When the little startup Hi-Toro from California realized that Mark went to be confused with the Japanese Toro lawnmower changed their name to something more friendly. The choice fell on the Spanish word for “female friend”, the Amiga.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago in June 1984 showed the Amiga up even a prototype of its new computer and the overall computer trade press were presented including the now legendary Boingdemot.
The stories differ greatly, but likely is that Boingdemot were displayed both winter and summer CES 1984 Winter version was very simple.
The computer – which at this time still was only a high interconnected circuit boards and completely lacked operating system, (really) keyboard and interface – called Lorraine CEO Dave Morse’s wife.
Lorraine showed off specifications nobody really dared believe in, and would cost only $ 1,500, impossible low for a home computer that placed contemporary IBM-PC in the corner. Add to that a palette of 4096 colors, built-in 5.25-inch floppy disk drive, built-in 300 bps modem and plenty of ports.
This sloppy hoptrådade pile of printed circuit board (with keyboard chassis made of wood!) signaled the end of Commodore’s plans to develop a personal computer based on its own CPU series.
To top it everything promised to the Amiga would be shipped in time for Christmas 84. The magazine Compute! wrote in his August numbers: “Lorraine was at the June CES whim unfinished prototype that was controlled from another external terminal. Getting Started production of less than half a year requires the input of Hercules dimensions and lots of money. “
Chief engineer Jay Miner and his companions on the Amiga lacked both muscle and money. Miner had previously worked at Atari who guarded Lorraine since the start of the project. Head of Atari was paradoxically exactly the same person who once founded Commodore, namely Jack Tramiel – who was fired shortly after the C64 was launched.
Somewhere in Amigas final negotiations with Tramiels Atari mingled Commodore of it all. The company added briskly up the millions of dollars needed to pick up a ready computer and bought out the Amigas debt to Atari.
That there was talk of begin to sell at Christmas 1984 understood all involved at this point.
In true Commodore spirit held it since the potential buyers and the media in ignorance. Christmas 1984 came and went – no Amiga was available, no notice was given.
What you really was doing was to scale down the prototype costly parts to something Commodore could sell to the promised prize. For example disappeared built-in modem, cartridge port and floppy station was replaced with a 3.5-inch variant.
Atari was, however, not idle but went on to develop a concept we started on. The result was the Atari 520ST, a computer model similar to the Amiga shown up years earlier. In the summer of 1985 was the production-ready – six months after the alleged project – and Atari was thus shelf-ready with a machine that could measure up to the Macintosh, but in color and at a third of the price.
Jack Tramiel put the final price to the consumer at $ 700 for an Atari 520ST, something no one thought that the Amiga could match – if it was released at all.
When the Amiga to end came out in late summer 1985, it had been almost three years since the media first heard of monster your PC.
The computer” Lorraine “had a role in the TV series” Miami Vice “in October 1985. A coincidence? But no Amiga was included, but an IBM 5150th
In Sweden took it further. The Swedish newspaper Joystick writes in its August numbers 1986: “ST’n has a major advantage both in terms of software and pricing. But the Amiga is still a great machine even though we had a long wait for the finished product. Commodore has reduced the price in the United States with $ 500 in order to speed up the slow sales. The price cut should also be reflected in Sweden. But despite this price, it is an Atari 1040ST with 1 MB of RAM (1024K) cheaper than an Amiga with 256K! How will the Commodore cope with this pressure? “
In the same issue are also made an attempt at comparison between the three computers Atari 520ST, the Macintosh Plus and Amiga – and the latter gets big hair: “All three computers have many good qualities in different areas, but one thing is clear … the Atari ST computer provides the most for your money! An empty plinth for a new graphics chip as soon seated and ‘can do all the Amiga can’ muddies the picture does not … “
The first Amiga model was shipped with monitor, which of course raised the price. Equitable business model Amiga 500 was coupled either to a separate monitor or straight into a regular TV, just like the Commodore 64th
Amiga was a buggy history and gained a reputation for not fit in anywhere. Atari and Macintosh divided the private computer segment between them – the IBM PC was temporarily left behind and more and more renowned developers began to prophesy Amigas cases.
One of these Jeff Minter, founder of Llamasoft, and one of those days most renowned game developers. He called Amiga “expensive, only slightly more powerful than the Atari ST but very buggigare” and he was offended also that some software written in Amiga hardware-OS Kickstart 1.1 does not work on the upgrade Kickstart 1.2.
Though Chris Gray, creator of the classic puzzle game “Boulder Dash”, was hesitant. He was in Sweden in 1986 to promote his new play “Infiltrator”: “Macintosh will fare because it was the first on the market and because there are lots of software and accessories to it. Atari ST will achieve great success because of its low price. Amiga has, unfortunately, neither the one nor the other … “
Amiga was released to end with a price of about $ 1,500, which was then at far too high. Commodore had not much to set against the Atari ST and after a year reported that it only sold 50,000 Amigas in the home country the United States. Developers hesitated and Amiga was threatened.
Maybe the tale ended in 1987 with the demise of Amiga 1000 – as the first model, now called – when the company received Brainwave instead to release two new models.
It was then time for the more expensive model Amiga 2000 to make an entrance – and of course, the model we usually mean when we talk on the Amiga today, the Amiga 500. What happened to the computer is a completely different story …
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