merman wrote:NorthWay wrote:So I read a little more and find this little nugget
ST: Amiga "originally funded by Atari under Warner Bros". Creative much?
Jay Miner did get funding from Atari near the start of the Amiga project. The change of management saw Miner go to Commodore to finish the machine, and Atari sued to get the investment back while Commodore sued Atari for poaching staff who had followed Jack Tramiel to Atari. Complicated and messy, but we ended up with the two computers based around the Motorola 68000 processor...
That's not right. First, it wasn't Miner that was doing those business dealings, it was David Morse. Likewise, there was no change in management at Atari, Atari Inc. went under and was split up. Regardless, it had zero to do with Amiga going to Commodore. That was started in June '84 before Atari Inc. was split up and even then Atari's investment was for a licensing deal for the chipset. David Morse had been up front from the beginning that Amiga was going to be sold at some point and any deals made could not hinder that. What he was not up front about is when he tried to get out of the licensing deal by returning the initial investment plus interest claiming their Lorraine prototype wasn't working right and they couldn't deliver the chip set.
Additionally the mention of the lawsuits is wrong. Commodore sued three ex-Commodore employees, not Atari Corporation, for theft of trade secrets and put an injunction on them from doing any computer work for Jack. Likewise, Jack countered Commodore by suing Amiga for breach of contact with the previous Atari. The Amiga licensing contract was through Warner, but executed by Atari and stayed with Warner after the splitting of Atari Inc. After Commodore sued Shiraz and the two other engineers, the cancelled check was discovered by Jack's son Leonard and they negotiated with Warner for the contract so they could launch the lawsuit.
NorthWay wrote:merman wrote:Jay Miner did get funding from Atari near the start of the Amiga project.
Let's just forget the 3 Florida dentists who put up the initial funding of Hi-Toro, and all the employees who took out mortages on their own homes to continue financing the operation.
That is correct, though there were actually several companies invested prior to Atari Inc. This is in fact what lead to Atari Inc. doing the whole escrow demand with the initial payments. Because Amiga was so dangerously close to going under, they wanted some way to recover their initial March payment if Amiga went under before the final licensing deal was signed in late June. The other investors would of course have first dibs on any liquidation and finances. So it was agreed that all the technical documents for the chip set would set in escrow until that signing, and if Amiga would go under before then Atari would get access to the documents and chipset with no licensing or royalties needed. This somehow got morphed in to the myth of if Amiga couldn't return the money then Atari would own Amiga.
Jagfest_UK wrote:
Exactly, it's quite a well known story now. Atari originally wanted the Amiga to be a console and not a computer.
No. Not sure where you got that idea. Jay Miner (and Joe Decuir) wanted it to be a console since the idea was first proposed when they were back at Atari in '79. Ray Kassar and Atari management said no, Jay left and eventually wound up with Hi-Toro to bring that vision to fruition. From the beginning the idea was a game console with a keyboard on it that could be directly programmed on by the game designers and possibly expanded in to a full computer for the players. This later morphed in to the console being a computer. Where you might be confusing things was that Atari's licensing agreement with Amiga was to be for use in a game console and in coin only, with the game console allowed to be expanded in to a computer in '85 and then Atari allowed to release a full computer with the chipset in '86.
Speaking of Miner, here's a pic of him and his beloved dog Mitchy that used to come with him to work at Atari Inc. and Amiga (and yes, Mitchy had his own Atari badge):
