The Amiga 3000 Unix and Sun Microsystems: Deal or No Deal?

Summary

The Amiga 3000 UNIX and Sun Microsystems: Deal or no deal? Summer 2025 Amiga lore is full of exciting tales. Many of them are retold to demonstrate how the incompetence of Commodore's management destroyed a platform that, by rights, was destined for success. Coulda, shoulda, and the Amiga woulda risen as rightful ruler of all other computer platforms, forever and ever. Amen. One of those stories is about how Sun Microsystems allegedly showed interest in the Amiga 3000 during the early 1990s. It's a classic Amiga anecdote, usually recounted without much reflection, and one I've certainly helped perpetuate. Alas, the more I think about it, the less it adds up. Fact or factoid? Let's speculate! Historical Sources The Amiga 3000 was launched in 1990. Featuring on-board SCSI, several high speed expansion slots, a 25 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and a 68882 FPU clocked at the same speed, it was certainly a very competent Amiga model. During 1991, Commodore launched a rebadged version dubbed Amiga 3000UX, which shipped with Commodore's own port of UNIX System V, Release 4 (or SVR4 for short). At the time of writing this text, the Wikipedia article on Amiga UNIX refers to a possible Sun deal as "unsubstantiated rumors (...) presented in various online venues." - but that's Wikipedia. Apart from rumors presented as such in the 1990s computer press, there are two other sources regarding a deal between Sun and Commodore. The first is Dave Haynie, a hardware engineer at Commodore who - among other things - worked on the Amiga 3000. In 1994, Haynie filmed, edited and released the video documentary The Deathbed Vigil. Interspersed between footage of Commodore's offices and staff (including people who worked on the Amiga UNIX port) are various informational screens of text. One of those states the following: "Sun Microsystems had planned to OEM the A3000UX as their answer to low-end, 680x0 based UNIX machines, a complement to their new high performance SPARCs. Unfortunately, the upper m...