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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer

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Speaker 1: over at How Stuff Works and a lot of all

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Speaker 1: things tech. And we are continuing our discussion about Amiga.

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Speaker 1: We have this episode and one more to go, because

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Speaker 1: that story is crazy complicated, not from a technology standpoint

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Speaker 1: so much as from a business standpoint, because Amiga was

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Speaker 1: so involved in the political maneuverings of other companies like

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Speaker 1: Atari and Commodore. But in the last episode, I left

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Speaker 1: off with the debut of the Amiga one thousand, the

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Speaker 1: initial original Amiga computer. Commodore, the electronics and computer company,

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Speaker 1: had purchased Amiga in four and had saved it from

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Speaker 1: being gutted by Atari and hold out all the stops

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Speaker 1: to show off this new computer in a lavish presentation

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Speaker 1: at the Lincoln Center in New York City. And I

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Speaker 1: talked all about that in the last episode, and the

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Speaker 1: computer was heading towards store shelves eventually, And because it's

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Speaker 1: going to come back in this episode a lot, here's

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Speaker 1: a quick reminder. Jack Tramiel was the founder of Commodore,

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Speaker 1: but he was forced to resign by the board of

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Speaker 1: directors UH, led by investor Irving Gould, after Tramuel had

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Speaker 1: led Commodore to push Texas Instruments out of the computer

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Speaker 1: business using drastic competition and price cutting. But Tramuel then

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Speaker 1: went on to go to Warner Communications, which owned Atari,

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Speaker 1: and in the wake of the video game crash in Nree,

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Speaker 1: that company seemed to be worth very little. So Tramuel

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Speaker 1: bought the video game console and computer divisions of Attari

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Speaker 1: from Warner Communications for no down payment, and he was

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Speaker 1: the one who would really go after Amiga, using a

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Speaker 1: five thousand dollar loan to Amiga, and if Amiga was

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Speaker 1: not able to pay that loan back, Atari was going

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Speaker 1: to get control of Amiga's chip set design. But then

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Speaker 1: Commodore got into the picture and ended up buying Amiga

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Speaker 1: for twenty four million dollars. And all of that is

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Speaker 1: important to remember when we talk about the things that

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Speaker 1: happened in the next couple of years. So while the

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Speaker 1: folks at Amiga continued to work to get their Amiga

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Speaker 1: one thousand ready to ship, they had shown it off

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Speaker 1: at a big press event, but it still wasn't ready

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Speaker 1: to buy in stores. Commodore was going through a bit

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Speaker 1: of a cash crisis. The Commodore sixty four was the

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Speaker 1: best selling computer of all time, but one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons it sold so well was that Tramuel had been

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Speaker 1: so aggressive pricing the Commodore sixty four at a low

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Speaker 1: fee in order to fight off Texas instruments that the

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Speaker 1: computers really popular, but the profit margin was pretty low,

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Speaker 1: so they weren't making a lot of money per sale.

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Speaker 1: Commodore had launched several eight bit computers to follow up

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Speaker 1: on the Commodore sixty four. Commodore sixty four was also

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Speaker 1: an eight bit computer. These computers were technically competing against

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Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four, which was a bit strange, and

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Speaker 1: some of them were a little interesting. There was the

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Speaker 1: Commodore s X sixty four. That one was a semi

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Speaker 1: portable PC. I called semi portable because it weighed more

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Speaker 1: than twenty pounds and you had to plug it into

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Speaker 1: a an a c uh wall outlet. There there was

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Speaker 1: no onboard battery that would let you work with it

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Speaker 1: without it being plugged in. It was interesting but didn't

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Speaker 1: sell very well. Commodore would discontinue it in nineteen eighties six,

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Speaker 1: but they also launched the Commodore Plus Slash four four.

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Speaker 1: This was built on an earlier computer architecture called the

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Speaker 1: Commodore sixteen. Commodore sixteen was a holy incompatible architecture with

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Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four. You could not run software written

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Speaker 1: for the Commodore sixty four on the Commodore sixteen. The

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Speaker 1: same was true for the Commodore Plus Slash four You

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Speaker 1: could not run Commodore sixty four software on it. And

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Speaker 1: so there really was no place in the market for

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Speaker 1: this odd computer, and so it didn't sell well either.

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Speaker 1: The question came up, why would I buy this other

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Speaker 1: eight bit based computer if it's not compatible with this

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Speaker 1: really popular one, And no one really had the answer

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Speaker 1: to that. And then there was the Commodore one. This

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Speaker 1: was still an eight bit computer, and you might wonder,

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Speaker 1: why are you we calling them eight bit computers if

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Speaker 1: you have Commodore sixty four a Commodore. Well, that actually

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Speaker 1: referred to the amount of RAM or read access memory

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Speaker 1: in the machine, not not the the processor, but the

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Speaker 1: actual amount of memory. So the Commodore had a D

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Speaker 1: twenty eight kilobytes of memory. It actually had two processors,

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Speaker 1: one of those was meant to handle processes or applications

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Speaker 1: that were associated with Commodore sixty four, and the other

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Speaker 1: was meant to handle Commodore one eight software, so we

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Speaker 1: could work on both. Unlike many of Commodore's other computers,

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Speaker 1: this one was actually backwards compatible. It sold modestly well.

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Speaker 1: But the one came out just at the end of

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Speaker 1: the eight bit computer era, so it was kind of

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Speaker 1: a and also ran because there were more advanced computers

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Speaker 1: coming out immediately following that. So Commodore was a company

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Speaker 1: that was not making much from its products. In five

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Speaker 1: and it purchased Amiga for twenty four million dollars, but

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Speaker 1: Amiga did not yet have a computer available on the market.

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Speaker 1: There You couldn't buy an Amiga yet, not until late night.

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Speaker 1: And meanwhile, Jack Tramuel was suing the heck out of

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Speaker 1: Commodore for forcing amount of the company. All of that

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Speaker 1: meant Commodore wasn't able to dedicate the resources that the

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Speaker 1: Amiga team needed to get the Amiga one thousand out earlier.

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Speaker 1: They were able to develop it, but they weren't able

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Speaker 1: to produce it as fast as they wanted to. Amigo

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Speaker 1: was finally ready to take orders for the Amigo one

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Speaker 1: thousand in August nineteen five, but Commodore was strapped and

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Speaker 1: couldn't actually move into high capacity production yet, so in

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Speaker 1: October they had only managed to produce fifty of the

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Speaker 1: Amigo one thousand computers. Five zero, just that many. That's it. Now.

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Speaker 1: None of those were actually in customer hands. They were

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Speaker 1: all internal computers. They were either being used to develop

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Speaker 1: software or they were used to give demonstrations to potential

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Speaker 1: customers and to make matters worse over at Atari, Jack

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Speaker 1: Tremuel had been busy in nineteen eighty five. He had

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Speaker 1: pushed his engineers and programmers, a lot of whom had

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Speaker 1: left Commodore to follow Tramuel after he had been ousted

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Speaker 1: from the company, even pushing them really hard to rush

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Speaker 1: a new computer system to market and get ahead of

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Speaker 1: the Amigo one thousand. Jack trying Meal was always one

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Speaker 1: of those people who took these things very personally, and

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Speaker 1: so he thought, well, if you're gonna force me out

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Speaker 1: of my company, I'm going to come back and launch

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Speaker 1: a computer that's going to completely take the wind out

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Speaker 1: of your sales. So in the spring of nineteen five,

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Speaker 1: months before the Amiga would come to market. Atari introduced

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Speaker 1: the Atari ST computer and the ST stood for sixteen

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Speaker 1: thirty two. That meant it was a PC with a

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Speaker 1: CPU that had sixteen and thirty two bit components or

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Speaker 1: or busses, that's the facilitators for a communication between different

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Speaker 1: components within a computer. This would be the Motorola sixty

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Speaker 1: eight thousand CPU. That's the same chip that served as

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Speaker 1: the CPU for the Amiga one thousand. And the Atar

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Speaker 1: E ST also had a graphical user interface or g

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Speaker 1: u I or gooey. It also had a mouse, and

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Speaker 1: it had a color monitor option, although the base model

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Speaker 1: was monochromatic and it was relatively inexpensive, so it is

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Speaker 1: a true shot across the bow of Commodore. Now. Atari

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Speaker 1: had a head start, but Commodore got more units moving

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Speaker 1: and by November it was actually finally possible for your

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Speaker 1: average customer to go and buy an Amigo one thousand

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Speaker 1: at a computer store. But that late entry was still

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Speaker 1: a disadvantage. It was not able to take the full

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Speaker 1: advantage of the holiday shopping season because it came out

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Speaker 1: so late. And also Commodore made another very odd decision,

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Speaker 1: and I honestly don't know what the logic was behind it.

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Speaker 1: They decided to only sell the Amigo one thousand in

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Speaker 1: computer stores. And the reason why I say that's weird

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Speaker 1: is because back in the eighties you could find computers

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Speaker 1: in lots of different places, including big department stores, and

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Speaker 1: Commodore had previously used big department stores to sell their computers.

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Speaker 1: The department store Sears had even offered to carry the

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Speaker 1: Amigo one thousand in its store, and Commodore declined the offer.

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Speaker 1: So if you went into a Sears and you went

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Speaker 1: to their computer section, you could find the Attar e

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Speaker 1: st but not an Amigo one thousand. And Commodore also

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Speaker 1: did not do a really good job on the marketing

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Speaker 1: front for this computer either. For one thing, the ads

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Speaker 1: they debuted all seemed to be a pale imitation of

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Speaker 1: other ads that were on the market. Specifically, there was

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Speaker 1: one that was obviously a copy of Apple's famous Night

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Speaker 1: four ad. And just in case you don't know what

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Speaker 1: I'm referring to, I'll give a quick rundown. But if

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Speaker 1: you've never seen this ad, you need to go to

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Speaker 1: YouTube search Apple commercial. It'll pop right up. It is

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Speaker 1: one of the most famous commercials ever made in Apple

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Speaker 1: released a commercial. It was directed by Ridley freaking Scott,

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Speaker 1: the film director directed this commercial, and it showed a

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Speaker 1: bunch of people walking down a hallway that had monitors

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Speaker 1: all over it and their lit in these very kind

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Speaker 1: of bluish lights. So it's got this very drab gray scene.

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Speaker 1: Everyone's kind of dressed in uh and very uh dull

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Speaker 1: clothing and they're all kind of staring lifelessly ahead of themselves.

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Speaker 1: And then they file into what is essentially like an

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Speaker 1: amphitheater and they sit down there looking at an enormous

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Speaker 1: screen with a huge face on it, and it's essentially

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Speaker 1: a character who's like big Brother in George or And

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Speaker 1: that is inter cut with shots of a woman who's

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Speaker 1: wearing like a white tank top and red shorts and

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Speaker 1: she's running down the hallway and she's carrying an enormous hammer.

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Speaker 1: She eventually runs into the room with the giant screen

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Speaker 1: on it and hurls the hammer at the screen and

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Speaker 1: that shatters the screen. It shocks the lulled people who

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Speaker 1: had been watching it. And the message was that Apple

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Speaker 1: was going to break the model of the dull lockdown

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Speaker 1: in utilitarian PC that had been introduced by IBM. So

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Speaker 1: IBM was the big brother. Apple was the woman throwing

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Speaker 1: a hammer through the screen. It made a big impact,

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Speaker 1: and that was in early so late, we're talking nearly

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Speaker 1: two years later. Commodore releases an ad during the Christmas

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Speaker 1: season and it shows a group of emotionless, drone like

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Speaker 1: people shuffling slowly up some stairs. At the end of

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Speaker 1: the stairs was a pedestal upon which sat the Amiga

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Speaker 1: one thousand, and the monitor is just got this blinding

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Speaker 1: white light coming out of it. So this was clearly

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Speaker 1: an imitation of the earlier Apple commercial, but not nearly

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Speaker 1: as impactful. And because it's an imitation, you don't you

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Speaker 1: don't admire it the way you would with the Apple commercial.

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Speaker 1: You'd say, oh, they're just copying what's already been done.

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Speaker 1: They had another commercial that showed an older man walking

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Speaker 1: through an mc escher light collection of weird staircases. You

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Speaker 1: get a real Labyrinth vibe from it, although to be fair,

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Speaker 1: Labyrinth would come out after this ad did. He eventually

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Speaker 1: gets to a similar pedestal as a computer on it,

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Speaker 1: also emanating a blinding white light they lost at the screen,

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Speaker 1: and he smiles, and then the screen cuts to black,

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Speaker 1: and you then see an illuminated fetus fill the screen. Yep,

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Speaker 1: little baby fills the screen glowing. It's weird, and it's

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Speaker 1: obviously an homage to Stanley Kubrick's film two thousand one.

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Speaker 1: I do not think it made many people want to

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Speaker 1: buy a computer. I did see one ad from that

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Speaker 1: era that made me chuckle. There was a man walking

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Speaker 1: his dog in a suburban neighborhood and inside one of

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Speaker 1: the houses is a boy who's working on his computer,

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Speaker 1: and he's created a replica of his own house on

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Speaker 1: his Amiga one thousand and then he clicks his mouse

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Speaker 1: and he makes the the image of his house rise

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Speaker 1: up off the bottom of the the image he's working on.

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Speaker 1: So he's lifting his house up, and meanwhile his actual

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Speaker 1: house starts to lift up out into the sky. And

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Speaker 1: none of that really got me chuckling. But what did

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Speaker 1: get a reaction out of me as the music that

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Speaker 1: was playing in the background of the commercial, because I

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Speaker 1: recognized it and I realized eventually that it was from

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Speaker 1: the movie score to the film The Goonies, and then

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Speaker 1: I went and listened to the Goony soundtrack. The ads

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Speaker 1: were not doing Amiga any favors. By the end of

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Speaker 1: n Commodore had sold fewer than fifty thousand Amiga one

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Speaker 1: thousand computers. Now here's hoping this ad break is more effective.

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Speaker 1: We're going to take our quick break to thank our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: In addition to the sales and marketing woes, the initial

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Speaker 1: batch of Amiga one thousand computers had some stability issues.

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Speaker 1: You might remember from an earlier episode that I talked

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Speaker 1: about how they had programmed the system crash error to

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Speaker 1: read Guru Meditation error. It was sort of a tongue

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Speaker 1: in cheek message. Unfortunately, this particular error was popping up

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Speaker 1: with frequency, and Amigo one thousand was quickly associated with

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Speaker 1: not just being unreliable, but this whole Guru Meditation error message.

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Speaker 1: And the team was able to patch the problem and

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Speaker 1: address it in future shipments, but the reputation of the

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Speaker 1: computer was already damaged. People associated the Amiga one thousand

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Speaker 1: with being unreliable. One product that worked in Amiga's favor

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Speaker 1: came from Electronic Arts. It was actually some software, so

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Speaker 1: Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, was impressed by

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Speaker 1: the Amiga. He had received an Amiga as sort of

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Speaker 1: a developer kit and was working within playing with it

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Speaker 1: to figure out what he might be able to make

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Speaker 1: with it. Over an electronic arts he led his team

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Speaker 1: to rewrite a program called Prism for the IBM PC

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Speaker 1: that in turn was already an evolution of an earlier

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Speaker 1: piece of software called Doodle for the Xerox computer. And

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Speaker 1: this new product for the Amiga was called Deluxe Paint.

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Speaker 1: EA produced what was then a truly incredible image of

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Speaker 1: King Tutin commons golden death mask, and chances are if

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Speaker 1: you've ever looked at art from earlier computer eras, you've

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Speaker 1: seen this picture. It was icon It would become a

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Speaker 1: very important piece of art that Amiga would use in

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Speaker 1: a lot of its advertising moving forward, and it was

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Speaker 1: a go to for Amiga for marketing. And Amiga was

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Speaker 1: in desperate need of good software, because without good software,

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Speaker 1: your computer doesn't really do any good. You have to

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Speaker 1: have people develop stuff for it. Developers were less keen

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Speaker 1: to create software for the Atar e ST largely due

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Speaker 1: to Jack Tramuel's reputation for being difficult to work with.

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Speaker 1: So there were developers who were shy about working for

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Speaker 1: Atar E s T because they didn't want to have

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Speaker 1: to deal with Tramuel. And there were people who are

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Speaker 1: getting more and more excited about Amiga. So while the

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Speaker 1: Autar E S T was priced lower than the Amiga,

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Speaker 1: it had more trouble getting good software investor. Irving Gould again,

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Speaker 1: he was the guy who led the effort to force

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Speaker 1: Jack Tramuel out of Commodore had put a man named

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Speaker 1: Marshall F. Smith in charge of the company of Commodore.

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Speaker 1: Smith had previously worked in the steel industry, which, as

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Speaker 1: you might imagine, is not very much like the computer industry.

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Speaker 1: In the computer industry, tech changes very quickly and the

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Speaker 1: business has to adapt to that. Steel does not tend

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Speaker 1: to change very quickly, and Smith just didn't seem to

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Speaker 1: quite have the mindset to head up a computer company.

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Speaker 1: He also made some decisions that some critics would point

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Speaker 1: out later as being very questionable. So, for example, back

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Speaker 1: in early at C E S, he got into a

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Speaker 1: conversation with somebody else, and that someone convinced him that

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Speaker 1: Commodore's line of portable computers with l C D screens,

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Speaker 1: which they were showing off at C E S was

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Speaker 1: going to be terribly unprofitable. They were just going to

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Speaker 1: end up languishing in the market, and the company was

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Speaker 1: going to lose money as a result for really backing

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Speaker 1: a portable computer with an l c D screen, and

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Speaker 1: Smith took at the heart and he canceled the line

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Speaker 1: of computers. So while they showed one off like a

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Speaker 1: prototype over at c E S, it would never become

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Speaker 1: an actual Commodore product. Here's where people got really upset.

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Speaker 1: The person who told him that it wasn't going to

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Speaker 1: be profitable was the CEO of Tandy Tandy Slash radio shack.

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Speaker 1: That was the company that was making its own line

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Speaker 1: of pordable computers. So essentially Tandy was able to talk

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Speaker 1: a competitor out of launching a product that would have

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Speaker 1: gone toe to toe with their own products, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of people said that Smith let a competitor sabotage

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Speaker 1: his own business. Marshall Smith began to cut costs at

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Speaker 1: the end of nineteen eight five because Commodore was not

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Speaker 1: going to be profitable unless they were able to trim

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Speaker 1: a whole lot of the expenses. That included cutting payroll

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Speaker 1: by forty five per cent. Commodore had suffered losses in

300
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Speaker 1: all but the final quarter of five and night at

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Speaker 1: the last quarter it posted a one million dollar profit.

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Speaker 1: That was not enough to set off the losses from

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Speaker 1: the rest of the year, and it had a lot

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Speaker 1: of debt to pay off as well. So over the

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00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:09,000
Speaker 1: course of the fiscal year of nineteen eighty five, Commodore

306
00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:14,200
Speaker 1: lost two hundred thirty seven million dollars. Clearly that was

307
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Speaker 1: going to affect Amiga as well as a division of

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Speaker 1: the company, and commodore struggles in spilled over into nine six.

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Speaker 1: The company made the decision to skip both c e

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Speaker 1: S shows that year. Remember the Consumer Electronics Show, which

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Speaker 1: these days has one show a year. It's in January.

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Speaker 1: It's in Las Vegas in the United States. There are

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Speaker 1: some international shows too, but that's the one big one

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Speaker 1: in the US. Back in these days, it had two shows,

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Speaker 1: one in the winter one this summer. Well, Commodore skipped

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Speaker 1: both of them and also skipped Comdex, which was a

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Speaker 1: huge computer trade show at that time, and it had

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Speaker 1: always maintained a very large presence during these shows, so

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Speaker 1: it's absence was notable On the executive side. Over in

320
00:19:01,920 --> 00:19:06,480
Speaker 1: the corporate section of Commodore, Chief operating Officer Thomas Radigan

321
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Speaker 1: was preparing to move into the role of CEO with

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Speaker 1: Marshall Smith stepping down. This had been the plan all along.

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Speaker 1: This was not a sudden decision. It was a long

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Speaker 1: term strategy, and so rat Agan had been groomed to

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Speaker 1: become the CEO of Commodore, and he was given a

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Speaker 1: five year contract that would expire in nineteen and he

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Speaker 1: assumed the role of Commodore CEO in March nine, and

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Speaker 1: it was down to him to turn Commodore into a

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Speaker 1: truly profitable company, which was going to require some really

330
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Speaker 1: tough decisions. Rat Agan had previously served as the CEO

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Speaker 1: of Pepsi co International, which was a pretty interesting move

332
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Speaker 1: because Apple had previously hired away Pepsi CEO John Scully

333
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Speaker 1: in nineteen eight three, So now you had two former

334
00:19:53,600 --> 00:19:57,520
Speaker 1: leaders of Pepsi leading personal computer companies that were in

335
00:19:57,560 --> 00:20:02,639
Speaker 1: competition with each other. Ratigan would lead three rounds of layoffs,

336
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Speaker 1: and the first round targeted people who were described as layabouts.

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Speaker 1: So I'm guessing these were folks who are either were

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00:20:09,560 --> 00:20:12,919
Speaker 1: not particularly productive at their jobs or they held jobs

339
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 1: that did not seem to contribute to the bottom line

340
00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,080
Speaker 1: of Commodore in any real way. So that was the

341
00:20:18,119 --> 00:20:21,040
Speaker 1: easiest cut to make and probably was the one that

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00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:24,800
Speaker 1: was making the most sense. From a business standpoint, The

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00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:28,680
Speaker 1: second round of layoffs involved cutting the people who were

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Speaker 1: working on what were now irrelevant or underperforming projects, so

345
00:20:33,840 --> 00:20:37,560
Speaker 1: rad again would discontinue things like the pet or PET

346
00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:41,480
Speaker 1: computer line, which had been introduced way back in ninety seven.

347
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Speaker 1: He also discontinued the VIC twenty, which came out in

348
00:20:45,920 --> 00:20:48,120
Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four was still selling, so he kept

349
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:52,400
Speaker 1: that going. The Plus Slash four and the Commodore sixteen

350
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:55,879
Speaker 1: models also were cut, and a few other projects that

351
00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:59,120
Speaker 1: were for systems that had not yet debuted but were

352
00:20:59,119 --> 00:21:03,399
Speaker 1: in development. Those were eventually acted as well, and a

353
00:21:03,440 --> 00:21:05,719
Speaker 1: lot of those people, most of them were let go.

354
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Speaker 1: The third round of layoffs was the hardest to make

355
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Speaker 1: because they're still needed to be cuts in order to

356
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Speaker 1: get Commodore back to profitability, but now they were cutting

357
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Speaker 1: into people who were contributing directly to Commodore's business. So

358
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:22,359
Speaker 1: a lot of people referred to this as cutting into

359
00:21:22,359 --> 00:21:27,160
Speaker 1: the bone because it was It was beyond the the

360
00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:30,080
Speaker 1: the folks that you could more easily say goodbye to

361
00:21:30,280 --> 00:21:34,480
Speaker 1: because they were not contributing to Commodore's business. So here

362
00:21:34,560 --> 00:21:37,480
Speaker 1: was where pro programmers and engineers found themselves out of

363
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:42,199
Speaker 1: a job both at Commodore headquarters in Pennsylvania in Westchester

364
00:21:42,840 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 1: and the folks over in Las Gatos in California. The

365
00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:51,719
Speaker 1: Amiga folks, they all of them, saw cutbacks, but another

366
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:54,119
Speaker 1: big change was coming, and that was that the Amiga

367
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:56,640
Speaker 1: team was told that their operations were going to move

368
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Speaker 1: across country and that the team was going to join

369
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:04,520
Speaker 1: the Amadore headquarters in Pennsylvania. People working for Amiga had

370
00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:07,320
Speaker 1: to make a decision. They could continue to work for

371
00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 1: the company, but that would mean they'd have to move

372
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,639
Speaker 1: across country or they were going to have to quit.

373
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Speaker 1: J Minor, the guy who had led the design for

374
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Speaker 1: the Amiga chip set, the co founder of Amiga, the

375
00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:23,199
Speaker 1: one guy who had been a consistent presence at the

376
00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:27,680
Speaker 1: company from its start, decided he was done. He resigned

377
00:22:27,720 --> 00:22:31,160
Speaker 1: from Commodore as a full time employee. He would continue

378
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:33,440
Speaker 1: to act as a consultant for the company for several

379
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:39,000
Speaker 1: more years, and ultimately J. Minor passed away in due

380
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:43,920
Speaker 1: to kidney failure. One other reason Commodore wanted the Amiga

381
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:47,720
Speaker 1: folks to move closer to their headquarters had to do

382
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:51,640
Speaker 1: with an embarrassing prank that went a little too far,

383
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,959
Speaker 1: So the Amiga had a graphical desktop environment that was

384
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Speaker 1: called Workbench, and there was a software developer who was

385
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,919
Speaker 1: working on an upgrade to work Bench. The you know,

386
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: a later version like one point two, and as far

387
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: as I can tell, this person's identity has never been revealed.

388
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:14,199
Speaker 1: But this software developer hid a message in the code.

389
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:16,959
Speaker 1: And the only way you would unlock the messages if

390
00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 1: you pressed a certain key combination simultaneously. And it wasn't

391
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:24,880
Speaker 1: a common one, so it would require you to know

392
00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 1: about it or to have heard about it in order

393
00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:29,679
Speaker 1: to do it. And if you did do it, a

394
00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:32,679
Speaker 1: message popped up on screen. That message read, and I'm

395
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:36,440
Speaker 1: going to paraphrase a little bit we made the Amiga.

396
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:41,320
Speaker 1: They left it up. The message did not obvious skate

397
00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:45,000
Speaker 1: the curse word. They they actually said it in the message.

398
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:50,160
Speaker 1: The head of software over at Amiga was perhaps amused,

399
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:53,960
Speaker 1: but told this developer that the this easter egg was

400
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 1: going to have to go. It could not stay in

401
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: the software. And at first it seemed like this engineer

402
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,960
Speaker 1: had taken that to heart, because if you did the

403
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: key combination. After the engineer had made some more changes

404
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:09,440
Speaker 1: and now said Amiga born a champion. But This turned

405
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:12,360
Speaker 1: out to be a smoke screen because if you held

406
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:16,320
Speaker 1: down another set of keys, the message we made the

407
00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:19,679
Speaker 1: Amiga would pop up. And then if you were to

408
00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:22,639
Speaker 1: keep holding those keys down and then have someone insert

409
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: a floppy disk into the disk drive, a second half

410
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 1: of that message would pop up. The they left it

411
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 1: up part would flash on screen for one six of

412
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 1: a second. Now, it sounds like such a thing would

413
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: not be discoverable, like this was just there for the engineer.

414
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: No one else would ever know about it. It would

415
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: just be this sort of insubordinate behavior that ultimately wouldn't matter.

416
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,680
Speaker 1: But in fact, someone in Europe found the code embedded

417
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:51,920
Speaker 1: in the read only memory of the chips. They could

418
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: see that it existed there, and managers her worked at

419
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: Commodore UK issued a recall on all the existing machines

420
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: and demanded that the affected ROM chips would have to

421
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: be replaced with new ones that did not contain that message,

422
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: which set Amiga back three months and sales in Europe.

423
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: And just so you know, traditionally in Europe Amiga did

424
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: much better business than did in the United States, so

425
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: this was a big deal, and so Commodore wanted to

426
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: bring these jokesters, maybe a little closer to home where

427
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:24,919
Speaker 1: they could be a bit more carefully observed. I have

428
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: no idea what sort of dressing down that engineer might

429
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,199
Speaker 1: have received as a result of this prank gone awry,

430
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:34,640
Speaker 1: but I imagine it must not have been a very

431
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: good day for that person when all of this shook out.

432
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 1: I've got more to say about Amiga, but first let's

433
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Commodore CEO

434
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: Radigan wasn't just cutting jobs and moving people around. He

435
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 1: wanted to make the Amiga platform a success. He didn't

436
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: want to get rid of it. He thought a good

437
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: strategy would be to create two lines of Amiga computers.

438
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: One would be dedicated toward a lower price point. It

439
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 1: would be a lower power machine to be kind of

440
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: the budget version of the Amiga. The other would be

441
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: a powerful computer aimed more at professionals, high end users,

442
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:24,199
Speaker 1: people who wanted to have a lot of power in

443
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:29,439
Speaker 1: the graphics and audio side of computation. And so he

444
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 1: thought we should make two brands of Amiga. That would

445
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: mean making one machine that was similar in spirit to

446
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: the old Commodore sixty four, something that would be accessible

447
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,399
Speaker 1: and could get people excited about Amiga's approach, and the

448
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: other would be a more powerful and more expandable computer

449
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: than the Amigo one thousand was. So the one thousand

450
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 1: would be kind of the middle of the road, and

451
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: these two would take more of an extreme path off

452
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:59,200
Speaker 1: of that middle. Ratigan's methods, while harsh with all the layoffs,

453
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: worked from a in a standpoint. In the last quarter

454
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: of NIX, Commodore posted a twenty two million dollar profit.

455
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: In the previous year it had suffered two d thirty

456
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: seven million dollars in losses, so this was a good move,

457
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:16,120
Speaker 1: but he was also setting people against each other. Ratigan

458
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: had wanted that lower powered, lower priced Amiga super Fast.

459
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: This would become the Amiga five hundred, and he had

460
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,720
Speaker 1: to figure out who was going to actually develop this.

461
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: Now you had all of Amiga under the umbrella of Commodore,

462
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 1: so you still had some engineers and developers and programmers

463
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 1: who had been part of Amiga, the ones who hadn't

464
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: been laid off and the ones who had chosen to

465
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,679
Speaker 1: move across the country. But on the other side you

466
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:45,520
Speaker 1: had engineers who had been at Commodore for a while.

467
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,920
Speaker 1: And Radigan decided that the Commodore engineers would be the

468
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: team to work on the Amiga five hundred. He felt

469
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: that they would have the motivation to do it quickly.

470
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 1: They had a challenge ahead of them. They were being

471
00:27:56,520 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 1: told this other team developed this architecture. I need you

472
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: guys to make a less powerful version of this as

473
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,239
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. So they had something to prove, and

474
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 1: so they had to work super hard to get the

475
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: computer on the market earlier than if the original Amiga

476
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:15,639
Speaker 1: team were to work on it. The thought being that

477
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 1: the original Amiga team would probably do a better job,

478
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: but they would take a lot longer to do it.

479
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 1: Jeff Porter became the director of New Product Development. He

480
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: had previously led the effort to design and build that

481
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,679
Speaker 1: LCD portable Commodore computer and I talked about earlier, the

482
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: one that Marshall Smith had canceled. After the Tandy CEO

483
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: was so helpful. George Robbins and Bob Welland, who had

484
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: been working on a Commodore workstation that ran on Unix

485
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: before that project had been canceled by Radigan, would become

486
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: the lead engineers for the Amiga five hundred. George Robbins

487
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: decided to increase the amount of RAM on the Amiga

488
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: chip called Agnes, up to one megabyte. The goal was

489
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: to give the chip enough memory to support higher graphic resolution,

490
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 1: and his decision kind of ruffled feathers with the original

491
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 1: Amiga team who had designed this chip, but that reaction

492
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: ended up being a motivator for the Amiga five hundred

493
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: team at Commodore, not something that detracted from it. The

494
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: new chip was called fat AGNES, and it worked. It

495
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: boosted the Amiga's abilities to display graphics without breaking backwards

496
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: compatibility because it still was using the same architecture as

497
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 1: the previous chip, but it did slow things down a

498
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: little bit in the process. The machine itself ran a

499
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 1: little more slowly. However, the improvement in graphical output helped

500
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:34,719
Speaker 1: balance that out. George Robbins also took a look at

501
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: the motherboard that the Amiga team had designed to try

502
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: and figure out ways that they could simplify things to

503
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: reduce the cost of fabrication and get that Amiga five

504
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 1: hundred down to the level that Ratigan wanted. One of

505
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: the things he cut was the original Amiga's ability to

506
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: connect directly to a television set. Robbins would replace that

507
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: capability on the motherboard. By including an adapter that could

508
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: do the same thing but would not be incorporate did

509
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 1: directly into the actual motherboard. That simplified the fabrication process

510
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 1: for the motherboard itself. He also took the power supply

511
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: out of the computer and he made it an external component.

512
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: He designed the Amiga five hundred to integrate the keyboard

513
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: directly with the computer case, so as part of the

514
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 1: computer case as a whole, and the computer case included

515
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: an expansion slot that would let users plug in devices

516
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: without having to open up the computer case. Each move

517
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 1: helped bring the Amiga's price down a little bit. Meanwhile,

518
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 1: Radigan had decided that the high end machine which would

519
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: become the Amiga two thousand, would not go to the

520
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: original Amiga team either. They're just weren't enough engineers left

521
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: to carry the projects, so he initially assigned the development

522
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: of the Amiga two thousand to a team of engineers

523
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: at Commodore's German subsidiary. That team took the Amiga one

524
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: thousand design and then they essentially added more stuff to it.

525
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 1: They added in an interface for expansion cards. They changed

526
00:31:01,520 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: the case to a more standard PC case, but then

527
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: Ratigan sees this design and he says, that's not really

528
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: what I wanted. It's not it's not powerful enough. It's

529
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,719
Speaker 1: not a step far enough from the Amiga one thousand.

530
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: He felt the team had failed to deliver upon the

531
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 1: goal of building out a truly powerful computer for the

532
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: high end market, so he turned to Commodore designer David Haney,

533
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: and Haney looked at the designs of the original Amiga

534
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:31,520
Speaker 1: chip set and motherboard design, and he began creating new hardware.

535
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: One thing he built was a chip called Buster and

536
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: Busters purpose was to handle the operations of the expansion bus.

537
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: And again, a bus is a component that facilitates communication

538
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: between different computer devices or even different elements within a

539
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: computer itself. Busters design worked on an architecture that was

540
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: called Zoro and uh It would allow for almost a

541
00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 1: plug and play a coroach with expansion devices, which was

542
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: uncommon in that era. The Amiga two thousands sported five

543
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: expansion slots using this Zoro bus design that Haney had built.

544
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: It also had four IBM pc I s A slots.

545
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 1: I s A, by the way, stands for Industry Standard architecture.

546
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: That was a term IBM used for its sixteen bit

547
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: internal bus. For computers that were built on the eight

548
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: two eight six CPU architecture and beyond two three sixty

549
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: six those this gave the Amiga two thousand incredible expansion

550
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: abilities when paired with the right devices. Haney also put

551
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 1: the processor on a separate board from the motherboard. So

552
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: why would you do that? Why would you put the

553
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: CPU on a separate board. Well, the idea was that

554
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: that would allow you to swap out the CPU more easily,

555
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 1: so you could conceivably upgrade the same machine over time,

556
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: as long as the CPU was compatible with the rest

557
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: of the architecture of the computer. Haney also incorporated a

558
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: generator locking mechanism the Amiga that's also known as gen lock.

559
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: The gen lock would allow a user to output computer

560
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: images to display on top of a video feed without

561
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: affecting the image stability, so you could overlay computer graphics

562
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: on top of a video feed. This is the source

563
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: of stuff you see in broadcast systems all the time

564
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: where you might see a graphic appear on top of,

565
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 1: say a live news report, that's due to stuff like this,

566
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 1: like a gen lock. This feature would make the Amiga

567
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: two thousand the go to computer for video production and

568
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: broadcast once a very important product would debut. More on

569
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: that in a bit. For a case, Hainey was able

570
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: to pull a design from the canceled Commodore nine hundred.

571
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: That was that Unix workstation that got canceled. I had

572
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: mentioned that a little bit earlier when Radigan was canceling

573
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 1: all those projects. That was one of them. The Amiga

574
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: two thousand was certainly more powerful than the Amiga one thousand,

575
00:33:56,880 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: but some people like J Miner, felt that the computer

576
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 1: did not go far enough. It wasn't really transformative enough.

577
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,719
Speaker 1: Minor believed that the technological advancements that were in the

578
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: industry had outpaced the two thousand, and that Commodore had

579
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:15,800
Speaker 1: made a mistake by not going far enough with the design.

580
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,399
Speaker 1: Like the Amigo one thousand, the five hundred and two

581
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: thousand both experienced delays in development. It takes a while

582
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:26,399
Speaker 1: to build out a new computer design, even if you're

583
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: starting from an already established foundation like the Amigo one thousand.

584
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: The team's building the five hundred and two thousand were

585
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:35,760
Speaker 1: not the same people who had designed the one thousand

586
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 1: to start with, so it took some time just to

587
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: get up to speed before serious design work could begin.

588
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 1: Investor Irving Gould and the Board of Directors wanted to

589
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: see new computers hitting the market right away, replacing the

590
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: Amigo one thousand, which was doing modest sales. And remember

591
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: the Amigo one thousand debut at the end of nineteen.

592
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: They wanted the new five hundred and two thousand models

593
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: to debut in nineteen eighty six, but it was taking

594
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: a while to get them ready to go, longer than

595
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 1: Gould would like. He was notoriously impatient. Irvin Gould pushed

596
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: the board to hire a management consulting firm to evaluate Commodore. Essentially,

597
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 1: from the way I've read it, it sounds like he

598
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 1: was looking for a reason to be able to fire Ratigan. Well,

599
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 1: there was a man who was part of this consulting

600
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: firm who came in named Mehdi Ali, who was then

601
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: a special advisor, and he prepared the report, and one

602
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: of the suggestions that Meddi Ali made in this report

603
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: was that the board should fire Ratigan as CEO right away.

604
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: Radigan knew what was up, He could see what was happening,

605
00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 1: so he went to work the next day anyway, he

606
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: was then met by security and lawyers and was escorted

607
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 1: off the premises, but reportedly no one could actually tell

608
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:57,399
Speaker 1: him why he was no longer employed. He had made

609
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: some really tough decisions as CEO. A lot of them

610
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 1: were not terribly popular because they involved tons of layoffs

611
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: some of really good people, and they some of those

612
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: decisions might have been harmful in the long run, but

613
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 1: he had returned Commodore to profitability. He had pushed for

614
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:18,279
Speaker 1: the next generation of computers in the Amiga line, and

615
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: now he was history almost You see, there was the

616
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 1: matter of that five year contract he had signed. So

617
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: Ratigan sues Commodore for breach of contract, claiming nine million

618
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: dollars of unpaid wages. Commodore counter sued Ratigan for twenty

619
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 1: four million dollars. This case would go on stretching all

620
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 1: the way to which fittingly would have been the end

621
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: of that five year contract. The courts ultimately found in

622
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: favor of Ratigan, and they dismissed the countersuit against him.

623
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: In Ratigan's place, Gould would serve as the chief executive

624
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,680
Speaker 1: for the time being. As for Amiga and two thousand

625
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: would both launch just a short while after Ratigan had

626
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: been let go. And I've got a lot more to

627
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 1: say about how those computers turned out, but we're going

628
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 1: to cover that in our next episode where we learn

629
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: about the ultimate fate of Amiga. If you guys have

630
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,560
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's

631
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 1: a technology, a company, a person in tech, anything like that,

632
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: send me an email. The address you should use is

633
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,840
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you

634
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: can always drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.

635
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: To handle with both of those is text stuff HSW.

636
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:39,200
Speaker 1: Make sure you go on over to t public dot

637
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: com slash tech stuff to check out all of our merchandise.

638
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: We got some cool stuff in there, and don't forget

639
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: we have an Instagram account. You should be following it

640
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 1: and I'll tell to you again really soon for more

641
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how

642
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: stuffs that carm