Atari-Amiga Deal

Introduction

At the 1983 AMOA show in New Orleans, Dave Morse meets Atari coin-op division President John Farrand. Discussions go well and that November a contract is signed.

Contract With Atari

On November 21st, Amiga and Atari sign a contract to use the Lorraine chipset for video game applications. Recipients are Dave Morse at Amiga and Mike Albaugh of Atari's coin-op division in Milpitas. Preliminary hardware specifications are included with the contract. During a budget meeting on December 20th, engineer Steve Bristow lists '1850 XL - 68000 based clones of Amiga game player system' in his log sheet of proposed computers.

Enter 1984

Atari and Amiga reconvene at the January CES in Las Vegas where Amiga are demonstrating their Lorraine computer prototype. On March 7th Atari deliver a $500,000 check to Amiga. Along with the check is a letter outlining previously discussed terms, which is signed by Dave Morse and John Farrand. A licensing agreement (LA) is expected to be signed at the end of June.

By April, Atari were working on their own version of the Amiga, codenamed Mickey.

An Unexpected Repayment

On June 29th, Dave Morse and Bill Hart meet John Farrand in the front lobby of Atari's headquarters at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale. Dave greets John and hands him a $750,000 check. This amount is a repayment of the original $500,000 plus interest. What Atari didn't know was that the money had been sent to Amiga from Commodore, who they had met with a day earlier.