Jay Miner
Overview
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
designer, known primarily for his work in multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
chips and as the "father of the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
". He received a BS
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in EECS
Computer engineering
Computer engineering, also called computer systems engineering, is a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer systems. Computer engineers usually have training in electronic engineering, software design, and...
from UC Berkeley in 1959.
Miner started in the electronics industry with a number of designs in the medical world, including a remote-control pacemaker
Artificial pacemaker
A pacemaker is a medical device that uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contacting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart...
.
He moved to Atari
Atari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
in the late 1970s. One of his first successes was to combine an entire breadboard
Breadboard
A breadboard is a construction base for prototyping of electronics. The term is commonly used to refer to solderless breadboard ....
of components into a single chip, known as the TIA
Television Interface Adapter
The Television Interface Adaptor is the custom computer chip that is the heart of the Atari 2600 game console, generating the screen display, sound effects, and reading input controllers. Its design was widely affected by an attempt to reduce the amount of RAM needed to operate the display...
.
Quotations
Dale Luck looked like your average off the street homeless hippy with long hair and was pretty laid back.
That's no problem for me I didn't mind if people wore pink bunny slippers as long as the job got done.
I spent this time polishing up the software/hardware documentation, renaming registers to be more meaningful. This was actually time well spent in my life.
When Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984, the legion of Amiga loyalists thought the world would beat a path to the better-mousetrap door. It didn't happen. The Amiga languished.