A number of false starts ensued, involving “OS partners” like BeOS, QNX and even Linux, but by 2000, the Amiga looked very dead indeed.Įxcept it isn’t. Its successor, Escom AG of Germany, did the same and then Gateway 2000 took over.

The first owner of the brand, Commodore, went bust after a couple of marketing disasters. However, the Amiga’s been cursed with poor management. Amigas with NewTek’s Video Toaster special effects and video editing card are still used in TV studios. The Amiga was at one stage the world’s best-selling home PC, and thanks to genlockable graphics, it found a niche for itself as a low-cost TV graphics/titling platform (anyone still remember Max Headroom?). And, the Amiga did all this with only 512KB of RAM, a 7.14MHz CPU speed and a single floppy drive, all thanks to an ingenious hardware design featuring specialised co-processors like Agnus (address generator), Denise (display adapter) and Paula (ports and audio). On top of that, the Amiga was the first mass-market PC to offer pre-emptive multitasking with a 32-bit processor (the MC68000 CPU was 32 bits internally, with 16-bit data and 24-bit address busses) coupled to a WIMP GUI. The Amiga sounded off with 4-channel digital true stereo audio and even had voice synthesis built in. It could display 4096 colours simultaneously at a time when PCs and Macs were relegated to monochrome or 16-colour EGA. With the emphasis on games and killer graphics, the Amiga 1000 stunned the world in 1985.

Amiga os 3.9 fastata