Amiga is a family of
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...
s introduced by
Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore ...
in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first per ...
—released earlier the same year—as well as the
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
and
Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The first mode ...
. Based on the
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including
sprites and a
blitter, and a
pre-emptive multitasking operating system called
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...
.
The
Amiga 1000
The Commodore Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most adv ...
was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to th ...
, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The
Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved graphics rendering, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000.
...
was introduced in 1990, followed by the
Amiga 500 Plus
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that ...
, and
Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal ...
in March 1992. Finally, the
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
and
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.
...
were released in late 1992. The Amiga line sold an estimated 4.85 million units.
Although early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine,
especially when outfitted with the
Sidecar
A sidecar is a one-wheeled device attached to the side of a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle, making the whole a three-wheeled vehicle. A motorcycle with a sidecar is sometimes called a ''combination'', an ''outfit'', a ''rig'' or a ''hack''.
...
IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. The
Video Toaster
The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC conne ...
hardware and software suite helped Amiga find a prominent role in
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 th ...
and
video production
Video production is the process of producing video content for video. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard dri ...
. The Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for
music tracker
A music tracker (sometimes referred to as just tracker for short) is a type of music sequencer software for creating music. The music is represented as discrete musical notes positioned in several channels at discrete chronological positions on ...
software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including
LightWave 3D
LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by NewTek. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualizations, virt ...
,
Imagine, and Traces, a predecessor to
Blender
A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...
.
Poor marketing and the failure of later models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share to the rapidly dropping prices of
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...
s, which gained 256 color graphics in 1987,
as well as the
fourth generation of video game consoles
In the history of video games, the fourth generation of game consoles, more commonly referred to as the 16-bit era, began on October 30, 1987, with the Japanese release of NEC Home Electronics' PC Engine (known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North Ame ...
.
Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of the Amiga packaged as a game console, the
Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32 (stylized as Amiga CD32, code-named "Spellbound") is a 32-bit home video game console developed by Commodore and released in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London on July 16, ...
, failed in the marketplace. Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including
Genesi,
Eyetech
Eyetech Group Ltd is a company founded in 1983, in order to provide commercial companies with automatical data collection systems. They had already been involved in the provision of the automatic toll collection systems used at the Dartford River ...
,
ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible systems such as
MorphOS
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale dev ...
and
AROS Aros may refer to:
*Aros (Middle-earth), a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
* Aros, Mull, the location of Aros Castle, a ruined 13th-century castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland
*AROS Research Operating System, a free software i ...
. Currently Belgian company
Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops
AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partne ...
, which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 - the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga Computers.
History
Concept and early development
Jay Miner
Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 – June 20, 1994) was an American integrated circuit designer, known primarily for developing graphics and audio chips for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family and as the "father of the Amiga".
Early life
Jay ...
joined
Atari, Inc. in the 1970s to develop custom
integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
s, and led development of the
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocesso ...
's
TIA.
Almost as soon as its development was complete, the team began developing a much more sophisticated set of chips,
CTIA,
ANTIC
Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display. Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977-1978 by ...
and
POKEY
POKEY, an acronym for Pot Keyboard Integrated Circuit, is a digital I/O chip designed by Doug Neubauer at Atari, Inc. for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It was first released with the Atari 400 and Atari 800 in 1979 and is included i ...
, that formed the basis of the
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
.
With the 8-bit line's launch in 1979, the team once again started looking at a next generation chipset.
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consu ...
had sold the company to
Warner Communications
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
in 1978, and the new management was much more interested in the existing lines than development of new products that might cut into their sales. Miner wanted to start work with the new
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
, but management was only interested in another
6502
The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...
based system. Miner left the company, and, for a time, the industry.
[
In 1979, Larry Kaplan left Atari and founded ]Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...
. In 1982, Kaplan was approached by a number of investors who wanted to develop a new game platform. Kaplan hired Miner to run the hardware side of the newly formed company, "Hi-Toro". The system was code-named "Lorraine" in keeping with Miner's policy of giving systems female names, in this case the company president's wife, Lorraine Morse. When Kaplan left the company late in 1982, Miner was promoted to head engineer[ and the company relaunched as Amiga Corporation.
]
The Amiga hardware was designed by Miner, RJ Mical, and Dale Luck. A breadboard
A breadboard, solderless breadboard, or protoboard is a construction base used to build semi-permanent prototypes of electronic circuits. Unlike a perfboard or stripboard, breadboards do not require soldering or destruction of tracks and are h ...
prototype for testing and development was largely completed by late 1983, and shown at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event t ...
(CES). At the time, the operating system was not ready, so the machine was demonstrated with the "Boing Ball" demo, a real-time animation
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
showing a red-and-white spinning ball bouncing and casting a shadow; this bouncing ball became the official logo of the Amiga company. CES attendees had trouble believing the computer being demonstrated had the power to display such a demo and searched in vain for the "real" computer behind it.
A further developed version of the system was demonstrated at the June 1984 CES and shown to many companies in hopes of garnering further funding, but found little interest in a market that was in the final stages of the video game crash of 1983
The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including ma ...
.
In March, Atari expressed a tepid interest in Lorraine for its potential use in a games console or home computer tentatively known as the . The talks were progressing slowly, and Amiga was running out of money. A temporary arrangement in June led to a $500,000 loan from Atari to Amiga to keep the company going. The terms required the loan to be repaid at the end of the month, otherwise Amiga would forfeit the Lorraine design to Atari.[
]
Commodore launch
During 1983, Atari lost over a week, due to the combined effects of the crash and the ongoing price war in the home computer market. By the end of the year, Warner was desperate to sell the company. In January 1984, Jack Tramiel
Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home comput ...
resigned from Commodore due to internal battles over the future direction of the company. A number of Commodore employees followed him to his new company, Tramel Technology. This included a number of the senior technical staff, where they began development of a 68000-based machine of their own. In June, Tramiel arranged a no-cash deal to take over Atari, reforming Tramel Technology as Atari Corporation
Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communica ...
.
As many Commodore technical staff had moved to Atari, Commodore was left with no workable path to design their own next-generation computer. The company approached Amiga offering to fund development as a home computer system. They quickly arranged to repay the Atari loan, ending that threat. The two companies were initially arranging a license agreement before Commodore offered to purchase Amiga outright.
By late 1984, the prototype breadboard chipset had successfully been turned into integrated circuits, and the system hardware was being readied for production. At this time the operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
(OS) was not as ready, and led to a deal to port an OS known as TRIPOS
At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mat ...
to the platform. TRIPOS was a multitasking system that had been written in BCPL
BCPL ("Basic Combined Programming Language") is a procedural, imperative, and structured programming language. Originally intended for writing compilers for other languages, BCPL is no longer in common use. However, its influence is still ...
during the 1970s for the PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sol ...
minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ' ...
, but later experimentally ported to the 68000. This early version was known as AmigaDOS and the GUI as Workbench. The BCPL parts were later rewritten in the C language, and the entire system became AmigaOS.
The system was enclosed in a pizza box form factor
In computing, a pizza box is a style of case design for desktop computers or network switches. Pizza box cases tend to be wide and flat, normally in height, resembling pizza delivery boxes and thus the name. This is in contrast to a tower s ...
case; a late change was the introduction of vertical supports on either side of the case to provide a "garage" under the main section of the system where the keyboard could be stored.
The first model was announced in 1985 as simply "The Amiga from Commodore", later to be retroactively dubbed the Amiga 1000
The Commodore Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most adv ...
. They were first offered for sale in August, but by October only 50 had been built, all of which were used by Commodore. Machines only began to arrive in quantity in mid-November, meaning they missed the Christmas buying rush. By the end of the year, they had sold 35,000 machines, and severe cashflow problems made the company pull out of the January 1986 CES. Bad or entirely missing marketing, forcing the development team to move to the east coast, notorious stability problems and other blunders limited sales in early 1986 to between 10,000 and 15,000 units a month.
Commercial success
In late 1985, Thomas Rattigan
Thomas John Rattigan (born 20 July 1937, in Boston) is an American businessman.
Early life
Rattigan earned a BS at Boston College in 1960 and an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1962. He joined PepsiCo in 1970 where he rose to the position of C ...
was promoted to COO of Commodore, and then to CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
in February 1986. He immediately implemented an ambitious plan that covered almost all of the company's operations. Among these was the long-overdue cancellation of the now outdated PET
A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence ...
and VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...
lines, as well as a variety of poorly selling Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...
offshoots and the Commodore 900 workstation
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workst ...
effort.[
Another one of the changes was to split the Amiga into two products, a new high-end version of the Amiga aimed at the creative market, and a cost-reduced version that would take over for the Commodore 64 in the low-end market.] These new designs were released in 1987 as the Amiga 2000
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Ami ...
and Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to th ...
, the latter of which went on to widespread success and became their best selling model.
Similar high-end/low-end models would make up the Amiga line for the rest of its history; follow-on designs included the Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved graphics rendering, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000.
...
/Amiga 500 Plus
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that ...
/Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal ...
, and the 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.
...
/Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
. These models incorporated a series of technical upgrades known as the ECS and AGA, which added higher resolution displays among many other improvements and simplifications.
The Amiga line sold an estimated 4,850,000 machines over its lifetime. The machines were most popular in the UK and Germany, with about 1.5 million sold in each country, and sales in the high hundreds of thousands in other European nations. The machine was less popular in North America, where an estimated 700,000 were sold. In the United States, the Amiga found a niche with enthusiasts and in vertical market
A vertical market is a market in which vendors offer goods and services ''specific'' to an industry, trade, profession, or other group of customers with specialized needs. A horizontal market is a market in which a product or service meets a ...
s for video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs video filters and where the input and output signals are video files or video streams. Video processing ...
and editing. In Europe, it was more broadly popular as a home computer and often used for video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...
.[ Beginning in 1988 it overlapped with the ]16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.
A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...
Mega Drive
The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan a ...
, then the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eu ...
in the early 1990s. Commodore UK's Kelly Sumner did not see Sega
is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, respectively. Its division ...
or Nintendo
is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards ...
as competitors, but instead credited their marketing campaigns which spent over or for promoting video games as a whole and thus helping to boost Amiga sales.
Bankruptcy
In spite of his successes in making the company profitable and bringing the Amiga line to market, Rattigan was soon forced out in a power struggle with majority shareholder, Irving Gould
Irving Gould (1919–2004) was a Canadian businessman credited with both saving and sinking Commodore.
Commodore was originally formed in Canada and initially produced mechanical typewriters and calculators. In 1965, Jack Tramiel, Commodore's fo ...
. This is widely regarded as the turning point, as further improvements to the Amiga were eroded by rapid improvements in other platforms.
Commodore shut down the Amiga division on April 26, 1994, and filed for bankruptcy three days later.[ Commodore's assets were purchased by Escom, a German PC manufacturer, who created the subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. They re-released the A1200 and A4000T, and introduced a new ]68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
version of the A4000T. Amiga Technologies researched and developed the Amiga Walker prototype. They presented the machine publicly at CeBit. Escom, in turn, went bankrupt in 1997.
A U.S. Wintel
Wintel (portmanteau of Windows and Intel) is the partnership of Microsoft Windows and Intel producing personal computers using Intel x86-compatible processors running Microsoft Windows.
Background
By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibi ...
PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000
Gateway, Inc., previously Gateway 2000, is an American computer hardware company. The company developed, manufactured, supported, and marketed a wide range of personal computers, computer monitors, servers, and computer accessories. It was acqui ...
, then purchased the Amiga branch and technology.[ In 2000, Gateway sold the Amiga brand to ]Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc. is a company that used to hold some trademarks and other assets associated with the Amiga personal computer (originally developed by Amiga Corporation).
Early years
In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari, Inc. staffe ...
, without having released any products. Amiga, Inc. licensed the rights to sell hardware using the AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
brand to Eyetech Group and Hyperion Entertainment. In 2019, Amiga, Inc. sold its intellectual property to Amiga Corporation.
Hardware
At its core, the Amiga has a custom chipset consisting of several coprocessor
A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or I ...
s, which handle audio, video and direct memory access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU).
Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is ...
independently of the Central Processing Unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
(CPU). This architecture frees up the CPU for other tasks and gave the Amiga a performance edge over its competitors, particularly in terms of graphics-intensive applications and games.
The general Amiga architecture uses two distinct bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
subsystems: the chipset bus and the CPU bus. The chipset bus allows the custom coprocessors and CPU to address "Chip RAM". The CPU bus provides addressing to other subsystems, such as conventional RAM, ROM and the Zorro II or Zorro III
Zorro (Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante who ...
expansion subsystems. This architecture enables independent operation of the subsystems; the CPU "Fast" bus can be much faster than the chipset bus. CPU expansion boards may provide additional custom buses. Additionally, "busboards" or "bridgeboards" may provide ISA
Isa or ISA may refer to:
Places
* Isa, Amur Oblast, Russia
* Isa, Kagoshima, Japan
* Isa, Nigeria
* Isa District, Kagoshima, former district in Japan
* Isa Town, middle class town located in Bahrain
* Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
* Mount ...
or PCI buses.
Central processing unit
The Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...
68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
series of microprocessors was used in all Amiga models from Commodore. While all CPU in the 68000 family have a 32-bit
In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...
ISA
Isa or ISA may refer to:
Places
* Isa, Amur Oblast, Russia
* Isa, Kagoshima, Japan
* Isa, Nigeria
* Isa District, Kagoshima, former district in Japan
* Isa Town, middle class town located in Bahrain
* Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
* Mount ...
design (programmer uses and sees a 32-bit model), the MC68000 used in the most popular models is a 16-bit
16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.
A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...
(or 16/32-bit) processor because its ALU operates in 16-bit (32-bit operations require additional clock cycles, consuming more time). The MC68000 has a 16-bit external data bus
In computer architecture, a bus (shortened form of the Latin '' omnibus'', and historically also called data highway or databus) is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This ...
so 32-bits of data is transferred in two consecutive steps, a technique called multiplexing
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - ...
. This is transparent to the software, which was 32-bit from the beginning. The MC68000 can address 16 MB of physical memory. Later Amiga models featured higher-speed, full 32-bit CPUs with a larger address space and instruction pipeline
In computer engineering, instruction pipelining or ILP is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing inco ...
facilities.
CPU upgrades were offered by both Commodore and third-party manufacturers. Most Amiga models can be upgraded either by direct CPU replacement or through expansion boards. Such boards often featured faster and higher capacity memory interfaces and hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...
controllers.
Towards the end of Commodore's time in charge of Amiga development, there were suggestions that Commodore intended to move away from the 68000 series to higher performance RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comp ...
processors, such as the PA-RISC
PA-RISC is an instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard. As the name implies, it is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, where the PA stands for Precision Architecture. The design is also referred to as ...
. Those ideas were never developed before Commodore filed for bankruptcy. Despite this, third-party manufacturers designed upgrades featuring a combination of 68000 series and PowerPC processors along with a PowerPC native microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...
and software. Later Amiga clones featured PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...
processors only.
Custom chipset
The custom chipset at the core of the Amiga design appeared in three distinct generations, with a large degree of backward-compatibility. The Original Chip Set
The Original Chip Set (OCS) is a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. It was succeeded by the slightly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) and greatly improved Advanced G ...
(OCS) appeared with the launch of the A1000 in 1985. OCS was eventually followed by the modestly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) in 1990 and finally by the partly 32-bit Advanced Graphics Architecture
Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) is the third-generation Amiga graphic chipset, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. Before release AGA was codenamed Pandora by Commodore International.
AGA was originally called AA for Advanced Archit ...
(AGA) in 1992. Each chipset consists of several coprocessors that handle graphics acceleration, digital audio, direct memory access
Direct memory access (DMA) is a feature of computer systems and allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory independently of the central processing unit (CPU).
Without DMA, when the CPU is using programmed input/output, it is ...
and communication between various peripherals (e.g., CPU, memory and floppy disks). In addition, some models featured auxiliary custom chip
Custom, customary, or consuetudinary may refer to:
Traditions, laws, and religion
* Convention (norm), a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted rules, norms, standards or criteria, often taking the form of a custom
* Norm (social), a r ...
s that performed tasks such as SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
control and display de-interlacing.
Graphics
All Amiga systems can display full-screen animated planar
Planar is an adjective meaning "relating to a plane (geometry)".
Planar may also refer to:
Science and technology
* Planar (computer graphics), computer graphics pixel information from several bitplanes
* Planar (transmission line technologies), ...
graphics with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 ( EHB Mode), or 4096 colors ( HAM Mode). Models with the AGA chipset (A1200 and A4000) also have non-EHB 64, 128, 256, and 262144 ( HAM8 Mode) color modes and a palette expanded from 4096 to 16.8 million colors.
The Amiga chipset can ''genlock
Genlock (generator locking) 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 picture sources together. The aim in video applications is to ensure the ...
'', which is the ability to adjust its own screen refresh timing to match an incoming NTSC or PAL video signal. When combined with setting transparency, this allows an Amiga to overlay an external video source with graphics. This ability made the Amiga popular for many applications, and provides the ability to do character generation and CGI effects far more cheaply than earlier systems. This ability has been frequently utilized by wedding videographers, TV stations and their weather forecasting divisions (for weather graphics and radar), advertising channels, music video production, and desktop videographers. The NewTek
NewTek, Inc. is a San Antonio, Texas-based hardware and software company that produces live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, by T ...
Video Toaster
The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC conne ...
was made possible by the genlock ability of the Amiga.
In 1988, the release of the Amiga A2024 fixed-frequency monochrome monitor
A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in t ...
with built-in framebuffer
A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...
and flicker fixer hardware provided the Amiga with a choice of high-resolution graphic modes (1024×800 for NTSC and 1024×1024 for PAL).
ReTargetable Graphics
ReTargetable Graphics is an API for device driver
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...
s mainly used by 3rd party graphics hardware to interface with AmigaOS via a set of libraries
A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...
. The software libraries may include software tools to adjust resolution, screen colors, pointers
Pointer may refer to:
Places
* Pointer, Kentucky
* Pointers, New Jersey
* Pointers Airport, Wasco County, Oregon, United States
* The Pointers, a pair of rocks off Antarctica
People with the name
* Pointer (surname), a surname (including a lis ...
and screenmodes. The standard Intuition interface is limited to display depths of 8 bits, while RTG makes it possible to handle higher depths like 24-bit
Notable 24-bit machines include the CDC 924 – a 24-bit version of the CDC 1604, CDC lower 3000 series, SDS 930 and SDS 940, the ICT 1900 series, the Elliott 4100 series, and the Datacraft minicomputers/Harris H series.
The term SWORD i ...
s.
Sound
The sound chip, named Paula, supports four PCM
Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the am ...
-sample-based sound channels (two for the left speaker and two for the right) with 8-bit resolution for each channel and a 6-bit volume control per channel. The analog output is connected to a low-pass filter, which filters out high-frequency aliases when the Amiga is using a lower sampling rate (see Nyquist frequency
In signal processing, the Nyquist frequency (or folding frequency), named after Harry Nyquist, is a characteristic of a sampler, which converts a continuous function or signal into a discrete sequence. In units of cycles per second ( Hz), it ...
). The brightness of the Amiga's power LED is used to indicate the status of the Amiga's low-pass filter. The filter is active when the LED is at normal brightness, and deactivated when dimmed (or off on older A500 Amigas). On Amiga 1000 (and first Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 model), the power LED had no relation to the filter's status, and a wire needed to be manually soldered between pins on the sound chip to disable the filter. Paula can read directly from the system's RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
, using direct memory access (DMA), making sound playback without CPU intervention possible.
Although the hardware is limited to four separate sound channels, software such as ''OctaMED
OctaMED is a popular music tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as ...
'' uses software mixing to allow eight or more virtual channels, and it was possible for software to mix two hardware channels to achieve a single 14-bit resolution channel by playing with the volumes of the channels in such a way that one of the source channels contributes the most significant bits and the other the least.
The quality of the Amiga's sound output, and the fact that the hardware is ubiquitous and easily addressed by software, were standout features of Amiga hardware unavailable on PC platforms for years. Third-party sound cards exist that provide DSP functions, multi-track direct-to-disk recording
A hard disk recorder (HDR) is a system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to reel-to-reel audio tape recording and video tape recorders, and provide n ...
, multiple hardware sound channels and 16-bit and beyond resolutions. A retargetable sound API called AHI was developed allowing these cards to be used transparently by the OS and software.
Kickstart firmware
Kickstart is the firmware
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...
upon which AmigaOS is bootstrapped. Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume
Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). ...
, such as a floppy disk or hard disk drive. Most models (excluding the Amiga 1000) come equipped with Kickstart on an embedded ROM-chip.
Keyboard and mouse
The keyboard on Amiga computers is similar to that found on a mid-80s IBM PC: Ten function keys, a numeric keypad, and four separate directional arrow keys. Caps Lock and Control
Control may refer to:
Basic meanings Economics and business
* Control (management), an element of management
* Control, an element of management accounting
* Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization
* Controlli ...
share space to the left of A. Absent are Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys: These functions are accomplished on Amigas by pressing shift and the appropriate arrow key. The Amiga keyboard adds a Help key, which a function key usually acts as on PCs (usually F1). In addition to the Control and Alt modifier keys, the Amiga has 2 "Amiga" keys, rendered as "Open Amiga" and "Closed Amiga" similar to the Open/Closed Apple logo keys on Apple II keyboards. The left is used to manipulate the operating system (moving screens and the like) and the right delivers commands to the application. The absence of Num lock frees space for more mathematical symbols around the numeric pad.
Like IBM-compatible computers, the mouse has two buttons, but in AmigaOS, pressing and holding the right button replaces the system status line
A status bar is a graphical control element which poses an information area typically found at the window's bottom.
It can be divided into sections to group information. Its job is primarily to display information about the current state of its ...
at the top of the screen with a Maclike menu bar
A menu bar is a graphical control element which contains Drop-down list, drop-down menus.
The menu bar's purpose is to supply a common housing for window- or Application software, application-specific menus which provide access to such function ...
. As with Apple's Mac OS
Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc.
In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...
prior to Mac OS 8
Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis o ...
, menu options are selected by releasing the button over that option, not by left clicking. Menu items that have a boolean toggle state can be left clicked whilst the menu is kept open with the right button, which allows the user – for example – to set some selected text to bold, underline and italics in one visit to the menus.
The mouse plugs into one of two Atari joystick port
The Atari joystick port is a computer port used to connect various gaming controllers to game console and home computer systems in the 1970s to the 1990s. It was originally introduced on the Atari 2600 in 1977 and then used on the Atari 400 an ...
s used for joystick
A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...
s, game paddles, and graphics tablet
A graphics tablet (also known as a digitizer, digital graphic tablet, pen tablet, drawing tablet, external drawing pad or digital art board) is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images, animations and graphics, with a spec ...
s. Although compatible with analog joysticks, Atari-style digital joysticks became standard. Unusually, two independent mice can be connected to the joystick ports; some games, such as Lemmings, were designed to take advantage of this.
Other peripherals and expansions
The Amiga was one of the first computers for which inexpensive sound sampling and video digitization accessories were available. As a result of this and the Amiga's audio and video capabilities, the Amiga became a popular system for editing and producing both music and video.
Many expansion boards were produced for Amiga computers to improve the performance and capability of the hardware, such as memory expansions, SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...
controllers, CPU boards, and graphics boards. Other upgrades include genlock
Genlock (generator locking) 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 picture sources together. The aim in video applications is to ensure the ...
s, network cards for Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
, modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
s, sound card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...
s and samplers, video digitizers, extra serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...
s, and IDE controllers. Additions after the demise of Commodore company are USB cards. The most popular upgrades were memory, SCSI controllers and CPU accelerator cards. These were sometimes combined into one device.
Early CPU accelerator cards used the full 32-bit CPUs of the 68000 family such as the Motorola 68020
The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keeping ...
and Motorola 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general ...
, almost always with 32-bit memory and usually with FPUs and MMUs or the facility to add them. Later designs feature the Motorola 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola na ...
or Motorola 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
. Both CPUs feature integrated FPUs and MMUs. Many CPU accelerator cards also had integrated SCSI controllers.
Phase5 designed the PowerUP
In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that can be used at any time chosen ...
boards (Blizzard PPC
PowerUP boards were dual-processor accelerator boards designed by Phase5 Digital Products for Amiga computers. They had two different processors, a Motorola 68000 series (68k) and a PowerPC, working in parallel, sharing the complete address space ...
and CyberStorm PPC) featuring both a 68k (a 68040 or 68060) and a PowerPC (603 or 604) CPU, which are able to run the two CPUs at the same time and share the system memory. The PowerPC CPU on PowerUP boards is usually used as a coprocessor for heavy computations; a powerful CPU is needed to run MAME
MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve ...
for example, but even decoding JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
pictures and MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
audio was considered heavy computation at the time. It is also possible to ignore the 68k CPU and run Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
on the PPC via project Linux APUS, but a PowerPC-native AmigaOS promised by Amiga Technologies GmbH was not available when the PowerUP boards first appeared.
24-bit graphics cards and video cards were also available. Graphics cards were designed primarily for 2D artwork production, workstation use, and later, gaming. Video cards are designed for inputting and outputting video signals, and processing and manipulating video.
In the North American market, the ''NewTek Video Toaster
The NewTek Video Toaster is a combination of hardware and software for the editing and production of NTSC standard-definition video. The plug-in expansion card initially worked with the Amiga 2000 computer and provides a number of BNC conne ...
'' was a video effects board that turned the Amiga into an affordable video processing computer that found its way into many professional video environments. One well-known use was to create the special effects in early series of ''Babylon 5
''Babylon 5'' is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Tele ...
''. Due to its NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
-only design, it did not find a market in countries that used the PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
standard, such as in Europe. In those countries, the ''OpalVision'' card was popular, although less featured and supported than the Video Toaster. Low-cost time base correctors (TBC) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard Amiga bus cards.
Various manufacturers started producing PCI busboards for the A1200, A3000 and A4000, allowing standard Amiga computers to use PCI cards such as graphics cards, Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system pl ...
sound cards, 10/100 Ethernet cards, USB cards, and television tuner cards. Other manufacturers produced hybrid boards that contained an Intel x86 series chip, allowing the Amiga to emulate a PC.
PowerPC upgrades with Wide SCSI controllers, PCI busboards with Ethernet, sound and 3D graphics cards, and tower cases allowed the A1200 and A4000 to survive well into the late nineties.
Expansion boards were made by Richmond Sound Design that allow their show control
Show control is the use of automation technology to link together and operate multiple entertainment control systems in a coordinated manner. It is distinguished from an entertainment control system, which is specific to a single theatrical depart ...
and sound design
Sound design is the art and practice of creating sound tracks for a variety of needs. It involves specifying, acquiring or creating auditory elements using audio production techniques and tools. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including ...
software to communicate with their custom hardware frames either by ribbon cable or fiber optic cable for long distances, allowing the Amiga to control up to eight million digitally controlled external audio, lighting, automation, relay and voltage control channels spread around a large theme park, for example. See Amiga software
Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the l ...
for more information on these applications.
Other devices included the following:
* Amiga 501 with 512 KB RAM and real-time clock
A real-time clock (RTC) is an electronic device (most often in the form of an integrated circuit) that measures the passage of time.
Although the term often refers to the devices in personal computers, servers and embedded systems, RTCs are pr ...
* Trumpcard 500 Zorro-II SCSI interface
* GVP A530 Turbo, accelerator, RAM expansion, PC emulator
* A2091 / A590 SCSI hard disk controller + 2 MB RAM expansion
* A3070 SCSI tape backup unit with a capacity of , OEM Archive Viper 1/4-inch
* A2065 Ethernet Zorro-II interface – the first Ethernet interface for Amiga; uses the AMD Am7990 chip The same interface chip is used in DECstation as well.
* Ariadne Zorro-II Ethernet interface using the AMD Am7990
* A4066 Zorro II Ethernet interface using the SMC 91C90QF
* X-Surf from Individual Computers using the Realtek 8019AS
* A2060 Arcnet
Attached Resource Computer NETwork (ARCNET or ARCnet) is a communications protocol for local area networks. ARCNET was the first widely available networking system for microcomputers; it became popular in the 1980s for office automation tasks. It ...
* A1010 floppy
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...
disk drive consisting of a 3.5-inch double density
Disk density is a capacity designation on magnetic storage, usually floppy disks. Each designation describes a set of characteristics that can affect the areal density of a disk or the efficiency of the encoded data. Such characteristics include ...
(DD), , drive unit connected via DB-23 connector; track-to-track delay is on the order of . The default capacity is . Many clone drives were available, and products such as the Catweasel and KryoFlux
KryoFlux is a hardware and software solution for preserving software on floppy disks. It was developed by the Software Preservation Society.
Overview
KryoFlux consists of a small hardware device, which is a software-programmable FDC system that ...
make it possible to read and write Amiga and other special disc formats on standard x86 PCs.
* NE2000-compatible PCMCIA
The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), ...
Ethernet cards for Amiga 600 and Amiga 1200
Serial ports
The Commodore A2232 board provides seven RS-232C serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...
s in addition to the Amiga's built-in serial port. Each port can be driven independently at speeds of 50 to . There is, however, a driver available on Aminet
Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pa ...
that allows two of the serial ports to be driven at . The serial card used the 65CE02 CPU clocked at . This CPU was also part of the CSG 4510 CPU core that was used in the Commodore 65
The Commodore 65 (also known as the C64DX) is a prototype computer created at Commodore Business Machines in 1990–1991. It is an improved version of the Commodore 64, and it was meant to be backwards-compatible with the older computer ...
computer.
Networking
Amiga has three networking interface APIs:
* AS225: the official Commodore TCP/IP stack API with hard-coded drivers in revision 1 (AS225r1) for the A2065 Ethernet and the A2060 Arcnet interfaces. In revision 2, (AS225r2) the SANA-II interface was used.
* SANA-II: a standardized API for hardware of network interfaces. It uses an inefficient buffer handling scheme, and lacks proper support for promiscuous
Promiscuity is the practice of engaging in sexual activity frequently with different partners or being indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners. The term can carry a moral judgment. A common example of behavior viewed as promiscuous by ma ...
and multicast
In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused wi ...
modes.
* Miami Network Interface (MNI): an API that doesn't have the problems that SANA-II suffers from. It requires AmigaOS v2.04 or higher.
Different network media were used:
Models and variants
The original Amiga models were produced from 1985 to 1996. They are, in order of production: 1000 1000 or thousand may refer to:
* 1000 (number), a natural number
* AD 1000, a leap year in the Julian calendar
* 1000 BC, a year of the Before Christ era
* 1000 metres, a middle-distance running event
* 1000°, a German electronic dance music magazi ...
, 2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
, 500, 1500
Year 1500 ( MD) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. The year 1500 was not a leap year in the Proleptic Gregorian calendar.
The year was seen as being especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought i ...
, 2500
5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. It has attained significance throughout history in part because typical humans have five digits on eac ...
, 3000, 3000UX, 3000T, CDTV
The CDTV (from Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, later treated as a backronym for Compact Disc Television) is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional ...
, 500+, 600, 4000, 1200, CD32
CD32 (cluster of differentiation 32), also known as FcγRII or FCGR2, is a surface receptor glycoprotein belonging to the Ig gene superfamily. CD32 can be found on the surface of a variety of immune cells. CD32 has a low-affinity for the Fc r ...
, and 4000T. The PowerPC-based AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
computers were later marketed beginning in 2002. Several companies and private persons have also released Amiga clones
Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to:
Places
* Clones, County Fermanagh
* Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland
Biology
* Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...
and still do so today.
Commodore Amiga
The first Amiga model, the Amiga 1000, was launched in 1985. In 2006, PC World
''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication.
It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...
rated the Amiga 1000 as the seventh greatest PC of all time, stating "Years ahead of its time, the Amiga was the world's first multimedia, multitasking personal computer".
Commodore updated the desktop line of Amiga computers with the Amiga 2000
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Ami ...
in 1987, the Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved graphics rendering, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000.
...
in 1990, and the 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.
...
in 1992, each offering improved capabilities and expansion options. The best-selling models were the budget models, however, particularly the highly successful Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to th ...
(1987) and the Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
(1992). The Amiga 500+
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that ...
(1991) was the shortest-lived model, replacing the Amiga 500 and lasting only six months until it was phased out and replaced with the Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal ...
(1992), which in turn was also quickly replaced by the Amiga 1200.
The CDTV
The CDTV (from Commodore Dynamic Total Vision, later treated as a backronym for Compact Disc Television) is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional ...
, launched in 1991, was a CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both com ...
-based game console and multimedia appliance several years before CD-ROM drives were common. The system never achieved any real success.
Commodore's last Amiga offering before filing for bankruptcy was the Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32 (stylized as Amiga CD32, code-named "Spellbound") is a 32-bit home video game console developed by Commodore and released in Europe, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London on July 16, ...
(1993), a 32-bit CD-ROM games console. Although discontinued after Commodore's demise it met with moderate commercial success in Europe. The CD32 was a next-generation CDTV, and it was designed to save Commodore by entering the growing video game console market.
Following purchase of Commodore's assets by Escom in 1995, the A1200 and A4000T continued to be sold in small quantities until 1996, though the ground lost since the initial launch and the prohibitive expense of these units meant that the Amiga line never regained any real popularity.
Several Amiga models contained references to songs by the rock band The B-52's
The B-52's, also styled as The B-52s, are an American new wave band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976. The original lineup consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards, synth bass), Cindy Wilson (vocals, ...
. Early A500 units had the words "B52/ROCK LOBSTER" silk-screen printed onto their printed circuit board
A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...
, a reference to the song "Rock Lobster
"Rock Lobster" is a song written by Fred Schneider and Ricky Wilson, two members of the B-52's. It was twice recorded and released as a single, first by DB Records as their debut release in April 1978, and again the following year for the ban ...
" The Amiga 600
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal ...
referenced "JUNE BUG" (after the song "Junebug") and the Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
had "CHANNEL Z" (after " Channel Z"), and the CD-32 had "Spellbound."
AmigaOS 4 systems
AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partne ...
is designed for PowerPC Amiga systems. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code, with some parts of version 3.9. Currently runs on both Amigas equipped with CyberstormPPC or BlizzardPPC accelerator boards, on the Teron series based AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
computers built by Eyetech
Eyetech Group Ltd is a company founded in 1983, in order to provide commercial companies with automatical data collection systems. They had already been involved in the provision of the automatic toll collection systems used at the Dartford River ...
under license by Amiga, Inc.
Amiga, Inc. is a company that used to hold some trademarks and other assets associated with the Amiga personal computer (originally developed by Amiga Corporation).
Early years
In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari, Inc. staffe ...
, on the Pegasos II
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 & 10/100), USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire. Like the PowerPC Macintosh ...
from Genesi/ bPlan GmbH, on the ACube Systems Srl Sam440ep / Sam460ex
Sam460ex is a line of modular motherboards produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl. The machine was released in October 2010 and can run AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, or Debian GNU/Linux (indeed only CRUX PPC Linux is available because there is ...
/ AmigaOne 500 systems and on the A-EON AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC-based personal computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and released in 2011. Its name pays homage to the Amiga 1 ...
.
AmigaOS 4.0 had been available only in developer pre-releases for numerous years until it was officially released in December 2006. Due to the nature of some provisions of the contract between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment (the Belgian company that is developing the OS), the commercial AmigaOS 4 had been available only to licensed buyers of AmigaOne motherboards.
AmigaOS 4.0 for Amigas equipped with PowerUP accelerator boards was released in November 2007. Version 4.1 was released in August 2008 for AmigaOne systems, and in May 2011 for Amigas equipped with PowerUP accelerator boards. The most recent release of AmigaOS for all supported platforms is 4.1 update 5. Starting with release 4.1 update 4 there is an Emulation drawer containing official AmigaOS 3.x ROMs (all classic Amiga models including CD32) and relative Workbench files.
Acube Systems
ACube Systems Srl is a company that started in January 2007 from the synergy of the Italian companies Alternative Holding Group Srl, Soft3 and Virtual Works.
The three companies have been engaged in the areas of sale, distribution and engineering ...
entered an agreement with Hyperion under which it has ported AmigaOS 4 to its Sam440ep and Sam460ex
Sam460ex is a line of modular motherboards produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl. The machine was released in October 2010 and can run AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, or Debian GNU/Linux (indeed only CRUX PPC Linux is available because there is ...
line of PowerPC-based motherboards. In 2009 a version for Pegasos II
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 & 10/100), USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire. Like the PowerPC Macintosh ...
was released in co-operation with Acube Systems. In 2012, A-EON Technology Ltd manufactured and released the AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC-based personal computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and released in 2011. Its name pays homage to the Amiga 1 ...
to consumers through their partner, Amiga Kit who provided end-user support, assembly and worldwide distribution of the new system.
Amiga hardware clones
Long-time Amiga developer MacroSystem entered the Amiga-clone market with their DraCo
Draco is the Latin word for serpent or dragon.
Draco or Drako may also refer to:
People
* Draco (lawgiver) (from Greek: Δράκων; 7th century BC), the first lawgiver of ancient Athens, Greece, from whom the term ''draconian'' is derived
* ...
non-linear video editing system. It appears in two versions, initially a tower model and later a cube. DraCo expanded upon and combined a number of earlier expansion cards developed for Amiga (VLabMotion, Toccata, WarpEngine, RetinaIII) into a true Amiga-clone powered by the Motorola 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
processor. The DraCo can run AmigaOS 3.1 up through AmigaOS 3.9. It is the only Amiga-based system to support FireWire
IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...
for video I/O. DraCo also offers an Amiga-compatible Zorro-II expansion bus and introduced a faster custom DraCoBus, capable of transfer rates (faster than Commodore's Zorro-III). The technology was later used in the Casablanca system, a set-top-box also designed for non-linear video editing.
In 1998, Index Information released the Access, an Amiga-clone similar to the Amiga 1200, but on a motherboard that could fit into a standard -inch drive bay
A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, but some can be removed.
Over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form f ...
. It features either a 68020
The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepi ...
or 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with gener ...
CPU, with a AGA chipset, and runs AmigaOS 3.1.
In 1998, former Amiga employees (John Smith, Peter Kittel, Dave Haynie
Dave Haynie is an American electrical engineer and was chief engineer at Commodore International. He is vocal in the Amiga community.
See also
* Metabox (on German Wikipedia)
* PIOS
The International Open Series (often referred to as Pontins ...
and Andy Finkel to mention few) formed a new company called PIOS. Their hardware platform, PIOS One, was aimed at Amiga, Atari and Macintosh users. The company was renamed to Met@box in 1999 until it folded.
The NatAmi (short for ''Native Amiga'') hardware project began in 2005 with the aim of designing and building an Amiga clone motherboard that is enhanced with modern features. The NatAmi motherboard is a standard Mini-ITX
Mini-ITX is a motherboard form-factor, developed by VIA Technologies in 2001. They are commonly used in small-configured computer systems. Originally, they were a niche product, designed for fan-less cooling with a low power consumption archi ...
-compatible form factor computer motherboard, powered by a Motorola/Freescale 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
and its chipset. It is compatible with the original Amiga chipset, which has been inscribed on a programmable FPGA Altera
Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.
The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...
chip on the board. The NatAmi is the second Amiga clone project after the Minimig
Minimig (short for ''Mini Amiga'') is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He inte ...
motherboard, and its history is very similar to that of the C-One
The C-One is a single-board computer (SBC) created in 2002 as an enhanced version of the Commodore 64, a home computer popular in the 1980s. Designed by Jeri Ellsworth and Jens Schönfeld from Individual Computers, who manufactured the boards t ...
mainboard developed by Jeri Ellsworth
Jeri Janet Ellsworth (born August 14, 1974) is an American entrepreneur, computer chip designer and inventor. She gained fame in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 emulator system on a chip housed within a joystick, called Commodore 30- ...
and Jens Schönfeld. From a commercial point of view, Natami's circuitry and design are currently closed source
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...
. One goal of the NatAmi project is to design an Amiga-compatible motherboard that includes up-to-date features but that does not rely on emulation (as in WinUAE), modern PC Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
components, or a modern PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...
mainboard. As such, NatAmi is not intended to become another evolutionary heir to classic Amigas, such as with AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
or Pegasos computers. This "purist" philosophy essentially limits the resulting processor speed but puts the focus on bandwidth and low latencies. The developers also recreated the entire Amiga chipset, freeing it from legacy Amiga limitations such as two megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes o ...
s of audio and video graphics RAM as in the AGA chipset, and rebuilt this new chipset by programming a modern FPGA
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...
Altera
Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.
The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...
Cyclone IV chip. Later, the developers decided to create from scratch a new software-form processor chip, codenamed "N68050" that resides in the physical Altera FPGA programmable chip.
In 2006, two new Amiga clones were announced, both using FPGA
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...
based hardware synthesis to replace the Amiga OCS custom chipset. The first, the Minimig
Minimig (short for ''Mini Amiga'') is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He inte ...
, is a personal project of Dutch engineer Dennis van Weeren. Referred to as "new Amiga hardware", the original model was built on a Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the fi ...
Spartan-3 development board, but soon a dedicated board was developed. The minimig uses the FPGA to reproduce the custom Denise, Agnus, Paula and Gary chips as well as both 8520 CIAs and implements a simple version of Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In M ...
. The rest of the chips are an actual 68000 CPU, ram chips, and a PIC microcontroller for BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the b ...
control. The design for Minimig was released as open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
on July 25, 2007. In February 2008, an Italian company Acube Systems
ACube Systems Srl is a company that started in January 2007 from the synergy of the Italian companies Alternative Holding Group Srl, Soft3 and Virtual Works.
The three companies have been engaged in the areas of sale, distribution and engineering ...
began selling Minimig boards. A third party upgrade replaces the PIC microcontroller with a more powerful ARM processor, providing more functionality such as write access and support for hard disk images. The Minimig core has been ported to the FPGArcade "Replay" board. The Replay uses an FPGA with about three times more capacity and that does support the AGA chipset and a 68020
The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepi ...
soft core with 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with gener ...
capabilities. The Replay board is designed to implement many older computers and classic arcade machines.
The second is the Clone-A system announced by Individual Computers. As of mid 2007 it has been shown in its development form, with FPGA-based boards replacing the Amiga chipset and mounted on an Amiga 500 motherboard.
Operating systems
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is a single-user multitasking operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
. It was one of the first commercially available consumer operating systems for personal computers to implement preemptive multitasking. It was developed first by Commodore International and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000. John C. Dvorak wrote in ''PC Magazine'' in 1996:
AmigaOS combines a command-line interface
A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
and graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
. AmigaDOS
AmigaDOS is the disk operating system of the AmigaOS, which includes file systems, file and directory manipulation, the command-line interface, and file redirection.
In AmigaOS 1.x, AmigaDOS is based on a TRIPOS port by MetaComCo, written in ...
is the disk operating system and command line portion of the OS and Workbench
A workbench is a sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewellers benches to the huge benches used by ...
the native graphical windowing, graphical environment for file management and launching applications. AmigaDOS allows long filename
A filename or file name is a name used to uniquely identify a computer file in a directory structure. Different file systems impose different restrictions on filename lengths.
A filename may (depending on the file system) include:
* name &ndas ...
s (up to 107 characters) with whitespace and does not require filename extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...
s. The windowing system
In computing, a windowing system (or window system) is software that manages separately different parts of display screens. It is a type of graphical user interface (GUI) which implements the WIMP ( windows, icons, menus, pointer) paradigm f ...
and user interface engine that handles all input events is called Intuition
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
.
The multi-tasking kernel is called Exec Exec or EXEC may refer to:
* Executive officer, a person responsible for running an organization
* Executive producer, provides finance and guidance for the making of a commercial entertainment product
* A family of kit helicopters produced by Rot ...
. It acts as a scheduler for tasks running on the system, providing pre-emptive multitasking with prioritised round-robin scheduling. It enabled true pre-emptive multitasking in as little as 256 KB of free memory.
AmigaOS does not implement memory protection
Memory protection is a way to control memory access rights on a computer, and is a part of most modern instruction set architectures and operating systems. The main purpose of memory protection is to prevent a process from accessing memory that h ...
; the 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
does not include a memory management unit
A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit having all memory references passed through itself, primarily performing the translation of virtual memory addresses to physical a ...
. Although this speeds and eases inter-process communication
In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categoriz ...
because programs can communicate by simply passing a pointer back and forth, the lack of memory protection made the AmigaOS more vulnerable to crashes from badly behaving programs
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing several related projects
* Time management
* Program, a part of planning
Arts and entertainment Audio
* Progra ...
than other multitasking systems that did implement memory protection, and Amiga OS is fundamentally incapable of enforcing any form of security model since any program had full access to the system. A co-operational memory protection feature was implemented in AmigaOS 4 and could be retrofitted to old AmigaOS systems using Enforcer or CyberGuard tools.
The problem was somewhat exacerbated by Commodore's initial decision to release documentation relating not only to the OS's underlying software routines, but also to the hardware itself, enabling intrepid programmers who had developed their skills on the Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness W ...
to POKE
Poke may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Poke (''Ender's Game''), a fictional character
* Poke (game), a two-player card game
* Poke, a fictional bar owner in the television series '' Treme''
* The Poke, a British satirical website
Fo ...
the hardware directly, as was done on the older platform. While the decision to release the documentation was a popular one and allowed the creation of fast, sophisticated sound and graphics routines in games and demos, it also contributed to system instabilityas some programmers lacked the expertise to program at this level. For this reason, when the new AGA chipset was released, Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore ...
declined to release low-level documentation in an attempt to force developers into using the approved software routines.
Influence on other operating systems
AmigaOS directly or indirectly inspired the development of various operating systems. MorphOS
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale dev ...
and AROS Aros may refer to:
*Aros (Middle-earth), a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
* Aros, Mull, the location of Aros Castle, a ruined 13th-century castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland
*AROS Research Operating System, a free software i ...
clearly inherit heavily from the structure of AmigaOS as explained directly in articles regarding these two operating systems. AmigaOS also influenced BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware.
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users an ...
, which featured a centralized system of Datatypes
In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...
, similar to that present in AmigaOS. Likewise, DragonFly BSD
DragonFly BSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system forked from FreeBSD 4.8. Matthew Dillon, an Amiga developer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and FreeBSD developer between 1994 and 2003, began working on DragonFly BSD ...
was also inspired by AmigaOS as stated by Dragonfly developer Matthew Dillon who is a former Amiga developer. WindowLab
WindowLab is an X window manager for Unix-like systems. It is based on aewm and retains that window manager's lightweight aesthetic. In many aspects, WindowLab has looked to the Amiga's user interface for inspiration without cloning it complete ...
and amiwm
In computing, the AMIga Window Manager (amiwm) is a stacking window manager for the X Window System written by Marcus Comstedt.
The window manager emulates the Amiga Workbench and includes support for multiple virtual screens like the AmigaOS, bu ...
are among several window manager
A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunctio ...
s for the X Window System
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...
seek to mimic the Workbench interface. IBM licensed the Amiga GUI from Commodore in exchange for the REXX language license. This allowed OS/2
OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...
to have the WPS (Workplace Shell
The Workplace Shell (WPS) is an object-oriented desktop shell (also called desktop environment) produced by IBM's Boca Raton development lab for OS/2 2.0. It is based on Common User Access and made a radical shift away from the Program Manager ...
) GUI shell for OS/2 2.0, a 32-bit operating system.
Unix and Unix-like systems
Commodore-Amiga produced Amiga Unix
Amiga Unix (informally known as Amix) is a discontinued full port of AT&T Unix System V Release 4 operating system developed by Commodore-Amiga, Inc. in 1990 for the Amiga computer family as an alternative to AmigaOS, which shipped by default.
...
, informally known as Amix, based on AT&T SVR4
Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
. It supports the Amiga 2500
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary A ...
and Amiga 3000 and is included with the Amiga 3000UX. Among other unusual features of Amix is a hardware-accelerated windowing system that can scroll windows without copying data. Amix is not supported on the later Amiga systems based on 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nam ...
or 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
processors.
Other, still maintained, operating systems are available for the classic Amiga platform, including Linux and NetBSD
NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is ava ...
. Both require a CPU with MMU such as the 68020
The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepi ...
with 68851 or full versions of the 68030
The Motorola 68030 ("''sixty-eight-oh-thirty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with gener ...
, 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nam ...
or 68060
The Motorola 68060 ("''sixty-eight-oh-sixty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola released in 1994. It is the successor to the Motorola 68040 and is the highest performing member of the 68000 series. Two derivatives were produced, the 68L ...
. There is also a version of Linux for Amigas with PowerPC accelerator cards. Debian
Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...
and Yellow Dog Linux
Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) is a discontinued free and open-source operating system for high-performance computing on multi-core processor computer architectures, focusing on GPU systems and computers using the POWER7 processor. The original deve ...
can run on the AmigaOne.
There is an official, older version of OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project e ...
. The last Amiga release is 3.2. MINIX 1.5.10 also runs on Amiga.
Emulating other systems
The 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-clone system mounted in an expansion case which connected to the expansion bus on t ...
is a complete IBM PC XT
The IBM Personal Computer XT (model 5160, often shortened to PC/XT) is the second computer in the IBM Personal Computer line, released on March 8, 1983. Except for the addition of a built-in hard drive and extra expansion slots, it is very simila ...
compatible computer contained in an expansion card. It was released by Commodore in 1986 and promoted as a way to run business software on the Amiga 1000.
Amiga software
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the platform became particularly popular for gaming, demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...
activities and creative software uses. During this time commercial developers marketed a wide range of games and creative software, often developing titles simultaneously for the Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first per ...
due to the similar hardware architecture. Popular creative software included 3D rendering
3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of converting 3D models into 2D images on a computer. 3D renders may include photorealistic effects or non-photorealistic styles.
Rendering methods
Rendering is the final process of creati ...
(ray-tracing) packages, bitmap graphics editors, 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 th ...
software, software development packages and " tracker" music editors.
Until the late 1990s the Amiga remained a popular platform for non-commercial software, often developed by enthusiasts, and much of which was freely redistributable. An on-line archive, Aminet
Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pa ...
, was created in 1991 and until the late-1990s was the largest public archive of software, art and documents for any platform.
Marketing
The name ''Amiga'' was chosen by the developers from the Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
word for a female friend, because they knew Spanish, and because it occurred before Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
and Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, Ca ...
alphabetically. It also conveyed the message that the Amiga computer line was "user friendly" as a pun or play on words.
The first official Amiga logo was a rainbow-colored double check mark
A check or check mark (American English), checkmark (Philippine English), tickmark (Indian English) or tick ( Australian, New Zealand English, and British English) is a mark (✓, ✔, etc.) used, primarily in the English-speaking world, to in ...
. In later marketing material Commodore largely dropped the checkmark and used logos styled with various typefaces. Although it was never adopted as a trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from ot ...
by Commodore, the "Boing Ball" has been synonymous with Amiga since its launch. It became an unofficial and enduring theme after a visually impressive animated demonstration at the 1984 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1984 showing a checkered ball bouncing and rotating. Following Escom's purchase of Commodore in 1996, the Boing Ball theme was incorporated into a new logo.
Early Commodore advertisements attempted to cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine,[ though the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s Commodore primarily placed advertising in computer magazines and occasionally in national newspapers and on television.
]
Legacy
Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line:
* Genesi sold PowerPC based hardware under the Pegasos brand running AmigaOS and MorphOS
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale dev ...
;
* Eyetech
Eyetech Group Ltd is a company founded in 1983, in order to provide commercial companies with automatical data collection systems. They had already been involved in the provision of the automatic toll collection systems used at the Dartford River ...
sold PowerPC based hardware under the AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
brand from 2002 to 2005 running AmigaOS 4;
* Amiga Kit distributes and sells PowerPC based hardware under the AmigaOne
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the ''Teron'' series of Powe ...
brand from 2010 to present day running AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partne ...
;
* ACube Systems
ACube Systems Srl is a company that started in January 2007 from the synergy of the Italian companies Alternative Holding Group Srl, Soft3 and Virtual Works.
The three companies have been engaged in the areas of sale, distribution and engineering ...
sells the AmigaOS 3 compatible Minimig
Minimig (short for ''Mini Amiga'') is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He inte ...
system with a Freescale MC68SEC000 CPU (Motorola 68000 compatible) and AmigaOS 4 compatible Sam440 / Sam460 / AmigaOne 500 systems with PowerPC processors;
* A-EON Technology Ltd sells the AmigaOS 4 compatible AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC-based personal computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and released in 2011. Its name pays homage to the Amiga 1 ...
system with P.A. Semi PWRficient
PWRficient is a microprocessor series by P.A. Semi where the PA6T-1682M was the only one that became an actual product.
PWRficient processors comply with the 64-bit Power ISA, and are designed for high performance and extreme power efficiency. T ...
PA6T-1682M processor.
* Amiga Kit Amiga Store, Vesalia Computer and AMIGAstore.eu sell numerous items from aftermarket components to refurbished classic systems.
AmigaOS and MorphOS are commercial proprietary operating systems. AmigaOS 4, based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code with some parts of version 3.9, is developed by Hyperion Entertainment and runs on PowerPC based hardware. MorphOS, based on some parts of AROS source code, is developed by MorphOS Team and is continued on Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...
and other PowerPC based hardware.
There is also AROS Aros may refer to:
*Aros (Middle-earth), a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
* Aros, Mull, the location of Aros Castle, a ruined 13th-century castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland
*AROS Research Operating System, a free software i ...
, a free and open source operating system (re-implementation of the AmigaOS 3.1 APIs), for Amiga 68k, x86 and ARM hardware (one version runs Linux-hosted on the Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...
). In particular, AROS for Amiga 68k hardware aims to create an open source Kickstart ROM replacement for emulation purpose and/or for use on real "classic" hardware.
Magazines
''Amiga Format
''Amiga Format'' was a British computer magazine for Amiga computers, published by Future plc. The magazine lasted 136 issues from 1989 to 2000. The magazine was formed when, in the wake of selling '' ACE'' to EMAP, Future split the dual-format ...
'' continued until 2000, some six years after Commodore filed for bankruptcy. ''Amiga Active
''Amiga Active'' was a monthly computer magazine published by Pinprint Publishing, it launched at a time when most other Amiga magazines had already closed, and as a result only had one major competitor: ''Amiga Format
''Amiga Format'' was a ...
'' was launched in 1999 and was published until 2001.
Several magazines are in publication today: ''Amiga Future'', which is available in both English and German; ''Bitplane.it'', a bimonthly magazine in Italian; and ''AmigaPower'', a long-running French magazine. Print magazine ''Amiga Addict'' started publication in 2020.
Trade Shows
The Amiga continues to be popular enough that fans to support conferences such as Amiga37 which had over 50 vendors.
Uses
The Amiga series of computers found a place in early computer graphic design and television presentation. Season 1 and part of season 2 of the television series ''Babylon 5
''Babylon 5'' is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Tele ...
'' were rendered in LightWave 3D on Amigas. Other television series using Amigas for special effects included ''SeaQuest DSV
''SeaQuest DSV'' (stylized as ''seaQuest DSV'' and also promoted as simply ''seaQuest'') is an American science fiction television series created by Rockne S. O'Bannon. It originally aired on NBC between 1993 and 1996. In its final season, ...
'' and '' Max Headroom''.
In addition, many celebrities and notable individuals have made use of the Amiga:
* Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
was an early user of the Amiga and appeared at the launch, where he made a computer artwork of Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.
Born in ...
. Warhol used the Amiga to create a new style of art made with computers, and was the author of a multimedia opera called '' You Are the One'', which consists of an animated sequence featuring images of actress Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
assembled in a short movie with a soundtrack. The video was discovered on two old Amiga floppies in a drawer in Warhol's studio and repaired in 2006 by the Detroit Museum of New Art
The Museum of New Art, better known as MONA is the first popup museum, founded in 1996 and run by artists since then. The museum's locations have varied from the walk-in closet of a commercial gallery (rented for $1 per year), the second floor of ...
. The pop artist has been quoted as saying: ''"The thing I like most about doing this kind of work on the Amiga is that it looks like my work in other media"''.
* Artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud credits the Amiga he bought for his son as a bridge to learning about "using paint box programs". He uploaded some of his early experiments to the file sharing forums on CompuServe
CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...
.
* The "Weird Al" Yankovic
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. He is best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific ...
film ''UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
'' contains a computer animated music video parody of the Dire Straits
Dire Straits were a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler (lead vocals and lead guitar), David Knopfler (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Pick Withers (drums and per ...
song " Money for Nothing", titled " Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*". According to the DVD commentary track, this spoof was created on an Amiga home computer.
* Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris (born 30 March 1930) is an Australian entertainer whose career has encompassed work as a musician, singer-songwriter, composer, comedian, actor, painter and television personality. He often used unusual instruments in his performan ...
used an Amiga to digitize his hand-drawn art work for animation on his television series ''Rolf's Cartoon Club''.
* Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...
's video "Change Myself" was produced with Toaster and Lightwave.
* Scottish pop artist Calvin Harris
Adam Richard Wiles (born 17 January 1984), known professionally as Calvin Harris, is a Scottish DJ, record producer, singer, and songwriter who has released six studio albums.
His debut studio album, ''I Created Disco'', was released in June ...
composed his 2007 debut album ''I Created Disco
''I Created Disco'' is the debut studio album by Scottish musician Calvin Harris. It was released on 15 June 2007 by Columbia Records. It was preceded by the singles "Acceptable in the 80s" and " The Girls", which reached numbers 10 and three on ...
'' with an Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...
.
* Susumu Hirasawa
is a Japanese musician and composer.
In the fifth year of elementary school, Hirasawa took up the electric guitar, inspired by the surf and instrumental rock bands he heard on the radio and on TV, later joining his junior high school's band. ...
, a Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
ese progressive-electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
, is known for using Amigas to compose and perform music, aid his live shows and make his promotional videos. He has also been inspired by the Amiga, and has referenced it in his lyrics. His December 13, 1994 "Adios Jay" Interactive Live Show was dedicated to (then recently deceased) Jay Miner. He also used the Amiga to create the virtual drummer TAINACO, who was a CG rendered figure whose performance was made with Elan Performer and was projected with DCTV. He also composed and performed "Eastern-boot", the AmigaOS 4 boot jingle.
* Electronic musician Max Tundra
Ben Jacobs (born 7 June 1974), more commonly known by the stage name Max Tundra, is an English multi-instrumental musician, singer and music producer. His work is noted for its maximalist approach, which is predominantly electronic music but inc ...
created his three albums with an Amiga 500.
* Bob Casale
Robert Edward Casale Jr. (born Robert Edward Pizzute Jr.; July 14, 1952 – February 17, 2014), or "Bob 2", was an American musician, composer and record producer. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as the keyboardist and rhythm guitari ...
, keyboardist and guitarist of the new wave band Devo
Devo (, originally ) is an American rock band from Akron, Ohio, formed in 1973. Their classic line-up consisted of two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs (Mark and Bob) and the Casales (Gerald and Bob), along with Alan Myers. The band had a ...
, used Amiga computer graphics on the album cover to Devo's album ''Total Devo
''Total Devo'' is the seventh studio album by American new wave band Devo, released on May 24, 1988 by Enigma Records, just under four years after their previous album, '' Shout'' (1984). " Disco Dancer" hit No. 45 on ''Billboards Hot Dance Clu ...
''.
* Most of ''Pokémon Gold'' and ''Silver'''s music was created on an Amiga computer, converted to MIDI, and then reconverted to the game's music format.
Special purpose applications
* Amigas were used in various NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
laboratories to keep track of low orbiting satellites until 2004. Amigas were used at Kennedy Space Center to run strip-chart recorders, to format and display data, and control stations of platforms for Delta rocket
Delta is an American versatile family of expendable launch systems that has provided space launch capability in the United States since 1960. Japan also launched license-built derivatives ( N-I, N-II, and H-I) from 1975 to 1992. More than 300 ...
launches.
* Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observat ...
used Amigas to calibrate and control the charge-coupled device
A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...
s in their telescopes, as well as to display and store the digitized images they collected.
* London Transport Museum
The London Transport Museum (often abbreviated as the LTM) is a transport museum based in Covent Garden, London. The museum predominantly hosts exhibits relating to the heritage of London's transport, as well as conserving and explaining the h ...
developed their own interactive multi-media software for the CD32 including a virtual tour of the museum.
* Amiga 500 motherboards were used, in conjunction with a LaserDisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...
player and genlock
Genlock (generator locking) 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 picture sources together. The aim in video applications is to ensure the ...
device, in arcade games manufactured by American Laser Games
American Laser Games was a company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico that created numerous light gun laserdisc video games featuring live action full motion video. The company was founded in the late 1980s by Robert Grebe, who had originally created ...
.
* A custom Amiga 4000T
The Amiga 4000T, also known as A4000T, is a tower version of Commodore's A4000 personal 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 ...
motherboard was used in the HDI 1000 medical ultrasound system built by Advanced Technology Labs.
*, the Grand Rapids Public School district uses a Commodore Amiga 2000 with 1200 baud modem to automate its air conditioning and heating systems for the 19 schools covered by the GRPS district. The system has been operating day and night for decades.
* The Weather Network
The Weather Network (TWN) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English language, English-language weather information specialty channel available in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. It delivers weather information on television, ...
used Amigas to display the weather on TV.
See also
* Amiga Forever
*List of Amiga games
__NOTOC__
This is a list of games for the Amiga line of personal computers organised alphabetically by name. See Lists of video games for related lists.
This list has been split into multiple pages. It contains over 3000 games. Please use the Tab ...
*Amiga emulation
Amiga emulation refers to the activity of emulating a Commodore Amiga computer system using another computer platform. Most emulators run on modern systems such as Microsoft Windows or Macintosh. This allows Amiga users to use their existing so ...
*SAGE Computer Technology#SAGE IV, SAGE Computer Technology
Notes
References
Works cited
*
*
External links
Official AmigaOS website
History of the Amiga
at ''Ars Technica''
Amiga, Inc. Website
Amiga Software Database
Amiga Hardware Database
Big Book of Amiga Hardware
*
RUN Magazine Issue 21
September 1985 article on the introduction of the Amiga
Amiga.org: community forums and support
English Amiga Board: Amiga community forums and support
The Hall of Light: the database of Amiga games
The Amiga Museum
{{Authority control
Amiga,
68k-based computers
American inventions
Computer-related introductions in 1985
Desktop computers
Home computers