===========================================================================
==  Tribute to Jay Miner                            By:  Julie Peterson  ==
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[It's hard to decide where to put this, so I decided to make it an article
all to itself.  It's not important because an A1000 is being sold, it's
important as a way to show how people felt about Jay Miner... -Jason]

Reprinted with permission from Julie Peterson.


From: LadyHawke@cup.portal.com (Classic - Concepts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.marketplace
Subject: FS: Vintage A1000/extras good working order
Date: 10 Jan 1995 13:18:12 -0800
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 62
Sender: pccop@unix.portal.com
Distribution: na
Message-ID: <130641@cup.portal.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: news1.unix.portal.com

I swore I would never sell this, but ...  I don't use it any more, and it
seems to me to be a crime to have a perfectly good computer sitting around
not being used.

This A1000 is special - besides being an early one.  It has Jay Miner's
signature - that's one of the main reasons I was never going to sell it.

I used to talk to Jay (Padre) on the Portal Amiga Zone chat moderated by
Harv Laser, and on his BBS.  And one time, half joking, at a conference in
California (Jay was in good spirits at that show, he was telling me about
the work he was doing with medical hardware - the way he put it, he felt
he was 'giving something back' to the medical industry that gave him a
second lease on life for his own medical problems) I told him I should
have brought my A1000 for him to sign.  To my surprise and delight he
said, "I would love to sign your one thousand".  So I took him up on it,
but instead of trying to carry or ship the whole computer, I just brought
the lid, and Jay was gracious, smiling, and true to his word.

I miss Jay.  I know many people do.  I will never forget the determination
and courage he showed at the Pasadena show where Commodore finally came to
their senses and recognized him in a small ceremony and presentation of an
A4000 computer.  Earlier, to my amazement, from a wheelchair, Jay had been
telling me that Commodore had never really said thank you to him in any
significant way, but he was happy about being at the conference and among
happy Amiga users.  Despite his medical problems, Jay partici- pated
actively and fully in all aspects of the conference, on the trade show
floor, at the sessions, in the 'apres trade show' activities accom- panied
by Don and Mike Nelson (who flew over from England to interview Jay for a
Euro magazine - does anyone have a copy of the article they could send me
a photocopy of??).  We had a great dinner at the Olive Garden with Don,
Jay, Doug (Walker) and Mike where Jay talked about the whole history of
the Amiga.  It was really interesting.  Jay's 'concept' of the first Amiga
was quite different from what Commodore released as the A1000.  The
picture in his head was much more like the A2000 (with more memory, slots
for expansion, etc.), but Commodore was anxious to keep the costs and
price down and get it shipping right away.  He also said he never really
realized what an impact the Amiga would have on video - the Amiga
literally spawned the Desktop Video revolution, in much the same way Apple
brought the desktop publishing industry to consumer desktops.  Well,
there's much more, but I won't take more bandwidth for that.

Anyway, I don't really want to sell this A1000 (includes computer, 1.5
MByte Spirit inboard RAM expansion and commodore 256K (to make 512K) RAM
expansion for a total (I think) of 2 megs; keyboard; Commodore genlock
(watch tv on your monitor while computing!) and mouse).  I'm keeping the
1080 monitor to use with my Toaster.  SO, since I also don't want a
working computer to sit idle (it bothers my conscience), I tried to think
of options.  Give it to someone bedridden in the hospital, give it to a
third world country, etc.

Here's what I decided to do.  I will sell it to the highest (reasonable
offer) at my final discretion and I'm going to donate half the proceeds
either to an organization that does organ transplants or research in that
area, or to an organization that assists seniors or handicapped children.
I would also encourage everyone to become organ donors.  Someone's
selfless generosity gave Jay four more years of life and gave all of us
four more years of Jay Miner.

email offers to LadyHawke@cup.portal.com 
p t b