Launch of the Commodore Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985. The name Amiga was chosen by the developers specifically from the Spanish and Portuguese word for a female friend, and because it occurred before Apple and Atari alphabetically.

Based on the Motorola 68k series of microprocessors, the machine sports a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (now known as AmigaOS). While the M68k is a 32-bit processor, the version originally used in the Amiga, the 68000, has a 16-bit external data bus (that transfers 32 bit of data in two consecutive steps, a technique called multiplexing -- all this transparent to the software, which is 32-bit from the beginning), and the original machine (along with its contemporary, the Atari ST) was generally referred to in the press as a 16-bit computer; later models sported fully 32-bit designs. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, and the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe, and sold approximately 6 million units.

It also found a prominent role in the desktop video / video production and show control business, and was a less-expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh and IBM-PC. The Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, although early Commodore advertisements attempted to place the Amiga into several different markets at the same time.

Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line. Eyetech sold Amiga hardware under the AmigaOne brand from 2002 to 2005.

Did you have one?