David Lewis Needle (December 17, 1947 – February 20, 2016) was an American computer engineer. He was a key engineer and co-chief architect in the creation of the Amiga 1000 computer with Jay Miner, Dave Morse, and

R. J. Mical Robert J. "RJ" Mical (born 26 January 1956) is an American computer programmer and hardware designer who has primarily worked in video games. He is best known for creating the user interface, Intuition, for Commodore's Amiga personal computer ...

. He was one of the main designers and developers of the custom chips of the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, 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 sign ...

computer. Later he co-invented the Atari Lynx and the

3DO Interactive Multiplayer The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, also referred to as simply 3DO, is a home video game console developed by The 3DO Company. Conceived by entrepreneur and Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, the 3DO was not a console manufactured by the compan ...

with Morse and Mical. A 1995 article in ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' commented: "It's true that of the machines that Mical and Needle have created, only the Amiga has been a true global mass market hit ... But it's only fair to put forward the argument that this is down to the marketing of the machines rather than the quality of the product." Dave Needle died on February 20, 2016.

References

American engineers 1947 births 2016 deaths Computer hardware engineers {{compu-bio-stub