THE HISTORY OF AMIGA
1980: The
idea
The story begins in an Atari
development lab where Jay Miner is developing 8-bit systems, such as the
2600, 400 and 800. The basic design of these machines rely upon a number
of custom chips to drive the audio and graphics display. At the time Atari
was one of the most successful companies of the time, occupying the position
held by Nintendo or Sony today. However, Jay has become increasingly bored
with the machine design. Instead of further refining existing technology,
he proposes the development of a new computer based upon the Motorola 68000
processor. Atari refuse, content with the 8-bit cashcow that they have created
- a fatal error on their part that eventually leads to the video game crash
of the mid-1980s. In frustration Miner quits Atari and moves to Zimast where
he designs chips for pacemakers.
1982: Below the
radar
The story picks up again in 1982
when Jay Miner receives a telephone call from Larry Kaplan - a former colleague
who left Atari to create Activision. Like Miner, Kaplan had become frustrated
with the current market and was searching for investors to start a game company.
By luck, Jay knew three dentists who wanted to invest $7 million into the
growing games market. This led to the creation of Hi-Toro, based in Santa
Clara (USA). During this time Dave Morse is recruited as Chief Executive
Officer, who leaves his role as vice-president of marketing at Tonka Toys
to take the job.
However, the continued delays
associated with managing a business were beginning to show on Larry Kaplan,
who becomes increasingly impatient with the company's slow pace and leaves
his position as vice president. To fill Kaplan's former position Dave Morse
offers the job to Miner, who is still working for Zimast at the time. With
Miner onboard, Hi-Toro begins to distinguish itself from other developers.
In a 1988 interview with Amiga User International, Miner indicates that the
creation of the Lorraine prototype was his idea soon after joining Hi-Toro:
I had wanted for years to build
a super personal computer based around the Motorola sixty-eight thousand
micro processor. Atari had turned me down and here was my big chance, as
long as it could be sold in a stripped down, low-cost version version for
video games Dave Morse and the financial backers were happy. As long as it
was unlimited in its expandability as a high level home computer, I was
happy"
To enable the development, Hi-Toro
was divided into two groups - the Atari Peripheral group consisted of marketers
and manufacturers that developed Hi-Toro's joysticks and games for the Atari
2600. These include the PowerStick and JoyBoard - game controllers that
demonstrate the pioneering spirit of game development during the 1980s, as
well as a small selection of simplistic games. The second group was the computer
development team, who would work on a project codenamed 'Lorraine', named
after Dave Morse's wife. Although the group was small initially, they had
lofty intentions. The aim of the Lorraine prototype was to create a monster
game machine that had a 3.5" floppy drive and a keyboard. It was predicted
that third party developers, such as Activision and Imagic, would be the
dominant game designers, so Hi-Toro made it as easy as possible to directly
develop games. This was a radical move for the market; Atari, like the
contemporary Nintendo and Sony were trying to create a closed system and
fight 3rd party developers. Hi-Toro were creating a machine that would reject
this concept, opening the flood gates to hundreds of potential developers.
In the AUI interview Jay Miner describes his experience of viewing of a military
flight simulator developed by Singer-Link. Impressed by what he saw, Miner
begins to consider the use of blitters to improve the graphics capabilities.
This is eventually developed into HAM (Hold and Modify) during 1985. This
made it possible to display 4096 colours at the screen by changing the colour
registers. However, early reports suggest that he was willing to remove these
capabilities when he realized how slow it was. It was only when the motherboard
designer informed him its removal would leave a hole in the middle of the
motherboard that he accepts that it will be present in the final version
- a wise decision that would distinguish the Commodore Amiga from its Atari
rival many years later.
A final significant event that
took place during 1982 is the company's' name change. In an attempt to
distinguish itself from the Japanese lawnmower firm 'Toro', the company name
is changed to 'Amiga Incorporated'. The reason for the choice of Amiga has
become legendary - Miner wanted a 'friendly' name that would dispel the air
of confusion that surrounds most computers. As the Spanish word for female
friend, Amiga fitted this profile. The fact that it came before Apple and
Atari in listings also helped. Although Miner was unhappy with the name
initially, he soon realized the impact that it could
have.
1983: From design concept to
breadboard
For many businesses in the early
gaming industry, 1983 was a dark time. It was becoming increasingly evident
that the market was on the brink of collapse, a crash so severe that the
media were beginning to question if the computer entertainment industry itself
was just a short-lived phenomenon. Even the Warner-owned Amiga Corp. were
tightening their belts, ceasing software and hardware development in a haphazard
fashion. Amiga Inc. were also feeling the effects. Although the Atari peripherals
had generated a steady revenue stream during the previous year, they were
loosing money fast. The Lorraine turned into their only chance of salvation
and they chose to recruit new staff to work on the Lorraine prototype. This
included Bob Burns, Glenn Keller, Dale Luck, RJ Mical (Software Engineer)
, Dave Needle, Ron Nicolson, Bob Pariseau and Carl Sassenrath. The influx
of fresh blood allowed the project team to be split into two groups - hardware
and software. Jay Miner led the hardware development team, while Dale Luck
and his group concentrated on getting the OS working through software simulation.
In an interview RJ Mical described his role at Amiga
Inc:
" I started as Software Engineer
at Amiga where I contributed to the graphics library development. I created
Intuition, the Amiga's user interface and windowing/menu system -- what a
haul that was: seven months of 100-hour weeks to get it finished in time
for the launch of the Amiga! I was Director of System Software for a while
too. I didn't help develop the Joyboard (a joystick controller in the form
of a skiboard), but I was a user. We created a game for it called the Zen
Meditation game. The object was to sit in lotus-position on the Joyboard
and move as little as possible for as long as possible. The goal was to reach
Nirvana by accumulating bonus kharma points. It's a long story; I guess you
had to be there... "
By September 1983 the custom chip
prototypes were mostly finished- there were 3 in all: Agnus (Address Generator),
Daphne, that would later be renamed Denise (Display Adapter) and Portia,
eventually called Paula (Ports and Audio). The only problem was shrinking
them, they looked more like something from a mainframe rather than the next
generation of microcomputer. Amiga Inc. were also suffering from a severe
cash flow crisis. Several employees were forced to take out second mortgages
or find finances elsewhere to support the company. The dream was close to
completion, but could easily have been
destroyed.
1984: First
sightings
After two years of development
the world got its first look at Amiga Inc's hardware. In an attempt to finance
the project, the Lorraine was shown to several interested investors at the
Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago on January 4th, 1984. However, the custom
chips weren't finished and the entire project was still held together by
four breadboards. During the show RJ Mical and Dale Luck wrote a bouncing
ball animation - a demo that showed a red & white sphere bouncing around
the screen. The 'Boing Ball' soon became a symbol of the Amigas technical
prowess and was later adopted as a symbol of rebellion against the Commodore
management. Although there was considerable interest in the hardware, the
show did not produce any conclusive
results.
By this time debts were piling
up and the Amiga team were forced to place all they owned on the line, Dave
Morse took out a second mortgage on his house. In an attempt to gain outside
funding Amiga Inc. made an appeal to Sony, Apple, Silicon Graphics, Atari,
and many others. Although these companies expressed an interest in the Amiga,
they did not provide a suitable offer. Steve Jobs of Apple made the excuse
that there was too much hardware, even though the newly redesigned board
consisted of just three chips. Only Atari Inc. (managed by Warner at the
time) made a serious offer for the Amiga custom chips, loaning $500,000 to
keep the company alive while a license agreement was constructed. In a 1992
interview, Miner indicated the deal was a last ditch
attempt:
"Atari gave us $500,000 with the
stipulation that we had one month to come to a deal with them about the future
of the Amiga chipset or pay them back, or they got the rights. This was a
dumb thing to agree to but there was no choice."
The tentative plans between Amiga
and Atari incorporated terms that Atari would purchase one million preferred
shares of Amiga at $3 each by September 1st. However, Atari knew that Amiga,
Inc. could not pay back the money and started to play dirty, reducing the
amount offered to just 98 cents per share for the company. To make matters
worse, Atari only wanted the Amiga technology in an attempt to get into the
16 bit market before Commodore (who were working on a Unix box) and had no
interest in the team that created it. Amiga grudgingly accepted the offer.
However, the Atari deal soon turned sour. On Tuesday July 3rd, Atari employees
were informed all 8-bit projects have been canceled and the Amiga project
was on hold. Facing cancellation the Amiga team began to look around for
other options in an attempt to find a
buyer.
While these events are being played
out, Jack Tramiel leaves Commodore with half of the engineering staff and
is sued by the company for breach of Commodore's propietary secrets. Just
a few days later Tramiel purchases Warner's Atari Consumer company to take
advantage of its existing manufacture and distribution channels and renames
Tramiel Technologies to Atari Corp. He subsequently discovers the original
Atari/Amiga agreement and files a $100 million suit in the Santa Clara County
Superior Court on Monday, August 13th against Commodore & Jay Miner
individually, charging a breach of contract. Atari suggest that Amiga
fraudulently dealt with other potential buyers after agreeing to negotiate
licensing specific microprocessors to Atari Inc. in return for the $500,000
advance payment. In an attempt to gain revenge on his old company for suing
him, Tramiel sought damages and an injunction to prevent Amiga from delivering
or selling chips to any other company.
Fortunately help is at hand and
Commodore decide that the Amiga is worth the potential cost. Two days later,
on August 15th, Commodore International Ltd. announced they would purchase
the cash strapped Amiga Inc. In a moment of rebellion, the Amiga team persuaded
Commodore to raise its bid to $4.25 a share and give them $1,000,00 to pay
their Atari debts. A few weeks the Amiga hardware and its creators moved
to the newly created subsidiary, 'Commodore-Amiga Inc.' and continued to
develop the newly renamed Amiga computer with 27 million dollars of extra
development money. The Amiga had been saved!!!
The newly formed Commodore-Amiga
started to upgrade the Amigas design, turning the Lorraine game machine into
a fully fledged computer, that would eventually become the Commodore-Amiga
1000. The computer shows many characteristics of a high-end workstation (for
the time). The memory was doubled to 256K and a neat "garage" desktop unit
was built that allowed the keyboard to actually fit under the machine. Jay
Miner recalled the early days at Commodore with nostalgia:
"Commodore was very good for AMIGA
in the beginning. They made many improvements in the things that we wanted
but we did not have the resources to accomplish. The AMIGA originally only
had three hundred and twenty colours across the screen, even in the six forty
mode. They also improved the colour by moving the NTSC converter off the
chip. They paid off our creditors including my loans to the company and they
got us a beautiful facility is Los Gatos and most surprising in 1984, sent
the entire company, including wives and sweethearts out to New York for a
grand AMIGA launching party at the Rockerfeller Centre" (Jay Miner, AUI
Interview, 1998)
For those familiar with Commodore's
later treatment of the Amiga, its early days were marked by uncharacteristic
generosity. Perhaps Commodore genuinely believed that they had found the
holy grail to the 16-bit market. As part of the arrangement Commodore insisted
upon their own schedule. Originally intended as an entirely mouse driven
system, 'Intuition' was taking some time to develop into a full computer
operating system. In an attempt to meet their deadline, Commodore employed
the British developers, MetaComCo to port a version of Tripos and incorporate
it into the existing code (Note the similarities to the Linux decision during
1999). However, the results was far below the expectations of Jay Miner and
his team, lacking many of the features that they had intended (resource-tracking,
etc.).
1985: Before its
Time
While Commodore were focussing
their resources into the Amiga, the Tramiel-owned Atari had not abandoned
their goal of 16-bit domination. Through the use of off-the-shelf hardware
and software the company constructed their own 16-bit platform - the Atari
ST - in record time. This used a 68k port of the CP/M operating system, which
was integrated with the GEM user interface. The result was a single tasking
OS that required a love of the colour green to be used over a long period.
However, its quick design made it significantly cheaper and easier to
manufacture, appearing several months before the Commodore AMIGA. In spite
of their initial defeat, Jack Tramiel demonstrated a willingness to dominate
his former company in the market place.
Just 11 months after Commodore
had bought the ailing Amiga Inc, they unveiled the product of that union.
The Commodore Amiga (the initial name of the Amiga 1000) was unveiled at
the Lincoln Centre in New York on July 23rd in a media frenzy. For the launch
Commodore had hired Andy Warhol & Debbie Harry (lead singer of Blondie)
to demonstrate the Amiga's graphics capabilities using Island Graphics
Graphicraft. This was accompanied by a full score synthesized by Roger Powell
and Mike Boom, author of Musicraft.
The Commodore Amiga was officially
launched in September 1985 for £1,500. The world's first Amiga magazine
- Amiga World - was launched soon after. At the time this price was a major
detractor that placed it in the high-end region occupied by the Apple Macintosh.
In comparison, the Atari ST was selling for less than half the price. It
was later recognized that this was Commodores' first mistake. Rather than
promoting the Amiga as a professional machine, they sought to replicate the
success of the Atari ST. However, the Atari ST had built a steady market
since its launch that made it a difficult adversary, with the Amiga playing
second fiddle to the ST regarding game
releases.
It is difficult to indicate just
how advanced the Amiga was compared to other systems. Apple had a graphical
interface but was largely restricted to the black and white monitor display,
whilst PCs were still horrible text based systems. The Amiga also had an
ace up its sleeve by the fact that it was TV compatible and could be used
for editing footage. A task that even now the Mac and PC cannot do as standard.
The Juggler demo, consisting of a character juggling reflective balls in
a 3D environment, attracted customers to the graphical capabilities. This
spurred Electronic Arts to rewrite their IBM PC package, Prism (which was
an enhanced port of Doodle for Xerox machines) and release it for the Amiga
during September. The rewrite was christened Deluxe Paint and the rest is
history.
1986: Creating a
Cult
At this early point in the Amiga's
history Commodore weren't complacent, and started developing two new systems
based upon the A1000. The first, titled the A2000, was designed by two teams-
the original Amiga creators in Los Gatos, USA, and another in Germany. However,
in a wave of cost cutting the Los Gatos facility was closed, the original
crew were laid off, and the German design was chosen. . The original Amiga
team became increasingly disgruntled with Commodore, both for their lack
of innovation and the way they were selling the machine. Although it is
considered to be technically inferior and was not considered to be a suitable
follow-up to the newly renamed Amiga 1000, Jay Miner was pleased with the
direction that the high-end models were being taken, with an emphasis upon
expandability.
In the market place, the ST, receiving
numerous conversions of past titles was still beating the Amiga. The most
successful market at the time was in America, although Commodore appeared
half-hearted about selling the Amiga as a serious machine. Allowing the likes
of IBM and Apple to dominate the industry and move into the home.
1987: "We sell to the masses,
not the classes"
This year saw the first major
system upgrade with the release of the high-end Amiga 2000 and the low-end
Amiga 500. The A2000 was promoted as a multimedia machine in the USA. In
Europe, the A500 began to take over the ST's market, finally getting games
that used the machines advantages. Despite its increased cost in comparison
to the ST, the Amiga 500 became the object of desire for many people, promoting
the initial move from existing 8-bit machines (such as the Spectrum and Amstrad)
into 16-bit technology. The machine represented a changing goal for Commodore.
They had come upon the Amiga quite by accident but, through a combination
of innovative hardware and operating system with Commodore's ability to sell
to the masses, the Amiga was a sure fire hit, redefining the home computer
market and making so-called luxury features such as multitasking and colour
a standard long before Microsoft or Apple sold these to the masses.
In the Commodore boardroom dramatic
events were unfolding. On April 22, Chairman Irving Gould replaced Rattigan
who was currently in control of Commodore. It is unclear as to why he was
replaced after turning the company around. The company had posted $28 million
in profits over the four quarters ending in March 1987. Rattigan claimed
that Chairman Gould forced him out due to personality conflicts and that
Gould was upset about Rattigan getting credit for the company's turnaround.
Gould argued that the profits in the U.S. were nothing compared to the drop
on market share overseas where 70% of its market was. Under Gould's control,
the North American operation was changed from an independent operation to
a sale and marketing division. The payroll was also cut from 4,700 to 3,100,
including half the North American headquarters' corporate staff, and five
plants were closed.
1988: Taking over the
world
The Amiga began to overtake the
Atari ST in the marketplace with more games being released that simply could
not be done on the ST. In an attempt to challenge Commodore's purchase of
Amiga Inc. in 1984, Atari took Commodore to court claiming that it had given
money to research the Amiga. Commodore won the battle. The 8-bit market took
a sky dive as full price games dropped considerably in sales, only to be
revived by a growing budget market, headed by the likes of Codemasters and
Alternative, persuading the big boys to stay with 8-bit for another 3 years.
This was the year that the 16-bit market began to develop in the UK and several
long-running Amiga magazines were launched.
1989: There may be trouble
ahead
Cracks were beginning to be shown
in Commodores armour as Microsoft and Apple began to really take over the
workplace. Commodore allowed the entire market to stagnate, safe in the knowledge
that their old enemy, Atari was dead in the water. However, there was evidence
that many of Commodore's old tactics were no longer working. Canadian records
for January 31st indicate the company was charged $40,000 for 'price
discrimination' (price fixing). In spite of these warnings only minor upgrades
were made available during 1989, such as the Amiga chipset being upgraded
to allow 1MB Chip Ram. Only the UK market was marketing the Amiga effectively.
David Pleasance, future head of Commodore UK, creates the "A500 Batman bundle"
This sold thousands of the machine and is largely responsible for the boom
in Amiga ownership during the early
1990's.
1990: Reinventing the
system
The Amiga world expanded further
with the release of the A3000 on April 24th. A long overdue advancement that
boasted 32-bit technology, SCSI and a major upgrade to the operating system.
Unlike the ugly appearance of Workbench 1.x, Workbench 2 finally looked something
like a professional system with a "clean" blue and grey desktop. However,
the Commodore management were having problems communicating product announcements
- just 30 minutes prior to it's announcement, Commodore denied the A3000
existed! This was followed by the launch of the CDTV for £699 in June.
Promoted as the first mainstream CD entertainment system, the CDTV was basically
an A500 with 1MB RAM and a CD drive that was marketed towards the mainstream
market. In a particularly interesting move, Commodore International indicated
the unit should not be placed with five meters of the computing section in
high-street shops, confusing retailers and the public alike. Sun attempted
to get an OEM license to produce A3000UX computers as a low end UNIX workstation.
However, Commodore management lose the deal. In other news NewTek release
their long awaited Video Toaster for the Amiga placing the Amiga as the
definitive kit for the graphic video market.
1991: Standing
still
The deep cracks in Commodore turn
to huge tidal waves as many people loose faith in the market. Commodore launch
a low-end upgrade to the A500 - the Amiga 500 plus - without informing anyone
that they were shipping the product and the CDTV was canceled. In the high-end
market, the A3000T is announced and launched. The Amiga 3000+ is also shown
as a future product. However, it is later scrapped in favour of the A4000.
The console market expands destroying the Amigas' domination of the home
computer market.
1992: The Next
Generation
The year begins with the market
finally coming to terms with the A500+, only to discover that the replacement
machine, the A600 was about to be released in March. The A600 was a nightmare
of design, using surface mounted technology to shrink the motherboard while
retaining the A500's price. In an attempt to compete with Nintendo and Sega's
growing domination of the consumer market, the A600 is promoted as a console
with a keyboard. Many users commented that it looked like a white Spectrum
48K, whilst others hated the lack of a numeric keypad. Early buyers were
also annoyed by several price reductions of the hardware, dropping from
£399 to £199. It did, however introduce the world to PCMCIA
technology...
It is widely agreed that the A600
should never have been launched, especially as a machine with a new chipset
was just around the corner. Excitement grew as news of the A4000 reached
the public- a new chipset titled AA (Advanced Amiga) - was finally confirmed
at the World of Commodore in Pasadena, USA on September 11th. This was hailed
as:
"the company's most significant
new technology advancement in its Amiga line since the product's introduction
in 1985."
For many enthusiasts the news
indicated that Commodore were finally taking the PC/Mac threat seriously.
The AA chipset was quickly renamed AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) to
avoid confusion with the Automobile Association in the European market. The
new graphics hardware allowed 256 colours to be displayed at the same time,
from a palette of 16.7M colours. The original HAM mode had also been upgrade
to HAM-8 allowing 256,000 colours on screen colours. On the software side,
the updated Amiga OS 3.0 provided a serious contender to competing operating
systems, showing the first indications that Commodore would drop the custom
chipset and move to a retargetable display. The release featured CrossDOS
(allowing access to PC disks), datatypes (an attempt at adding system-wide
plugins), localization (allowing multi language configuration), a standard
installer utility, improvements to the file system (increased speed using
directory caching as well as better support for international, non-English
characters) , and much more...
Two AGA machines were launched
during 1992. The chipset first appeared in the high-end Amiga 4000. This
wet the appetite of the Amiga faithful and disproving the arguments that
the new machine would be incompatible with existing software. By upgrading
the product line to 32-bit whilst retaining compatibility with most OCS/ECS
software,the Amiga had decimated the last challenge of the Atari ST and ensured
that the Falcon was doomed to obscurity. However, developers were looking
at it bitterly after seeing the pre-production models that had been produced,
that in most cases were significantly better than the A4000.
This was soon followed by the
launch of the low-end AGA system, the A1200. Although significantly delayed
until December, the machine was able to replicate the popularity of the A500.
The Amiga product line was finally being upgraded, but trouble lay around
the corner.
1993: Trouble
looming
The year was a turning point that
would produce both good and bad news. The year began with news of a price
cut for most of the product line in February, followed by the announcement
that Commodore had broken previous records with over 100,000 sales since
the A1200's launch in April. However, the company continued to announce losses.
This did not prevent them from diversifying the market further by announcing
a third AGA system called the CD32. Similar to the earlier CDTV, it was a
keyboardless Amiga (in this case, the A1200) that would be sold to non-computer
users. There were indications that Commodore had finally learnt their lesson;
much was made of the machine being the first 32-bit CD-based console on the
market and a great deal of effort had been made to encourage developers to
release products for the console. This ploy seemed to have worked; between
its launch in September 1993 and most of the following year CD32 titles were
outselling other CD formats by a dramatic margin, beating the established
Mega/Sega CD and the upstart PC CD-ROM. However, the machine was labeled
as a last ditch attempt at the console market, in a time when the 16-bit
platforms had already gained dominance. There were also accusations that
Commodore had not resolved the absence of multimedia or educational titles
that plagued the CDTV release. During its early development, this would be
the main area of expansion for the PC CD-ROM
market.
The A1200 remained the most highly
desired machine of 1993, but the PC was eyeing the machine with a vulture's
gaze, ready to attack the traditional Amiga market - the home.
1994: Good-bye old
Friend
A defining year that marked the
end of the Commodore years and the Amigas' long stay in the wilderness. In
March, the company announced a fourth AGA machine - the Amiga 4000T. However,
they were unable to release it in sufficient numbers. After months of speculation
Commodore International filed for liquidation to protect it from its creditors
at 4:10PM on April 29th. This immediately stranded the remaining subsidiaries
by limiting the number of available machines. Commodore UK issued warnings
that their supply would be depleted by September, creating the first Amiga
famine. In many countries this did not matter, several subsidiaries, notably
Commodore Australia had closed in previous months and many were soon to follow.
In an attempt to resurrect the company, David Pleasance of Commodore UK cited
his aim to initiate a management buyout and operate the company under the
name of 'Amiga International'. In an interview Colin Proudfoot
commented:
"There should be no impact in
the UK marketplace... The brand is too strong to die: we're confident that
Commodore and the Amiga will come out of this a better, stronger
company."
As time passed and the final stock
of Amigas ran out it became increasingly clear that they may be unable to
afford too buy the company, At one point it was claimed that a large bank
was supporting them but this appears too have come to nothing. Time slipped
away and the PC took over the Amigas position in the home. This was soon
followed by the news that Jay Miner passed away at the El Camino Hospital
in Mountain View on June 20th. The cause of death was heart failure as a
result of kidney complications. 1994 was a bleak
year...
1995: Back for the
Future...
1995 surprisingly began a second
after 1994 ended and saw the Amiga in the same basic position - a computer
without an owner. In January, Chelsea Football club considered taking legal
action against Commodore for money they never received for sponsorship. Buyout
dates came and went, until April 20th when the Amiga and Commodore as a whole
went up for sale. Interested parties included Commodore UK, IBM, Dell, Escom,
CEI and Samsung. In the end, Escom walked away with the rights to Commodore
and the Amiga. Although at first they only appeared interested in the Commodore
name, they were forced to bid for the whole thing. An action that for many
people signaled Escom's exact interest in the Amiga -
nothing.
Under their governance, Escom
quickly separated the Commodore and Amiga brand names, badging new PCs (as
well as speakers, keyboards, and anything else they could think of) with
the redesigned Commodore logo. Amiga sales and development would be handled
by a new subsidiary called Amiga Technologies, headed by a number of Amiga
people, including Jonathan Anderson. There was even discussions of Amiga
set-top Internet boxes from a company called VISCorp, who had became the
first company ever to license Amiga technology. However, Amiga owners became
increasingly skeptical as promised machines failed to materialize in the
shops. It was finally a rainy day at the end of October when the new Amiga
Magic pack appeared. A4000 wannabes had to wait until February of 1996 just
to buy their machines. There was also concerns that Escom were expanding
too rapidly and making significant losses as a result. History looked set
to repeat itself.
1996:
Stagnation
Another turbulent year as Amiga
Technologies announced they were closing their offices in Maidenhead and
moving into the Escom UK department. Jonathan Anderson left the company just
months after attacking Amiga Power magazine for trying to kill the Amiga,
and Amiga users in general felt that they had been abandoned. He is quickly
replaced by long time Amiga enthusiast, Petro Tyschtschenko. Skeptic's signaled
this was the end of Escoms interest in the Amiga. They would be proven wrong
with the surprise appearance of the Mind Walker ( named after the first computer
game Commodore published) and the announcement of the Power Amiga. The Walker
was quite a departure from the classic Amiga design, looking like a cross
between a Hoover and K9 out of Doctor Who. It also allowed expansion through
Zorro slots or the cheaper PCI. There were also a number of announcements
from companies such as PIOS (now MetaBox) and Phase 5 that new Amiga-compatible
systems such as the TransAM and the A/Box were in development. However these
would not be available for another 2-3 years at the best estimate. Elsewhere,
the long time competitor of Commodore over the home computing market, Atari
was bought by JTS Corp, a hard disk drive manufacturer.
The Story Continues.........
