Timeline:1983

1983

January 6-9 At the January CES Commodore announce the B128 and the P128 computer range. The P128 was a business computer to take over from the Commodore PET, and was part of the CBM-II project. It came with an 80 column green screen display, a 6509 CPU @ 1mhz, with 128k or Ram. While the B128 had a 40 column display, 128k of Ram, but no VDU, with both models sporting a smooth case which was a concept by Porsche Design (a company run by Ferdinand Porsche's Son), and the Porsche Pet cases were completed by Ira Velinsky. The P-128 was subsequently cancelled, and a few pre-production models they produced were mostly recalled and destroyed. The B-128 idea developed over the next few years, and was released in Europe as the CBM 610.At the CES Commodore also demonstrate the HHC-4 Hand-held computer, featuring a 6502 processor, 24 character x 1 row LCD display, 4KB ram expandable to 16k, for $199. Jack Tramiel was initially hopeful the programmable calculator market was could stand a late-to-the market contender, having developed from the Texas Instruments TI-55 programmable calculator released in 1977, to the Panasonic (otherwise known as the Quasar) H1400 HHC  (which is Held held computer), introduced in 1982. The Commodore HHC-4 didnt gain significant interest, and was cancelled.

jan 83 - The Atari 1200XL is presented at the Winter CES. The 1200XL. Notable features were 64 KB of RAM, built-in self test, redesigned keyboard (featuring four function keys and a HELP key), and redesigned cable port layout. It was shipped in March at $899 (over 2K today). Part of its design was based on the Sweet 8 project also knows as LIZ/NY, created in the WCI/NY Atari labs run by Steve Mayer, who was one of the founders of Atari's think-tank Cyan Engineering. Liz was then modified into the 1200XL, after some of its features were cancelled, and was introduced as a replacement to the Atari 800.

19th - The Lisa PC is introduced by Apple Computer Inc. Lisa features M68000 CPU @ 5mhz, a built in 12" monocrome monitor displaying 720x364 graphics, 1MB RAM, twin 5.25" floppies for $10,000, with an optional ProFileHD for  US$3,499 for 5MB, the combo costing around 32-and-a-half thousand dollars today. By now, the Apple II has become a universally popular machine, and Apple were worth $8 per share, with an annual revenue near $1 Billion. Customers of the Lisa were at first enthusiastic to see a fourth generation Apple Computer, which was an early attempt to copy the Xerox Alto, and Xerox's own Portable Alto, the Xerox 820 a.k.a "The Worm", which appeared in 1981 for just $3,000. Apple got on with making the Lisa II, while continuing development of the Machintosh.

January 1983, Commodore offer a $100 cash back in the United States on the purchase of a C64 to anyone that traded in another video game console or computer. Thousands of customers traded in their own consoles, putting the likes of Timex, who were marketing their own version of the ZX81; the Timex Sinclair 1000 at the time, totally out business within a year. This sparked a price war on an already shakey consumer market, and this increased fears that consumers did not know which technology to trust, and greatly adding to the looming video games market crash of 1983.

January and October - Amiga Corporation recruit new members to work on the Lorraine prototype. This included Tom Cahill as lead lab technician, Glenn Keller in charge of the sound chip, and systems engineer Dave Needle; who worked on Agnus and the system boards. Ron Nicholson's friends from BTI Computer Systems, Dave Dean and Bob Pariseau (join as software engineers) and later Carl Sassenrath, a calculator designer from Hewlett-Packard, who had become frustrated with HPs limited use of his ideas, and who was interested in writing an operating system from scratch. Sam Dicker a software sound engineer joins from Williams Electronics, followed in July by Williams Engineer RJ Mical.

In August, Systems Engineer Dale Luck is hired by the team, and in October the final hiring include Bob Burns; a specialist software designer for printers and input devices, and Bob Peck a specialist in writing manuals.

April May 1983By this stage, the Amiga's hardware design had been laid out on a huge white board in Jays office, where the employees can ask questions and add their input. The plan is to create an super computer at a fraction of the cost of a real super computer, at least somewhere around a thousand to fifteen-hundred instead of tens of thousands. The key inspirations for the machine were Sun Microsystems and UNIX mainframes, with the portability and GUI of the Xerox Alto. Jay started to design sketches of what the outside of the machine would look like, showing the usual IBM style which allowed for lots of cards to be slotted into the motherboard, along with a chunky IBM keyboard and display. Dave Morse thought the card slot idea would be too expensive for the ultra-cheap machine Morse wanted to sell. So Jay was talked out of the idea, even though they knew the only computers which had done well at the time; like the Apple and IBM, had card slots. Years later Jay recalled in an interview for Amiga User International magazine that not taking on IBM from the start; which were still silent monochrome machines back in 83; was his biggest regret, although in the end it saved the Amiga. At the time, the backers at ZyMOS become more interested in the video games rather than a new games machine, especially when it is discovered that the Zymos chips simply dont work fast enough to be used with Lorraine as a powerful home computer. There was also a debate over which graphic modes the new machine should use. Chunky Pixel mode would be better for the 3D games Jay and RJ had in mind, while Planar mode would be better to produce 2D screens and the GUI. Dave Morse wanted the machine to be able to animate 2D cartoons like "The Smurfs", in real time, at least 10 times faster than another other computer, with hardware sprites. And so in the end, Planar mode was chosen to make the design of a multi window operating system and 2D features much faster and easier, and because Planar Bitplanes only required a small amount of memory, when memory in those days was still very expensive. RJ Mical questioned the logic of having Expansion ports in the design of a low-cost games machine, and Jay's reply was that the machine would be sold in two forms, the very basic model like the Atari 400, and the expanded model with full keyboard like the Atari 800. The open collar culture at Amiga corporation continued the relaxed approach adopted from Nolan Bushnell's Atari, with employees able to dress as they liked and with flexible working hours, with Jay Miner's Dog Mitchy able to walk around freely, with his ID clipped to his collar. Dave Morse would kindly settle issues, and keep the team on track over the coming months.May 83 - Production of Cyan Engineerings original Colleen Atari 400 & 800 computer ends.

May 83 - In Europe, The Milton Bradley Vectrex is shipped, having been introduced in the United States in November, and Japanese retails wont get to see the unit until June. The Vectrex is a second generation machine, being the first, last, and only home-based system to use a vector based screen.. It used a Morotola 68A09 CPU @ 1.5 mhz, with 8KB of rom which also held a Mine Storm game, and only 1K of Ram, with everything loading from 32kb cartridge ROMs. The Vectrox also boasted a 3" built in paper cone speaker, and an AY-3-8912 sound chip; which went on to be used in the 128K Spectrum computer two years later in September 1985. The concept for the Vectrex came about after John Ross and engineers at Smith Engineering found a 1" cathode ray tube from a fighter aircraft heads-up-display at Electro-Marvin surplus store in LA. The system was unveiled at the 1982 July CES in Chicago, and early sales lead to rapid growth in the Milton Bradley company, and the product becoming available globally by the summer of 1983; just before the video games crash. In September a light pen for drawing and a 3-D Imager headset is released, developed by John Ross, transforming 2D black and white images into full Colour 3D! But this did nothing to save the machine from commercial failure. An attempt was made to bring back the concept as a handheld device in 1988, but this clashed with the pending introduction of the Nintendo Gameboy in 1989, and eventually all plans for the system were released into the Public Domain.

May 83 - As the Amiga Lorraine team where planning the 4th generation hardware, Amiga Corp also begin to design The power Module, a memory interface which allowed Atari 2600 users to load games via a normal cassette recorder. The power Module was to be sold with three 3D games, which used 3D glasses supplied with the unit. The Amiga Team hope this will new innovation will keep Amiga peripherals rolling out, to support the development of Lorraine.

June - Atari announce the cancellation of the Atari 1200XL line, just as they introduce the 600XL and 800XL home computers at the Summer CES in Chicago. Atari 1400XL and 1450XLD computers were also introduced, but these never made it into production and were cancelled. The 600XL would directly replace the Atari 400, and the 800XL would replace the 800 and 1200XL. Peripherals introduced included: the 1027 letter quality printer, a 1030 300 baud modem; for use with Compuserv, and upgraded dual density 1050 5.4" disk drive. The public is slow to take on the new computers, fearing another cheap computer with low quality games could be a waste of their cash., and the consumer electronics market begins to look very shakey.

June 83 CES - Commodore shows the B128-80 Business, and P128-40 Personal computers, also known as the Commodore CBM-II range, in another desperate attempt to win over business Commodore PET users. The P-128 was subsequently cancelled and the few pre-production models they produced were mostly recalled and destroyed. The B128 idea developed over the next few years, and was released in Europe as the CBM 610, 620, and 630, and the CBM 710, the 720 and the CBM 730. Although all existing peripherals such as printers and disk drives will work with the machines, and despite a promised second CPU option to become PC compatible, the Business 128-80 was another Commodore flop. The machine was discontinued in 1984, and all schematics, plans and prototypes were subsequently handed over to the Chicago B128 Users Group.

At the summer CES of 83, Commodore also show Commodore SX-100, later known as the SX-64 and the Executive 64. This is a portable commodore 64 computer. with a 6-inch color monitor and is priced at US$995 ($2,390 today).The SX-64 was released in January of 1984, featuring a MOS 6510 rated at 1MHZ, 40 line 16 column text mode, and a 320 x 300 graphics mode for games. As well as the now standard composite video out, the machine also housed an S-Video port, so that the system could be used with many modern TVs. The SX-64, as well as the B128, were huge failures and shortly cancelled. Dale Luck from the Amiga design team later put an Amiga A500 motherboard inside a gutted SX-64 case for a one-off prototype he named the SX-500, which he used as his own portable Amiga.

Rumous of a secret Commodore Supercomputer, supervised by Jack Tramiel himself are leaking. This was the C900 or the Z machine, which used a 1979 Zilog Z8000 series CPU, two of which had recently been used by Namco for it's 1982 Arcade title Pole Position. The C900 is ahead of its time, but even after a mountain of investments it is so far behind the times it is hardly worth releasing.

Amiga Corporation were also at the June CES, announcing a new range of cartridges for the Atari 2600, having recently cancelled the Power Module. Three Cartridges would make up the Power Play Arcade series, #1 would contain the 3D -Ghost Attack, 3D Havoc and 3D-Genesis, developed by Video Soft; which used the heavy duty 3D glasses originally intended for the Power Module package. Cartridge 2 would contain 5 family games including Scavenger Hunt and Word Zapper, and #3 would contain a number of older titles by Imagic, although this deal later fell through. . July 7 - Warner Communications Inc. (WCI) announces that Ray Kassar had resigned as Atari chairman and CEO, and that Kassar's replacement would be James J. Morgan.

July: Sierra was the code name for a 16-bit/32-bit personal computer designed by Atari's Sunnyvale Research Lab (SRL) starting around summer of 1983. A two-chip GPU package was collectively known as Rainbow, and the system is sometimes referred to by this name. The CPU had not been chosen, but the Motorola 68000 and Intel 286 were being considered.

July 15 83 - The Family Computer, or Famicom, later renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System or (NES) is released in Japan. This is a 3rd generation video games console, and was extremely popular from launch. But the machine would not be seen commercially in America until October 1985, with most units being shipped in to Europe and the US in 1986, after the Amiga A1000 has be released. The Famicom was inspired by Nintendoes massive coin-op hits such as 1981s Donkey Kong, and was originally titled the GameCom. Original plans for a 16 bit high performance machine with a disk drive and keyboard were rejected in favour of a cheap 8-bit console which would not interfere with future coin-op sales. Imported semi-conductors such as the 6502 were expensive and rare, so Nintendo turned to the Japanese Ricoh Company, formed in 1936 as Riken Sensitized Paper. The Famicom used a Ricoh (Ree-ko) 2A03 CPU rated at 3.58 mhz; which was a remodelled MOS 6502 design, and a Ricoh Picture Processing Unit as the graphics processor producing a 256x240 pixel display.. The combined 192 kb of ram onboard was just enough to drive the video display and sound, with between 8kb - 1MB of ROM inside the cartridges. This was very much a machine to rival the Atari 2600, and set a standard for others to follow.

July 1983 - Robert J Mical (Software Engineer) joins the Amiga team. RJ was a software engineer at the Williams coin-op company in Chicago, working on the laserdisk games Sinistar and Star Rider. Sinistar was a multi-directional space shooter from 1983, with collectables and fast paced asteroid dodging action, with its own unique catchphrase. Star rider was way ahead of its time, using laserdisc technology create graphics which were way beyond the capabilities of any computer. But so few of them were made that the company reported a loss of $50 million on the game. RJ turned down job offers from Amiga corp. twice simply because he thought the project sounded way too wacky, and leaving behind his family and friends in Chicago for the new startup-company in California felt way too scary. He changed his mind when co-worker and friend Noah [Falstein] dropped the coin-op game Red Baron, as were trying to move the cabinet. Mical jumped to save the machine but it fell onto him, and badly damaged his leg and knee. He apparently saw this as a sign, and made his way to the Amiga interview on crutches.

July 25th 1983, Amiga Corporation file a trademark for their Power-stick joystick. By this point several Games had been developed for the Atari 2600, and at least 2 games for the companies new hope for the future, The Joyboard, but most of these titles were never released:3-D Genesis3-D Ghost Attack3-D HavocDepth ChargeOff Your RockerAtom Smasher, S.A.C. Alert, Scavenger Hunt, Strafe, Surf's Up - which used the joyboard - and Mogul Manic, a skiing game which used with the joyboard, co-created with ??

August 5 - Amiga powerstick released. Originally called The Pro-Stick, this tiny controller fits in your palm and has a stick you can maneuver easily with two fingers. This was first shown at the Atlanta Toy Fair in 1983 and featured a 1.5" handle and dual fire buttons, and boasting true 8-way response, unlike typical controllers that only use 4 switches. At least 7 different types of controllers were released, in varous colours, for the Atari, Tandy, Vic-20, C64, Intellivision and Colecovision.

August - Dale Luck hired by the Amiga team. At this stage, they had an Atari 800 test board, and a Sage model IV with its Motorola 68000 @ 8 mhz, 512kb ram and 800kb floppy drive. The Sage II computer debuted at the West Cost Computer Fair in March 1982, with the Sage IV daughterboard adding 512kb ram and 4 extra serial ports and a Winchester Hard Disk controller appearing by mid 1983. Lots of plans are now taking form at the design stage, on a huge whiteboard in the main office, but nothing in the shape of real hardware. To overcome this, a software emulator called AGONY was created to emulate some of the functions of the Amiga on their Sage machine, where up to 4 people would crowd around it trying to program and use it. September 83: Amiga developer Jay Miner completes a prototype design for the computer code-named "Lorraine", using a Motorola 68000 processor with three custom chips called Agnus; the fancy animation chip, Daphne the display chip, and Portia, which was originally Paula, and will return to that original name, as the digital audio resampler and port chip. The Amiga now had 4 blitter channels, (which is a way to duplicate data quickly, and was another feature introduced in the Xerox Alto), eight hardware sprites 16 pixels wide but unlimited by height, (which was inspired by the Atari re-usable sprites technique) and 4 audio channels. The team are also working on ideas to sync the chipset timings with the NTSC video signal so that images could be recorded onto video tape. It was the first time a computer was able to do this, and made signal broadcasting and genlocking possible. In order to achieve overlays on a video screen without interfering with the colours, they came up with Compressed Colour Encoding system known as Hold and Modify or HAM mode. With fancy ways to offload the processor with DMA driven IO operation taken from IBM mainframes, and dynamic co-processing within the File Allocation Table Address Generator Units, abbreviated as the FAT Agnus chip, which were the copper and blitter functions.

September: Shockwaves ripple through the community as North American Video Games Crash of 1983 is made official, and sales of computers and video games at an all time low. Consumer confidence is decimated after many companies flood the market with a series of very cheap video games, mainly for the Atari 2600 and other second generation home computers. The market would continue to decline over the next 6 months, forcing many computer and software providers out of business. Only the Commodore 64 would survive the crash without losing momentum.September: Just as everything is looking great, the bottom drops out of the video games market, killing the joystick and cartridge side of the business, which starts losing money fast, and they eventually sell the joystick line to their manufacturer Pride Electronics.

October - Lorraine was further along in design, they are starting to making the breadboards. But funding has run dry, and the Amiga team are having to work under a very tight budget. Amiga has now taken on over 30 employees, and it isn't long before their rather small residence in Scott Boulevard and getting rather crowded, with everything piled on top of each other. Everyone manages to get along, and this creates the great atmosphere which created the Amiga. By this time, the basement labs have transformed into two separate areas, one containing the CPU and serial components, the other room containing the Agnus Paula and Denise chips. A huge pipeline of wires and cables connects the two rooms, via a corridor, which were hanging over the ceiling, and required all engineers to bow as they entered, which RJ in particular found amusing. The wire-wrapped breadboards produced a lot of heat, so fans would blow 24 hours a day to keep everything cool, which would mean it was noisy, dark and hot down there most of the time.

October - Carl Sassenrath continues early work on his pre-emptive kernel, and the first rough prototype is built in hardware. This takes care of all of The Amiga Team's remaining cash reserves, and as they shop around for Support, they are turned down by Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Sony, Philips and Apple. Steve Jobs visits the no-longer secret Los Gatos team several times during this period. Jobs concluded there was too much hardware inside the Lorraine prototype, even though it was based on just 3 chips, and refused to bail them out or make an offer to help. Amiga Corporation are officially broke, so..

November: - 21st 1983: Atari and Amiga Corp. sign Letter of Intent (LOI) agreement. (see amiga contract 21st nov 83). This agreement allowed Atari access to the Amiga computer system in development in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money from Atari to Amiga for assistance in the development of the system. Atari would gain access to the Amiga chipset and design its own version of the Amiga computer codenamed "Mickey" after the developers wife and also a latter contract with Disney, and a subsequent "Minnie" 256K memory card would be developed. As part of the agreement, Atari would sell "Mickey" as a video game system with no keyboard for 1 year. After that, Atari could then sell a keyboard add-on and sell full blown versions of "Mickey" to the public.

December 83- A group of coin-op engineers begin work on Atari's GAZA project, with dual 68k CPUs connected with an independent bus, to compete with the Sun and Apollo computers, and this could be the breakthrought the company needs to break into the serious high-end market. They began work on their own OS, but later buy CPM-68k which was shortly available.

Dec 5th?? - Amiga Breadboards being plugged in and tried as a whole machine for the first time, 4 weeks before the CES. With lots of technical issues to be resolved the Lorraine hardware eventually works. At this stage Lorraine has no keyboard, so there was no way to communicate directly with the technology except for a serial interface, through which code was injected using a remote terminal connection from the Sage IV. Many libraries and tools had been written on the Sage, which used the Idris stripped down UNIX operating system, which was close enough to how they were writing the Lorraine operating system that C compiled code could be tested on the Sage within AGONY and then transferred to the real hardware.

Dec 12th?? - Amiga team remove the hardware emulator AGONY from the Sage and try programming registers on real hardware for the first time. It worked, so over the next three weeks they move into the office, and begin working 24 hours a day, eating, sleeping in the one development room, programming their computer. Wives and girlfriends would arrive with food, and generally help out, while engineers ate and slept at their desks. The software compiler would then take hours to compile the changes, so they resorted to dancing during the late-night compiler runs to prevent falling asleep. One of the hidden messages in the Workbench 1.2 credits highlights this: "Moral Support: Joe Pillow and the Dancing Fools." At this stage, everything was held together with separate wires, and if something touched or fell off, it crashed the whole system. Things died, wires broke, forcing the engineers to push each other, and to keep pushing harder. The money was all gone, the CES was all or nothing.December 20th, Atari Budget meeting discusses plans for the 800 XLD (which is 800XL with a disk drive), a 1600 computer known as the 1650 XLD, (which is based on a new GAZA chipset), and the 1850 XL (a 68000 based clone of Amiga Lorraine, and designed as a gaming system.

Dec 24th?? - Having got the machine running, and lots more things breaking down, one of the engineers came up with the idea of Line Draw in hardware. This would mean boxes and windows with straight lines would take no CPU time and meant everything from the GUI to wireframe games would be highly increased in speed. Dale Luck also wanted this, so he talked to Dave Needle about this, who flatly refused to let him add line-draw, but was eventually talked into it by Bob Pariseau (head of software dev) and Mitchy The Dog, who jumps up at Pariseau and Needle as they were arguing about it, biting Daves arm roughly until they stopped. Dec 27st?? - Dale Luck is hacking the system software while the custom chips are still on huge breadboards, in order to add line draw. To prevent blowing out the hardware, he places an anti-static mat on the floor and convinces everyone to go barefoot, as one micro-volt could shut down the entire computer, which lead to days of debugging.