WEBVTT - Building the First Amiga Computer 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.920 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.000 I'm your host, Jonathan's Trickling. I'm an executive producer here 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.200 at how Stuff Works and love all things tech. And 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.119 while my producer Tari chortals on the other side of 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.079 the glass laughing at something, I can only guess as 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:30.440 to the reasons why we're going to go back and 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.920 pick up on our story about Amiga. Now. I left 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.560 off in the last episode about talking about the simulated 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.520 hardware of the Amiga chips set with the Motorola sixty 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:47.280 eight thousand processor and the breadboard simulated chips. These enormous 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.520 circuits that would represent the teeny tiny chips that would 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.200 be on the motherboard in the future Amiga. But what 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.440 about the operating system? You really need an operating system 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.480 in order to do anything useful with a computer. Developers 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.880 would need an application programming interface or a p I 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.600 in order to build programs to run on this machine, 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.000 and users would need some sort of method to navigate 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.000 the computer system. So for Amiga, that task fell to 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.360 the team that was led by a man named Bob Parizo, 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.800 the chief of software engineering and Perizo had previously worked 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:29.080 on mainframe computers with a company called Tandem, and Tandem 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.640 made giant computer machines for the banking industry. That Prizo's 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.679 background was in machines that could handle multitasking, and so 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.920 he set out to create an operating system that would 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.959 take advantage of the hardware that J Miners team was 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:48.080 building over on the other side of Amiga, and he 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.640 wanted to be able to run multiple applications simultaneously. This 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.160 was in stark contrast with all the other home computers 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.480 at the time. They were all designed so that they 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:02.120 would run a single program at anyone given time, generally speaking, 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.480 and that if you wanted to launch a second program, 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.320 you first would have to shut down the program you 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.240 were in, or at least have it go into kind 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.040 of a sleep mode. But Pariza wanted a machine that 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:18.760 could truly run multiple applications side by side, so he 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.520 hired on several people to join his team, including Robert J. 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:27.360 Mical Or r J, Carl Sassin, rath Dale Luck, and 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:32.000 Dave Needle. All joined the Amiga team over the course 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.960 of the next year or so. M r J had 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:39.600 previously worked as a software engineer at Williams Electronics and 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.480 worked on video games and Amiga. He would build out 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.720 many of the system's basic routines for the OS that 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:48.920 that made it all possible. He was also known for 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.160 building a game for the Amiga that made use of 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.280 the joyboard peripheral that I mentioned in the last episode. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.840 That was that balance board peripheral that acted kind of 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.640 like a joystick. This game was called Zen Meditation, and 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:07.480 the goal was to sit perfectly still the high stress 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:09.799 environment of building a new computer system, and a lot 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.480 of folks would kind of give this a world try 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.200 and calm down. And when it came time to create 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.920 an error message for the Amiga that would show in 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.080 the event of a system crash, you know, you would 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:24.160 get that message kind of like the blue screen of 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.120 death known in the Windows Circles. Well, for the Amiga, 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.079 it was cheekily decided that they would call it the 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:34.600 Guru Meditation error, and that was kind of a nod 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.200 to this game that r J had made. Carl Sassin 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.160 Wrath had worked as a television cameraman when he was 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:42.400 a teenager and then would go on to get a 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.360 degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.720 of California at Davis and began working with Hewlett Packard 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.760 as a programmer and system designer, including heading up a 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.680 project team to develop a mouse driven graphical user interface 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.280 or g u I, also known as a gooey. He 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:03.320 became Amiga's manager of operating Systems. Dale Luck got a 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.360 degree in computer science from Michigan Technological University and would 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.120 join Amiga as the manager of graphics Software, and Dave 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.840 Needle worked not just on software but also on chip design, 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.160 and all four would go on to do big things 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:21.400 outside of Amiga later on. Carl Sassin Wrath was already 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.119 working on ideas for an operating system that could handle 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.400 multitasking before he had ever met Prizo. That fell right 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.000 in line with what Bob Aarrizo wanted to do with 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.719 the Amiga system. So the challenge was figuring out how 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:40.039 to do multitasking without overtaxing the CPU and chip set 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.440 and memory capabilities of this machine. They had to build 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:45.919 out a system that would make efficient use of the 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.680 resources of the computer would have Assassin Wrath developed an 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.320 approach that would later be called a microkernel. This is 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.680 the collection of features that are needed at minimum to 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.120 implement an operating system that includes stuff like in her 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:04.720 process communications, low level address space management, thread management, that 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.360 kind of thing. The concept of the micro colonel actually 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:12.040 pre dates Assassin Wrath's work, but his was a notable 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:15.919 early example. In the home computer space. Herrizo and his 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:20.160 team were determined to incorporate a graphical user interface with 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.240 this operating system. This g u I or gooey, and 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.839 this is how we access pretty much all consumer computer 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:32.120 systems these days. Files are represented as icons. Clicking on 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.880 an icon can execute a file. I know what I'm 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:36.960 saying is all old news to you guys. This is 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.479 the stuff you use every single day. But for the 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.800 programmers out there, and also for old folks like myself, 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:49.080 we remember the days of command lines. And in a 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.480 command line computer system back in the day, the way 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.680 you would run a program is you wouldn't type the 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.880 word run, typically followed by the file name that you 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.680 wanted to execute. You actually had to type all this 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.000 stuff in. You had to navigate file trees and systems 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:11.200 using typewritten commands, had to change drives this way, and 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.359 it wasn't really complicated to get the basic commands down, 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.200 but it acted as a barrier to entry. It was 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:22.120 something that intimidated people because it was rarely intuitive. It 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:26.200 wasn't necessarily hard once you learned the basics, but the 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.320 basics themselves seems so foreign, so alien, that a lot 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.280 of people felt that that meant computers were for quote 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.960 unquote smart people or nerds or something. The g U 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:41.120 Y made interacting with a computer much more easy, much 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:43.479 more intuitive. I mean, we've seen this over and over 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.840 again the Mac Os, Windows, all of these different graphic 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.720 user interfaces that carry over today into things like smartphone interfaces. 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.000 They show that they're much easier to understand than those 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.120 command lines, and in nine three they were largely unheard 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:04.359 of outside of specific spheres within the computing community. The 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.200 model had actually been in development for years at other places, 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:11.320 such as Xerox's Park facility, but it hadn't really made 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:15.560 its way into consumer computers yet. Meanwhile, r J was 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.480 getting to work building out the Application Programming Interface or 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.360 a p I. J Minor once said that r J 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.080 had done this by locking himself in his office for 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.040 three straight weeks and emerged only once to get up 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.920 some clarification from Sassain Wrath on something the a p 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.760 I that he eventually built was given the name Intuition, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.520 and because it was the product of one person, it 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:43.000 was fairly uniform and straightforward. A lot of other a 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.040 p I s are the products of teams that are 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:49.160 working sometimes at different times. Something work might get started 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.440 by one team and then finished by another team, and 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.360 so sometimes those sort of interfaces can be a little 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.000 clunky to work with because different people with different perspectives 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.120 were working on it. But Intuition was the product of 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.880 one person at Amiga, So as long as you understood 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:08.200 how r J thought, you could figure out how to 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.960 build applications for the Amiga. So you had these two teams. 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.280 You had the hardware team, you had the software team, 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:16.760 and they were both working very hard to create what 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.560 would become the first Amiga computer, and the company planned 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:26.239 to demonstrate something at the Consumer Electronics Show or ce 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:31.760 S in January nur in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now they 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.560 knew they were not going to have the full prototype 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.640 Amiga computer to show off something that would look like 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:41.040 a production model, they would have to rely on the 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.520 simulated chips they had built on bread boards. So these 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:49.880 enormous bread boards that would represent tiny, tiny chips They 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.360 knew the operating system was not going to be finished 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.599 in time for this demonstration, but the team wanted to 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.600 show off their work and the capabilities of their chips 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.120 set design, and this would hopefully bring in more investors 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.520 and pull in the money they would need to keep 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:09.720 operations going and move towards a production model because their 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:14.440 revenue generating process. You know, they had been making stuff 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.360 for the video game industry, the home video game industry, 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.960 but that industry had collapsed, so now they were desperately 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:24.400 trying to get work done and get investment money into 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.119 the company to keep it going until they had a 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.360 consumer ready computer they could put on the market. Money 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.520 was already tight. The team didn't have any idea of 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:38.280 how they were going to ship their prototype to the 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.040 trade show without endangering it. I mean, you had these 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.400 enormous bread boards with thousands of wires connected to them, 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.160 and disconnecting any of those wires would make the simulated 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:52.880 chips not work properly. So r J and Dale took 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.280 it upon themselves and they booked an extra airline seat 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.640 in between them so that they could put the prototype 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.160 in an airline seat and make sure that it was 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:10.520 protected in addition, they completely covered this prototype in pillows. Now, 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.760 to book a seat, they had to give a passenger name. 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.959 This is again this is in the old days when 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:19.920 it was pretty easy to go through an airport, but 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.320 you still needed to have a name on a ticket 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.080 if you wanted to book a seat. So the name 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:30.360 they gave their passenger this prototype computer was Joe Pillow. 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.839 The engineers, perhaps giddy from working so hard for so long, 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:38.160 even drew a face on one of the pillows to 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:40.920 give Joe Pillow a face, and apparently he wore a 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.280 tie to Legend has it that Dale and r J 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.160 even tried to go so far as to get an 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.320 airline meal for Joe, but the flight attendants drew the 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:53.280 line there and said no dice. At c E S, 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.360 the Amiga team had a booth with a backstage area 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.760 where they kept their prototype, and this would keep the 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.679 computer away from prying eyes and allow the team to 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.320 control who could actually see it. They would hold demonstrations 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:10.040 in this backstage area. They would approve people, bring them 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.199 back there, and then show off this prototype. It was 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:17.640 still working from those simulated chips, and it was enormous. 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.199 It was sitting on top of a table, and more 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.679 than a few onlookers would actually snoop around to make 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.800 sure that the bread boards were in fact acting as 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.720 a chip set and that there wasn't some other computer 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:32.559 system hiding out of view that was creating the effects 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.920 that they were seeing. Uh, it was not running the 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.360 Amiga operating system, because, as I said, the operating system 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.760 was not finished at that point. So r J and 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.640 Dale had built in some demo software that would run 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:47.880 directly off the chip set to show off what the 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.120 computer could do. One of the demos that they built 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:54.480 was a large ball, and the ball had a checkered 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.080 pattern on it, and the ball would bounce up and 0:11:57.200 --> 0:11:59.720 down on the bottom edge of the screen, and every 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.760 time it would appear to hit that bottom edge, it 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:07.200 would produce a booming noise and stereo. And it was 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.720 a hasty demonstration, but that checkered ball would become an 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:15.120 iconic symbol and would stand as the symbol for Amiga 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.280 going forward. I've got a lot more to say about 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:20.920 the birth of the Amiga, but first let's take a 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:32.000 quick break to thank our sponsor. The demonstrations at that 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:37.199 January c e S where success and the team got 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.560 back to work. They had a new goal that they 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.560 wanted to meet, because back in those early eighties there 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.559 were actually two c e S shows every year. There 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:48.840 was one that would take place in the winter and 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:50.880 one that would play take place in the summer. The 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.120 winter ones would take place in Las Vegas, and the 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:57.080 summer ones tended to move around a little bit, but 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.960 that second show would happen in June in Chicago, Illinois. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.920 So the Amiga team had set a goal. They wanted 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.760 to do more demonstrations of the Amiga, but this time 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:13.040 they wanted to use prototype silicon chips, not the simulated 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.160 chips on bread boards. They wanted to actually produce the 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.640 silicon chips and create a motherboard where they could run 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.959 demonstrations off that show that they had made some progress 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.120 and that they would soon be able to move into 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:30.480 fabrication and production stages, though at the time they would 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:33.079 only really be able to do this for a prototype 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:35.439 because again they were running short on funds at this point. 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.560 The Chicago ce S show was another success from a 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:44.240 technological standpoint, but Amiga was out of money. They were 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.160 not going to be able to stay in operation without 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:51.080 a significant investment, and the CEO of Amiga. Dave Morse, 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.600 who had come from Tonka Toys to head up Amiga, 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:59.680 sought out potential investors and partners, including at very established 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.720 company's stuff like Sony and Hewitt, Packard and Phillips, as 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:07.000 well as Apple, which was younger but had been doing 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:11.720 quite well. But none of those seemed particularly interested in 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:17.080 investing in Amiga. One company, however, did offer up a 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.880 pretty cutthroat deal. It was a five hundred thousand dollar 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:25.200 loan and the company was Atari, the same company that 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.640 Amiga co founder j Minor had worked for in the 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:35.000 nineteen seventies, and he had left Atari for another company 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.920 before starting Amiga. Well, he left Atari because he had 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.760 had disputes about bonuses and the direction of projects. Attari 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:46.920 was the same company that had been rocked by the 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:51.080 video game crash a year earlier. And here was Atari saying, yeah, 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.680 we can loan you half a million dollars. But the 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.520 deal was a really tough one. According to the agreement, 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.920 Amiga would get that half million dollar loan, but it 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.120 would have to repay Atari by the end of June, 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:10.280 otherwise Atari would end up owning all of Amiga's technology. 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:12.840 And this was a draconian deal, but at the same time, 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.800 there weren't really any other options available, and Morse really 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.440 had no other lifeline, so he signed this deal because 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:24.960 it was either this or dissolve. Now it could have 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.160 unfolded that Amiga was never able to pay back that 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.400 loan and it would have become part of Atari, and 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.280 maybe that would have saved Atari, though I doubt it. 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.520 But at any rate, it's all a moot point because 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.640 another company swooped in and kind of sort of rescued 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:46.280 Amiga from being devoured by Atari, and that company was Commodore. 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:50.880 I've done episodes about Commodore, but here's a quick overview 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.840 of its history. Commodore had started off as a typewriter 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.560 repair and assembly company back in nineteen fifty four. It 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.040 was founded by a guy named i Deck Trammilski, who 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:06.000 changed his name to Jack Tramiel. He immigrated to the 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.680 United States after he had been rescued from a Nazi 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:12.640 work camp during World War Two, and he founded the 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:17.040 company Commodore in the nineteen fifty four. In nineteen sixty five, 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:21.440 he secured money from an investor named Irving Gould, and 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:26.040 Irving Gould will play another important part in our Amiga story. 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:30.800 In the nineteen seventies, Commodore would diversify and start making calculators, 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:35.440 largely relying upon chips from another company called Texas Instruments. 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.840 But then Texas Instruments began building its own calculators and 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:44.080 started competing with Commodore, and that taught Tramiel a lesson. 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:47.840 He decided they didn't want to depend upon some other 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.680 companies products, only to have that company enter into direct 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.200 competition with him further down the line, and so Commodore 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.680 decided to get into another business and they acquired another 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:03.440 company called Most Technology. Most Technology was the company that 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:07.080 made the Most six five O two chip, and that 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:11.119 chip powered many early computer systems and video game consoles. 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.600 Commodore had been one of the early players on the 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:19.439 personal computer scene. They introduced the pet or PET in 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:23.240 nineteen seventy seven, the VIC twenty in nineteen eighty one, 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.240 and in nineteen eighty two, Commodore introduced the best selling 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:32.240 computer of all time, the Commodore sixty four. But then 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.560 Commodore went into kind of a scorched earth policy against 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.800 competitors like Texas Instruments and tried to drive them out 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.880 of the industry and become the dominant player. To do that, 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:49.400 one of the big tactics was cutting prices, and they 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.119 cut prices on their their products to the point where 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.880 the company was eating into its own reserves. And that's 0:17:55.920 --> 0:18:01.119 when Gould, the investor and Tremiel the founder budded heads. 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.280 Gould wanted his investment protected, Tramuel wanted to be the 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.840 dominant force in personal computing. In late nineteen eighty three, 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.560 Gould would go to the board of directors and they 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.640 decided to force Jack Tramiel to resign from the company 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.520 he had founded. But while Tramuel wasn't in charge when 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:24.400 Commodore would approach Amiga, he still plays an incredibly important 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.440 part of this story. And this is really where things 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.640 get Games of Throne ish arelthough with the players in fold, 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:34.880 maybe I should call this video game of Thrones. So 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.440 Jack Tramiel, he gets pushed out of his own company 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.000 at the end of nineteen eighty three, and while the 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.000 folks over at Amiga, we're still getting ready for their 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.680 first prototype debut at C E S the following January. 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.760 So at this point Amiga is an independent company and 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:54.200 they're building up for C E S night four, Jack 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:58.040 Tramiel gets kicked out of Commodore. He does not go 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:04.119 into retirement. Instead, he saunters over to Warner Communications. Warner 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:10.199 Communications was the parent company of Atari. Now, this was 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:15.000 in the fallout of the video game crash of nineteen 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:19.399 eighty three, and at that point Warner Communications really was 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.199 trying to find a way to dump the personal computer 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.320 and video game console division of Attari. The only part 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.560 of Atari the company still wanted to hold onto was 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.879 Atari's arcade division because it was still making money. But 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.680 in the wake of the video game crash, the console 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:39.120 and personal computer arms of Attari felt like an anchor. 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.560 So Jack Tramuel comes over to Warner Communications and says, 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:45.119 I'll take that off your hands, and he's able to 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.000 take over the company without even making a down payment. 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:52.639 It was one of the biggest craziest deals in tech 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:57.280 history where Jack Tramuel essentially took over control of Atari. 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.439 So now Jack Tramuel's in charge of Atari. And you 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.720 remember that five hundred thousand dollar loan deal I mentioned 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:07.399 from Atari, the one that would force Amiga's technology to 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.879 become Atari property if Amiga failed to pay back that 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.280 loan by the end of June that was put together 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.639 by Jack Tramiel, formerly of Commodore, and the company that 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.880 would rescue Amiga was Commodore, so in a way, Amiga 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.800 was put in the middle of a really ugly custody 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:31.440 battle between an entrepreneur and his former company. Originally, Commodore 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.520 was going to enter into a licensing agreement with Amiga 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.720 to use the company's chip set in return for four 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:41.800 million dollars, but ultimately Commodore executives decided that what made 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.600 the most sense was to acquire Amiga outright, and so 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.960 Commodore would acquire Amiga for the princely sum of twenty 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:55.919 four million dollars, which obviously allowed Amiga to payback that 0:20:55.920 --> 0:21:00.560 five thousand dollar loan, and Amiga would become part of Commodore. 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.119 Jack Tramiel must have been pretty steamed to have his 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.840 former company come in and rescue Amiga, so under his leadership, 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.320 Attari got to work designing a new personal computing system, 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:18.760 one that would compete directly against Commodore's Amiga computer. The 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.080 official name for this other computer, the Atari computer, was 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.840 the Atari st that. Some people would jokingly refer to 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.800 this as the jack Intosh because it seemed to eight 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.560 Apple's Macintosh platform, and it was rushed into production by 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.520 Jack Tramiel. Ultimately, this feud would be really harmful to 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:43.400 both companies spoiler alert. They spent so much time facing 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:47.200 off against each other that other companies like Apple, IBM 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.000 and later Microsoft were able to get a firmer foothold 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.760 in the personal computer marketplace. They fought a fierce battle 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.560 against each other while a larger war was going on. 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.600 But I am getting ahead of myself, so we'll rejoin 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:04.600 that discussion later on. At first, Commodore was pretty darn 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:07.760 awesome to the Amiga team. The group got the resources 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:10.760 they needed to keep developing their first computer system, and 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:13.720 while there was an initial fear that Commodore was going 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:16.040 to require the Amiga group to pick up stakes in 0:22:16.119 --> 0:22:20.360 California and moved to Westchester, Pennsylvania, which is where Commodore 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:25.040 headquarters were, those fears were initially quelled. The team did move, 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.320 but they moved into larger offices about ten miles away 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:30.800 from where they had been working, so it wasn't that 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:32.679 big of a change, and it meant that they were 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:35.800 no longer in a very cramped working space. Amiga was 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.359 able to get more equipment and able to hire on 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:41.760 more engineers to get back at it, and things were 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:47.240 looking up. But nothing lasts forever. I'll tell you more 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:49.760 when we get back after this quick break to thank 0:22:49.760 --> 0:23:00.239 our sponsor. As the hardware had been taking shape, so 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:04.640 was the operating system. The microkernel named Exact served as 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:07.639 the core for this OS. The g u I or 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.240 Graphical User Interface was coming together, but the OS would 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:13.959 still need a way to handle the file system and 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.000 some of the other tasks that neither EXACT nor the 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.360 g u I would touch on. There are some things 0:23:19.400 --> 0:23:21.560 that the OS needed to do that neither of these 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:25.120 components could do now. At first, the solution to this 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:29.160 was going to be creating code called the Commodore Amiga 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:35.440 Operating System or c a O S CHAOS. That might 0:23:35.440 --> 0:23:38.959 have been a little prophetic. Carl Sassin Wrath wrote up 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:43.119 the design specifications for CHAOS. What CHAOS was supposed to 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:46.920 be able to do. This would include some advanced operating 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:51.080 system task management capabilities, like the ability to take the 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:54.480 resources that were used by one application and then free 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:58.399 those resources up if that application should crash. Since the 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.080 Amiga was being built as a mole t tasking machine. 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:04.640 That was a really important feature because without it, computer 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.320 resources could get locked up in a crashed application while 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:11.359 other applications are still working, and eventually that means you 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:14.480 would run out of computer memory or processing power if 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:16.199 you couldn't get to those, and you would have to 0:24:16.480 --> 0:24:18.600 do a hard reboot of your system in order to 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:22.800 free them all up. Again. Design was falling behind, and 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:27.200 so the team chose to outsource some elements of Chaos 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:31.800 to third party developers. But despite pulling long hours and 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:35.320 despite putting outsourced work in there, it became evident that 0:24:35.359 --> 0:24:37.560 there was no way the team was going to get 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:40.840