I’ve been thinking a lot about how much Apple and Microsoft have sucked up all the air in the room regarding the history of microcomputers. Docudramas, biographies, and news stories exalt the dominance of the two major corporations creating our PC environments.
What culture needs is the larger picture, the fuller story of the way these machines entered into our world. I remembered a series of articles I had read over a decade ago regarding the history of Amiga Computers. Just like the mythos around Woz and Jobs in the garage, wiring up the first Apple machines, the story of the Amiga is charged with wonder and marvels.
I rediscovered those articles today, and discovered that the series has tripled in length since I first read them. Since they’re spread throughout the site, I’ve compiled the “chapters”, as it were, in order here for easy reading. Hats of to Jeremy Reimer of Ars Technica for writing the (not quite a) book on this world-shaking company!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/07/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-1/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/08/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-2/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/08/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-3/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/amiga-history-4-commodore-years/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/12/amiga-history-part-5/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/02/amiga-history-part-6/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/05/amiga-history-part-7/
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/06/shadow-of-the-16-bit-beast-an-amiga-gaming-retrospective/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-demo-scene/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-video-toaster/
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-10-the-downfall-of-commodore/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-12-red-vs-blue/
As an early PC adopter, I remember the Amiga, but also the Commodore 64 that I bought in 1984, which I still have down in my basement, as well as the VIC-20, both of which preceded the Amiga. The C-64 and VIC-20 sold more computers than the Amiga did. Commodore International was started in Canada and it is the story of that early PC company that needs to be told. See –
https://www.7dayshop.com/blog/8-computers-from-the-80s/