Anyone meet Jay Miner?

[Kesa]

This is something I have always been curious about. I have read about how he invented the Amiga as well as the Atari, as well as his dog which apparently everyone loved. But what was the man like in real life? I was wondering if anyone could provide some insight on what he was like as a person as opposed  to the legend we all know. I ask this as I know he did a lot of guest speaking at community groups so i figure someone somewhere would have interacted with the him.

If yes, care to share any insightful stories?

[ChaosLord]

I met him.  We used to talk on the phone.

He told me he did not design Paula but he hired an electrical engineer to design it for him.

[Pentad]

If yes, care to share any insightful stories?

Yes, I met Jay Miner at a party thrown by Commodore in Chicago (we had cake and everything!) and I was in my late teens.

I then would talk to him a lot on his BBS via chat and email.

Jay was a very generous and kind person.  He also had time to talk and share information no matter what you asked.  Looking back, my questions probably seemed pretty naive (but I was only 17) compared to what he knew.

I saw Jay at a couple of other Amiga shows in Chicago but he looked ill.  I remember he looked better after his sister gave him a kidney but I think he always had health issues.  He was a very nice guy though.  RIP Jay.

BONUS:  My friends and I were trying to move a beta kickstart from $200000 to another address because we didn't have memory at $200000.  (I can explain if anyone cares) Anyway, we called Rob Peck in California for help.  We got his answering machine but explained what we were trying to do.  He called back, was incredibly nice, and talked to us for a long time.  This was when LD was still pretty pricey during the day.

I didn't know Rob had cancer and when he died suddenly it really surprised me.  He was also a very nice guy.  RIP Rob.

BONUS II:  Simon Douglas who wrote AMAX was a super nice guy as well.  I met him at an Amiga show in New York.  He was very generous with his knowledge about the mac and emulation.  Simon spoke at length about programming AMAX on the Amiga and how dumb he thought MagicSac programmers were.

They said that Mac emulation on the Amiga was near impossible and he was so ticked off by their comments he had it running in a weekend.  The disk drive portion took much longer but basic Mac emulation worked great.


BONUS III:  Jim Drew was also a nice guy.  I called him when I was in college and told him I was a poor college student and my friends (who were also poor college students) really wanted Emplants.  He told me if I got 10 people to order he would sell them to us at a 50% discount.  I got 10 people and he sold us 10 plus gave us one for free.  What impressed me was I called Utilities Unlimited, asked for Jim, and they just transferred me to him.

BONUS IV:  Motorola was also a very nice company.  In college, one of their reps came in a did a talk.  The students spoke about programming on the 68000 and how we wanted to program on the 030 but none of us could afford the accelerator boards + 030/882.  They sent us like 60 030s and 882s as engineering samples.  We each received the technical books for the entire 68k line of CPUs.  We were able to buy accelerators without the cpu/fpu much cheaper and just plug in our chips.  No kidding.


-P

[DutchinUSA]

Good times :banana:

Amiga made it happen !

[matthey]

Good times :banana:

Amiga made it possible !

I fixed it for you . Yea, good stories B).

[Duce]

Never had the chance to meet the man in person, but a story some of you might enjoy on my blog about my encounters with Jay Miner:

http://amigabbs.blogspot.ca/2011/10/more-general-content-and-backstory.html

[Pentad]

I know none of you will be surprised by this but Jay was pretty pessimistic about the Amiga by 1988.  Jay was not shy about his thoughts when you spoke to him.  He thought Commodore had missed the opportunity for the Amiga to be a major player in the computer market.

Jay wanted Commodore to market the Amiga 1000 differently and then wanted to follow up the Amiga 1000 with Ranger.  I'm not sure it HAD to be Ranger but coming out with a faster CPU w/FPU, etc...

I know hindsight is 20/20 but I think he was right.  I think we can all agree that Commodore marketing sucked.  I also think rolling along with better hardware would have kept the Amiga in the forefront.

-P

[EDanaII]

Marketing was certainly a problem, but I'll bet you good money where Miner was pessimistic was R&D. After all, by '88, Miner and the rest of his team had been fired. But by '88, while Amiga was still ahead of the curve, the others were catching up pretty quickly.

My two cents...

[Pres]

I met Jay Miner at the AmiExpo in Cologne, Germany, in the late eighties.

I was a shy college kid and didn't know what to say, so I blurted out "Thank you for the greatest computer ever!"
And he grinned and said "My pleasure". :-)

A very kind man, and patient: he autographed my ticket, a floppy disk and an A500 brochure (even though he reportedly didn't like the A500 much). I still have that brochure framed.

[AeroMan]

Wow!!! this is awesome! Post a picture here, I would love to see that

[Akiko]

Jay apparently had his own BBS board, a member here dialed in on his 3000 and did a small interview back in the day which I thought was pretty cool.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48647

[djos]

Jay apparently had his own BBS board, a member here dialed in on his 3000 and did a small interview back in the day which I thought was pretty cool.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48647

Cool :cool:

EDIT: thought it was same as Duce's post, but looks like not. :p

[Duce]

Finally found the text blurb we users of Jay's BBS logged on to see, informing us of his passing.

http://everything2.com/title/Jay+Miner

BBS was called "The Mission" and was in Mountain View, CA, iirc.

[Pentad]

I know this is a bit off topic but does anyone know what happened to Bob Pariseau?

I thought he did a great job at the Amiga launch by Commodore (starting at 1:25) which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiOVa1R4m0

He spoke very well and made the demo smooth and intelligent.

He was talked about in the History of the Amiga video (and in photos) but I was never able to find out how long he stayed with Amiga, Inc. and/or Commodore.  Did he do consulting for them?  

I think he would have some great stories to tell.

-P

[JimDrew]

BONUS III:  Jim Drew was also a nice guy.  I called him when I was in college and told him I was a poor college student and my friends (who were also poor college students) really wanted Emplants.  He told me if I got 10 people to order he would sell them to us at a 50% discount.  I got 10 people and he sold us 10 plus gave us one for free.  What impressed me was I called Utilities Unlimited, asked for Jim, and they just transferred me to him.

Wow!  I remember this!

Obviously, I thought very highly of Jay, RJ, Dave, Bill, Carolyn, etc. at CBM.  They were an extended family to a lot of Amiga developers.  It was nice to be able to pick up the phone and get a hold of someone who actually knew something when you really needed it.

I agree with your comments about Simon Douglas.  Although we never spoke, I thought he did an outstanding job with AMAX and never 'borrowed' anything from my Mac emulation (unlike others) when he made a color version.  I respected that a lot.

I did a lot of work for Motorola in Arizona, testing their new programmable core CPU.  This was in the works after the 68K family was being used primarily for washing machines (yes, really) and after the first PPC chips were released.  This was a Xilinx style of chip where we could program the CPU microcode, basically emulating a CPU.  The project was too costly for the performance so it was scrapped, but it was quite fun working with these guys on something revolutionary.