History of The Amiga - Amiga Corporation

Amiga Corporation

The Amiga's chipset was designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation during the end of the first home video game boom. Wary of industrial espionage, the developers codenamed the chipset "Lorraine" during development. Development of the Lorraine project were done using an Sage IV (m68k/8 MHz/1MB) machine, nicknamed "Agony". Amiga Corp. funded the development of the Lorraine by manufacturing game controllers, and from an initial bridge loan from Atari Inc. while seeking further investors. The chipset was to be used in a video game machine, but following the video game crash of 1983, the Lorraine was repurposed to be a graphics-focused personal computer. Steve Jobs was shown the original prototype for the first Amiga and said there was "too much hardware". He was in the midst of work on the Macintosh at the time and was reportedly worried that the Amiga would surpass his plans. However, before Amiga Corp. could bring the machine to market, the company encountered financial difficulties. Atari was early favored to be sold the technology, but in a "surprising" development, the company was purchased by Commodore.