AmigaSource.com - HISTORY
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Links to the world of Commodore other old systems and computer History!
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In July 1985, 40 years ago, the Commodore Amiga was officially introduced to the world. This groundbreaking computer caught a lot of people by surprise and it has an equally amazing development story. |
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41 years ago today — July 23, 1985 — Commodore launched the Amiga 1000 at LincolnCenter in New York City and completely changed personal computing. Restored and presented in 1080p HD. In front of a star-studded audience, Andy Warhol live-painted Debbie Harry (Blondie) on stage using the Amiga, proving this machine was something special. This wasn’t just another computer — it was the birth of multimedia computing. True preemptive multitasking. Up to 4096 colors & advanced custom graphics chips. 4-channel stereo sampled sound. Years ahead of Apple, IBM, and Atari. The Amiga 1000 brought professional-level graphics, sound, and creativity into people’s homes for the first time. |
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The third installment of our series on the history of the Amiga begins with... Prototyping the hardware. Modern chips are designed using high-powered workstations that run very expensive chip simulation software. However, the fledgling Amiga company could not afford such luxuries. It would instead build, by hand, giant replicas of the silicon circuitry on honeycomb-like plastic sheets known as breadboards. |
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On July 23, 1985, Commodore introdu (The Silicon Underground)ced its Amiga 1000 computer. And let’s just say the world wasn’t ready for it yet. Dave Haynie, a Commodore engineer who worked on the later models, has said there was no such thing as a 1980s computer. There were 1970s computers and 1990s computers, and it was the Amiga that dragged the rest of the industry into the 1990s. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 03, 2026
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id: 2252 |
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{Thread @ Hacker news discussing the Amiga 1000} |
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In my thesis, I study Amiga ASCII text art. Amiga ASCII is a form of text art where the composition of letter characters set in the Amiga computer's font forms a two-dimensional representation or image. The Amiga scene is a subculture of computer enthusiasts that was popular in the 1990s. At its core are the logos and other visual materials created for BBS systems and the competitive rivalry among artists who create text art over their image-making prowess. |
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This is a collection of legends, folklore, and [mis]remembered stories about the Amiga, its creators, and its history. |
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Author:
Tony Smith
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Verified:
Sep 15, 2026
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id: 6046 |
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Amiga, inc. is turning itself into Be, if this weekend's revelations from the Amiga 2000 show, held in St. Louis, are anything to go by. During the show, the company said it had entered into partnerships with a series of companies, most notably Sun, Red Hat and Corel, put Java at the forefront of its software efforts and outlined its hardware plans. The key announcement on the hardware front was an upcoming developer-oriented machine, designed to get coders working with Amiga's software technology as quickly as possible. Based on a 500MHz AMD K6-II and 64MB of RAM, it's not exactly the most powerful box out there, but it should be cheap. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Sep 15, 2026
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id: 6051 |
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lease Note that this story was constructed from a rather fragmented IRC session. A fast-typing Amiga fan going by the nick of "cwall_SHO" was attending the show and passing on his notes in real time to the 60-70 people in the IRC channel, sponsored by the User Group Network. While some details may be missing or blurry, this is basically the gist of Collas' presentation. March 12, 1999 - Jim Collas, the newly named president of Amiga Inc. and formerly the senior vice president of Product Development and Management for Amiga's parent company, Gateway, addressed an enthusiastic crowd gathered at the Henry VIII Hotel, site of the Amiga99 show in St. Louis, Mo. tonight. |
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Author:
AR Staff
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Archived:
1999-10-09 |
Verified:
Aug 09, 2026
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id: 2405 |
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{{ARCHIVED}} It hasn't been easy keeping a cheery disposition since April 29, 1994. Now, the liquidation chapter of Commodore's existance is all but closed. Barring an amazing development in the Bahamas Supreme Court, which has all but promised to echo the decision of the US court, Escom AG will become the owner of the assets of Commodore International. |
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{{ARCHIVED}} {Creative Computing Magazine article published Oct 1985 about the new Amiga 1000. Vol 11, No 9.} |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 09, 2026
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id: 2385 |
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The WHOLE reason AmigaSource exists! Thanks for shutting down your site 20 years ago! The Amiga Web Directory was a free service of the Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group. The site was actively operated from May 16, 1994 to January 1, 2000. Thanks to all our members, friends and supporters throughout the years. Contact CUCUG by accessing our comment page. {Currently links to Amiga news from 1995-99. Again REALLY CRAPPY they didn't hand their VAST WEALTH of knowledge to someone else in the community but on the flip side... If it wasn't for them AmigaSource.com would not exist!} |
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In the grand mythology of personal computing, revolutions are supposed to begin in garages, venture capital boardrooms, or research labs filled with whiteboards and cold pizza. They are not, as a rule, supposed to begin in dental offices in Florida. And yet, the early story of what became Amiga Corporation starts precisely there, with three dentists who decided that funding an experimental hardware startup was a perfectly reasonable thing to do after a long day of cleaning teeth. The phrase “the three dentists” has endured because it sounds like the setup to a joke. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Sep 13, 2026
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id: 6057 |
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Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was *BYTE*. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. {...} This zoomable map shows every page of every issue of BYTE starting from the front cover of the first issue (top left) to the last page of the final edition (bottom right). |
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Author:
Byte Magazine
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Archived:
2012-09-22 |
Verified:
Aug 03, 2026
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id: 2256 |
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{{ARCHIVED}} Byte Magazine article about the Amiga 1000. Vol 10, No 8. Published Aug 1985} |
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By September 1984, Amiga Corporation had a remarkable computer on its hands and a much less remarkable problem: it was running out of money. The small California company had spent years developing an ambitious new computer architecture built around advanced graphics, sound and custom processing hardware. The technology worked. The financing was another matter. Then Commodore stepped in. In September 1984, Commodore officially completed its acquisition of Amiga Corporation in a deal generally valued at around $27 million to $30 million. The purchase settled Amiga’s immediate financial problems, covered obligations linked to earlier funding from Atari and gave Commodore control of the technology that would become the Amiga computer range. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 03, 2026
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id: 2250 |
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Today marks a very special occasion for Commodore Amiga fans — the 40th anniversary of Commodore's initial unveiling of the first-ever Amiga computer (otherwise known as the Commodore 1000). It was on Tuesday, July 23rd 1985 that Commodore first unveiled the eagerly-anticipated computer at the Lincoln Center in New York, in what was described in the press at the time as a lavish "coming out" party, with its plan being to position the $1295 Motorola 68000-based computer as a potential rival to Apple's Macintosh computer, which had released one year earlier. |
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Author:
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Archived:
2002-06-02 |
Verified:
Sep 15, 2026
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id: 6050 |
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{{ARCHIVED}} Corel and Amiga work closely to support new Amiga Operating Environment Ottawa, Canada— July 27, 1999— Corel Corporation (NASDAQ: CORL, TSE: COR) is pleased to announce that it has formed a new relationship with Amiga, to ensure that Corel’s award-winning software applications will be supported on Amiga’s new line of products that are scheduled to be released later this year. |
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Flashback, early 1970s and you’re sitting in a school classroom or maybe a hobbyist’s basement. There’s a rectangular box on the table—a computer—but it’s nothing like the sleek, polished devices we know today. This is Commodore. The brand that was once poised to rule the world of personal computing. It’s difficult to imagine now, but there was a time when Commodore was synonymous with innovation and affordable technology for the masses. In fact, they were positioned to become the global leader in the personal computer revolution. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 09, 2026
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id: 2366 |
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Demoscene the Amiga years reflects the making of the best demos as well as the history of the most emblematic and best known groups of the demoscene. Discover numerous pictures of demos through more than 450 pages as well as contributions of "sceners". This book is the first volume covering the years 1984 to 1993 with about 90 demos amongst the most famous and popular ones. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 15, 2026
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id: 2430 |
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Dr Tim King, one of the engineers closely associated with the creation of AmigaDOS, died at the end of July 2026. His name may not be as widely known as the Amiga brand itself, but his work sits right at the heart of the machine’s operating system. King’s main contribution came through TRIPOS, an operating system developed in academia and later adapted into the foundation of AmigaDOS. That software became responsible for many of the everyday jobs an Amiga had to handle, including files, directories, devices, scripts and command-line operations. In practical terms, AmigaDOS was the part of the system users met whenever they worked beyond the graphical desktop. |
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Gateway Inc. may have big plans for Linux-based Internet appliances. But Amiga Inc. -- the company Gateway bought in 1997 and subsequently sold off last year -- has aspirations and agreements of its own to bring Linux to "Amigans." "We're doing exactly what Gateway said they'd do with us," said Bill McEwen, president and CEO of the Snoqualmie, Wash.-based U.S. arm of Amiga. "Gateway could have had it all." |
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Author:
CNET staff
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Verified:
Sep 15, 2026
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id: 6044 |
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In another twist in the long saga of the Amiga computer, Gateway--the company's would-be savior--apparently won't be making a new Amiga machine anytime soon. Instead, the PC maker will focus on opportunities in the emerging information appliance market, according to sources, and its Amiga subsidiary is redefining itself as a software company. That was unwelcome news to long-suffering fans of the Amiga computer, which has become something of a cult-like icon with a following to match. |
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Author:
CNET staff
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Verified:
Sep 15, 2026
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id: 6043 |
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Direct PC maker Gateway appears to be revving up a strategy for decidedly un-PC like "information appliances" through its independent subsidiary, Amiga. Gateway's purchase of Amiga in 1997 mystified many in the computer industry. Amiga's time in the spotlight had long since passed, although it still had many devotees using it for its advanced multimedia capabilities. Two years later, however, the plan is beginning to take shape. |
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Author:
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Verified:
Aug 15, 2026
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id: 2441 |
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First released on an unsuspecting public on July 23, 1985, the Amiga 1000 brought the fondly remembered Commodore Amiga line of computers to the masses, and in many cases their first experience with a multitasking graphical user interface (GUI), vibrant colors and rich sound in a personal computer. Already known for the PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 line of personal computers, the Amiga took things to an extremely next level for both Commodore and personal computers in general. |
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