In 1982, Amiga Corporation developed "Lorraine", a computer named after the company's president's wife. Amiga incorporated a 16-bit 68000 chip as Lorraine's CPU. Lorraine presented two dedicated graphics and sound chips.

When Lorraine was introduced to the Consumer Electronics Show on January 4, 1984, the development costs that Amiga had dedicated to her had exceeded her resources. After Atari showed interest in buying the company, Commodore intervened to overcome the console giant and renamed the Amiga system.

The commodore made some minor changes to the Amiga. The system memory has been upgraded to 256 KB and the console has been redesigned to accommodate the storage of the keyboard beneath it. The Commodore finally launched the Amiga 1000 in July 1985 at a retail price of $ 1,295. It was compatible with home television sets and could be used for video editing. It had a palette of 4,096 colors and was capable of 320 x 200 resolution. The system also featured a 3.5-inch floppy drive that could store up to 880 KB externally.

The "Paula" sound chip allowed the programs to be heard in stereo. The system featured two mouse / controller ports. Peripherals such as joysticks, lightweight pens or gaming paddles can be used with the system. Even in its early stages of release, the Commodore chose to promote the Amiga as a gaming machine.

The "kickstart" was a small part of the operating system that was contained in the ROM. The Amiga performed a kickstart or initiated the loading of the operating system itself every time the computer was activated. To fully load the operating system at 3.5 inch AmigaDos disk needed to be inserted into the external drive. Every time the computer was shut off, the operating system was lost from memory and needed to be reloaded.

The Amiga 1000 was capable of "multitasking." A concept similar to Windows 95, multitasking allowed users to keep two or more programs open at one time and instantly switch between them. The "Workbench" was the Amiga's file manager. Workbench allowed users to open windows and run programs.

In 1987, Commodore released the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 2000. The Amiga 500 was a compact system that became the best selling computer in the Amiga line. Among the improvements Commodore incorporated into the Amiga 500 were an updated operating system (AmigaDOS 1.2), 512KB RAM and a bigger keyboard. The Amiga 2000 featured a new computer case design, expansion slots and a CPU slot for future processor upgrades. It was powered by a 68000 microprocessor.

The Amiga 3000 improved on the Amiga 2000 by offering new Zorro III expansion slots, an integrated SCSI interface and a built-in hard drive. It used a 68030 32-bit microprocessor and a new version of Workbench.

In 1992 Commodore released the Amiga 600. Commodore promoted the system as a video game console with a keyboard. It quickly vanished from store shelves. Later that year Commodore released the Amiga 4000 and the Amiga 1200. The 4000 featured the speedy 68040 processor. It could display up to 256,000 colors on-screen at once. The 1200 was a compact system that combined the CPU, keyboard and disk drive into a single unit. It was similar in design to the Amiga 500. It used the 68020 processor and could run at 14.28MHz.

In October 1993 Commodore introduced the Amiga CD 32. This 32-bit CD-ROM based add-on featured a palette of 17 million colors. It retailed for $ 400 and had a built-in catalog of software because it was compatible with game titles for the failed Commodore CDTV multimedia system. Timing for the CD 32's release was not perfect. Several other CD-ROM based gaming consoles, like the 3DO and Sega CD, were released at the same time and flooded the market. The Amiga CD 32 system never gained a following.

Unfortunately, software developers rarely released programs that displayed the full potential of Amiga's impressive graphics. The system was much more technologically advanced than its competitors. Finally, the Amiga was seen as an expensive game console and, as software support declined, so did sales. On April 29, 1994, Commodore announced that it was in the process of closing the company.

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