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The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
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Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer with a range of video games and creative software. The bestselling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The 1990 Amiga 3000 includes a minor update to the graphics hardware via the Enhanced Chip Set, also used in subsequent models.

The Amiga established a niche in audio and multimedia. The first music tracker was written for the Amiga, and it became a popular platform music creation. The 3D rendering packages LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces (a predecessor to Blender) originated on the system. The 1990 third-party Video Toaster made the Amiga a comparatively low cost option for video production. In later years, the Amiga started losing market share to IBM PC compatibles and video game consoles, eventually leading to Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 and then the end of Amiga. Commodore is estimated to have sold an 4.85 million Amigas. Various groups have since released spiritual successors. (Full article...)

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Selected article

Workbench is the graphical file manager of AmigaOS developed by Commodore International for their Amiga line of computers. Workbench provides the user with a graphical interface to work with file systems and launch applications. It uses a workbench metaphor (in place of the more common desktop metaphor) for representing file system organisation.

The Amiga Workbench uses the metaphor of a workbench (i.e. a workbench of manual labor), rather than the now standard desktop metaphor, for representing file system organization. The desktop itself is called Workbench and uses the following representations: drawers (instead of folders) for directories, tools for executable programs, projects for data files; and a trash can as a folder intended to contain deleted files. These representations may be considered somewhat unusual by a modern user, but at the time there were no commonly accepted metaphors and Commodore chose to use different idioms from their competitors (Apple had already pursued legal action to prevent other software companies from offering graphical user interfaces similar to its own). Additionally, in 1985 computer graphics capabilities were more common in high end "workstations", and the Amiga was a multimedia/'creative' machine rather than an office machine, which may have provided further inspiration for the metaphor. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

RJ Mical signing an Amiga 1200 for the 25th anniversary of the Amiga computer, 2011
RJ Mical signing an Amiga 1200 for the 25th anniversary of the Amiga computer, 2011
Robert J. "RJ" Mical (born 26 January) is a pioneer and an influential figure in the video game industry. He created video games at Williams Electronics, helped invent the Amiga computer, co-invented the Atari Lynx and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer with Dave Needle. He was the central developer of Amiga's Intuition user interface and was well known at early Amiga gatherings. Mical was the Chief Architect of the Fathammer mobile game engine. From 2005 to 2011 he worked as a Senior Manager at Sony on the PlayStation product line. Since 2011 he has been working on software games and inventions with his own company, Arjinx. In 2012 he started working on game technology for Google. According to Mical he created his first electronic game, a tic-tac-toe player, when he was 14. (Full article...)
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Amiga Assampler
Amiga Assampler
Credit: HenningThielemann
Screenshot of Amiga Assampler.
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Did you know...

... that AROS implements the AmigaOS API in a portable open-source operating system?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
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Pen & Earth
Pen & Earth


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