Shiraz Shivji
Shiraz Shivji (born 1947 in Tanzania) was the primary designer of the Atari ST computer, and one of the engineers behind the Commodore 64.
Biography
Shiraz Shivji studied electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1969-1973.
Atari ST design
When Jack Tramiel took over Atari in 1984 with a number of Commodore engineers, the company was in bad shape. Shiraz Shivji became Atari's Vice President of Research and Development, and led a team of six engineers who designed the Atari 520ST computer. This work was completed in a remarkably short five months (July to December 1984). The prototype presentation at the January 1985 Las Vegas CES was a great coup for Atari, and the product revived the company. He later led the design of the Atari TT before leaving Atari.
When he joined Atari from Commodore, he was one of four ex-Commodore engineers charged, but acquitted, of theft in relation to disc drive design plans.[1]
Momenta design
After leaving Atari, Shivji designed the Momenta Pen Computer in 1991. This was one of the first full-sized tablet computers with a sophisticated hardware for that time. However, its operating system was based on DOS and did not deliver sufficient applications for its graphical user interface.