Amiga

In computing, Amiga is a range of home/personal computers primarily using the Motorola 68000 processor family, whose development started in 1982, initially as a game machine. The original Amiga hardware was designed by Jay Miner; his machine was ahead of its time when it appeared in 1985, having a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound features and a sophisticated multitasking operating system, now known as AmigaOS. The Amiga eventually became popular among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe, as they upgraded from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64. It also found a business role in video production.

Models and variants

Marketed Amiga models

Unreleased models

Due to management turmoil, some viable Amiga models under development were canceled prior to release:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• A3000+: Prototyped in 1991, it used the AGA chipset and had an AT&T DSP3210 chip, high-fidelity audio, telephone line interface, and 2.5Mbit/s RS-485 network port.
• A1000+: Intermediate in price and features between the A1200 and A3000+, it would have been a detached keyboard system with expansion slots (two Zorro slots, video slot, CPU slot). (Dave Haynie, Usenet Message-ID: <40c78969.243987715@news.jersey.net>).

Unreleased models (after Commodore)

A number of new Amiga models were announced after the end of the Commodore model era. However, very few of them were ever produced beyond simple prototypes (if they even got that far). Some models that were never produced include:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• The Amiga Walker: This was supposed to be a new, compact multi-media computer compatible with the classic Amiga. Its case design was very weird: The metallic grey case, about the size of a games console, was curved at the rear. It was joked to be shaped like a vacuum cleaner. There were more-or-less working prototypes of the Walker but it was never released into the mass market.
• The Amiga 5000 and 6000: One of the new owners of Amiga announced that it was planning to continue the classic Amiga line with two new models, the 5000 and the 6000. As far as is known, nothing ever became of them.
• iWin Amigas: iWin was a German company that announced in 1999 that it was designing new computers that were compatible with both classic Amigas and IBM PCs. The only source of information about these computers was iWin's own website, which contained some technical circuit diagrams about them. Upon closer inspection, the circuit diagrams were revealed to be completely unrealistic.
  After a few months, the supposed "iWin Amigas" vanished without a trace, without ever being publicly presented or released into the mass market. The general consensus of the Amiga community is that iWin never had done any real design, but were simply trying to pull a hoax on the eagerly-awaiting Amiga fans.
• The BoXeR: Designed by Mick Tinker at Access Innovations, the BoXeR was to be a new motherboard based on a Motorola 68060 processor. Amongst other improvements over the Commodore motherboards of the time, it incorporated the ageing AGA chipset into one chip. Sadly it never got far beyond the advanced protoyping stage. Mick was also responsible for the Access, which was basically an Amiga 1200 that was re-jigged to fit into a full length 5.25" drive bay.