Amigas history
Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2004 5:28 pm
A history if the Amiga Computer
by Peter Perlsø, published 6th of March 2003 , updated 4th of June, 2004
Before the Beginning
1982:
Jay Miner and Dave Morris founds Hi-Torro Company, bringing in the original gurus, including Carl Sassenrath, R.J. Mical and Dave Luck. First Amiga prototype developed and named "Lorraine".
Company later renamed as "Amiga Incorporated".
1984:
4th of January, the Winter Computer Entertainment Show (CES) hosts, amongst others, the Amiga company, which shows off its first Amiga hardware prototype. The Boing Ball demo is shown - the birth of a legend =)
Rise of The Amiga
1985:
Amiga Inc. started running out of cash, and approached a number of "big" computer companies, such as Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Atari, for negotiation of at takeover and subsequent renewed cash flow. It turned out however, that the relatively minor company named Commodore, had the best bid on offer - $4.25 per share of Amiga Inc.
June:
First "real" Amiga shown to the public, sending many disbelieving computer geeks into coma after being presented with the Amiga's visual capabilities.
July 23rd:
Amiga 1000 (A1000) presented in public at an event where Andy Warhol himself participated. The event was immortalised when Warhol created a digital painting of Blondie.
September:
A1000 released to public, at a price roughly half that of a comparable EGA-based PC.
Amiga World magazine published for the first time. The legendary Juggler demo is released.
1986:
Amiga development picking up speed, but the success brought with it the first serious internal conflicts. Amongst other areas of disagreement was the design of the forthcoming Amiga 2000, where the original machine design was scrapped and replaced with outsourced design of german orgin. Half of the original team was subsequently sacked, and before the end of the year, they were all gone from the company.
The game "Defender of the Crown" was released, proving to be a killer app. It delivered graphics of a quality that even games a decade later were hard pressed to match.
The Golden Years
1987:
A500 and A200 released, both initially using Workbench 1.2.
1989:
The "Batman Pack A500" was released, becoming a major cash cow for Commodore, as it sold in the hundreds of thousands.
1990:
The Amiga compter became the best selling home computer - worldwide!
24th of April: A3000 unveiled to the public, and released in May. Used Workbench 2.0.
June: Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) released - it was essentially an A500 with a CD-ROM drive packed into what looked like a black VCR box.
August: A500+ released, featuring the ECS chipset and Workbench 2.04, causing numerous compatibility problems with old Amiga software, especially games.
November: NewTek Video Toaster was released, and made a splash big enough to establish it as a TV and video editing solution good enogh for such shows as Star Trek TNG, Seaquest DSV, Babylon5, and motion pictures such as Jurassic Park and Robocop!
1991:
CDTV turns out to be a major flop, draining the Commodore coffers in the process.
A600, sporting new technolgies such as PCMCIA expansion and IDE hard disk interface, was presented and touted to be the future successor to the A500+.
1992:
A3000+ with AGA graphics presented, but later scrapped and replaced with the A4000.
March: A600 finally released, once again introducing compatibility problems for users of A500/500+ software.
Amiga Format (UK) printed in excess of 130.000 magazines every month.
11th of September: A1200 unveiled, features included AGA chipset and WorkBench 3.
December: A4000 and A1200 released just in time for the holiday shopping =)
The Recession
1993:
The layoffs at Commodore starts. The AAA chipset, which was set to surpass the AGA ditto, was scrapped due to Commodore's poor financial situation. Rumors of Commodore's demise persist.
The PCs starts to overtake Amiga in the marketplace :p
March: Amiga Report, an online magazine, is founded by James Compton.
April: A1200 sales exceed a total of 100.000. WorkBench 3.1 released to developers. Emplant emulator, which emulates the Apple Macintosh, is released.
September: CD32 game console released - essentially a transformed Amiga 1200 with a CD-rom drive in a console package. The public response to this new Amiga was mixed.
The Collapse
1994:
March:
Disaster strikes - Commodore announce massive financial losses, and the layoffs proceed with draconian force, leaving only 30 employees of the original one thousand before the end of the month (Monday March 25th).
Wednesday 27th March: Westchester facility shuts its doors.
Friday 29th of March 1610 GMT, Commodore files for liqudation.
20th of June: Jay Miner dies.
Takeover and recollapse
1995:
Commodore's repeated attempts at a management buyout fails.
1st of March: Amiga World magazine ceases publication.
April:
Escom and Dell Computer bids to acquire the remaining assets of Commodore - Escom wins, even though their bid of 7 million GBP is less than that of Dell's 15 million. Escom subsequently launches Amiga Technologies, for selling A1200 and the new A4000T, which has gone back into production.
16th of April: Great Valley Products (GVP), another legendary manufacturer of Amiga hardware products, goes out of business.
1996:
11th of April: Viscorp/STB announce that they intend to purchase the Amiga assets from Escom. It turns out that their efforts will be in vain.
8th of May: Microvitec releases a product range consisting of 15" and 17" monitors for the Amiga.
15th of May: Phase 5 unveils a new product line of PowerPC accellerators for the Amiga, called "PowerUp".
Eagle Computers announce their line of A4000TE refurbished Amigas.
The Walker prototype is presented to the public, featuring AGA graphics, a CD drive, a floppy drive, Zorro expansion - and an enclosure that reminded people of Darth Vader's helmet.
15th of July: Escom files for bankruptcy, after buying out numerous computer shops in Germany and not doing any solid forecasting work.
September: Amiga Power ceases publication.
24th of November: Carl Sasserath resigns from Viscorp.
29th of November: Viscom cancels bid for Escom assets.
4th of December: Jason Compton, now spokesman for Viscorp, resigns.
The Gateway Era
1997:
1st of Feburary: QuikPak, a company that prodiuves A4000s, bids for the Amiga assets.
2nd of March: Phase 5 announces CyberStormPPC and BlizzardPPC CPU upgrades, featuring PowerPC 603, 604, and 68040, 68060 processors.
March:
Vulcan and ClickBoom advances into the Amiga games market and manages to sell thousands of copies of the newly ported "Myst" and "Quake" titles.
27th of March:
Gateway2000 buys out Amiga assets from Escom - Amiga Technolgies renamed to Amiga International.
9th of May: Haage & Partner claims they will produce a Java solution for the Amiga.
Amiga Int'l R&D arm founded with the purpose of developing the next Amiga product. Staff included Jeff Shindler, Bill McEwen, Dr. Havemose, and Fleecy Moss.
June & July: Dieoff of the last big Amiga publications: Amiga User International, Amiga Computing, and eventually Amiga Review close their doors due to lack of advertisers.
5th of July: Index Info. is licensed to fabricate Amiga computers, such as the Access and the BoXer. Ditto for Intrinsic Computers 5 days later.
15th of September: Amiga Int'l publishes manifest of spare parts for sale.
10th of October: Cloanto releases Amiga Forever package, which contains UAE, Kickstart and Workbench files - all legally licensed from Amiga Int'l.
11th of November: Index ships the Access Amiga.
21st of December: Amiga Int'l announces the sale of a "large" order of A1200s to India.
1998:
15th of May: Amiga OS 4 announced at the World of Amiga show. What shocked many long time Amiga users was that it would run on x86 (Intel) hardware. Furthermore, the OS 3.5 upgrade was cancelled. Apparently, Gateway was planning on utrning the AMiga into a digital appliance, and not the computer that the Amiga crowd knew and loved.
July: AmigaNG (Next Generation) details announced at the AmiWest show: Dolby AC3 audio, 3D-graphics, advanced MPEG decoding capabilities, HDTV support, OpenGL support, Java support (no, Haage & Partner never delivered), FireWire and USB connectivity and so on. All very buzzword compliant.
October: MAE show, Amiga Int'l announces that the OS 3.5 upgrade will after all be released - as a gift to the Amiga community. Features: brushed up user interface, better Internet capability, enhanced printer support, PowerPC support, new Fast File System, bug fixes ad more.
11th of November: Amiga Int'l announces that the AmigaNG platform will be based on the QNX real-time operating system.
1999:
26th of Feburary:
Jim Collas took over Amiga Inc. and moved it to San Diego. Jeff Shindler took over product strategy for the New Amiga.
16th of July: Amiga Inc. releastes a tech brief, detailing the new Amiga Operating Environment, AmigaObjects and Java - using Linux (QNX shelved??). Also the MCC (Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer) is described as a computer system up to current PC specs in the audiovisual department, but with poor documentation of the hardware specs.
1st of September: Jim Collas resigns as president of Amiga Inc. due to internal disagreements on the future course of the Amiga project. Replaced by Tom Schmidt.
17 new "Digital Convergence" patents filed.
15th of September: Tom Schmidt proclaims that all hardware developments will cease, and Amiga Inc. will focus on software development (Amiga OE) in the future. MCC is thus scrapped.
October: Haage & Partner releases OS 3.5 for "Classic" Amigas. Requirements: '020, CDROM drive, 6 MB RAM and a hard drive.
2000:
January: Amino, under Fleecy Moss and Bill McEwan, buys trade name and rights to the Amiga platform from Gateway. Old Amiga Inc. folds into Gateway Development group.
Phase 5 goes bankrupt because of low sales and PPC 7400 supply problems.
April:
Amiga announces a new (developer) system, based on a 500 Mhz AMD K6-2 CPU with 64 M RAM and a Geforce 256 gfx card. This machine will be able to run Linux and Tao Group's "Elate OS". Partnerships with Red Hat, Sony, Sun etc. formed
June: Amiga SDK released for the developer system, which has morphed into a more potent hardware configuration, sporting possible Athlon processors, Matrox G400 gfx boards, 128 megs of RAM, a 10 Gig hard drive and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet card.
The New Amiga OS will use "Virtual Processor Dynamic Translation" to facilitate the execution of any program code in existence - Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Java etc.
October: New specification for the "AmigaOne" announced: any AmigaDE-savvy processor, 64 megs of RAM, a Matrox gfx board, EMU10K1 audio hardware, a 10 gig HD, CD or DVD drive, USB and FireWire connectivity, 10/100 Ethernet, 56K modem, PCI expandability etc.
EyeTech is set to rpoduce AmigaOne hybrids for "Classic Amiga" users.
Amiga Inc. announced the Amiga OS 3.9 for "Classic Amigas" - features: Genesis TCP/IP support, multimedia support with video playback, AWeb web browser, AmiDock, WarpOS 5, Iomega Tools, Enhanced Shell, Datatype Recognition, Unpacker, FastSearch, and so on.
2001:
Febuary: EyeTech AmigaONE prototype hardware displayed on the Alt-WOA show in Huddersfield.
March through April: New Sharp PDA unit (running AmigaDE/OS) presented by Amiga Inc. at the St. Louis show. Psion also announced AmigaDE/OS plans. Amiga OS 4.0 announced, will be PowerPC native, and will run on existing PPC Amigas plus the AmigaOne. AmigaOS 3.9 BoingBag update 1 released.
22nd of May: At the Business Show in Tokyo, Japan, Sharp announces the Zaurus PDA, based on the AmigaDE platform.
June: AmigaDE Party Pack released w/ copies of AmigaDE + AmigaSDK.
July: Storm X 4 announces C++ developer package, which is GCC and Storm C3 compatible.
October: Haage & partnet releases AmigaOS XL, a very fast Amiga emulator for QNX machines or AMIthlon, that will boon on any Pentium II PC.
November: Hyperion recieves Amiga OS 4 / PPC development license.
More about amigas history?
http://amiga.emugaming.com/amigahistory.html
by Peter Perlsø, published 6th of March 2003 , updated 4th of June, 2004
Before the Beginning
1982:
Jay Miner and Dave Morris founds Hi-Torro Company, bringing in the original gurus, including Carl Sassenrath, R.J. Mical and Dave Luck. First Amiga prototype developed and named "Lorraine".
Company later renamed as "Amiga Incorporated".
1984:
4th of January, the Winter Computer Entertainment Show (CES) hosts, amongst others, the Amiga company, which shows off its first Amiga hardware prototype. The Boing Ball demo is shown - the birth of a legend =)
Rise of The Amiga
1985:
Amiga Inc. started running out of cash, and approached a number of "big" computer companies, such as Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Atari, for negotiation of at takeover and subsequent renewed cash flow. It turned out however, that the relatively minor company named Commodore, had the best bid on offer - $4.25 per share of Amiga Inc.
June:
First "real" Amiga shown to the public, sending many disbelieving computer geeks into coma after being presented with the Amiga's visual capabilities.
July 23rd:
Amiga 1000 (A1000) presented in public at an event where Andy Warhol himself participated. The event was immortalised when Warhol created a digital painting of Blondie.
September:
A1000 released to public, at a price roughly half that of a comparable EGA-based PC.
Amiga World magazine published for the first time. The legendary Juggler demo is released.
1986:
Amiga development picking up speed, but the success brought with it the first serious internal conflicts. Amongst other areas of disagreement was the design of the forthcoming Amiga 2000, where the original machine design was scrapped and replaced with outsourced design of german orgin. Half of the original team was subsequently sacked, and before the end of the year, they were all gone from the company.
The game "Defender of the Crown" was released, proving to be a killer app. It delivered graphics of a quality that even games a decade later were hard pressed to match.
The Golden Years
1987:
A500 and A200 released, both initially using Workbench 1.2.
1989:
The "Batman Pack A500" was released, becoming a major cash cow for Commodore, as it sold in the hundreds of thousands.
1990:
The Amiga compter became the best selling home computer - worldwide!
24th of April: A3000 unveiled to the public, and released in May. Used Workbench 2.0.
June: Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) released - it was essentially an A500 with a CD-ROM drive packed into what looked like a black VCR box.
August: A500+ released, featuring the ECS chipset and Workbench 2.04, causing numerous compatibility problems with old Amiga software, especially games.
November: NewTek Video Toaster was released, and made a splash big enough to establish it as a TV and video editing solution good enogh for such shows as Star Trek TNG, Seaquest DSV, Babylon5, and motion pictures such as Jurassic Park and Robocop!
1991:
CDTV turns out to be a major flop, draining the Commodore coffers in the process.
A600, sporting new technolgies such as PCMCIA expansion and IDE hard disk interface, was presented and touted to be the future successor to the A500+.
1992:
A3000+ with AGA graphics presented, but later scrapped and replaced with the A4000.
March: A600 finally released, once again introducing compatibility problems for users of A500/500+ software.
Amiga Format (UK) printed in excess of 130.000 magazines every month.
11th of September: A1200 unveiled, features included AGA chipset and WorkBench 3.
December: A4000 and A1200 released just in time for the holiday shopping =)
The Recession
1993:
The layoffs at Commodore starts. The AAA chipset, which was set to surpass the AGA ditto, was scrapped due to Commodore's poor financial situation. Rumors of Commodore's demise persist.
The PCs starts to overtake Amiga in the marketplace :p
March: Amiga Report, an online magazine, is founded by James Compton.
April: A1200 sales exceed a total of 100.000. WorkBench 3.1 released to developers. Emplant emulator, which emulates the Apple Macintosh, is released.
September: CD32 game console released - essentially a transformed Amiga 1200 with a CD-rom drive in a console package. The public response to this new Amiga was mixed.
The Collapse
1994:
March:
Disaster strikes - Commodore announce massive financial losses, and the layoffs proceed with draconian force, leaving only 30 employees of the original one thousand before the end of the month (Monday March 25th).
Wednesday 27th March: Westchester facility shuts its doors.
Friday 29th of March 1610 GMT, Commodore files for liqudation.
20th of June: Jay Miner dies.
Takeover and recollapse
1995:
Commodore's repeated attempts at a management buyout fails.
1st of March: Amiga World magazine ceases publication.
April:
Escom and Dell Computer bids to acquire the remaining assets of Commodore - Escom wins, even though their bid of 7 million GBP is less than that of Dell's 15 million. Escom subsequently launches Amiga Technologies, for selling A1200 and the new A4000T, which has gone back into production.
16th of April: Great Valley Products (GVP), another legendary manufacturer of Amiga hardware products, goes out of business.
1996:
11th of April: Viscorp/STB announce that they intend to purchase the Amiga assets from Escom. It turns out that their efforts will be in vain.
8th of May: Microvitec releases a product range consisting of 15" and 17" monitors for the Amiga.
15th of May: Phase 5 unveils a new product line of PowerPC accellerators for the Amiga, called "PowerUp".
Eagle Computers announce their line of A4000TE refurbished Amigas.
The Walker prototype is presented to the public, featuring AGA graphics, a CD drive, a floppy drive, Zorro expansion - and an enclosure that reminded people of Darth Vader's helmet.
15th of July: Escom files for bankruptcy, after buying out numerous computer shops in Germany and not doing any solid forecasting work.
September: Amiga Power ceases publication.
24th of November: Carl Sasserath resigns from Viscorp.
29th of November: Viscom cancels bid for Escom assets.
4th of December: Jason Compton, now spokesman for Viscorp, resigns.
The Gateway Era
1997:
1st of Feburary: QuikPak, a company that prodiuves A4000s, bids for the Amiga assets.
2nd of March: Phase 5 announces CyberStormPPC and BlizzardPPC CPU upgrades, featuring PowerPC 603, 604, and 68040, 68060 processors.
March:
Vulcan and ClickBoom advances into the Amiga games market and manages to sell thousands of copies of the newly ported "Myst" and "Quake" titles.
27th of March:
Gateway2000 buys out Amiga assets from Escom - Amiga Technolgies renamed to Amiga International.
9th of May: Haage & Partner claims they will produce a Java solution for the Amiga.
Amiga Int'l R&D arm founded with the purpose of developing the next Amiga product. Staff included Jeff Shindler, Bill McEwen, Dr. Havemose, and Fleecy Moss.
June & July: Dieoff of the last big Amiga publications: Amiga User International, Amiga Computing, and eventually Amiga Review close their doors due to lack of advertisers.
5th of July: Index Info. is licensed to fabricate Amiga computers, such as the Access and the BoXer. Ditto for Intrinsic Computers 5 days later.
15th of September: Amiga Int'l publishes manifest of spare parts for sale.
10th of October: Cloanto releases Amiga Forever package, which contains UAE, Kickstart and Workbench files - all legally licensed from Amiga Int'l.
11th of November: Index ships the Access Amiga.
21st of December: Amiga Int'l announces the sale of a "large" order of A1200s to India.
1998:
15th of May: Amiga OS 4 announced at the World of Amiga show. What shocked many long time Amiga users was that it would run on x86 (Intel) hardware. Furthermore, the OS 3.5 upgrade was cancelled. Apparently, Gateway was planning on utrning the AMiga into a digital appliance, and not the computer that the Amiga crowd knew and loved.
July: AmigaNG (Next Generation) details announced at the AmiWest show: Dolby AC3 audio, 3D-graphics, advanced MPEG decoding capabilities, HDTV support, OpenGL support, Java support (no, Haage & Partner never delivered), FireWire and USB connectivity and so on. All very buzzword compliant.
October: MAE show, Amiga Int'l announces that the OS 3.5 upgrade will after all be released - as a gift to the Amiga community. Features: brushed up user interface, better Internet capability, enhanced printer support, PowerPC support, new Fast File System, bug fixes ad more.
11th of November: Amiga Int'l announces that the AmigaNG platform will be based on the QNX real-time operating system.
1999:
26th of Feburary:
Jim Collas took over Amiga Inc. and moved it to San Diego. Jeff Shindler took over product strategy for the New Amiga.
16th of July: Amiga Inc. releastes a tech brief, detailing the new Amiga Operating Environment, AmigaObjects and Java - using Linux (QNX shelved??). Also the MCC (Amiga Multimedia Convergence Computer) is described as a computer system up to current PC specs in the audiovisual department, but with poor documentation of the hardware specs.
1st of September: Jim Collas resigns as president of Amiga Inc. due to internal disagreements on the future course of the Amiga project. Replaced by Tom Schmidt.
17 new "Digital Convergence" patents filed.
15th of September: Tom Schmidt proclaims that all hardware developments will cease, and Amiga Inc. will focus on software development (Amiga OE) in the future. MCC is thus scrapped.
October: Haage & Partner releases OS 3.5 for "Classic" Amigas. Requirements: '020, CDROM drive, 6 MB RAM and a hard drive.
2000:
January: Amino, under Fleecy Moss and Bill McEwan, buys trade name and rights to the Amiga platform from Gateway. Old Amiga Inc. folds into Gateway Development group.
Phase 5 goes bankrupt because of low sales and PPC 7400 supply problems.
April:
Amiga announces a new (developer) system, based on a 500 Mhz AMD K6-2 CPU with 64 M RAM and a Geforce 256 gfx card. This machine will be able to run Linux and Tao Group's "Elate OS". Partnerships with Red Hat, Sony, Sun etc. formed
June: Amiga SDK released for the developer system, which has morphed into a more potent hardware configuration, sporting possible Athlon processors, Matrox G400 gfx boards, 128 megs of RAM, a 10 Gig hard drive and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet card.
The New Amiga OS will use "Virtual Processor Dynamic Translation" to facilitate the execution of any program code in existence - Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Java etc.
October: New specification for the "AmigaOne" announced: any AmigaDE-savvy processor, 64 megs of RAM, a Matrox gfx board, EMU10K1 audio hardware, a 10 gig HD, CD or DVD drive, USB and FireWire connectivity, 10/100 Ethernet, 56K modem, PCI expandability etc.
EyeTech is set to rpoduce AmigaOne hybrids for "Classic Amiga" users.
Amiga Inc. announced the Amiga OS 3.9 for "Classic Amigas" - features: Genesis TCP/IP support, multimedia support with video playback, AWeb web browser, AmiDock, WarpOS 5, Iomega Tools, Enhanced Shell, Datatype Recognition, Unpacker, FastSearch, and so on.
2001:
Febuary: EyeTech AmigaONE prototype hardware displayed on the Alt-WOA show in Huddersfield.
March through April: New Sharp PDA unit (running AmigaDE/OS) presented by Amiga Inc. at the St. Louis show. Psion also announced AmigaDE/OS plans. Amiga OS 4.0 announced, will be PowerPC native, and will run on existing PPC Amigas plus the AmigaOne. AmigaOS 3.9 BoingBag update 1 released.
22nd of May: At the Business Show in Tokyo, Japan, Sharp announces the Zaurus PDA, based on the AmigaDE platform.
June: AmigaDE Party Pack released w/ copies of AmigaDE + AmigaSDK.
July: Storm X 4 announces C++ developer package, which is GCC and Storm C3 compatible.
October: Haage & partnet releases AmigaOS XL, a very fast Amiga emulator for QNX machines or AMIthlon, that will boon on any Pentium II PC.
November: Hyperion recieves Amiga OS 4 / PPC development license.
More about amigas history?
http://amiga.emugaming.com/amigahistory.html
It was really cool to see the old favorite again...
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