Portal:Amiga

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The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
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Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, 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.

The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. Finally, the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 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 IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. It also found a niche in video production with the Video Toaster hardware and software, and Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for music tracker software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces, a predecessor to Blender.

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 compatibles, which gained 256 color graphics in 1987, as well as the fourth generation of video game consoles.

Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of the Amiga packaged as a game console, the Amiga CD32, failed in the marketplace. Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Genesi, Eyetech, ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible systems such as MorphOS and AROS. Currently Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops AmigaOS 4, which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 – the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga Computers. (Full article...)

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Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware of the Amiga computers developed by Commodore.

Most Amiga models were shipped with the Kickstart firmware stored on ROM chips. Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume, such as a floppy disk.

Commodore's AmigaOS was formed of both the Kickstart firmware and a software component provided on disk (with the software portion often termed as Workbench). For most AmigaOS updates the Kickstart version number was matched to the Workbench version number. Confusingly, Commodore also used internal revision numbers for Kickstart chips. For example, there were several Kickstart revisions designated as version 2.0. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

Petro Tyschtschenko at an Amiga user club meeting in Tampere, Finland, in September 2014
Petro Tyschtschenko at an Amiga user club meeting in Tampere, Finland, in September 2014
Petro Taras Ostap Tyschtschenko (born 16 April 1943 in Vienna) is an Austrian-born German businessman best known for his work in the European market for the American computer company Commodore International.

Tyschtschenko first came into contact with Commodore in 1982, when he saw a job advertisement in a newspaper. Salomon+Schimmelmann, a German headhunter company, was looking for a new business administrator for Commodore. Tyschtschenko immediately signed up for a job interview, but was not hired. However, he later received a telephone call from Harald Speyer, the director of Commodore's German market, saying he would want to hire Tyschtschenko as a business administrator and wanted him to start as soon as possible. Tyschtschenko immediately resigned from his current job at the company Adressograph-Multigraph and joined Commodore the next day. (Full article...)

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Amiga Unix installation disks
Amiga Unix installation disks
Credit: Pouët.net
Picture of Amiga Unix installation disks.
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Did you know...

... that AtheOS was originally intended to be a clone of AmigaOS?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
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