about Amiga2007/04/06

The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner (1932-1994) as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International introduced the machine to the market in 1985, after having bought Amiga Corp. The machine sported a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a sophisticated pre-emptive multitasking operating system, now known as AmigaOS. It ceased production in 1996, but efforts to revive the OS on newer hardware have continued to the present day. The name amiga was selected by the developers specifically from the Spanish word for a female friend.

Based on the Motorola 68k series of 32-bit microprocessors, the Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, and the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe. It also found a prominent role in the video production and show control business.

Considered "ahead of its time" due to being built from the ground up as a multimedia and multitasking machine, it was a less-expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh and IBM-PC. Amiga also had arguably better hardware for the price than those two alternatives. The Amiga community has accused Commodore of poor marketing, resulting in the Amiga mostly being sold as a home-gaming machine, although early Commodore advertisements attempted to place the Amiga into several different markets at the same time