Jay Miner, Atari and Amiga computer designer

I’m just going to put this out there. Jay Miner is my hero. He designed the Atari 2600 game console, the Atari 8-bit computers, and the Amiga computer. But he made contributions to humanity outside of that, working on medical devices when he wasn’t making the greatest computers of whatever decade he was working in. He did this in spite of not being able to invent something to save himself, and he died much too soon, aged 62, on June 20, 1994.

Jay Miner’s service to his country and humanity

The upper case of the Amiga 1000 computer contained the signatures of its designers molded into the plastic, including Jay Miner and his dog Mitchy’s paw print.

During the Korean War, Jay Miner paused his college education and enlisted in the Coast Guard. They put him in electronics school. He served three years, during which he met his wife, Caroline Poplawski. After finishing a 3-year tour of duty, he and his wife moved to California, where he earned his electrical engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958.

He was a pioneer in designing digital voltmeters and calculators. He cofounded chip manufacturer Synertek, which put him in touch with Atari. MOS Technology was unable to supply Atari with enough chips and recommended Synertek as a reliable second source. At Synertek, Atari met Jay Miner. They quickly made a deal with Synertek to acquire Miner so he could design chipsets for their upcoming products. These became the Atari 2600 game console and Atari 400 and 800 computers.

When he got fed up with Atari’s (mis)management, he left, putting his talents toward designing very low-power CPUs for use in pacemakers that could run for years off a small battery. And after he got fed up with Commodore’s (mis)management, he left. His final project was a chip for a cardiac defibrilator that could be programmed externally.

Sadly, while he was making it possible for people with unhealthy hearts live longer, his own kidneys were failing him. He had to undergo dialysis for many years and received a kidney transplant when he was 58, which allowed him to live four more years.

The father of the Amiga

Jay Miner’s Atari 2600 was the bestselling game console of its generation, going on to sell 20 million units. His Atari 800 computer was the best microcomputer of the 1970s, and it was the machine every home computer designed through 1983 tried to match or beat. In the early 1980s, David Morse approached him about designing another computer. This computer, the Amiga, had a 16/32-bit CPU, color graphics, 4-channel sound, and full pre-emptive multitasking. And it was released in 1985. Dave Haynie, one of Miner’s coworkers at Commodore, said there is no such thing as a 1980s computer. All 1980s computers were actually 1970s computers, and the Amiga dragged the whole industry into the 1990s.

Amiga was a small startup running on a tight budget and was running out of money. Atari and Commodore were both interested in the company. But Amiga took a loan from Atari before they knew of Commodore’s interest. Commodore paid off the loan to Atari, bought Amiga, and got itself sued. But in November 1985, the Amiga came to market and Jay Miner showed the world what computing was supposed to be.

If he’d been able to live long enough to design one more computer and one more medical device, one can only wonder what else he would have been able to do. Several key members of his team got back together to design the Atari Lynx and the 3DO console. But those only provide glimpses of what Miner would have wanted to do.