amiga 500
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...
with the custom chipset implemented using an field-programmable gate array
Field-programmable gate array
A field-programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by the customer or designer after manufacturing—hence "field-programmable"...
(FPGA), released under the GNU General Public Licence. It uses the MC68000 CPU chip from Freescale.
Natami
Natami is an ongoing hardware project to build 68k based computer to run AmigaOS 3.AmigaOS 4 compatibles
When Hyperion EntertainmentHyperion Entertainment
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is a Belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting Windows games to Amiga, Linux and Macintosh. Later on, they were contracted by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and retired from the gaming business...
released final version of AmigaOS 4.0 in fall 2006, there were no machines currently selling that could run the OS, due to the production of AmigaOne machines ceasing some months earlier. In the same announcement, Hyperion stated that an undisclosed manufacturer would begin production of a new Power Architecture
Power Architecture
Power Architecture is a broad term to describe similar RISC instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale, AMCC, Tundra and P.A. Semi...
based machine that could run AmigaOS 4.0 later in 2007.
Samantha
Samantha systems are PowerPC 440EP or PowerPC 460 based systems built by ACube Systems located in Italy. They are sold in various configurations CPU clock rate ranging from 400 MHz to 800 MHz. Their primary targets are the industrial and embedded markets, with some plans to reach the desktop markets with AmigaOS 4AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4, , is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
.
Pegasos II
Genesi
Genesi is computer company focused on building Power Architecture and ARM architecture computers. The organization is split into two units, Genesi USA, Inc. working out of Texas operating as the primary front-end for sales, customers and developers, and bplan GmbH based in Germany as the primary...
Pegasos II
Pegasos
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports , USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire...
systems.
AmigaOne SE/XE/Micro
In 2002, Eyetech in cooperation with Amiga, Inc.Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc. is the company that holds the intellectual property associated with the Amiga personal computer , including the Amiga trademark.-Brief history of Amiga brand:...
(Washington), began selling a small number of AmigaOne
AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the Teron series of PowerPC POP mainboards...
s. The "AmigaOne SE" was based on Mai Logic's Teron CX POP (PowerPC Open Platform) reference design motherboard from 2001, and development to adapt AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4, , is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner...
to this hardware began. The AmigaOne SE was succeeded by AmigaOne XE, which was based on the Teron PX reference board, a newer design with a replaceable CPU module which came in G3 and G4 flavors. In 2004, Eyetech began selling the Micro-A1, based on the Teron Mini, a mini-ITX model with a 750GX G3 CPU. Eyetech AmigaOnes are no longer being produced or sold.
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC based computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and is expected in late 2011...
is a PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
-based computer dedicated to run AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4, , is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner...
. It was announced by A-Eon and is expected by 2010. Its name is influenced by the original Amiga 1000
Amiga 1000
The A1000, or Commodore Amiga 1000, was Commodore's initial Amiga personal computer, introduced on July 23, 1985 at the Lincoln Center in New York City....
released by Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
in 1985.
Other Amigas
Other than AmigaOS based systems there are many alternatives to the official Amiga branding. Like AmigaOS 4 compatibles they do not implement custom chip compatibility.AROS systems
AROSAros
Aros may refer to:*Aros , a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium*AROS Research Operating System, a free software implementation of AmigaOS* Aros, the original Viking name of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark...
is an open source re-implementation of AmigaOS. It runs on many x86 based systems as native or hosted flavors. AROS also runs on some 68k based Amigas and PowerPC systems. There is also a company selling AresOne systems dedicated to run AROS only. Unlike many other Amiga based solutions AROS is Amiga binary compatible only on 68k based systems.
MorphOS systems
MorphOSMorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
is a closed source re-implementation of AmigaOS. It runs only on PowerPC based systems as native but can execute system friendly Amiga software. MorphOS runs on Efika
EFIKA
Efika are a line of mobile computing Power Architecture and ARM architecture based computers manufactured by Genesi.In Esperanto efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".-Efika 5200B:...
, Pegasos I/II and some PowerPC based Apple Mac models.
New Commodore Amigas
In 2011, Commodore USACommodore USA
Commodore USA, LLC is a computer company based in Pompano Beach, Florida, with additional facilities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Commodore USA, LLC was founded in April 2010...
, which bought rights to the Commodore and Amiga brands, announced a relaunched and updated Commodore 64 model, and said they also planned to release updated Amiga models.
Further reading
- A history of the Amiga - Jeremy Reimer's discussion of the history behind the Amiga's creation and demise with Commodore.
- Famous Amiga Uses