It’s Not Dead. It’s Not Sleeping. It’s The Amiga.

The demise of Amiga should have come about when Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. It was, however, a survivor from the beginning. Even before it was a Commodore product.

Dave Needle (right) wearing an Amiga themed shirt by Atlanta based artist Robert Hamilton. Behind Needle — the room where the first 3DO console was developed. He is standing next to the first ever Amiga computer to come off of the production line in the Sanyo factory, Japan. The place where the designs for the Amiga computer — which developed in the emerging personal computing scene of California in the 1980s — were turned into a mass consumer product.

Jay Miner, who had developed the Atari 400 and 800 computers, set up the Amiga Corporation to produce a games machine. Ambitions outgrew this application when the US computer games market crashed in 1983. The world’s first multimedia computer was developed and — instead of getting bought and sunk by rivals like Apple — the Amiga Corporation was acquired by Commodore in 1984. Ten years later, Commodore was no more and the future of Amiga systems looked uncertain.

Flash-forward 2014

The AmigaOne X1000 is the flagship system running AmigaOS 4.1. It had been intended for a summer release in 2010 in order to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the first Amiga 1000 system. However, it started shipping in late 2011 after some delays. The AmigaOne X3500 and AmigaOne X5000 got announced at Amiwest 2013 — one of the largest events on the Amiga enthusiast calendar. Users decided that the X5000 would come out as the X5000/20 and X5000/40. The suffix is a Commodore tradition used to distinguish between the P5020 and P5040 CPU variants.

The AmigaOne X1000 at the Amiga 30th event held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It would be succeeded by the AmigaOne X5000 and A1222 board by 2020.

Nostalgia versus Survival

Despite the odd legal battle here and there, the Amiga has survived through a loyal user base. When new hardware looked like an improbable dream, AmigaOS was modified to run on other platforms. For example, MorphOS works on PowerPC based Apple Macs and AROS on PC. ClusterUK Ltd even demonstrated AROS running on a Raspberry Pi — the credit card sized computer designed to teach the basics of computing. The company also designed their own system called the IMICA. A standalone AROS unit starts at USD $25 via Raspberry Pi. An all all in one IMICA can be acquired from ClusterUK for USD $335.

Minimig

Another interesting twist on the Amiga legacy is the Minimig. A Dutch electrical engineer called Dennis Van Weeran created the Amiga 500 based system in 2007. It is an open source reimplementation of the most popular Amiga computer sold. A field programmable gate array “FPGA” chip was — a microchip that can be programmed after manufacture as opposed to being used for defined specifications. It essentially brought the otherwise retired system back to life.The source code and schematics for the Minimig system are now available under a General Public License.

Amiga Inc.

The Amiga brand changed hands several times after Commodore went bankrupt. German PC manufacturer ESCOM AG acquired Amiga in 1994 but went bankrupt itself in 1996. Gateway Inc. then acquired certain rights and incorporated Amiga Inc. in South Dakota in 1997. Two subcontractors then stepped in after it was decided that Amiga Inc. would close in 1999. Bill McEwen and Barrie Jon “Fleecy” Moss — bought the Amiga.com domain name. The deal also included the right to incorporate elsewhere. In this case, the State of Washington.

The Amiga brand now exists as a smart acquisition based on licensing rights. The AmigaOne brand is used for a PowerPC based architecture, as seen through the likes of the X1000. It is the system that currently runs via the successor to the original AmigaOS operating system. In addition to this, CommodoreUSA bought the rights to use the Amiga name. This was used for a desktop computer that ran on a Linux based Workbench 5.0. Since the death of founder Barry S Altman in December 2012, however, that branch of the Amiga legacy seems in disarray. Amiga Inc. also licensed the name for a series of Tablets and All-In-One computers in Hong Kong. These were created by IContain Systems, Ltd.

The timeline above was left on the edit room floor for Retrospective Computing and Consumer-Led Development , which appeared in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. It outlines key events in the timeline on the right - still fossilized in the user community of Amiga based technologies. It also shows periods of ownership alongside technological developments based on the custom chipsets tethered to Amiga computers. The timeline only runs to 2015.

AmigaOne

The AmigaOne systems are designed to run AmigaOS 4. There were numerous iterations from several different companies before A-EON Technologies announced the AmigaONE X1000 in 2010 (see the lineage above). The company is a labour of love for business angel Trevor Dickinson. His affection for Commodore systems began with a PET in 1980. In fact, the business meeting pleasure element of A-EON Technology can be seen in Trevor’s Blog.

Trevor Dickinson of A-EON Technologies.

The X1000 was the platform needed to drive further developments like the X3500, X5000/20 and X5000/40. The Cyrus Plus motherboard is a good example of the right personalities driving a sustainable approach to technology developments.

User Community

Aminet is the world’s largest archive of Amiga software and files. It was originally a university hosted site. Some of the more vocal Amiga users include Dan Wood — radio presenter and blogger at http://www.kookytech.net/. His video on being an Amiga user in 2011 is featured above. It also inspired other Amigans to share their views through social media. For a fair and fascinating look at the evolution of a newer system visit Epsilon’s AmigaOne X1000 Blog. The insights of this Australia based user has helped X1000 owners everyone. Even Trevor Dickinson has acknowledged Epsilon as an excellent resource. One of the largest community portals is http://www.amigaworld.net/ , which is described as receiving ¾ million views on average each month. Even magazines like Amiga Future continue to be published every two months.

Note: the sources mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg for a very active and global network of users.

The original teams who worked on the Amiga — both as a startup and after the technology got acquired by Commodore — remain close friends. They also went on to have careers on many well noted projects. Some of people worked on the Amiga from its startup phase and post acquisition phase are shown above. Left to Right. Carl Sassenrath (Amiga operating system kernal, REBOL computer language, REBOL OS and ROKU); Andy Finkel (Commodore, 3DO and Rajant Corporation); R.J. Mical (Amiga Intuition, Epyx, Inc. , 3DO, Sony and Google); Dave Needle (Amiga hardware team, Epyx, Inc. , 3DO and consultant on the power supply for Google’s Project Tango); Dale Luck (Amiga -including its blitter, Commodore, 3DO and ROKU); Ron Nicholson ( Apple, Amiga, Hewlett Package, hardware team on the Nintendo 64 at Silicon Graphics).

Summary

The Amiga is a system that has a lineage that is as legitimate as companies it once competed with for market share on a larger scale, such as Apple. It was a computer with a massive following in Europe — to a point that, when Commodore folded in the US, it was a German company that began the process of keeping the Amiga alive. Today, the strength of the Amiga brand and system architecture can be seen on two noticeable fronts. First, the continued success of its corporate repacking via Amiga Inc. Second, through a user community that refuse to let the Amiga computer die.

Despite bankruptcy, legal disputes and some wilderness years in terms of development, the Amiga is the Lazerus of the computer world. It refuses to die and may well have weathered the storm to see more brighter days ahead.