wurlycorner wrote:It sure is...
I didn't realise just how closely related they are though - didn't realise the ST was actually based on a licensed version of the chips originally developed for the miggie.
Ah man, now you've made me type out a long boring post

Apologies to Vanzep for spamming your profile ...
[ boring bit for most people ]
In the beginning Amiga Corporation was a separate company entirely, nothing to do with Atari or Commodore, and they had a problem. As a small startup with lofty goals, they needed money to develop the machine they wanted to make. They managed to get pretty far, but as always the funding only went so far, so they approached Atari. Atari gave them a loan to get them to completion, with the caveat that while Amiga would make the computer, Atari would have access to the chipset to enable them to make games consoles using it. The kicker was that if for whatever reason Amiga Corporation couldn't repay the loan by a certain time, Atari got everything.
Meanwhile, a man called Jack Tramiel who was formally the CEO of Commodore, was ousted from the company by the board, who had fallen out with his management style. He had a lot of employee loyalty, and as a result took a lot of the engineers with him, and using his business smarts - managed to buy Atari from Time Warner for a small sum (the rumour is $1), as the company wanted shot of their video games side. He got his engineers to work, and they quickly, using off the shelf parts, put together what became the Atari ST.
This meant Commodore had just lost a lot of their engineering talent, so needed something - and they also found Amiga. They bought the whole company, and gave them the money to pay back the Atari loan. This was a bit dubious legally, and caused a lawsuit that lasted for quite a few years!
But at the end of the day, the only thing that the Amiga and Atari shared, was the processor (the Motorola 68000).
[ / boring bit for most people ]