🚚 🌙 🗼 Wars around the 68000 chip, part 1: Amiga Lorraine 🌽 📦 👩🏾‍🚀

This is what revolutionary technology looks like. In 1986, Tim Jenison, the founder of NewTek, began distributing these color digital photographs - the first such images ever to appear on a PC screen - through distribution channels for Amiga programs. So came the era of multimedia.

Amiga was a wonderful computer. A puzzle inside a mystery hidden in a secret and squeezed into a plastic case. I wrote a whole book about him, and I'm still not sure that I figured out all of its difficulties and contradictions.

Amiga was a great computer when it first appeared in 1985 - far surpassing all the offers on the market. In his heart was a miracle of that era, the Motorola 68000 chip - the same chip that was inside the Apple Macintosh and Atari ST. However, the environment of this chip made Amiga special: three special microcircuits with unforgettable names Paul, Denise and Agnus. Together, they provided Amiga with the best graphics and sound in the industry, with a huge margin. And freeing 68,000 from a huge share of the work on creating graphics and sound, as well as performing many other tasks, such as accessing the disk, they allowed Amiga to shine, and easily outperform all competitors in real speed on any tests that could be imagined. The result was not just a gradual improvement,and an extremely rare thing in any technology is a leap forward a whole generation.

Amiga, especially in its original 1985 incarnation, was a terrible computer. The operating system that came with it was painfully buggy. Well, if you managed to use the machine for an hour or two in a row so that for no apparent reason it would run out of memory or it would not fall. Other glitches seemed strangely funny if they didn’t happen to you personally - such as the mysterious “date virus” that could start spreading across all disks, assigning all files a timestamp with a year of 65,000 and slowing the system to a complete stop (no, that's there wasn’t a real virus, just a weird bug). Of course, the programs could be fixed, and for the most part, they were fixed. Other problems were more complex. For example, the fact that the machine used interlaced graphics for maximum resolution modes,led to terrible blinking graphics with most color combinations. Puzzled users, whose swollen eyes were ready to get out of their orbits after several hours of similar work, could be content only with lengthy technical explanations of what was happening and suggestions to change the color palette to minimize the effect. Surely all Amiga buyers who expected to work with him would be as pleased as with the famous ease of use of a Macintosh computer, were disappointed.Surely all Amiga buyers who expected to work with him would be as pleased as with the famous ease of use of a Macintosh computer, were disappointed.Surely all Amiga buyers who expected to work with him would be as pleased as with the famous ease of use of a Macintosh computer, were disappointed.

Despite advertising similar in appearance to a mouse-controlled windowed interface, users who wanted to work actively or play on the Amiga had to get acquainted with technical details such as the difference between chip memory and fast memory, as well as what the software stack was and how configure it manually. Even in the best case, working with Amiga was like handling a house of cards, ready to fall apart from the first breeze. And when this breeze blew, the user was left alone with an inexplicable Guru Meditation Error and a bunch of frightening numbers. Sometimes it seemed that Amiga was specifically designed to confuse users.

Amiga anticipated the future, marking the beginning of a new era. He showed us the way that led us to how we live and work with computers today. I didn’t just call my book about this car The Future Was Here.[The future was here]. The aforementioned leap for an entire generation in graphics and sound was the most significant breakthrough in the history of personal computers, since it made Amiga not just a new computer, but something completely new: the first multimedia PC in history. With Amiga, for the first time you could save and play aesthetically pleasing images and sounds from the real world, as well as combine them and interact with them in a digital environment inside your computer. It changed everything that was related to how we calculated, played, lived, and opened the door to everything from the world wide web to iPod, iPad and iPhone. It was almost as important that Amiga became a pioneer of multitasking on a PC - it was another feature that was available to the user thanks to amazing hardware,capable of greatly expanding the capabilities of 68000 compared to other computers. There is a serious amount of psychological research, according to which multitasking has literally changed the way we think, changed our brain - a good achievement for any commercial gadget. Listening to music while talking through a messenger with a friend, while trying to finish the course and choosing new shoes on Amazon, you personify the created Amiga person.you personify the created Amiga man.you personify the created Amiga man.

Performing all these actions, Amiga was inextricably linked with previous ways of achieving these goals, so she simultaneously marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. It was the point at the end of the first uncouth decade of American PCs, and the last example of how an American company decided to release a completely new machine, completely incompatible with everything that came before it. Her circuit diagram reflected both the past and the future. Special chips, combined with each other and with 68000 so close that not a single beat was wasted, was a masterpiece of engineering, created by a small team of brilliant people. If a computer can be a work of art, then Amiga is definitely worthy of such a title. Yet her scheme has become an evolutionary impasse; special chips and everything else could not be disassembled and improved,without breaking the software that existed before. The future was for modular and expandable platforms, like the ones that were used by the IBM PC and its clones, for open standards for hardware and software that weren’t nearly as sexy or elegant, but could grow and improve over time.

Amiga was a great success, the last before Wintel hegemony[Windows + Intel] expanded to complete dominance in the field of home computers, as it did in the field of business in the mid-1980s. Its gaming heritage is one of the richest among all platforms, it includes games that appeared over a 15-year period, many of which, especially in the first seven years, went beyond the boundaries of the possible and expanded the very concept of a computer game. I will not even try to list all the breakthrough classics born on Amiga; in this blog it will be possible to study it for many more years. In Europe, Amiga was such a popular gaming platform that it survived many years after the death of its corporate parent Commodore - an unprecedented phenomenon in the consumer computer segment. The last of many glossy magazines dedicated to this platform, the British Amiga Active,He didn’t leave store shelves until November 2001 - he stayed for seven years after the platform was orphaned. The same long-lived platform appeared in another of its main niches, as a workstation for creating video. Thanks to the unique opportunity to combine your own graphics with analog video signals - which, ironically, was possible thanks to the same interlaced video mode that drove everyone crazy - Amiga computers could be found in the workplaces of small cable channels and video producers until the 2000s. Only the great shift to high-definition broadcasting finally completed Amiga's career in this area.as a workstation for creating videos. Thanks to the unique opportunity to combine your own graphics with analog video signals - which, ironically, was possible thanks to the same interlaced video mode that drove everyone crazy - Amiga computers could be found in the workplaces of small cable channels and video producers until the 2000s. Only the great shift to high-definition broadcasting finally completed Amiga's career in this area.as a workstation for creating videos. Thanks to the unique opportunity to combine your own graphics with analog video signals - which, ironically, was possible thanks to the same interlaced video mode that drove everyone crazy - Amiga computers could be found in the workplaces of small cable channels and video producers until the 2000s. Only the great shift to high-definition broadcasting finally completed Amiga's career in this area.Only the great shift to high-definition broadcasting finally completed Amiga's career in this area.Only the great shift to high-definition broadcasting finally completed Amiga's career in this area.

Amiga was a terrible failure, and I remember one of many examples of a product from the history of computers that could have been made much better. In 1985, so many people expected that the computer could become something much more than just another gaming machine, or “just” the pioneer of a new area of home video, the forerunner of the YouTube generation. The first Amiga users believed that it was so best that it was already on the market - not just technically, but conceptually - that it would surely conquer the whole world. Indeed, such software giants of that time as WordPerfect, Borland, Ashton-Tate and Lotus immediately appreciated this computer as soon as they met it, and already began to port their applications to it. However, in the end, only WordPerfect did it, and although Amiga has changed the world in the long run,his innovations improved, and then Apple and Microsoft embodied instead. A huge layer of Amiga heritage recipients - almost all the inhabitants of the "developed" world - and have no idea that such a computer once existed.

And these are just a few examples of the contradiction awaiting any writer who decides to seriously understand a topic such as Amiga. In addition, there is also a more ironic contradiction: the absolute love for him of all those who had this computer. I have to admit that Amiga was also my first computer love. From the day in 1994, when I succumbed to fashion and bought my first Wintel-based car, I became indifferent to platforms. Hot fans of Linux and Apple, apologists of Microsoft - all of them left me indifferent, making me wonder how you can relate with such passion to any platform that is not called Amiga. Of course, I understand that all this is not so important that the gadget is just a gadget, a means to an end. I even admit that if Amiga hadn’t appeared when it appeared,and did not become a pioneer of a new computational paradigm, then something else would have appeared. This is how history works. And yet, the Amiga computer had something special for those of us who were at that time, something that went beyond the typical hacker love for his first computer.

To say that Amiga users were - and remain - platform fans is to say nothing. General computer magazines, from the late 1980s and into the greater part of the 1990s, learned to expect a mountain of critical emails from Amiga users every time someone in a published article had the courage to say something bad about this platform - or, what else worse, as inevitably happened more and more as time went on, and Amiga moved farther away from its leading position, if this platform was not mentioned at all in the article. Outstanding mainstream columnist John C. Dvorak liked to say that while Mac users were simply arrogant and arrogant, Amiga users were completely insane. There are still people shivering over their 25-year-old Amiga computers, functioning thanks to duct tape and twine,and considering them their main computing platform. A frightening number of such people are still waiting for the day when Amiga will rise again from oblivion and conquer the world, although it is hard to imagine what a modern Amiga computer should be or why it should be in a world in which all the best ideas have long been included in more fashionable and simple gadgets.

Every decent cult needs an origin myth, and the Amiga cult is no exception. It appeared back in the heyday of Amiga in North America, in the late 1980s, when the platform luminary R.J. Mikal, the developer of the Intuition library containing graphic widgets and many other critical parts of the software infrastructure, started going to trade fairs and exhibitions , telling everyone a terribly sentimental story about the early days of the platform when the Amiga computer was developed by a tiny independent company called Amiga, Incorporated.

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Well yes. Idealism, of course, played a role in the history of Amiga, however, besides this, it was also a completely ordinary story of competition in Silicon Valley. It began in 1982 with our old friend Larry Kaplan, one of the Atari Fantastic Four programmers, who founded Activision with Jim Leigh.

Activision felt fine, and according to Kaplan himselfThe Fantastic Four enjoyed privileges such as “limo rides, corporate cars, and a personal chef,” in excess of a salary of $ 150,000 a year. And yet Kaplan, who is often described as the personification of the phrase "good where we are not," did not find a place. He wanted to form another company, his own one this time, to enter the growing Atari VCS market [Atari Video Computer System, originally named Atari 2600]. One day in early 1982, he called his long-time Atari colleague: Jay Miner, the Atari VCS display chip developer, who later developed the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computer chipsets. Kaplan and two other Fantastic Four people wrote the operating system and BASIC interpreter for these machines. Therefore, he knew Miner well.Understanding the intricacies of doing business and starting his own company a little less than programming, he asked him this first question: “I would like to open my own company. Do you have any familiar lawyers? ”

The miner, who left Atari at about the same time as the Fantastic Four, due to a similar aversion to new director Ray Kassar, also moved from Silicon Valley to Freeport, Texas, where he worked for small-scale semiconductor manufacturer Zymos, developing chips for pacemakers and other medical devices. Miner said that he himself is not familiar with any lawyers, but his boss, the founder of Zymos, Bert Braddock, is well versed in running a business. He introduced them to each other, and things went. Kaplan presented Braddock with a plan to combine hardware and software in the fast-growing home video game market, offering hardware that improves Atari VCS's apparently limited capabilities, as well as game cartridges. Such a scheme could hardly be called original;other people have also noticed a combination of the incredible popularity of Atari VCS coupled with its incredibly serious limitations. For example, two other former Atari engineers, Bob Brown and Craig Nelson, have already created Starpath, trying to develop an electronic extension for this console and its corresponding games. Later, Starpath will merge with another company founded under the name Automated Simulations, and then renamed Epyx to write games under the name Summer Games.to write games called Summer Games.to write games called Summer Games.

Nevertheless, Braddock decided that such a partnership could prove fruitful enough for a company like its chip maker Zymos. He found Kaplan's investors in the nearby and oil-rich Houston, and raised about $ 1 million to give the company an initial boost. He also found and hired Dave Morse, vice president of marketing at Tonka Toys, considering him to be the business-savvy person and tough negotiator the company needed. An informal agreement was reached in the group: Morse will manage the new company, Kaplan will write games, Miner (working on a contract since he did not leave Zymos) will develop auxiliary iron, and Zymos will produce iron and game cartridges. At the same time, everyone had the thought thatthat if they succeed with their games and additional gadgets, then they will probably be able to take the next step: create their own original game console, a follower of Atari VCS; Atari's Ray Kassar was clearly not interested in such a goal.

In June 1982, Kaplan announced to his shocked colleagues at Activision that he was leaving for free bread; the bridges that he burned then were not restored to this day. He and Morse opened a small office in Santa Clara, California for their new company, which Kaplan called Hi-Toro. Morse and Braddock, a truly heaven-sent person for a young company, searched for investors for months and managed to raise another $ 5 million. Most of the depositors were dentists and other members of the medical community due to Bradock’s extensive connections in this area. They practically did not understand computer technology, but they well knew that video games were a fashionable topic, and were in a hurry to stake out their place at the base of the new Atari.

And then the fidget Larry Kaplan nearly overwhelmed the whole thing. He called Atari founder Nolan Bushnell in October of that year to talk about his new company and convince him to join him at Hi-Toro as chairman of the board. A name of such a level would instantly give legitimacy to this enterprise. However, instead, the hunter became a victim. Bushnell, known for his legendary charm, persuaded Kaplan to switch to him instead in order to establish a new video game company and compete with Atari, without Zymos, Morse, and Miner. And Kaplan announced his second shocking resignation in the same 1982. As a result, as Kaplan later wrote, “Nolan, of course, was shocked,” and interrupted all communication with him - perhaps, well deservedly. As a result, Kaplan will complete his lap, again moving to Atari before the end of the year,however, all this mess will end because1983 computer game industry crisis . Kaplan’s career, which by that time had already begun to be considered too unreliable and not worth the lost trust, could not recover from the blow. However, he managed to sell his part of Activision's shares after the company entered the stock exchange, which made him a fairly wealthy person who, in principle, no longer had to work - not a bad fate for Claudius of our time.

Meanwhile, Dave Morse remained in limbo - he had a company, office, investment, but there were no product designers. He invited Jay Miner to leave Zymos and take a full-time job at Hi-Toro to help fill the vacuum left by Kaplan's departure. The miner, who had been dreaming for some time to create a game console and a computer based on the new Motorola 68000 chip, considered Hi-Toro his only chance to fulfill his dream, and agreed - provided that he could take his beloved dog Mitchie of the breed with him to work every day. cockapu [ hybrid cocker spaniel and poodle / approx. perev. ].

One of the very first things that left the company after Kaplan was the name he coined. Everyone, no matter who Morse and Miner spoke to, agreed that Hi-Toro was a terrible name that wouldn't even fit lawn mowers. So one day Morse leafed through a dictionary, looking for a word that could be put in the corporate directory before Apple and Atari. He came across a Spanish word for "friend": amigo. It sounded good, especially in an era when “user friendliness” was very fashionable. However, the feminine version of the word - amiga - sounded even better, friendly, elegant, even a little sexy. Miner, by his own admission, reacted to the new name coolly, but everyone with whom Morse spoke liked it, so he did not argue. So Hi-Toro turned into an Amiga.

Of course, Morse and Miner could not have done it alone. Over the following months, they assembled a team whose members are destined to become legends for hackers. Atari's old colleague Miner, who worked with him on VCS, as well as 400 and 800 models, Joe Decure joined them on a temporary contract to help Miner begin work on a new set of special chips. Several young electronic engineers have been hired full time. Morse hired Bob Parisot to put together a team of programmers; and he became, in fact, the equivalent of Jay Miner on the software side of the company. The number of programmers soon exceeded the number of electronic engineers. In their ranks were such legendary names today as R.J. Mikal, Dale Luck and Karl Sassenrath.

For the most part, all of the company's new recruits were young and inexperienced. And if you call them “loser-dreamers” it is too much, then you can certainly say that their previous work experience was too mixed for the norms of Silicon Valley; Mikal, for example, dropped out of his studies at a specialist in English literature, and shortly before entering work nine months he traveled around the world with a backpack. And although their youthful idealism ultimately influenced the creation of the special character of the Amiga computer, Morse had a purely practical reason to fill his office with all these young talents: the gaming industry began to be blown away slowly, so he simply could not afford to pay salaries to more experienced people. Amiga’s financial difficulties gave a unique chance to a bunch of people,which otherwise would have been difficult to get even the most initial positions in companies such as Apple, IBM or Microsoft.

A striking exception to this demographic rule was Jay Miner himself. Creative engineering research at the forefront is usually the lot of young people. However, Miner was already 50 years old at the time of the creation of his masterpiece, the Amiga chipset. He developed electronic circuits 20 years before the advent of microprocessors, and long before some of his colleagues were born. Perhaps due to chronic kidney problems, which eventually killed him at the age of 62, he looked and sometimes behaved even older than his years, and preferred quiet and unhurried hobbies like growing bonsai and cutting aircraft models from balsa wood. Today, people remember him with words like "fatherly," "quiet," and "wise." Nervous Dave Morse became the face of Amiga for the whole world, and Miner set the tone for the company,enduring and even encouraging the fun madness of life at Amiga offices. Miner:

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The question of when and what this group worked on will be more difficult to answer than you might think. Using the word Amiga to denote this era, we can talk about three different possibilities. Firstly, the Amiga company, which in the first months of work spent more than half of the personnel and resources on games and add-ons for the old Atari VCS, instead of developing new revolutionary technology. Secondly, the Amiga chipset, which was developed by Miner and his team. Finally, a complete game console and computer with this chipset. Understanding the intricacies is becoming more difficult due to the confused stories of revisionists who tend to find ingenious plans and connected stories where they were not. So let's carefully understand each of these options in turn.

Amiga joyboard

In the initial plan, Kaplan Hi-Toro / Amiga was supposed to produce primarily cartridges and electronic add-ons for VCS, and if successful, create a completely new console. The priorities in these plans changed somewhat when Kaplan left, and Miner came to the company with a passion for creating a console and / or computer, but the plans themselves were never canceled. Therefore, Amiga in 1983 really created a lot of original games, and also released joysticks and other equipment. The most innovative and remembered people their product was a device called Joyboard: a large and flat plastic plate on which the player could stand, leaning to the sides or forward / backward, controlling the game as a joystick. Together with Joyboard, Amiga supplied the ski simulator Mogul Maniac,and also developed two more - Surf's Up surfing simulator and Off Your Rocker sequence search game - which didn’t live up to the release. Joyboard and its related products are often described as simple tricks designed to divert attention from Amiga's real projects. In fact, Morse had high hopes for the commercial success of this part of his company; he relied on these products as a source of funding for the other part. He spent a lot of money to organize an enchanting presentation for Joyboard at the New York Toy Fair in February 1983, and briefly hired former Olympic skier Susie Schuffy, better known to her generation as “Susie Chapstick,” thanks to her long-term partnership with this brand [under which lip balm was sold].All his plans were buried by the 1983 game crisis. Peripherals and games failed miserably, which preceded the onset of the Amiga financial crisis, which I will return to later.

Chips have always been the brainchild of Jay Miner. In the early days, they were known as Portia, Daphne and Agnus, and later Portia became Hollow, and Daphne Denise. And together with 68,000, they offered unprecedented audiovisual capabilities, including a 4,096-color palette and four-channel stereo sound. Their most innovative features were the so-called "Copper" and "blitter" located inside Agnus. The first of them, which was also present in its less advanced version in Atari 400 and 800, could run small programs independently of the CPU in order to change the display settings on the fly as a reaction to reaching a certain position with an electronic gun that constantly redraws the image on the monitor. This paved the way for a whole universe of new visual tricks.Blitter, however, could be programmed to copy memory blocks from one place to another with great speed, and in the process, it could also convert and combine data, again, regardless of the CPU. In the world of fast animation, this feature worked wonders. Denise, although it was not programmable in the same sense as copper and blitter, autonomously handled the task of directly displaying the image on the screen, and Paula was able to autonomously produce up to four sound samples at the same time, and also independently processed the input / output from the disk .in offline mode, it handled the task of directly displaying pictures on the screen, and Paula was able to autonomously produce up to four sound samples at the same time, and also independently processed disk I / O.in offline mode, it handled the task of directly displaying pictures on the screen, and Paula was able to autonomously produce up to four sound samples at the same time, and also independently processed disk I / O.

What was the ultimate goal of developing the Amiga chipset - a game console, a computer, an arcade machine, or all three options - the most difficult question in the tangled tangle of the company's intentions, subject to the greatest historical revisionism. Amiga fans of a later period, desperate to make their favorite platform accepted as a “serious” computer like the IBM PC or Apple Macintosh, were ashamed of its origins in the gaming industry. Because of this, they sometimes say that in fact Amiga always wanted to make a computer, and games-related plans were intended only to mislead investors and maintain financial flows. In fact, there is every reason to doubt the existence of any long-term plan. In later interviews, Miner notedthat there was a split in the company on this issue, in which Mikal - which is funny, since he would later receive the status of a platform luminary - was on the side of "investors", campaigning for the release of an inexpensive game console, and others, in particular, Dale Luck and Karl Sassenrat, wanted to make an Amiga computer. Miner himself stated that he imagined a console that could be expanded to a real computer by adding an optional keyboard and disk drive (Amiga had similar plans for Atari VCS in the form of a device called Amiga Power Module - another project buried by the collapse of the video game market). About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.since he would later receive the status of a platform luminary - he was on the side of “investors”, campaigning for the release of an inexpensive game console, while others, in particular, Dale Luck and Karl Sassenrat, wanted to make an Amiga computer. Miner himself stated that he imagined a console that could be expanded to a real computer by adding an optional keyboard and disk drive (Amiga had similar plans for Atari VCS in the form of a device called Amiga Power Module - another project buried by the collapse of the video game market). About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.since he would later receive the status of a platform luminary - he was on the side of “investors”, campaigning for the release of an inexpensive game console, while others, in particular, Dale Luck and Karl Sassenrat, wanted to make an Amiga computer. Miner himself stated that he imagined a console that could be expanded to a real computer by adding an optional keyboard and disk drive (Amiga had similar plans for Atari VCS in the form of a device called Amiga Power Module - another project buried by the collapse of the video game market). About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.wanted to make an Amiga computer. Miner himself stated that he imagined a console that could be expanded to a real computer by adding an optional keyboard and disk drive (Amiga had similar plans for Atari VCS in the form of a device called Amiga Power Module - another project buried by the collapse of the video game market). About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.wanted to make an Amiga computer. Miner himself stated that he imagined a console that could be expanded to a real computer by adding an optional keyboard and disk drive (Amiga had similar plans for Atari VCS in the form of a device called Amiga Power Module - another project buried by the collapse of the video game market). About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.About the opinion of Dave Morse, who left us in 2007, there are no records at all. One can suspect that he was simply in the “wait-and-see” mode for most of 1983.

It is only clear that the first Amiga machine that they were going to present to the public was not so much a prototype of a real or potential computer or game console as the smallest possible platform for demonstrating the capabilities of the Amiga chipset. Amiga Lorraine, named after Morse’s wife, began to take shape at the end of 1983, during the crazy mess that preceded the Winter Consumer Electronics Show [Winter CES], which was due to begin on January 4. And any crazy scientist could be proud of the contraption created by them. Miner and the team created a chipset, which will ultimately be minimized and embodied in silicon, from ready-made electronic components, as a result of which they got a mountain of breadboards that fill the whole table, and spaghetti from wires connected in some places held together with clamps crocodiles.He did not have a keyboard or other input means, a program for him wrote a program on a workstation based on a 68000 chip called Sage IV, and then downloaded them to Lorraine and launched it through a cable connection. All this mess was extremely difficult to maintain, when the wires periodically fell off, parts were constantly overheating, and the circuit seemed to be completely randomly short. But when everything worked, it was the first tangible demonstration of Miner's incredible project. The team packed this whole thing and - very carefully! - brought to Las Vegas to her first exhibition.All this mess was extremely difficult to maintain, when the wires periodically fell off, parts were constantly overheating, and the circuit seemed to be completely randomly short. But when everything worked, it was the first tangible demonstration of Miner's incredible project. The team packed this whole thing and - very carefully! - brought to Las Vegas to her first exhibition.All this mess was extremely difficult to maintain, when the wires periodically fell off, parts were constantly overheating, and the circuit seemed to be completely randomly short. But when everything worked, it was the first tangible demonstration of Miner's incredible project. The team packed this whole thing and - very carefully! - brought to Las Vegas to her first exhibition.

R.J. Mikal and Dale Luck, as well as other team members, worked feverishly to create a set of demos to be shown in the closed corner of the exhibition pavilion at CES, which could be accessed only by invitation of selected representatives of the press and industry. The hit of the whole set was a demo written by Mikal and Luck right at the exhibition for one feverish night hackathon, backed up by a “pack of six cans of warm beer”, where a large soccer ball jumped up and down - it was the prototype of one of the most famous computer demos of all time. A bouncing soccer ball will soon become the unofficial symbol of Amiga.

This and other demos were impressive, but the iron, obviously, was still in its infancy, and he was still very far from the product ready for sale. Many observers were openly skeptical that this mountain of breadboards and wires could be turned into the three chips promised by the company, and that these chips, which would inevitably turn out to be complex, could be produced at a fairly low price. Two obvious areas of application for the chipset, for the game console and for arcade machines, met with enormous resistance to the video game crisis that occurred the previous year. No one wanted to mess with this market. Bringing another computer, incompatible with anything else, to the market, no matter how impressive its hardware was, also seemed a risky business. Most visitors were impressedbut reacted to suggestions evasively. Was there a place in the world for, even incredible, Amiga technology? That was the question. Interestingly, of all the glossy magazines, only Creative Computing bothered to write something about Lorraine in sufficient detail, announcing with enthusiasm that "this is the most amazing offer of graphics and sound in the consumer market." However, the same journalist, John Anderson, noted how important it will be to ensure the compatibility of the resulting Amiga computer with the IBM PC, which, without a doubt, will dominate the industry.that "this is the most amazing offer of graphics and sound in the consumer market." However, the same journalist, John Anderson, noted how important it will be to ensure the compatibility of the resulting Amiga computer with the IBM PC, which, without a doubt, will dominate the industry.that "this is the most amazing offer of graphics and sound in the consumer market." However, the same journalist, John Anderson, noted how important it will be to ensure the compatibility of the resulting Amiga computer with the IBM PC, which, without a doubt, will dominate the industry.

The presentation of Amiga to the general public as a whole went with a mixed result, having received a bunch of impressed observers and not a single new investor. And this was a serious problem, because Amiga quickly ran out of finances. Products intended for VCS were not only not sold, but also absorbed millions for development, so the financial condition of the company became more and more desperate every week. It became clear that in no way would they be able to find the money to turn Lorraine into a finished computer - or anything finished at all - and to advertise it independently. It seemed that they had three options: to license the technology to third parties with deeper pockets, to sell completely to another company, or to leave the business. And while the founders of the company mortgaged their homes in order to have at least some means,and Morse begged lenders to wait with repayments, the only company seriously interested in the Amiga chipset was the one Jay Miner would least like to deal with: Atari.

Atari longtime employee Mike Albo first visited Amiga long before CES in November 1983. He was shown an overview of the possibilities of the chipset that existed only on paper, and, knowing well the capabilities of Jay Miner, he expressed cautious interest. After the first real acquaintance with the capabilities of the chipset at CES, Atari was seriously interested in buying this incredible technology from the company, which seemed to be in their power, and desperately wanted to make a deal that allowed it to stay afloat a little more. With no other realistic options, Dave Morse made the best deal possible with Atari, given the weak bargaining power. Atari was not interested in buying a finished car, whether it be a game console or a computer. They needed only that wonderful chipset. Preliminary Protocol of Intent,signed by Amiga and Atari on March 7, 1984, reflects this fact.

This protocol, as well as Atari's $ 500,000 transferred by Atari to Amiga's account under the protocol, will lead to legal confusion that will last for years. The specific things contained in this protocol, as well as, which is equally important, what was not in it, cause misunderstanding to this day. Fortunately, the original agreement was preserved and was posted on the Internet by Atari historians Marty Goldberg and Kurt Wendel. I carefully studied this document, enlisting the support of a couple of acquaintances who are better versed in issues of law and finance. And since it is very important for the history of Amiga, and also experienced so many misunderstandings, I think it's worth taking the time to study it in more detail.

The document describes the proposed agreement, according to which Atari receives an exclusive license to use the chipset in home gaming consoles and arcade machines, for an unlimited time after signing the final agreement. The agreement also gives Atari a non-exclusive license for the use of chips in a personal computer, taking into account the fact that Atari can first offer an add-on kit that turns the game console into a full-fledged computer in June 1985, and then a separate computer made on these chips only in March 1986. Before and after the creation of the Atari computer, Amiga has the right to make its own computer, however, it can only be sold through special computer sellers, and not through large retail chains such as Sears or Toys 'R' Us. Atari, accordingly, will limit sales to large retailers.Obviously, it was intended to offer Amiga products in the professional market, and Atari - in the market of gamers and ordinary users. Atari will pay Amiga royalties in the amount of $ 2 for one computer or game console containing a chipset, and $ 15 for each slot machine. Keep in mind that all the conditions described were merely null and void proposals, on the basis of which it was supposed to conclude a final agreement - unless certain events occurred that would automatically lead to the consolidation of these proposals, which I will discuss later.and $ 15 for each slot machine. Keep in mind that all the conditions described were merely null and void proposals, on the basis of which it was supposed to conclude a final agreement - unless certain events occurred that would automatically lead to the consolidation of these proposals, which I will discuss later.and $ 15 for each slot machine. Keep in mind that all the conditions described were merely null and void proposals, on the basis of which it was supposed to conclude a final agreement - unless certain events occurred that would automatically lead to the consolidation of these proposals, which I will discuss later.

Now we turn to the parts of the document that have legal force from the moment of its signing. Since Amiga needed finances and she still had to carry out a significant amount of work before the chipset was completed, Atari agreed to give her an immediate “loan” in the amount of $ 500,000, which, however, they did not particularly expect. It was then assumed that Atari would continue to give Amiga more loans in line with its goals: $ 1 million to sign the final agreement; $ 500,000 each, when each of the three chips will be finished and transferred to Atari ready for production. And here everything is a little confused: upon the delivery of all three chips and the signing of the agreement, Amiga's outstanding loan obligations will turn into Atari's purchase of Amiga shares in the equivalent of $ 3 million.If the final agreement is not signed by March 31 - just three weeks after signing the preliminary - Amiga will have to return $ 500,000 by June 30, along with interest in the amount of 120% of the current key rate of Bank of America, unless until that moment other agreements concluded. If Amiga is unable or unwilling to do so, the preliminary agreement will automatically become a legal contract, with one important change - Atari will not have to pay any royalties, and the license “will be considered fully paid in exchange for terminating the loan.” Then the Amiga chipset will play the role of collateral for the loan, and its drawings and technical specifications will be kept on deposit by a third party (Bank of America).together with interest in the amount of 120% of the current key rate of the Bank of America, unless otherwise agreed otherwise. If Amiga is unable or unwilling to do so, the preliminary agreement will automatically become a legal contract, with one important change - Atari will not have to pay any royalties, and the license “will be considered fully paid in exchange for terminating the loan.” Then the Amiga chipset will play the role of collateral for the loan, and its drawings and technical specifications will be kept on deposit by a third party (Bank of America).together with interest in the amount of 120% of the current key rate of the Bank of America, unless otherwise agreed otherwise. If Amiga is unable or unwilling to do so, the preliminary agreement will automatically become a legal contract, with one important change - Atari will not have to pay any royalties, and the license “will be considered fully paid in exchange for terminating the loan.” Then the Amiga chipset will play the role of collateral for the loan, and its drawings and technical specifications will be kept on deposit by a third party (Bank of America).with one major change, Atari will not have to pay any royalties, and the license will “be considered fully paid in exchange for terminating the loan.” Then the Amiga chipset will play the role of collateral for the loan, and its drawings and technical specifications will be kept on deposit by a third party (Bank of America).with one major change, Atari will not have to pay any royalties, and the license will “be considered fully paid in exchange for terminating the loan.” Then the Amiga chipset will play the role of collateral for the loan, and its drawings and technical specifications will be kept on deposit by a third party (Bank of America).

There are other technical features in the contract - for example, Atari will be able to bill Amiga for time and other resources, if Amiga does not manage to finish the development of the chipset, because of which Atari engineers will be forced to do this - then, it seems to me, the most I described important parts of it (skeptics may refer to my summary of the contract or to the full text of the original). What is striking in the first place, this contract cannot be called a profitable agreement for Amiga. Paying only $ 2 for a console or computer, when their main component is a paid chipset, seems too mean. For Atari, this contract would mean the theft of the century. Why would Morse sign such a terrible deal?

The obvious answer is that he was in despair. Perhaps it’s quite dangerous to speak out about the motivation of the person who left us who never made public comments on this issue, circumstantial evidence suggests that this contract has become a last resort, a way to quickly get $ 500,000 in hand, to stay afloat a little more and hope for a miracle. Morse did not sign the final agreement until March 31 - a risky step - and gave Atari the right to automatically use the Amiga chipset, without having to pay her a cent more if Morse fails to agree on something else or find another way to return $ 500,000 with interest up to 30 June. Carl Sassenrath once describedMorse as his "role model for cool business." Looks like he really had iron nerves. And, surprisingly, he still waited for his miracle.

The second part of

Wars around the 68000 chip, part 1: Amiga Lorraine

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