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The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced game console. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International introduced the machine to the market in 1985, after having bought Amiga Corp. The machine was ahead of its time, sporting a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a sophisticated multitasking operating system, now known as AmigaOS. Providing a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe. It also found a prominent role in the video production business.
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The Amiga's chipset was designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation during the end of the first home video game boom. Wary of industrial espionage, the chipset was codenamed Lorraine during development. Amiga Corp. funded the development of the Lorraine by manufacturing joysticks while seeking 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. Before Amiga Corp. could bring the machine to market, the company encountered financial difficulties and was sold to Commodore in August 1984.
The first Amiga computer, simply called the Amiga, was released in 1985 by Commodore, who marketed it both as their intended successor to the Commodore 64 and as their competitor against the Atari ST. It was later renamed the Amiga 1000 (or A1000 for short). Revolutionary for its time, it could display 4,096 colors and produce 4 channels of 8-bit digital audio. It is also notable for having the first preemptive multitasking operating system with a color GUI, allowing users to perform multiple tasks at the same time.
In 1987, Commodore released two new Amiga models, the A500 and the A2000. These were marketed as low-end and high-end machines, respectively. The former became the most popular Amiga computer of the decade and served primarily as a games machine, while the latter was marketed as a more serious workstation for graphic purposes, due to the presence of a SCSI controller option, a Genlock slot and a video I/O connector.
In 1990, the A3000 was introduced as the successor to both the A1000 and A2000, with an extended chipset (ECS) and the second release of its operating system, which would eventually be called AmigaOS.
In the same year, Commodore released three new low-end machines: the CDTV, aimed to move the platform to the living room; the A500+, with the same enhancements as the A3000; and the A600, basically an A500+ in a smaller box with an IDE controller for hard disks. All of these were commercial failures, mainly due to poor marketing.
Mass-market Amigas were then considerably cheaper than PCs and Macs at the time. This factor helped to boost sales in the more price-conscious European markets, but it also led to Commodore being viewed in U.S. markets as a producer of cheap "game machines". This perception was furthered by the fact that most Commodore retail outlets were toy stores, and marketing campaigns were woefully mismatched with the status-conscious American public. Overall, the Amiga was very successful in Europe, but it sold less than a million units in the U.S..
In 1992, Commodore released their last Amiga computer models, the A1200 and the A4000: Each featured the new AGA chipset and the third release of AmigaOS.
In 1993, menaced by console giants Sega and Nintendo, Commodore marketed the CD32 in a desperate attempt to save their business. The CD32 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.
In 1994, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and its assets were purchased by Escom, a German PC manufacturer, who created the subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. However, Escom in turn went bankrupt in 1997. The Amiga brand was then sold to another PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000, which had announced grand plans for it. However, in 2000, Gateway dropped the Amiga brand. This is rumored to be due to pressure by Microsoft; however, the real reason for the sale is unknown.
The current owner of the trademark, Amiga, Inc., has licensed the rights to make hardware using the Amiga brand to a U.K. computer vendor, Eyetech Group, Ltd, which was founded by some former UK employees of Commodore International. They are currently selling the AmigaOne via an international dealer network. The AmigaOne is a PowerPC computer designed to run the last remnants of AmigaOS, which was itself licensed to a Belgian-German company, Hyperion Entertainment.
Only a very few Amiga clones were ever produced, as both Commodore and subsequent owners of the trademark refused to license the Amiga technology to third-party manufacturers.
Today, Amigas running AmigaOS version 3.9 and earlier are now considered "Classic" Amigas, as opposed to the new Amiga Inc./Eyetech/Hyperion models. Due to its popularity as a gaming platform, many people incorrectly refer to the Amiga as a games console (even though it is a fully-featured computer). However, there are many "Classic" Amigas still in use around the world. A popular use for the classic Amiga is as an automated readerboard for local community-access TV stations.
For its time, the Amiga was quite an advanced computer for the home market. It provided impressive sound and graphics for games, and it was also popular in business environments until around the mid-1990s, aiding users in video editing and 3D graphics.
The very first model, the Amiga 1000, had a 7.16MHz CPU, designed to work directly with NTSC video. The CPU clock frequency was precisely double the 3.58MHz color carrier frequency. The A1000 had a built-in composite video output, which allowed the computer to be hooked up directly to a TV or VCR. However, the output signal was considered too "hot" (strong) by many to be useful for anything other than home use (however, this could be remedied by running the A1000's composite output through a video processing amplifier, or "proc amp", to bring the video levels down to a suitable amount).
The Original Amiga chipset, or OCS, was more advanced than other architectures of its time: it had dedicated chips for real-time video effects, allowing users to easily work with genlocks to overlay graphics atop live video. The Amiga's unique overscan feature, the ability to run at custom, user-defined resolutions, allowed it to draw images past the visible borders of a television screen, allowing seamless fly-ins and scrolling from off-frame. Today, many TV stations and broadcast corporations are still using A3000s and A4000s for their real-time video effects. Many programs were also written for creating "fansubs" of foreign films and Japanese animation.
Another unique feature provided by the Amiga was the ability to change display resolutions on the fly — the computer could display different scan lines at different resolutions, allowing for multiple screens of information at different resolutions that could overlap one another without interfering with each other. The chipset also included a blitter, which could copy and manipulate large amounts of graphics data at once (making the Amiga well-suited to arcade action games), and accelerated line-drawing and area-filling functions, which helped advance the popularity of real-time 3D graphics and games.
The operating system, AmigaOS, was also quite sophisticated for its time, combining an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) like that of the Apple Macintosh together with an elegant Command Line Interface (CLI) which then eventually evolved into a very powerful Shell. This gives the user of Amiga some of the flexibility of UNIX while retaining a simplicity that made maintenance rather easy. While its operating system was the only preemptive multitasking platform with an efficient message-passing kernel in the consumer marketplace for several years with an efficient memory management, robustness left something to be desired, mainly due to the absence of protected memory, resulting in the famous "Guru Meditation" errors.
The Amiga operating system was resurrected in 2000 as AmigaOS 4, which currently runs only on AmigaOne computers and on A1200s and A4000s with a PowerPC accelerator card.
Other, still maintained, operating systems are available for the classic Amiga platform, including Linux and NetBSD. Older versions of OpenBSD can also be run - the last Amiga release was 3.2. Commodore Amiga Unix (based on AT&T System V Rel. 4) was available only for the A2500 and A3000.
MS-DOS compatibility was a major issue during the early years of the Amiga's lifespan in order to promote the machine as a serious business machine. In order to run the MS-DOS operating system, Commodore released the 'Sidecar' for Amiga 1000, basically a 8086 board in a closed case that connected to the side of the Amiga. Clever programming (a library named Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of doorways) made it possible to run PC software in an Amiga window without use of emulation. At the introduction of the Sidecar the crowd was stunned to see the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator running at full speed in an Amiga window on the Workbench.
Later the Sidecar was implemented on a expansion card named 'Bridgeboard' for Amiga 2000+ models. Bridgeboard cards appeared up to 486 processor variants. The Bridgeboard card and the Janus library made use PC expansion cards and harddisk/floppydisk drives possible. The bridgeboard card was manufactured by Commodore, later third party cards also appeared for the A500/1200 expansion slot such as the KCS Powerboard.
Eventually, full-software emulators, such as PC-Task allowed Amigas to run MS-DOS programs, including Microsoft Windows, without additional hardware, at the costs of speed and compatibility.
Also introduced for the Amiga was the Emplant expansion card, which allowed the Amiga to emulate an Apple Macintosh and run the Macintosh Operating System. It required an Apple Macintosh ROM image, which had to be obtained from a Macintosh.
In 1988 an Apple Mac emulator called A-Max was released for the Amiga 500. It needed Mac ROMs to function, and could read Mac disks when used with a Mac floppy drive (Amiga floppy drives are unable to read Mac disks. Unlike Amiga disks Mac floppy disks spin at variable speeds, much like CD ROM drives). It wasn't a particularly elegant solution, but it did provide an affordable Mac experience.
Over time full-software emulation was available in programs like Shapeshifter, but you still had to get a ROM image.
Amiga was originally supported by such prestigious software titles as WordPerfect, Deluxe Paint, and Lattice C. Video Toaster, one of the first all-in-one graphics and video editing packages, began on the Amiga. The Amiga made 3D raytracing graphics available for the masses with Sculpt 3D (before the Amiga, raytracing was only available for dedicated graphic workstations). Some titles were later ported to Microsoft Windows and continue to thrive there, like the rendering software Maxon Cinema 4D, LightWave, which was originally part of Video Toaster, in addition to Video Toaster itself. Even Microsoft produced software for use on the Amiga. AmigaBASIC, an advanced BASIC software development environment, complete with an Interactive Development Environment (IDE), was written by Microsoft under contract.
Richmond Sound Design (RSD) created both show control and theatre sound design software which was used extensively in the theatre, theme park, display, exhibit, show and themed entertainment industries in the 80s and 90s and at one point in the mid 90s, there were many high profile shows at major theme parks around the world being controlled by Amigas. There were dozens at Walt Disney World alone and more at all other Disney, Universal Studios, Six Flags and Madame Tussauds properties as well as in many venues in Las Vegas including the Mirage Hotel Volcano, MGM Grand EFX show, Broadway theatre, London's West End, the Royal Shakespeare Company's many venues, most of Branson, Missouri's theatres, and scores of theatres on cruise ships, amongst hundreds of others. RSD purchased used Amigas on the web and reconditioned them to provide enough systems for all the shows that specified them and only stopped providing new Amiga installations in 2000. There are still an unknown number of shows on cruise ships and in themed venues being run by Amigas.
Much shareware and free software was written for the Amiga and could be obtained via the Fred Fish disk series or from the Aminet software archive.
| Original Chipset (OCS) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Timescale | RAM (base) | OS Version | Additional Information |
| Amiga 1000 | 1985 - 1987 | 256 KB | 1.0 - 1.3 | Later A1000s shipped with 512KB base memory |
| Amiga 500 | 1987 - 1990 | 512 KB | 1.2 - 1.3 | First "low-end" Amiga |
| Amiga 2000 | 1987 - 1992 | 1MB | 1.2 - 2.04 | First desktop Amiga with expansion slots |
| Amiga 2500 | 1989 - 1990 | 1MB | 1.3 | A2000+'020/'030 card (not a distinct model) |
| Amiga 1500 | 1990 - 1991 | 1MB | 1.3 | UK only, variant of A2000 with 2 floppy drives. This version originated with CBM UK Marketing who found it necessary to distinguish the floppy-only version from the A2000 with the general public. |
| Amiga CDTV | 1991 - 1992 | 1MB | 1.3 | CD-ROM based multimedia machine |
| Enhanced Chipset (ECS) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Timescale | RAM (base) | OS Version | Additional Information |
| Amiga 3000 | 1990 - 1992 | 2/5 MB | 2.0 - 2.04 | First Zorro III system |
| Amiga 3000T | 1990 - 1992 | 1/4 MB | 2.04 | First "towerized" Amiga |
| Amiga 3000UX | 199? - 199? | ? MB | 2.04 | UNIX based Amiga 3000 |
| Amiga 500+ | 1991 - 1992 | 1 MB | 2.04 | ECS based A500 with 1MB RAM base memory |
| Amiga 600 | 1992 | 1 MB | 2.05 - 2.1 | First Amiga using SMT, built-in IDE and PCMCIA support |
| Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Timescale | RAM (base) | OS Version | Additional Information |
| Amiga 1200 | 1992 - 1996 | 2 MB | 3.0 - 3.1 | Entry-level AGA machine, A1200HD with 20~209MB hard drives |
| Amiga 4000 | 1992 - 1994 | 2 MB | 3.0 | First AGA machine, 68030/68040 CPU options |
| Amiga 4000T | 1994 - 1996 | 2 MB | 3.1 | Towerized version of the A4000, 68040/68060 CPU options |
| Amiga CD32 | 1993 - 1994 | 2 MB | 3.1 | World's first 32-bit CD-ROM based console |
| PowerPC based | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Timescale | RAM (base) | OS Version | Additional Information |
| AmigaOne SE | 2002 - 2004 | Varies | (pre)4.0 | ATX format motherboard |
| AmigaOne XE | 2003 - 2004 | Varies | (pre)4.0 | ATX format motherboard |
| MicroA1 - C | 2004 - | 256 Mb | (pre)4.0 | Mini-ITX format motherboard |
| MicroA1 - I | 2004 - | 256 Mb | (pre)4.0 | Mini-ITX format motherboard |
Some models were released by other companies which were not official Amigas, but were compatible with Amiga software.
Prototypes:
Due to management turmoil, some viable Amiga models under development were canceled prior to release:
A number of new Amiga models were announced after the end of the Commodore model era. However, very few of them were ever produced beyond simple prototypes (if they even got that far). Some of these were announced by companies who later owned, or seeked to own, the Amiga rights. Others were unofficial machines which would run AmigaOS, whilst others still were intended to run an operating system compatible with Amiga software. Some models that were never produced include:
| List of Commodore microcomputers |
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MOS Technology 6502-based (8-bit): MOS/CBM KIM-1 | PET/CBM | CBM-II (aka B/P series) | VIC-20/VC-20 | C64 | SX-64 | C16 & 116 | Plus/4 | C128 M68K-based (16/32-bit): Amiga 1000 | Amiga 500 | Amiga 2000 | Amiga 500+ | Amiga 2500 | Amiga 3000, UX, T | Amiga 600 | Amiga 1200 | Amiga 4000 |