Amiga corporation

In early 1980, Jay Miner, along with other full-time employees, left Atari , disappointed in the company's management. In September 1982 ^[1] , they began a project to develop their own chipset and found Hi-Toro (later renamed Amiga ) in Santa Clara , where they expected to work in accordance with their ideas about creative freedom. Since investors who invested in the authorized capital of the company require the creation of a game console , Miner makes a strategic decision: the development of a personal computer based on the MC68000 processor is voiced (for investors) as the development of a game console and is covered by the development of joysticks (for the whole outside world). Thus, no one except four people knew what the development team of Amiga Corporation was doing. The company was engaged in the design and sale of joysticks, the sale of cartridges for the popular Atari 2600 and ColecoVision game consoles, and also developed the legendary JoyBoard joystick in the form of a “surfboard”.

In 1984, Warner Brothers, who owned Atari , sold it to the only person interested in it, Jack Tramiel , who had previously led Commodore International . Shortly before the purchase of Atari, the latter signed a business agreement under which Amiga pledged to provide Atari a month later with the Lorraine chipset they developed or return the $ 500,000 received under this agreement. By this time, Amiga was on the verge of bankruptcy and was forced to sign the contract. Tramiel acquired Atari with the idea that he could use the Lorraine chipset in the new Atari ST computers , instead of financing the development of his own. Also, with a view to financial pressure, he delayed the payment of contracts, according to which Atari had to pay for the development carried out by Amiga for Atari earlier.

The chosen strategy had the most unpleasant consequences for Atari, because when Commodore acquired Amiga , the corporation's lawyers motivated the termination of the contract by the failure to fulfill Atari's financial obligations. Thus, Atari not only did not receive the Lorraine chipset (later, the Original Custom Chipset ), but was forced to use the components it had that were outdated compared to the Lorraine chipset (developed by the Jay Miner team during his work at Atari) to complete the Atari project ST (The Amiga licensing lawsuit lasted for many years, but ended unexpectedly by 1990. Although not all details have been disclosed so far, many believe that Atari received some kind of technological “gifts” from Commodore. In particular, Dave Morse's departure Erjen Michael at Atari and their work on the Atari Lynx was no accident.).

• Amiga (computer)
• Jay Miner (founder)
• Commodore (second Amiga ™ owner)
• ESCOM (third owner of Amiga ™)