WEBVTT - The Birth of Amiga 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.800 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.520 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.600 How Stuff Works and I love all things tech and 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:22.680 tech stuff. Listener Matt asked if I might do an 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.759 episode or two, or maybe three or four about the 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:30.440 Amiga series of personal computers, and Amiga has a pretty 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:36.280 fascinating history with lots of ups and significant downs, And 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.480 I've definitely touched on Amiga a few times and episodes 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.640 about the early PC era, as well as the episodes 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:47.479 I've done about Commodore because Commodore acquired Amiga. But this 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.519 computer line deserves its own set of episodes because it's 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:55.560 it's not just fascinating from a technology standpoint, but it 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.120 plays into a lot of other things that were happening 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:02.280 in tech in the eighties that are also really important 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:05.200 and interesting all on their own. So the story is 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.319 likely going to take a few episodes to tell because 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.040 of how complex it is and how much the Amiga's 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.760 story plays into these other stories of other companies and 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.360 big events that were happening in the personal computer and 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.240 video game industries. But I think That's part of what 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:22.959 makes this hall fascinating because it gives you an opportunity 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.480 to understand some of those other topics from a new 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.480 angle within the context of Amiga. So I know it's 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:32.600 going to be at least three episodes because I've got 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:37.320 two to go right now. Probably gonna be four, we'll see. Also, 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.319 if you really want a true deep dive into the 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.560 history of Amiga, because this is peanuts compared to what 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.400 some folks have done, and if you want to know 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.520 more about all the people involved with Amiga, I have 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.920 a recommendation for you. There's a website called ours Technico. 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:59.480 It's one of my favorite websites, especially for technology, and 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:03.320 over it Ours Technica, a software developer named Jeremy Reymer 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.040 has written what I considered to be the definitive history 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:12.480 of Amiga. It's so far a twelve part article series, 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.520 and the very first article published on August first, two 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:21.639 thousand seven. The most recent part of this series published 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.520 on March twenty nine, two thousand eighteen. So it's a 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.680 series of articles that have spanned more than a decade now. 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.280 When I pulled this twelve part series over into notes 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:34.760 so that I could print it, out. It was about 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:39.080 seventy five pages and the word count was around forty 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.640 two five words. So while I'm going to be talking 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:46.440 about Amiga for several episodes and you still want more, 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.080 that's where you need to go. There's also a couple 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.440 of spinoff articles I did not include in my notes, 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.600 but they are related to Amiga. So if you're really fascinated, 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.280 that's the place to go, I would say. So the 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.280 Amiga it was one of the lines of computers that 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.760 emerged in the early nineteen eighties, back before things had 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.040 really shaken out, so that they were essentially a face 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:13.919 off between Apple and IBM, and then later on various 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:19.880 IBMBC clone manufacturers, and then later still Microsoft, so it 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.720 was always Apple versus IBM, then IBM clones, and then 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.600 Microsoft in particular. But back in those days, there were 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:31.640 a lot of different competing computers that were on the market, 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:34.680 and I've talked about those in previous shows. There was 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.680 the TRASH eighty or the TRS eighty from Radio Shack 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:42.320 Slash Tandy. There was the t I ninety nine Slash 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:46.720 four from Texas Instruments. There was the various computers from Commodore, 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.720 including the Commodore sixty four, which was the best selling 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:53.560 PC of all time, and those were all in that 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:57.880 same space that were there when Apple had its Apple 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.520 to come out, and before even the IBM personal computer 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:06.520 had shown up. J Minor is often credited as being 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.960 the father of Amiga. J Minor was born in Prescott, Arizona, 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.400 on May thirty one, nineteen thirty two, and as a 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.880 kid he became interested in electronics. He enrolled in San 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.120 Diego State College, and while he was in college, there 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.839 was an enormous event that happened. North Korea invaded South Korea, 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:30.680 precipitating the Korean War that happened on June twenty, nineteen fifty. 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.520 So J. Minor would then go and enlist in the 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:38.159 Coast Guard and he continued studying electronics. Once he was 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:40.920 discharged from the Coast Guard, he moved back to California 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.599 with his wife. He had had met a woman and 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.120 married her in nineteen fifty two, and then he enrolled 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.960 at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.599 a degree in electrical engineering in nineteen fifty eight, with 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:57.600 an area of focus in designing generators and servo motors. 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.720 Kind of interesting but his first gig, according to an 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.920 interview that he gave to the magazine Amiga User International 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.800 back in was to develop a computer control console with 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.560 a video display. Even though his expertise, at least a 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:19.640 scholarly expertise, was in generators and servo motors, so he 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.680 had to go back to teaching himself. He started to 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:26.440 read from books and learn logic design and how to 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.160 lay out transistor circuits. But he said the nice thing 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.560 was that in those days it wasn't too complicated to 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:37.720 learn from a book. You could still actually buy books 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.000 and become self taught and be able to work in 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:45.160 that space. Miners resume after college included several companies, including 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.919 fledgling ones that were sort of a sign of the 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.400 future for California and technology and kind of a a 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:56.480 foreshadowing of the birth of Silicon Valley. And j. Minor 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.920 found he really liked designing electronics. He wasn't as interest 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.599 it in other parts of engineering, and so he never 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.960 really felt tied down to any one employer if there 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.480 was another interesting opportunity to do design work on the horizon, 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.440 so he kind of hopped run company to company. In 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.119 nineteen seventy four, one of Miner's friends, a guy named 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.760 Harold Lee, convinced Minor to come and check out the 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.720 company that Harold Lee was working for. He was an 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.360 engineer for a little company called Atari. Now, Atari is 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.840 gonna end up being a very important part of the 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:34.480 Amiga story. Nolan Bushnell had founded Atari in nineteen seventy 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.559 two after he had designed an early arcade game called 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.760 Computer Space. The company at that time was known for 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.719 building arcade games like Pong and Space Race. Minor would 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.920 design components for many of Atari's early arcade games, and 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.920 then he became the lead chip designer of a new 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.960 project in nineteen seventy five, and that project's goal was 0:06:56.000 --> 0:07:00.719 to create a reprogrammable gaming machine. Now, up to this point, 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.799 all the gaming machines were custom built for a specific game. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.760 The circuitry of the machine was the game. But in 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.200 the phase of competition, Atari wanted to create a gaming 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.400 machine that could accept some form of media, which would 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.480 turn out to be cartridges, and run that media interchangeably 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.520 so that you could switch out between games using the 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:28.320 same hardware. This project would evolve into the video computer 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:33.160 system the VCS, also known as the Atari twenty hundred 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:37.120 one of the challenging aspects of building out this kind 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.480 of computer was keeping the costs low enough to make 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.760 it a marketable consumer device, which meant finding the right 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.360 processor to act as the CPU for the machine. It 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.520 needed to be powerful enough to do the job, but 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.280 not so expensive as to drive the price of the 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.040 final product out of the market range, and ultimately Atari 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:01.559 settled on the most technology six five O two chip. 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.440 And to be fair, I say CPU CPU is being 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.280 very generous for these video game consoles, but it was 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.960 serving that purpose. Now. The six two chip was not 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.240 particularly powerful, it's an eight bit processor, but Miner's design 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.200 got the most out of its capabilities and made the 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:25.280 VCS a viable product. Not just viable, it became the 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:29.760 runaway success of the late nineteen seventies. The at E 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:34.360 vcs would debut in nineteen and by the next year 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:38.920 it was already they must have item on everyone's list. 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.719 J Minor would move on to design new products for 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.120 at riis uh line, and this time they were was 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.520 focusing on personal computers, which were also emerging at this time. 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.840 In nine there are only a few personal computers that 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.840 were available on the market outside of the kits that 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.560 you could purchase to put to your own computer together. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.080 So Apple had been founded in nineteen and had introduced 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.160 the Apple two in nine at Radio Shack Slash Tandy 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.880 had the TRS eighty and seventy seven, Commodore had the 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.800 PET or PET did not yet have the Commodore sixty 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.839 four that would come later. Digital Research had created the 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:25.800 CP slash M Operating Systems style UH interface, which Bill 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.360 Gates would later leverage when his company would create MS DOSS. 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.320 But no one knew where the industry was going yet. 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.960 It was slowly transitioning from the realm of hobbyists and 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:41.839 bleeding edge adopters to mainstream consumers. J Minor would use 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.800 the six five O two chip as the main microprocessor 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.920 for a pair of computers from Matari. They were the 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:51.240 four hundred and the eight hundred, and as you might guess, 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.240 the eight hundred was a more powerful computer than the 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.440 four hundred. The Atari computers could display a maximum of 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:02.160 forty colors on a screen simultaneously, which today obviously is nothing, 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.600 but back then it left the nearest competitor, which would 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.640 have been Apple at that time, in the dust. J 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.720 Minor designed chips to handle sound and graphics as well, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.800 something that would foreshadow a future era of expansion cards. 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.559 They were meant to do the same thing that one 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.960 really take effect until the nineties. In Nolan Bush Now 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:30.000 sold his company to Warner Communications. Ray Cassar, the new 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:34.040 CEO of Atari, would clash with the company's programmers in 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.680 a big way. The programmers wanted to share in the 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:41.679 success of their work. They wanted royalties, but ray Cassar refused, 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.280 and in addition, Atari chose to write off the costs 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.679 of developing the four hundred and the eight hundred systems 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.200 up front, so all the costs of developing went right 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.960 into the budget at the front of it, instead of 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.280 being distributed across the lifetime of the four hundred and 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.360 the eight hundred. That meant that on the books, it 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.320 looked like the company had not met its profit goals 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.959 and because of that, it was not going to trigger 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.079 bonus payments. Programmers were not going to get paid bonuses 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.000 because at least on paper, Atari was just barely eking 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.080 out of profit, when in reality you could argue that 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.800 it's because they frontloaded all of the development costs. At 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:27.040 the very beginning of the year, some of the programmers 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.040 felt that they were being cheated, that they were being abused, 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:34.000 and people began to leave Atari. One of those programmers 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.199 was a guy named Larry Kaplan, and he will also 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.720 become very important in the Amiga story in just a moment. 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:43.160 But upon the four hundred and eight hundred release, Atari 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.400 did something a little weird. The computers, which were capable 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:50.160 of playing pretty neat games for that era, were not 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.200 marketed as multi purpose machines that could do gaming because 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:58.320 Atari did not want to cannibalize their console sales, and 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:00.559 so the four hundred and eight hundred were keted as 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:05.080 serious machines meant for serious stuff like business and academics. 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.480 Despite limiting the marketing reach for the product, the computer 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:11.800 models sold pretty well. And here's a fun fact. The 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.200 Atari four D PC would serve as the innards for 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:19.880 ataris fifty two hundred console, the successor to the A twenty. Sure, 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.520 but the software written for the two platforms was not 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.360 really compatible. All right, I've got more to say about 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.840 the era that would launch the Amiga, but first let's 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:40.880 take a quick break to thank our sponsor. After the 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.080 four hundred and the eight hundred, j Minor wanted to 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.559 move forward and really had his eye on a different microprocessor, 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:51.000 and this one was from Motorola, not most technologies. It 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.320 was the sixty eight thousand, So the six five oh 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.839 two was an eight bit micro processor, but the sixty 0:12:56.920 --> 0:12:59.920 eight thousand was a sixteen slash thirty two bit Mike 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.520 grow processor, meaning it could handle much more complicated processes 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.200 than the six five oh two, and it was being 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:08.960 used in micro computers and would become the chip that 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:12.960 would power Apple's Macintosh in the mid nineteen eighties. So 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:16.480 J Miner pitched a computer system to Atari management that 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:19.080 would rely on the sixty eight thousand chip. It would 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.840 be the most advanced computer, especially in terms of graphics 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.400 and sound systems. It would be able to play incredible games, 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:32.080 but Attari management shut him down. In addition, Attari was 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.600 starting to do the same thing to engineers that it 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.040 had done to programmers previously, meaning the company was refusing 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:40.840 to pay out bonuses, and J. Minor did not want 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.480 to keep doing the same thing, that is, designing systems 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.360 for the six five oh two, and he was frustrated 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.160 his voice wasn't being heard. He felt that the company 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.640 wasn't valuing his work. He didn't like the fact that 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:53.920 he wasn't gonna get paid his bonus, so he decided 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.480 to put on his walk and shoes and he left 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.840 the company. So after he left Atari, j Minor joined 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:06.240 another company called z Mast. This company made special microprocessor 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:10.160 chips for specific types of products, and the specific type 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.680 of product that Minor worked on were pacemakers. So he 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.120 worked with z Mast for three years and in nineteen 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:20.320 eight two he got a call from Larry Caplan and 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.400 that was that Atari programmer I had mentioned earlier who 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.800 had left Atari in a huff in nineteen seventy nine. 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:30.280 After Atari, Larry Caplan had gone on to join a 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.760 brand new company called Activision. In fact, he joined so 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.000 early that typically we call him a co founder of Activision, 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:42.880 although Encyclopedia Britannica actually says that he was not a 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.720 true co founder but joined shortly after the founding of 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.920 the company. But he helped define that company. And I'll 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.000 have to do a full episode or maybe a short 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:56.000 series of episodes about Activision someday, because that company has 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.760 continued to be incredibly important in the video game world. 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:03.000 But the original incarnation of Activision was meant to be 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.040 a place where developers would get recognition for their work, 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:13.120 including getting credited on game boxes and receiving royalties as 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:15.720 a result of good sales for their titles. And these 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:20.120 are good things, but Larry Kaplan got disenchanted with this 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:23.640 company in nineteen eighty two. He wanted to go into 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:28.720 developing some hardware, but Activision did not the other exact 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.160 Activision did not want to go in that direction. They 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.760 wanted to focus solely on developing game titles, and so 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.600 Kaplan would leave the company that he had joined in 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.400 nineteen seventy nine, and he reached out to J. Minor 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:42.560 to see if Minor knew of anyone who might help 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.880 him get funding to get a new business off the ground. 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:50.600 So J Minor takes Larry Caplan's call and he introduces 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:54.760 Kaplan to his own boss, Bert Braddock over at Z 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.320 Mast and together these three began to put together a 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.840 plan for Larry Caplan's new business venture. They got an 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.680 office in Santa Clara, California. They hired away a vice 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.720 president over at Tonka Toys to be the CEO of 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.720 this new company, and the plan was that J. Minor 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:17.520 would design chips for the hardware. Z Mask would take 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:21.160 the designs and build those chips, and Larry Kaplan would 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:24.360 design games to run on that hardware, and this is 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:27.000 the business they would form. They have some sort of 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.640 video game console or computer business and they would all 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:34.080 work and make money from it. They were originally called 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:38.040 this venture High Toro uh or really it was just 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.240 High Toro, I guess, because they thought it sounded kind 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:42.920 of like a high tech company, and also it sort 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.360 of paid tribute to being a company born out of Texas. 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:48.880 But this process was going to take some time putting 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.200 all this business together, and while they were working on it, 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:54.600 Larry Kaplan, the guy who was asking for this in 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.680 the first place, started to get cold feet. He might 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.040 have worried that maybe the base was getting way too 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:05.920 competitive in creating hardware for the video game world. Maybe 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:10.040 he was worried about the prospects of this business being 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.320 able to hold its own. But for whatever reason, in 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.600 late nine two he bailed on the whole plan. Not 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.359 only that, but he decided to return to Atari, the 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:23.639 company he had quit three years earlier, and apparently Nolan 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.119 Bushnell had presented a very attractive offer. So Larry Kaplan 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.359 was out, and that left j Minor and z Mast 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:34.240 holding the ball. So Minor was asked to serve as 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.439 the chief engineer for High Toro, and he agreed to 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:41.560 do it under two important conditions. The first was that 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.199 he wanted to create a video game machine around the 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:49.000 sixty eight thousand Motorola chip, and the second was that 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:52.360 the video game machine should also be a computer, not 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.800 just a video game console. Now, this was in late 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.399 nine two, and the landscape was very different from what 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.960 it would be in just one year. In late video 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:08.280 game consoles were seen as money printing devices. There was 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.040 just a ton of cash in video games. Companies were 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.320 rolling in it, and everyone at the time was convinced 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:18.600 that the party was never going to stop. So investors 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.560 were willing to get behind something like a video game console. 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.200 But personal computers, on the other hand, were still seen 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:29.240 as a luxury product that very few people owned. Investors 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:33.720 were less keen to get behind those products, so the 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:38.639 company decided. High Toro decided that the wisest decision was 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:43.119 to hitch High Toro first as a video game console company, 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.880 that the product they were making was a video game console, 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.679 and then just kind of hide or ignore all the 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:53.360 computer elements when it came to trying to get investors. 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.879 J Minor had one standard that he personally wanted to 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.720 meet with this new machine. He wanted make a personal 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.680 computer that would be capable of running a really good 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.359 flight simulator on it. He had a friend named al 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.879 Pound at a company called Singer Link who had shown 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:14.040 Minor military grade flight simulators, and Minor thought these things 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.440 were amazing, So he wanted to create a machine that 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:19.800 could run something like that on your desktop without having 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.840 to have the multimillion dollar equipment to do it. Now, 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.080 that meant that Minor needed to build out a computer 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.679 that could be both a stripped down video game machine 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:32.960 and expandable into a high performance computer. Now. J. Minor 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:36.359 was a bit frustrated that they weren't just taking the 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.119 kid gloves off and going toe to toe with IBM, 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.840 because IBM was just at this point trying to get 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:47.640 established in the home computer space. They had dominated in business, 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.920 but we're just starting to get into home computers, and 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.440 Minor thought we actually have the opportunity here to take 0:19:55.520 --> 0:20:00.640 the lead. However, the general thought was that video games 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:02.840 were where the money was, and that was better to 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.680 focus on that part of the market and to let 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.880 the computer stuff come later. J Minor would eventually say 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:11.640 that was probably the right decision for the time, just 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:13.960 because it would have been very difficult to get the 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:19.199 financing the investment for going after IBM, but he still 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:21.159 said he was sad that they were never able to 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.960 jump on that because the IBM PC when it came out, 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:27.159 it was monochromatic, it was crazy expensive, it had limitations 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.320 on memory. These were all areas that miners saw as 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.320 opportunities for them to take over, but it was just 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:38.720 not meant to be from an investment standpoint. So they 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:43.200 decided to divide operations for High Toro into two big categories, 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:45.639 and J Minor would head one side, which would be 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:49.960 the chip designers and engineers the hardware experts, and they 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.919 began working on prototypes for chips to go in this 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.760 future computer, and they didn't have a way to fabricate 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.320 chips to test their designs in a way that was 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:04.000 economically feasible, so instead they first would sketch their designs 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.520 out on white boards, and then they would move to 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:09.800 build prototypes on bread boards more and that in a 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:12.679 little bit. The other side of the operations was a 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.000 video game centric part of the business. The company would 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:20.080 make peripherals for existing systems from other companies, namely the AT, 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:24.560 and they would make video games for those systems as well, 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:27.360 and this served a couple of purposes. For one thing, 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.040 it brought in some revenue while the other side was 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.000 still working on getting the internal components together for their 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:38.280 future video game system, Slash Computer for another, and almost 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.960 acted like a front for the business. C. J. Minor 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.840 was really worried that if other companies had heard that 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.959 he was working on a new personal computer design, they 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:50.879 might try to do some industrial espionage snoop in and 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.119 find out what was going on, and once they figured 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:55.840 out what J. Minor was trying to do, they might 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:59.760 try to rush their own projects through their own existing 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.720 companies and try to beat the fledgling company to market. 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:06.399 So one of the products that they made at this 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.720 time was something called the Joyboard, which looked kind of 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.520 like a foot rest, and it was actually a balance 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:16.240 board and a control system, so players would stand on 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.000 this thing and they would lean in order to control 0:22:19.040 --> 0:22:21.040 a video games like leaning to the Left and make 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:23.440 your character go to the left. And they actually made 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.560 a few games like skiing games and stuff that would 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:32.399 use this control system shortly after becoming a company to 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:38.199 really big things would change everything. I'll explain more in 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:40.399 a second, but first let's take another quick break to 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:50.960 thank our sponsor. The first thing that changed was that 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:54.600 the company Hi Toro had to swap out its name 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:58.040 because there already was a Japanese lawnmower company called Hi Toro, 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.479 and they didn't want to be confused with it, so 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:04.360 they got the brainstorming a new name for this company. 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:09.120 Minor reportedly suggested they use Amiga, which is the feminine 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:13.240 version of the Spanish word for friend, amigo. So he 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:18.600 supposedly suggested this, but also did not actually like the suggestion. 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:21.680 It was one of those things the kind of said 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:23.959 but what didn't really have a whole lot of feeling behind. 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:26.439 But no one could come up with anything better, so 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.240 they stuck with it. They made a few games for 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:33.600 the A under this company name, and they made some 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:36.160 peripherals for the video game industry, but that only worked 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.080 for a short time. And the reason I say this 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:44.520 is because in just a few months after the company 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:48.760 had been coming together in the first place, the bottom 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:51.720 fell out of the home video game market. This was 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:56.280 the infamous video game crash of nine eight three, and 0:23:56.320 --> 0:24:00.159 I've done full episodes about this, so I'm just they 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:04.040 have a super short overview here to explain what happened 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:08.320 leading up to There were a ton of companies. They 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:12.240 were all in the home video game space. You had 0:24:12.400 --> 0:24:15.359 console companies, you had in television, you had Atari, you 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:19.320 had Colleco and others that were all creating video game consoles. 0:24:19.720 --> 0:24:23.560 You had tons of third party game developers of varying 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:27.680