Amiga Corporation
 1985 logo |
|
| Industry | Computer |
|---|---|
| Fate | Became a subsidiary of Commodore International |
| Successor | Commodore-Amiga, Inc. |
| Founded | September 1982 (as Hi-Toro) |
| Defunct | August 1984 |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California, United States |
|
Key people
|
Jay Miner (founder) |
| Products | Amiga |
Amiga Corporation was a United States computer company formed in the early 1980s as Hi-Toro. It is most famous for having developed the Amiga computer, code named Lorraine.
In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari staffers, had become fed up with management and decamped. In September 1982, they set up another chip-set project under a new company in Santa Clara, California, called Hi-Toro (which meant "high bull" to them, later renamed to Amiga), where they could have some creative freedom. There, they started to create a new 68000-based games console, codenamed Lorraine, that could be upgraded to a full-fledged computer. The initial start-up financing of Amiga Corporation was provided by three dentists in Florida, who later regained their investment once Commodore bought the company.
To raise money for the Lorraine project, Amiga designed and sold joysticks and game cartridges for popular game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, as well as an odd input device called the Joyboard, essentially a joystick the player stood on.
During development in 1983, Amiga had exhausted venture capital and was desperate for more financing. Jay Miner and company approached former employer Atari, and the "Warner owned" Atari paid Amiga to continue development work. In return Atari was to obtain one-year exclusive use of the design. Atari had plans for a 68000-based machine, code-named "Mickey", that would have used customized chips, but details were sparse.
During this period a downturn started in the video game business that would soon turn into an outright rout known as the Video game crash of 1983. By the end of the year, Atari was losing about $1 million a day, and their owners, Warner Communications, became increasingly desperate to sell the company. For some time, no one was interested.
Meanwhile, at Commodore International a fight was brewing between Jack Tramiel, the president, and Irving Gould, the primary shareholder. Tramiel was pressing the development of a 32-bit machine to replace their earlier Commodore 64 and derived machines, fearing a new generation of machines like the Apple Macintosh would render the 64 completely obsolete. The fighting continued until Tramiel was dismissed on January 13, 1984.
...
Wikipedia