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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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Intuition is the native windowing system and user interface (UI) engine of AmigaOS. It was developed almost entirely by RJ Mical. Intuition should not be confused with Workbench, the AmigaOS spatial file manager, which relies on Intuition for handling windows and input events.

Intuition is the internal widget and graphics system. It is not implemented primarily as an application-managed graphics library (as most systems, following Xerox' design, have done), but rather as a separate task that maintains the state of all the standard UI elements independently from the application. This makes it responsive because UI gadgets are live even when the application is busy. The Intuition task is driven by user events through the mouse, keyboard, and other input devices. It also arbitrates collisions of the mouse pointer and icons and control of "animated icons". Like most GUIs of the day, Amiga's Intuition followed Xerox's lead anteceding solutions, but pragmatically, a command line interface was also included and it extended the functionality of the platform. Later releases added more improvements, like support for high-color Workbench screens and 3D aspect. Replacement desktop file managers were also made available, such as Directory Opus Magellan, or Scalos interface. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

Image taken at the first Amiga show in Cologne (Köln). Front row from left to right, Matt Dillon and Fred Fish
Image taken at the first Amiga show in Cologne (Köln). Front row from left to right, Matt Dillon and Fred Fish
Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 – April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of Fish disks of freeware for the Amiga. He was a pioneering spirit pervasive in the Amiga community. The Fish Disks (term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Group meeting) became the first national rallying point, a sort of early postal system. Fish would get his disks off around the world in time for regional and local user group meetings who in turn duplicated them for local consumption. Typically, only the cost of materials changed hands. The Fish Disk series ran from 1986 to 1994. In it, one can chart the growing sophistication of Amiga software and see the emergence of many software trends.

The Fish Disks were distributed at computer stores and Commodore Amiga enthusiast clubs. Contributors submitted applications and source code and the best of these each month were assembled and released as a diskette. Since the Internet was not yet in popular usage outside military and university circles, this was a primary way for enthusiasts to share work and ideas. He also initiated the "GeekGadgets" project, a GNU standard environment for AmigaOS and BeOS. (Full article...)

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Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint
Credit: Blake Patterson
Deluxe Paint for Amiga floppy disk (1985 Electronic Arts).
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Did you know...

... that the Amiga became one of the first widespread 3D development platforms?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
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