The inventor of the Amiga 1000 was Jay Miner, who created the Atari 800 many years before. He wanted to make the most powerful computer ever, then he joined a small Californian company called Amiga. He used the principle of the three coprocessors (again) to help the main processor.
At the beginning, the Amiga had only 64 kilobytes of RAM! The original "Amiga" called the Lorraine was meant to be a game machine with some computer capabilities.
Atari initially invested the money in the Amiga Corp. to do the R&D on the Amiga computer line. Naturally, when the design was finished, Amiga Corp. gave Atari the choice to purchase the technology. Atari passed in favor of their own project. Amiga Corp. then offered the technology to Commodore, Inc., who were quite pleased to purchase it, seeing that their own 16-bit computer was so far from reaching the shelf.
After the loss of a major legal battle for control of the Amiga chip set design, Atari launched the ST series (Sixteen-Thirty-two) as a competitor for the upcoming Amiga.
The operating system (AmigaDOS) was done by MetaComCo, a British company who specialized in the 68000 processor (they also made languages for the Sinclair QL). It is a fully multitasking system which looks like UNIX with a graphical user interface.
It was the very first personal computer with great graphics and sound capabilities with a GUI environment.
The Amiga BASIC was written by Microsoft (like most other versions of BASIC), but the first models were shipped with a non-Microsoft BASIC called ABasiC.
The Amiga 1000 was to lose popularity one year later with the creation of its two main successors: the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 2000.
There were two versions of the Amiga 1000. The first one sold only in the USA, had a NTSC display and no EHB video mode. Later versions would have this built in. The second one had a PAL display, the enhanced video modes (EHB) and was built in Germany.
The official name for the A1000 was the Commodore Amiga. It was only when the A2000 was launched that they officially began to refer to the machine by its model number.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
Its a shame people in the below comments have to lie about Jay and the Amiga ,and say the above info in this case isnt right. As of this writing.To promote the lies and to go so far as make Jay a non creator oh Illuminati u have gone even unto Amiga Screen grab taken.
its Lorraine 1979-80 hightorro 1980-81 Amiga/inc. 1982
Yes, Amigas prior name can be a project or a code name apple or any othere company had code names or projects . That where there product also. Amiga was one such code name. Really ,guys you say it was just inc then wait its high toro then..you conflict ..you cant have your cake and eat it too,and guess what that is a code/project inc ,and a product as well.. oopss conflict of what was and has been said prior. late 87 earl 1988 Amiga 3000 was released 1986 Amiga cdtv was released Amiga CD32/ Amiga 1200 1990
Aga chipsset chip was ready by 1988 they where moving on devleoping the aaa .The corrupt management Wanted to delay the AGA by another 2 years.So the ECS was released .REally, guys all you have to do is take away 8bits oh bing the 16bit ecs is there the zorr3 was ready. Dave said the CDTV was ready 2 yeas prior. I went to Mass Brothers in Gasinvelle ,Fl in 1988.TO see and purchase 3 parts to make whole. Thee a1200 I bought from the UF book store owner in 1991 New the people in Amiga. Sterling S.New people in Amiga also as he got the /a 1990 cd32.it seems we have inundated apple/atari $ Illuminati influenced / one in the same people That are against people like me. That tell the truth. That prevent , any and all from correcting any info on wiki,or anywhere else for that matter. That leads to the Truth on Amiga this includes the Mass Brother link Sad indeed. Nor do they want to hear it. Yes, they want to make a video of the lies.or print the lies Me I won''t allow the lies to continue as I promised Jay as he asked.RIP
Monday 1st May 2017
Amigaman
The Atari/Amiga deal was over before Jack Trammel arrived at Atari. He only discovered it when commodore sued Atari for stealing IP when he poached the commodore engineers who took from commodore the designs for CBM 900 (which turned into the ST). Atari countersued and the case was eventually settled out of court.
Sunday 10th April 2016
smf
There are a number of mistakes here. Jay Miner was indeed instrumental in the creation of the Amiga''s architecture, much of the machine in a more simplified form was proposed by Miner while still at Atari, however as the current home computer and console ranges were selling well, the current overlords Warner, were not interested. Frustrated, Miner left and came across a group who were looking to create a next generation gaming system. This group became known as Hi-Torro, who created and sold game controllers to help fund the new Lorrane project.
Funding was a problem, Warner''s Atari became interested and funded the development with a few strings attached, one of which was the investment needed to be repaid by a certain date or the technology became property of Atari.
Then something weird happened...
Warner feared the home console/computer market would never recover so put Atari''s home division up for sale (While keeping the profitable Arcade division). Jack Trammel had previously left Commodore and wanted a company to help launch a new computer which he was planning and realised the Atari brand and identity was just what he needed for such a machine. The deal was done and Trammel took over Atari, which was not what the group developing what was now known as the Amiga wanted. However they were contracted to Atari and now had a problem...
Trammiel had seen the contract and knew the company could not repay the money, but he also knew the technology would be of little use without its creators, so he offered to buy the company. The Amiga creators did not want to do this but felt they had little choice, then Trammel $ped his offer...
Then something else weird happened...
Commodore, anxious to get one over on their former boss, came in at the last minute, bought the company for more than Trammel had ever offered, giving the developers all the money they needed to pay Atari back, which they did. Atari lost the Amiga and Commodore gained it.
Trammiel sued to try and stop Commodore using the technology citing breach of contract, but as the contract was with the Amiga company and staff, and Amiga company and staff officially paid the money back in time, the case was thrown out.
Trammiel continued with the machine he was already developing (Which became the ST), Commodore stopped development on their Unix machine (The 9000?) and created the worlds first multimedia system, at a time when no one really knew what it was, but they loved it all the same.
