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28-529: In the early 1980s Jay Miner , along with other Atari staffers, became fed up with management and left the company. In September 1982, they set up another chipset project under a new company in Santa Clara, California , called Hi-Toro (which meant "high bull" to them, later renamed to Amiga ), where they could have some creative freedom. The new company's first headquarters was located in Building 7 in

56-402: A holding company , Tramel Technology, Ltd. , (a phonetic spelling of "Tramiel") and visited various US computer companies with the intention of purchasing a company for manufacturing and possible technology acquisitions. Tramiel visited Mindset (run by Roger Badersher, former head of Atari's Computer Division), and Amiga. Amiga's talks eventually fell through as Tramiel told Amiga staff that he

84-486: A 68000-based machine, code-named "Mickey", that would have used customized chips, but details were sparse. During this period a downturn started in the video game business that turned into the Video game crash of 1983 . By the end of the year, Atari was losing about $ 1 million a day, and its owner, Warner Communications , sought to sell the company. For some time, no one was interested. Meanwhile, at Commodore International

112-658: A business park at 3350 Scott Boulevard in Santa Clara. They started to create a new 68000 -based games console, codenamed Lorraine , that could be upgraded to a full-fledged computer. The initial start-up financing of Amiga Corporation was provided by three dentists in Florida, who later regained their investment once Commodore bought the company. To raise money for the Lorraine project, Amiga designed and sold joysticks and game cartridges for popular game consoles such as

140-592: A cardiac defibrillator. Miner married his wife Carolina (née Poplowski) in 1951 while attending an electronics school in Groton, Connecticut. His dog Mitchy, a cockapoo , accompanied him everywhere. While he worked at Atari, Mitchy even had her own employee ID badge with number 000, and an embossing of her paw print is inside the Amiga 1000 top cover, alongside staff signatures. Miner's personal hobbies included cultivating bonsai trees, square dancing, and camping. He

168-534: A closed decision. Jay Miner Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 – June 20, 1994) was an American integrated circuit designer, known primarily for developing graphics and audio chips for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit computers and as the "father of the Amiga ". Jay Miner received his first formal electronics education after joining the U.S. Coast Guard out of high school. Following his service he became

196-482: A fight was brewing between Jack Tramiel , the president, and Irving Gould , the primary shareholder. Tramiel was pressing the development of a 32-bit machine to replace their earlier Commodore 64 and derived machines, fearing a new generation of machines like the Apple Macintosh would render the 64 completely obsolete. The fighting continued until Tramiel was dismissed on January 13, 1984. Tramiel formed

224-432: A floppy-disk drive, the computer will reportedly sell for less than $ 1000 late this year". It turned out that Amiga was supposed to deliver the Amiga chipset to Atari Inc. on June 30, 1984, or forfeit the company and its technology. With the deadline fast approaching and still not having enough funds to finish development, the Amiga crew went on alert after having heard rumors that Tramiel was in closed negotiations to complete

252-597: A radio operator for the North Atlantic Weather Patrol who serviced meteorological duties on distant islands for three years. He returned to school to enroll in the University of California at Berkeley , for which he received a BS in EECS in 1958, focusing on electronics design. Miner first became a chip designer when he joined General Microelectronics in 1964, playing a role in the design of

280-532: A subsidiary of Commodore. Jay still owned Amiga, because of the Patents/IP, but once again grew frustrated with the management style of the company. His frustrations largely revolved around what he said was Commodore marketing executives' failure to penetrate the Amiga into the low-cost computer market. He still owned majority of Amiga. Miner's last electronics job was at the company Ventritex, operating medical instrumentation and designing chips which controlled

308-697: Is a fellow of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society , IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Communications Society . Decuir made substantial technical and editorial contributions to wired and wireless communications engineering standards, including: Decuir is a resident of Issaquah, Washington . He is married to American colorist painter Deborah L.R. "Deb" Freng, and has four children. Decuir volunteers his time to IEEE Global Humanitarian Conferences. This article about an American electrical engineer

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336-479: The Atari 2600 and ColecoVision , as well as an input device called the Joyboard , essentially a joystick the player stood on. During development in 1983, Amiga had exhausted venture capital and was desperate for more financing. Jay Miner approached his former employer, Atari, which then paid Amiga to continue development work. In return Atari was to obtain one-year exclusive use of the design. Atari had plans for

364-684: The Bulova Watch Company , but they quickly became a second source manufacturer for chips designed by other firms such as Intel, Rockwell, and MOS Technology. Due to its manufacturing of the MOS Technology 65xx series of chips, Synertek was recommended as a partner to Atari, Inc. after it had been decided to use the MOS 6507 for their upcoming Atari VCS home video game console. One of Atari's engineers, Harold Lee , had worked with Miner at Standard MicroSystems and suggested him as

392-460: The TIA but the project was altered from a video game console into what would become the Atari 8-bit computers . Due to clashes with management over this and other decisions, Miner left Atari before the release of the computers and found his way into the medical world. He worked for a company called Zymos Corporation and received two patents for a microprocessor-driven pacemaker made into a product by

420-511: The age of 62. Joseph C. Decuir Joseph C. Decuir is an American fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) who was nominated in 2015 for contributions to computer graphics and video games . Decuir was nominated to Fellowship in the IEEE based on his contribution to early video games. One of his fellow nomination sponsors was Ralph H. Baer . He

448-430: The co-founders of the company Hi-Toro. In 1979 The soon to be called Amiga was called the Lorraine. In 1980 with the hardware in hand suddenly the sole focus of Hi-Toro, (eventually renamed Amiga Corporation ). Soon, the company suffered financial difficulties. Which led it first into a temporary deal with Atari, Inc. and then acquisition by Commodore International . Miner continued to work for Amiga Corporation as

476-480: The company Intermedics Inc. called Cosmos. In 1979, Miner was approached by David Morse, Vice President from Tonka Toys about starting a new company to create video game hardware without the oversight of a large corporation. Jay Minor agreed to take control of engineering on two conditions: that the design be a computer, and that it be a 16/32-bit system, built around the Motorola 68000 CPU. They would become two of

504-479: The contract given to the now defunct Atari Inc. So instead of Amiga delivering the chipset to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $ 500,000 to Atari Corp. on Amiga's behalf (right about the time they were discovering the contract), in effect returning the funds invested into Amiga for completion of the Lorraine chipset. Seeing a chance to gain some leverage, Tramiel immediately used the situation to countersue Commodore through its new (pending) subsidiary, Amiga, which

532-523: The designer for a custom chip which would power Atari's new console. Through an arrangement with Synertek, Atari hired Miner in late 1975 to lead the chip design for the Atari VCS, primarily that of the display hardware, the TIA . Miner was also the designer on the follow-up technology intended for a successor console to the Atari VCS. The ANTIC and CTIA were created with enhanced capabilities compared to

560-561: The first calculator to use the MOS ICs, the Victor 3900 . He then worked at the companies Standard MicroSystems and American Micro Systems, at the latter of which he contributed to the design of the MP944 microprocessor . Subsequently he co-founded Synertek in 1973, where he served as the company's primary chip designer. One of the company's earliest contracts would be creating CMOS chips for

588-462: The purchase of Atari in several days. Remembering Tramiel's visit that Spring during their investor campaign, they began scrambling for another large investor. So, at around the same time that Tramiel was in negotiations with Atari, Amiga wound up entering into discussions with Commodore. The discussions ultimately led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga outright, which would (from Commodore's viewpoint) cancel any outstanding contracts — including

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616-544: Was a division of Commodore. Over the next few years many employees felt Commodore's management proved to be as annoying as Atari's, and most of the team members left, were laid off, or were fired. Meanwhile, Atari used this time to finish and release the Atari ST computer just months ahead of the release of the Amiga. Both lawsuits themselves were laid to rest in March 1987, when Commodore and Atari Corp. settled out of court in

644-474: Was a particular fan of flight simulators on computers, having been significantly inspired to design Amiga as an excellent flight simulator. He said at one time his favorite Amiga program was the game F/A-18 Interceptor published by Electronic Arts in 1988. He endured kidney problems for most of his life, according to his wife, and relied on dialysis . His sister, Joyce Beers, donated a kidney to him in 1990. He died due to complications from kidney failure at

672-498: Was done on August 13, 1984. He sought damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with that technology. The suit tried to render Commodore's new acquisition (and the source for its next generation of computers) useless and do to Commodore what they were trying to do to him. Meanwhile, at Commodore, the Amiga team (according to conversations by Curt Vendel of Atarimuseum.com directly with Dave Needle of Amiga and also with Joe Decuir of Amiga)

700-701: Was losing about $ 10,000 a day. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for his new computer, he approached Atari and entered talks. After on again/off again negotiations with Atari in May and June 1984, Tramiel had secured his funding and bought Atari's Consumer Division (which included the console and home computer departments) that July; Tramel Technology, Ltd. became Atari Corporation. Commodore filed an injunction against Tramiel and Atari, seeking to bar them from releasing their new computer. One of Tramiel's first acts after forming Atari Corp.

728-448: Was sitting in limbo for nearly the entire summer because of the lawsuit. No word on the status of the chipset, the Lorraine computer system or the team's fate was known. Finally in the fall of 1984 Commodore informed the team that the Lorraine project was active again, the chipset to be improved, the OS developed and the hardware design completed. From this point on the former Amiga Corporation

756-452: Was to fire most of Atari's remaining staff and cancel almost all ongoing projects in order to review their continued viability. It was during this time in late July that Tramiel's representatives discovered the original Atari Inc./Amiga contract. BYTE had reported in April 1984 that Amiga "is developing a 68000-based home computer with a custom graphics processor. With 128K bytes of RAM and

784-487: Was very interested in the chipset, but not the staff. In the meantime, he had set his chief engineer (former Commodore engineer Shiraz Shivji ) the task of developing a new low-cost, high-end computer system. Tramiel's design for his next generation computer was 95% completed by June (which only fueled speculation that Shivji and other engineers had taken technology with them from Commodore). Tramiel discovered that Warner Communications wanted to sell Atari, which at that point

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