Jay Miner

Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 – June 20, 1994, Rest In Peace) was an American integrated circuit designer, known primarily for developing multimedia chips for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family and as the “father of the Amiga”.

While working for Atari in the 70s, Jay designed the TIA chip, which was one of the two main chips in the Atari 2600 games console (along with the 6507 CPU).  He then designed the ANTIC, CTIA and GTIA chips, which were the main chips (again, asides from the CPU) in the Atari 8-bit home computers (Atari 400, 800, 1200XL, 600XL, 65XE, 130XE, XEGS) and the Atari 5200 Video Game System, all of which are very similar internally to each other.

I mention this because these are the spiritual ancestors of the Amiga custom chips, using much of the same ideas and concepts, but greatly expanded upon, using his expertise and experience gained while working at Atari.

In 1982 Jay quit working at Atari, and with David Morse, founded Hi Toro Inc., which later that year became Amiga Inc.  This was the beginning of the Amiga.

USA Patents granted to “Jay G. Miner”, including many of the original patents for the Amiga.