Shiraz Shivji

Shiraz Shivji (* 1947 in Tanzania) was the main developer of the Atari ST computer and one of the developers of the Commodore 64

Biography

Shiraz Shivji studied from 1969 to 1973 electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Working at Atari

When Jack Tramiel with a number of former developers of Commodore in 1984 took over the company Atari, the company was in a bad state. Shiraz Shivji was Atari's vice president for development and research, as he developed the Atari ST with a team of six engineers.

The work was completed within a remarkably short period of only five months ( July-December 1984). The presentation of the prototype at CES in January 1985 was a remarkable success and Atari's future for the time being secured.

Shivji designed the Atari ST was the first of a series of models. Later, he led the development of the Atari TT until the end of his tenure at Atari.

Work at Momenta

After leaving Atari, he developed the 1991 Momenta pen computer. This was one of the first tablet computer with a powerful hardware for that time. However, he suffered from the lack of appealing software for its DOS - based GUI.