Inside computing, Amiga is a range of home/personal computers primarily using the Motorola 68000 processor family, whose development began inside 1982, initially as a bet on machine. A original Amiga devices was designed by Jay Miner; his machine was ahead of its time while it appeared inside 1985, getting the custom chipset with advanced graphics & healthy features and the sophisticated multitasking operating system, now called AmigaOS. A Amiga one of these days became popular among computer enthusiasts, especially inside Europe, when it upgraded from either Octet-bit computers like a Commodore 64. It likewise observed the business role within streaming production.

History

A 1st Amiga computer, only known as a Amiga, was freed around 1985 by Commodore, who marketed it two when their arranged successor to the Commodore 64 and as their competition against a Atari ST range. It was late renamed a Amiga 1000 (or even A1000 for short).

Within 1987 Commodore released ii recently Amiga system, a A500 and the A2000 as low-prevent & high-prevent machines, severally. the previous became a virtually all popular Amiga computer of that decade & was mostly referred to as a games machine, when the latter was marketed as a further good workstation for graphic purposes, due to the presence of a SCSI controller option, the Genlock slot and an I/O streaming connective.

Within 1990 the A3000 was introduced in a market as the successor of two A1000 and A2000, with an extended chipset (ECS), and a 2nd release of its operating models, to become known finally when a AmigaOS.

In a equivalent month, Commodore freed leash fresh online-prevent machines: the CDTV, aimed to move a platform to the parlor; the A500+, with a equivalent sweetening when a A3000; and a A600, basically an A500+ within the little pack by using an IDE controller for hard disks. Completely of the two were the commercial failure, in the main due to unfortunate marketing by Commodore.

Mass-market Amigas were so substantially inexpensive than PCs or even Mack of their period. This boosted sales in the further price-conscious European markets, however led to Commodore existence viewed in the United States as a producer of inexpensive "game machines". This conception was furthered per fact that virtually all Commodore retail outlets were toy stores, & marketing campaigns which were deplorably mismatched using a status-conscious Western public. This explains how come Amiga was super successful around Europe, but not in the US market, with to the lesser degree a million sold.

Around 1992 Commodore released their survive Amiga computer system, a A1200 and the A4000: both of a two featured the fresh AGA chipset and a third release of AmigaOS.

Around 1993, in the desperate attempt to save their business, menaced by console giants when Sega and Nintendo, Commodore marketed the CD32, one of the earliest compact disc depending consoles, sustaining specification similar to the A1200.

Within 1994 Commodore filed for liquidation and its plus were bought by Escom, the German PC manufacturer, which successively filed for liquidation in the period of 1997. A Amiga brand was so sold to an additional PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000, which had grand plans for it, however it inside time sold it in 2000 before actually realizing their plans. There are rumour that this low was conducted because of on-going inflict by Microsoft; however, this is unproved.

A todays creator of the trademark, Amiga Inc., has accredited a rights to produce devices using the Amiga brand to an U.K. computer trafficker, [http://www.eyetech.co.uk Eyetech Group, Ltd] founded by a bit of previous employees of the UK branch of Commodore International. It is presently selling a AmigaOne via an international dealer network. A AmigaOne occurs as PowerPC computer suited to run a endure remnant of a platform, the AmigaOS, that was in turn accredited to the Belgian-German company, [http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz Hyperion Entertainment].

When you took these years, the super limited total of clones (Amiga-compatible computers) were produced, as each Commodore & subsequent owners of the trademark strongly refused to use Amigas produced under license.

Amigas running off any operating technique as much as version Triplet.Nina from carolina come existence considered "Classic" Amigas now, contrary to the recently Amiga Inc./Eyetech/Hyperion system. Numbers of "Classic" Amigas come however within utilise now to develop commercial message for local cable TV shows.

Today the Amiga is for instance incorrectly known as a games console, though it was & however occurs as fully featured computing system similar to the modern Windows PCs.

Technical features

A Amiga got occasionally of the virtually all telling healthy & graphics available for the front yard user. Indeed, it was as well utilized for commercial amusement production till a mid Nineties, aiding users in the Streaming videos redaction & 3D fields.

the super number one model, a Amiga 1000, was designed by having a Seven.16MHz CPU therefore it may well operate by owning NTSC video. A CPU clock frequency was precisely double a Trinity.58MHz color host frequency. Continuing its videos focus, the G got the composite videos output, which allowed it to become hooked higher directly to a TV or even VCR. Still, a output was considered as well "hot" (hard) by numerous to become utile for any price differently at home have.

A Original Amiga chipset, or OCS, was thomas more advanced than more architectures of its period: it experienced dedicated chips for graphic results according to a monitor's beam position & a utilise of genlocks was very easily; possibly now several broadcast corporations however apply A3000s and A4000s for their real-time streaming video results. Several software online for making fansubs were written for the Amiga.

Of these unique feature a Amiga experienced was a ability to vary a monitor guide on the fly, in the read line or even 2. This allowed multiple overlapping screens of different results that can be pulled down or even higher before of every more, totally while forgoing interfering by using every more, restricted at a devices level. the chipset involved a blitter, which could not exclusively copy & manipulate big metropolitan locality of graphics, making a Amiga swell suited to arcade action games, however it besides involved delineation & area-filling devices, which helped advance a popularity of real-instance 3D games.

Operating systems

A operating technique, AmigaOS, was also quite sophisticated for its instance, combining an elegant graphical user interface (GUI) like that of the Apple Macintosh together with an elegant Command Line Interface (CLI) which then finally evolved into the super mighty Plate. This gives a user of Amiga a select few of the flexibility of UNIX while retaining a simplicity that manufactured maintenance like easily. When its operating system was the merely preemptive multitasking platform by using an effective message-passing kernel in the consumer marketplace for many years with an effective memory management, robustness left something to be desired, in the main due to the absence of protected memory, resulting in the celebrated "Guru Meditation" errors.

A Amiga operating technique was resurrected inside 2000 as AmigaOS 4, which currently diarrhea exclusively in AmigaOne computers and in A1200s and A4000s with the PowerPC accelerator card.

More, however maintained operating systems come available for the classic Amiga platform, including Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Commodore Amiga Unix (based on AT&T System V Rel. Quaternity) was available single for the A2500 and A3000.

MS-DOS on Amiga via Sidecar or Bridgeboard
MS-DOS compatibility was a major issue in a period of the early years of the Amiga's life sequentially to promote a machine as a good business machine. Sequentially to begin a MS-DOS operating body, Commodore freed a 'Sidecar' for Amigthe 1000, au fond a 8086 board in the closed instance that attached to the side of the Amiga. Clever programming (a library known as Janus, when the Roman god of doorways) processed it conceivable to redo PC computer software around an Amiga window forgoing have of emulation. At a introduction of a Sidecar a crowd was stunned to view the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator running at full speed around an Amiga window on the Workbench.

Late the Sidecar was implemented in a expansion card known as 'Bridgeboard' for Amiga 2000+ system. Bridgeboard cards appeared as much as 486 processor variants. A Bridgeboard card & a Janus library manufactured have PC expansion cards & harddisk/floppydisk causes conceivable. A bridgeboard card was made by Commodore, late third person cards likewise appeared for a A500/1200 slot like the KCS Powerboard.

Third party software

Amiga wwhen originally supported by such prestigious software program titles as WordPerfect, Deluxe Paint, and Lattice C. Video Toaster, 1 of the number one 100%-around-one graphics & streaming video editing packages, began on the Amiga. A Amiga processed 3D raytracing graphics available for the masses by owning Sculpt 3D (before a Amiga, raytracing was exclusively available for dedicated graphic workstations). A few titles were late ported to Microsoft Windows and continue to thrive there, prefer a giving package Maxon Cinema 4D, LightWave, which was originally part of Video Toaster, in addition to Video Toaster itself. Potentially Microsoft produced software for have on the Amiga. AmigaBASIC, an advanced BASIC software development environment, complete with an Interactive Development Environment (IDE), was written by Microsoft under contract. Microsoft never supported a Amiga.

Good deal shareware & loose computer software was written for a Amiga & can be found via the Fred Fish disk series or from either a Aminet software archive.

Models and variants
Marketed Amiga models

Unreleased models

Due to management turmoil, a select few viable Amiga system under development were canceled before release:

A3000+: Prototyped around 1991, it used a AGA chipset and got an AT&T DSP3210 chip, high-fidelity audio, telephone line interface, and 2.5Mbit/s RS-485 network port. A1000+: Intermediate inside price & features between the A1200 & A3000+, it would develop been a detached keyboard models using slot (ii Zorro slots, cd slot, CPU slot). (Dave Haynie, Usenet Message-ID: <40c78969.243987715@news.jersey.net>).

Unreleased models (after Commodore)
a total of recently Amiga system were announced when the prevent of the Commodore model era. Yet, super couple of the children were ever produced beyond elementary image (whenever it possibly had that far). A bit of system that were never produced include: A Amiga [http://www.blachford.info/computer/walker/walker.html Walker]: This was supposed to exist as a newly, compact multi-multimedia system computer compatible using the classic Amiga. Its out break project was super weird: the metal grey instance, just about a size of a games console, was curved at the tail. It was joked to exist as shaped rather the vacuum cleaner. There were additional-or even-less working epitome of a Walker however it was never freed into the mass market. A Amiga 5000 & 6000: One of a freshly owners of Amiga announced that it was planning to prove my point a classic Amiga line sustaining 2 recently system, a 5000 & a 6000. When far when is known, nothing ever became of the babies. iWinside Amigas: iWin was the German company that announced in 1999 that it was designing new computers that were compatible by owning each classic Amigas & IBM PCs. A exclusively source of facts all about these computers was iWin's possess internet site, which contained occasionally technical indicator circuit diagrams all about the children. Upon nigher review, a circuit diagrams were revealed to become all unrealistic.
When two or three months, a supposed "iWin Amigas" vanished forswearing a trace, forswearing ever existence publicly bestowed or even discharged into the mass market. the general consensus of the Amiga community is that iWin never experienced done any very project, however were just trying to pull a hoax on the eagerly-awaiting Amiga fans. the BoXeR: Intentional by Mick Tinker at Access Innovations, the BoXeR was to become a recently motherboard according to a Motorola 68060 processor. Amongst more improvements on top a Commodore motherboards of a instance, it incorporated the senescent AGA chipset into a single chip. Sadly it never had far beyond a advanced protoyping stage. Mick was as well responsible the Access, which was au fond an Amigthe 1200 that was re-jigged to healthy into a fully length Quint.25" drive bay.

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 [http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/mickey.html 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.