It was also a less expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh and IBM PC as a general-purpose business or home computer. When it was eventually renamed AmigaOS, the BCPL parts were rewritten in the C language.Īlthough early Commodore advertisements attempt to cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Amiga Sidecar PC compatibility addon, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. The original operating system, partly based on TRIPOS and written in BCPL, is called AmigaDOS and the GUI is called Workbench. However, poor marketing and failure to repeat the technological advances of the first systems meant that the Amiga quickly lost its market share to competing platforms, such as the fourth generation game consoles, Apple Macintosh, and IBM PC compatibles.īased on the Motorola 68000 family of microprocessors, the machine has a custom chipset with graphics and sound capabilities that were unprecedented for the price, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. Finally, as the third generation, the A1200 and the A4000 were released in 1992. The A3000, introduced in 1990, started the second generation of Amiga Systems, followed by the A500+ and the A600. The best selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 and became one of the leading home computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s with approximately six million sold. It originated as a project code-named 'Lorraine', therefore the female was used instead of the male and general version Amigo. The name 'Amiga' was chosen because it is the Spanish word for (female) friend, and alphabetically it appears before Apple in lists of computer makers. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers, such as the Commodore 64, and the platform quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts. The first model, the A1000, was launched in 1985 and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities. The Amiga is a family of personal computers sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s.

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