Interesting,
The book "On the Edge", and various interviews with Jay Miner and RJ Mitchel seem to portray a slightly different story
Actually no, On the Edge (a wonderful book by Brian, that I also contributed to) recounts the meeting Jack had with them that Spring as part of his TTL (Tramel Technology Ltd.). Jack spent that Spring going across Silicon Valley looking for new technologies to possibly use in his computers. Amiga was one of several places he visited.
BTW - it's RJ Mical. As far as him, see below.
(and different amounts- $24 million and $4.25/share IIRC).
The amounts I gave come directly from the contracts.
RJ explains it all in the DVD included with "Amiga Forever" and you can find it on you Tube.
RJ does a "storytelling" routine on his stage presentation. As a direct quote of his states - "If I have to choose between the truth and telling a good story - I prefer to tell a good story". Unfortunately, 99% of the missinformation comes from RJ - who was not involved in any of the actual business dealings. Jay was involved in the initial contact, but Dave Morse was the one who actually did all the meetings, correspondences, and negotiating.
Almost every word that comes out of RJ Mical's mouth in that stage storytelling you linked to is false. There was no deal for them to buy Amiga, there was a deal to provide access to the chips and licensing for production. There was no one month to negotiate (the hammering out of the licensing agreement was to be hammered out from the delivery of the check on March 7th through the final meeting on June 28th). The stock purchase was very clearly laid out (as I stated above and was actually reported in the Wall Street Journal that Summer as well), there was no dramatic negotiation and dropping stock offer. There was no agreement of "pay back the $500,000 or we get the company. What there was, is an agreement that if Amiga folds (i.e. goes bankrupt) because it can't meet it's financial obligations, that Atari Inc. gets access to the chip schematics (which were being held in escrow until the meeting on the 28th) and payback of the $500,000 plus interest (via liquidation if necessary). Amiga had financial deals with 5 other companies at the time and Atari needed some way to protect it's interest against the others should Amiga fold during the process. They never expected a payback, and badly needed money was only a guarantee for Amiga to move forward during the licensing discussion period, and it was to be rendered null on the signing of the licensing that Jun 28th. Which is also when the first chip fabrications were to be delivered to the Mickey engineering team. Likewise, there was no last minute meeting with Atari lawyers where he slammed a check on the table. Dave Morse cancelled the meeting on the 28th, showed up on the 29th at the COO's office with the $750,000 check to the complete surprise of him, claiming they couldn't get the chips to work properly. The COO also would not accept the check, as he didn't feel legaly authorized to do so (the deal was actually with Warner) and tried to find out from Dave why they wanted out the last minute and what it was really about. The last contact with Morse had been at the CES that early June with two meetings where they finalized the licensing agreement, shook hands and celebrated the end of a long process and looked forward to the formal signing at the end of the month. Shortly after he stopped returning calls and nobody had any contact with Amiga until he showed up at the office. During the 15 minute meeting the COO tried to assure Dave they had no intention of taking over the documents on the signing deadline date, they sincerely wanted to follow through on the signing and would give more time. Dave was adamant about wanting out, still claimed the chips didn't work, and the meeting ended.
What they didn't know was that Dave had also been negotiating with Commodore that entire month, who were first interested in a possible licensing and then buying the company outright. Dave had stated all along that his primary motivation was to build Amiga up enough to sell it, and this opportunity had come along - hence his wanting out and trying to portray the $500,00 as an escape clause. That's also why Amiga eventually wound up loosing the judgement summary and settled out of court.
This is all by sworn testimony, the actual contracts, etc.
Another interesting myth debunked, according to testimony on the Commodore side, is the oft repeated idea that they contacted and bought Amiga to get back at Jack or because they wanted a technology to compete against Jack. In actuality they begrudgingly met with Amiga at the behest of one of their (Commodore's) internal people who pushed for a meeting, as they (Commodore) already felt they had to many projects going on inside.
They, of course are slightly bias accounts from Amiga staff. I would wonder which story is closer to the truth.
We've gone directly by the actual contracts, court testimony, engineering documents, etc. all of which we have in posession. We've also conducted extensive interviews with the engineers of the Mickey project (the name of the project at Atari Inc. that was to use the Amiga chips for a game console and later expandable computer), management, etc.
But you are right, Jack didn't find out until after he got Atari about the Amiga deal, but he did negotiate a deal with Amiga when he was still at Commodore, which never went anywhere (and left a real "Bad" attitude about Jack to the Amiga staff- He basically tried to squeeze Amiga for nothing.)
No, that was as TTL. He left Commodore in very early January, the meeting at Amiga took place that late April/early May.
Out of all the people interviewed for the book -RJ had really Bad feelings about Jack.
Which is what primarily motivates most of his storytelling activities regarding that.
BTW, here's the
wirewrap dev pcb layout for Mickey. You'll notice the labled Amiga chip spots. Final pcb's were ordered and to be delivered from the factory after the July 4h weekend to coincide with the expected delivery of the chips.
