Amiga 1000
Commodore purchased Amiga Corp. in August 1984 and the Amiga 1000 was
introduced in July 1985. It was created in part by Jay Miner, who also helped
designed the Atari 800. The Amiga 1000 was a quantum leap above any other
system out at the time, as it included a 32bit pre-emptive multi-tasking GUI,
4 channel stereo sound, 880k 3-1/2" floppy disks, and HAM (hold and modify)
video modes which provided 4096 colors as standard equipment when other
systems were monotasking at just 16 colors. It quickly became a favorite for
artists and animators since it's multiple coprocessors allowed it to do
complex images and animations that other systems, with the exception of
expensive workstations, just couldn't handle. There were a lot of hardware
add-ons, such as video and sound digitizers, hard disks, external floppy
disks, and RAM expansion made for this machine. What the Amiga 1000 began,
with it's easy image manipulation and animation, took off with an explosion
of new hardware and software when the Amiga 2000 and it's increased
capabilities was introduced in 1987. Like the Macintosh 128k, the Amiga 1000
has the signatures of all of it's designers cast into the inside of it's
case, including the pawprint of Jay Miner's dog Mitchy. The Amiga 1000
originally listed for $1300. The Amiga 1000 and the technology behind it
were awarded patent# 4,777,621 on October 11, 1988.
The Amiga 1000 is unlike most other Amiga's in that it has it's
Kickstart, which boots the sytem, on floppy disk instead of in ROM. Due to
this, it was difficult to upgrade the OS on the 1000, while on other Amigas,
one just had to upgrade the ROM's and software. The 1000 is largely
incompatible expansion-wise with the rest of the Amiga line since it's ZORRO
bus connector is flipped from that of like the Amiga 500, and it's parallel
and serial ports differ slightly in the voltages and pin assignments.
On April 29, 1994 Commodore International shut it's doors, and on June 20th
1994 Jay Miner passed away. Early in 1995, German PC-manufacturer ESCOM
bought Commodore, though they themselves would go into receivership the next
year. Then in mid-1997 Gateway 2000 bought all rights to the Amiga with
plans to continue developement of the platform.
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