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.

Trivia

• After Commodore went bust, a team of engineers and programmers created an unofficial system capable of running Amiga software as an upgrade route for Amiga fans. This resulted in the Pegasos PowerPC computers, and the MorphOS operating system.
• The name amiga is the Spanish and Portuguese word for 'female friend', from the Latin amica.
• The Amiga still has a very strong user community, particularly outside the United States.
• The Amiga community made a significant contribution to a computer subculture known as the Demo Scene. The Demo Scene was more or less a phenomenon inherited from Commodore 64 times.
• Much operating system advocacy surrounds the technology implemented in the Amiga, to the point that many Amiga users are accused of zealotry (look for "Amiga Persecution Complex" in the Jargon File).
• Amiga has two Three-finger salutes, one for warm reset (CTRL plus the two "Amiga" keys) and the other for reboot (CTRL plus the two "Alt" keys). The latter method was introduced with AmigaOS 4.0.
• When an Amiga crashes, it displays a flashing red box with a mysterious Guru Meditation number. The number is actually the 68000 exception number, and the address (in hexadecimal) at which it occurred.
• During the Commodore era, machines with 'thousands' model numbering were marketed as 'quality' machines for business use, while the other machines (A500, A500+, A600, A1200) were 'consumer' machines.
• The three most popular low-end models of the Amiga - the 500, 600 and 1200 - each had the name of a B-52's song written on their motherboard. The most widely cited reason for this is the designers having been fans of the band. The motherboard of the 500 says "Rock Lobster", that of the 600 says "June Bug" and that of the 1200 says "Channel Z". No other models have song names on their motherboards.
• The Amiga 600 was originally supposed to be the Amiga 300, a very low-cost "introductory" model, but in an attempt to cut costs plans from CBM management changed at the last minute, and it was instead marketed as the successor to the 500 and the 500+. The motherboard of the Amiga 600 still says "Amiga 300".
• A common misconception is that before Amiga was sold to Commodore, Atari was in the running for purchasing the small, Los Altos-based company. The misconception further states that after Atari lost the acquisition, it developed the Atari ST to compete with the (then) "Commodore" Amiga.
  The truth is that it was Warner's Atari Inc. that had made a deal with Amiga back in 1983 (which can be seen here) and not Tramiel's Atari Corp. (which developed the ST). The agreement basically gave Atari Inc. access to the Amiga hardware for their own computer system codenamed "Mickey".
  As part of the agreement, Atari would sell "Mickey" (formally the Atari 1850XLD) as a video game system with no keyboard for 1 year. After that, Atari could then sell a keyboard add-on and sell full blown versions of "Mickey" to the public. Work was started but Atari ran in to the well known financial troubles and Warner wound up breaking up and selling off the parts of Atari Inc.
  The consumer division (which included consoles and computers) was sold to former Commodore founder Jack Tramiel. Jack had left Commodore in January 1984 and after taking a short vacation decided to return to the business with his own next generation low cost computer system. So he formed Tramiel Technology, Ltd. (TTL) with some former Commodore employees and designed what would become known as the ST series of computers. In late May 1984 he purchased Atari Consumer for their manufacturing capabilities and distribution network, which he'd need to manufacture and sell his new computer.
  The takeover was completed on July 2nd, and the truth of the matter is that the ST was 90% finished by the time this occurred. The operating system being the only major work needed to be finished. Jack and his people had no idea about the Amiga agreement at the time. When they took over Atari Consumer and formed Atari Corp., all projects were put on hold until they could evaluate them. In the meantime, more engineering and management left Commodore to join up at Jack's new Atari Corp.
  Within the span of a few weeks, several major occurrences happened.
  
• In late July, Commodore filed suit against Jack for stealing trade secrets because of this influx of former Commodore employees.
• Commodore bought Amiga.
• During the project evaluations, the Tramiel's discovered Atari Inc.'s previous agreement with Amiga and used it to launch a countersuit against Commodore via Amiga on August 13th.
  All suits were eventually dropped and/or settled out of court.
• Steve Jobs was shown the original prototype for the first Amiga (Amiga 1000) before it had been purchased by Commodore, and said there was "too much hardware". He was working on Macintosh at the time.
• Two of the designers of the original Amiga, RJ Mical and Dave Needle, would later go on to design the Atari Lynx, giving it a framebuffer based display with a blitter very similar to that in the Amiga. The two would also go on to work on the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer.