Did ICD ever deliver catboxes in the end?

[DracIsBack]

A few years ago (almost ten now), ICD software caused a big scandal by taking people's orders for catboxes, charging money and then failing to deliver.

 

Was wondering if anything ever came of those undelivered Catbox orders? I was surpised to see ICD's site still active!

 

http://www.icd.com/

[Bryan]

Last time I heard anything about this, Tom had lost all information on who paid. It doesn't really matter since when the building ICD was in was closed down, he left almost all the Atari stuff behind.

 

I worked there for a year when he was still making Catboxes and I would have loved to have saved some of the stuff that ended up being left for the dump.

[ovalbugmann]

No, they did not make good on all their Catbox preorders, approximately 40 people had the unfortunate experience to pay in advance of the first run, thinking they would be "securing" this "swiss army knife for the Jaguar", and they were all left out in the cold! Never to see their money again. Tom went ahead and sold them to customers in at least two runs but forgot all about those 40 or so, pre-paying people.

 

The web site is still up, but it is far from "active" as you suggest. I saw that website on 10/19/06 and sent a few emails to Tom at that time and did not receive a reponse to either the sales@icd.com or support@icd.com email addresses. So it's all bogus now.

 

As a matter of fact the guy here on atariage that was selling the custom 6MB Alpines purchased some catboxes with no printing on them and some prototype catboxes that were left in the old ICD place of business in Rockford, Illinois. There was some other ICD products that were left there, in the dark, also. The guy renting out that space currently, discoved the goods and sold them to this Atariage member (6MB Alpine guy) - forgot his name here. I'll have to find that thread again.

[mos6507]

No, they did not make good on all their Catbox preorders, approximately 40 people had the unfortunate experience to pay in advance of the first run, thinking they would be "securing" this "swiss army knife for the Jaguar", and they were all left out in the cold! Never to see their money again. Tom went ahead and sold them to customers in at least two runs but forgot all about those 40 or so, pre-paying people.

 

Is a somewhat accurate list of 40 people archived somewhere for posterity?

Edited December 29, 2007 by mos6507

[ovalbugmann]

Looks like there was at least 31 people that ordered 1 or more catboxes:

 

Where's my Catbox!!!

 

Refund letter

 

Some Catbox info

 

interesting 4play/ICD interview

 

a few ICD catbox complaints

 

Here's the story of the proto catboxes and other inventory left in the old ICD building:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=107732

 

Here's the longest Catbox review I've seen in this ST Report:

 

http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/12/05/03/0494.php

Edited December 29, 2007 by ovalbugmann

[jedijeff]

I was one of those unfortunate people who pre-paid for 2 catboxes that I never saw. Would have been nice to get something for my money, even if it involved a baseball bat.

[Bryan]

When I worked with Tom, Kevin Manne got in touch with me and I really thought the orders were going to be filled (I believe Tom did too). I wish I hadn't replied since my name is now associated with this unfortunate event.

 

Here's a little back-story:

 

Damien Jones (of dmj software) and I started Temporary Sanity Designs and convinced Atari to send us an Alpine setup after we demoed a crude 2600 emulator on the TT. We quickly developed an emulation demo for the Jag and apparently it impressed the hell out of them. Unfortunately, things were going south for Atari and our dealings with them started to get a little weird. They suddenly didn't want the emulator (I later found out that Dave Staugas was working on one internally) and Bill Rehbock convinced us to develop something like an AtariKarts II with guns and stuff. We were negotiating a contract (with a $330K advance!) when all Jaguar development was halted and our calls were no longer returned. Apparently, anyone who had received advance money got to keep it, but we hadn't gotten to that stage yet.

 

We both had roots in the Atari community and knew the 4play guys pretty well, so we started talking to Tom about some PC-based projects he was working on to save ICD and in the end we both moved to Rockford. I was there for a year and I guess Tom was still taking CatBox orders when I arrived. We developed some very innovate stuff but ICD became Rock River Internet and everything else was shelved (the SnapDragon page can still be seen at icd.com, and I still use some of the imaging software we wrote).

 

Anyway, the company that owned the building ICD was in went out of business and Tom only took what he needed for the ISP business. If I had been in better financial shape I would have driven up there with a U-Haul and saved some of the rare equipment and documentation (including all kinds of Atari NDA stuff!!!). Tom said most of it was ransacked when he went back a few months later. I get really sad when I think of the Fine-Tooned guy losing half of ICD's history (when he couldn't pay his storage bill) and Tom losing the rest.

 

I knew Tom pretty well although I haven't heard from him in a couple years, and I don't believe he intend for this to happen. He was still ordering parts for the new CatBoxes while I was there. At one point he was on the verge of losing his house and he eventually walked away from ICD/BCD entirely (BCD was kept separate in case something should happen to ICD, a legal thing). When I left ICD I was so burned out that I didn't do any serious programming work for a couple years.

 

-Bry

Edited December 29, 2007 by Bryan

[Agent X]

I'm one of the unlucky people who paid for a Cat Box about a decade ago and never received it.

[Albert]

Anyway, the company that owned the building ICD was in went out of business and Tom only took what he needed for the ISP business.

Is Rock River Internet owned by Tom? Is he still involved with that business?

 

How much did everyone pay for the CatBox pre-orders?

 

..Al

[Bryan]

Is Rock River Internet owned by Tom? Is he still involved with that business?

As far as I know.

 

Tom told me once that some people were successful in doing a CC chargeback.

[ovalbugmann]

I get really sad when I think of the Fine-Tooned guy losing half of ICD's history (when he couldn't pay his storage bill) and Tom losing the rest.

 

I don't believe he intend for this to happen.

 

-Bry

 

Who is this "Fine-Tooned guy" ?

 

Looks like Tom lost the rest, alright....along with at least 31 of his customers who ordered 1 or more catboxes (31+ x $69.99 + s/h)

 

I'm sure he didn't intend for ICD to go out of business or for this to happen, but it did, and he made no effort to pay back these people, whatsoever..........but he was financially sound enough to start Rock River Internet - immediately in 1997. If these 31 people were his personal friends do you think he would have paid them the money he owes????? I'm sure he would have, instead the pre-order list was "lost" (what really happened to the list?) and he left ICD to die with all it's financial problems and it's customers to eat their loss. He did not make any attempt to pay people back when he could have in 1997 or 1998 when Rock River Internet took off, instead he made comments to you about, "hey I think some of the catbox guys' successfully did a CC chargeback." Tom always had a choice , If he chose not to fulfill on his obligations, where people have entrusted him, he still has made a choice.

 

On another note Tom's son has posted on atariHQ.com/JI2 -You know the old forum. And he was asking something about BattleSphere, I think, and he told people there he was Tom's son and was met with; "hey tell your father I'm still friggin' waiting" & "Your father sux dude - tell him" and stuff like that.

Edited December 30, 2007 by ovalbugmann

[Bryan]

Who is this "Fine-Tooned guy" ?

Mike Hohman. He bought the rights to almost all the 8-bit stuff ICD made, then lost most of the equipment as I understand it.

I'm sure he didn't intend for ICD to go out of business or for this to happen, but it did, and he made no effort to pay back these people, whatsoever..........but he was financially sound enough to start Rock River Internet - immediately in 1997.

You're right. I wish he had made an attempt. I can tell you that the ISP was started with almost no money on used equipment. We had a cheap T-1 from a local ISP, 24 phone lines and a PC acting as our authentication/mail server. We'd drive down to the phone room of our building at all hours to keep it up and running. Tom got several of the tenants to buy hard-wired internet from him so it pretty much paid for itself right away. We'd use ethernet to serial adapters to limit their bandwidth since our routers couldn't throttle. I acted as tech support for the last couple months I was there.

On another note Tom's son has posted on atariHQ.com/JI2 -You know the old forum. And he was asking something about BattleSphere, I think, and he told people there he was Tom's son and was met with; "hey tell your father I'm still friggin' waiting" & "Your father sux dude - tell him" and stuff like that.

That's too bad. They probably don't even know about it since they were very young at that time (Tom has twin sons).

 

-Bry

[atarifan49]

When I worked with Tom, Kevin Manne got in touch with me and I really thought the orders were going to be filled (I believe Tom did too). I wish I hadn't replied since my name is now associated with this unfortunate event.

 

Here's a little back-story:

 

Damien Jones (of dmj software) and I started Temporary Sanity Designs and convinced Atari to send us an Alpine setup after we demoed a crude 2600 emulator on the TT. We quickly developed an emulation demo for the Jag and apparently it impressed the hell out of them. Unfortunately, things were going south for Atari and our dealings with them started to get a little weird. They suddenly didn't want the emulator (I later found out that Dave Staugas was working on one internally) and Bill Rehbock convinced us to develop something like an AtariKarts II with guns and stuff. We were negotiating a contract (with a $330K advance!) when all Jaguar development was halted and our calls were no longer returned. Apparently, anyone who had received advance money got to keep it, but we hadn't gotten to that stage yet.

 

We both had roots in the Atari community and knew the 4play guys pretty well, so we started talking to Tom about some PC-based projects he was working on to save ICD and in the end we both moved to Rockford. I was there for a year and I guess Tom was still taking CatBox orders when I arrived. We developed some very innovate stuff but ICD became Rock River Internet and everything else was shelved (the SnapDragon page can still be seen at icd.com, and I still use some of the imaging software we wrote).

 

Anyway, the company that owned the building ICD was in went out of business and Tom only took what he needed for the ISP business. If I had been in better financial shape I would have driven up there with a U-Haul and saved some of the rare equipment and documentation (including all kinds of Atari NDA stuff!!!). Tom said most of it was ransacked when he went back a few months later. I get really sad when I think of the Fine-Tooned guy losing half of ICD's history (when he couldn't pay his storage bill) and Tom losing the rest.

 

I knew Tom pretty well although I haven't heard from him in a couple years, and I don't believe he intend for this to happen. He was still ordering parts for the new CatBoxes while I was there. At one point he was on the verge of losing his house and he eventually walked away from ICD/BCD entirely (BCD was kept separate in case something should happen to ICD, a legal thing). When I left ICD I was so burned out that I didn't do any serious programming work for a couple years.

 

-Bry

 

Bryan,

 

Thanks for sharing that. From what you indicated it sounds just like I though happened - ICD got into financial hard times. Up to that point with the second re-order of Catboxes, ICD was a very trustworthy business.

 

I met Tom at Jagfest '97 in Chicago. I had recently, at the time, acquired a Catbox at a used video game store (a wonderful $15 find!) and needed a network terminator for the Catbox. He was very kind to bring one to the show with him and give to me for no charge.

 

I remember Tom calling me at work to get my order. But I never heard back from him after that and was never able to do my refund. I consider it a lesson learned.

 

Regards,

Glenn

[atarifan49]

I remember Mike Hohman. He had some great ideas for some products for the 8bit computers. His biggest downfall was being able to stay focused on a project to see it thru. He was easily distracted by other ideas (e.g., redoing the MIO to use IDE hard drive and SIMM memory).

 

Mike ended up burning thru money he got thru an inheritance from what I'm told. He ended up abandoning his storage unit is Scotts Valley, CA where he had stored all the stuff he acquired for the ICD 8bit products (SpartdosX, BasicXL/XE, etc). I remember he went off and worked for a semiconductor firm in Arizona (the one that does the 65816 processor). And one day he contacted me over email from Virgina. And as quickly as that contact started it ended and haven't heard from him again.

 

As one friend of mine put it - "Mike had the technical skills to produce some great stuff. He just didn't have the business sense to keep functioning."

 

 

Glenn

[Bryan]

As one friend of mine put it - "Mike had the technical skills to produce some great stuff. He just didn't have the business sense to keep functioning."

 

Oh crap! That sounds like me.

[doctorclu]

I think we all have learned this lesson in the various retro computer hobbies.

 

I've learned not to advance payment in good faith. I've learned to get all that was promised before finishing a trade. I've learned that if you have someone building half a certain item and you give all 100% in advance in good faith you will probably have to write all the whole thing a year and a half later after many excuses.

 

I've also learned that in such cases that sometimes people come good on promises years later. When you no longer care, and after you're a bit hurt, but hey! There is it!

 

This is a weird hobby sometimes.

 

My case was some six pack cartridge boards that I got from Bill Williams (the maker of the Omnimon) for the Atari 8-bit computer. A old Atari aquintance from my BBs days offered to build half of the cartridges if he could have the other half. I expected him to make good on it. I knew him for 13 years at that point.

 

He took them, and after many excuses on getting to them, and then excuses of getting them back to me when it couldn't be done, some of which he was in town but forgot... I wrote the boards and him off. Now I can accomplish what I was after by using the Atarimax 1 mb and 8 mb flash carts, and he has junk. Hurts to loose someone you thought was a friend or at least trusted though.

 

I've trusted many others since though, and had MANY successful trades since, but I just had to learn some steps to make them successful. The key... always give them something to work for. You pay them up front, no matter how noble, they will always drag their feet making good on a promise.

 

As for me, I drag my feet, I procastinate, but when money hits my hands I say to myself "Crap man, I don't want to be a Tom Harker... that package is in the mail tomorrow!!"

 

Just kidding. But I don't feel the money is truly mine until product is delivered.

[Bryan]

It's generally a bad idea in general to take pre-orders if you can't afford to finish something on your own. One snag could leave you with a debt you can't pay. I think people are willing to pay up front because we want to believe this hobby is a safe and magical place, but the reality is it's just like everything else. People will let you down from time to time.

[mos6507]

That's not to make any excuses for some of his own questionable moves, but with FTe, Mike got into the A8 scene when the market was already too far gone to support itself. I have to say I was positively shocked when he arrived on the scene, let alone announcing all of the stuff he planned to do, at such a late date. So I think no matter what he may have been able to accomplish, I doubt he'd ever make back his overhead. At least he was able to make some more runs on stuff like SpartaDOS X carts.

[doctorclu]

ICD made some AMAZING things to compliment the Atari hobby in the Atari 8-bit and ST worlds. SpartaDos, the R:P: module or whatever that did 19.2K on the 8-bit Ataris, the ICD Link that made SCSI drives possible on even the earliest ST's... so there is no doubt in my mind had I been there at those times that if I was a Jaguar fan I would have JUMPED at the chance to get a Catbox from ICD. I would have said "Hell yeh!" after seeing all the other things ICD (or at least that name) had done. Luckily I was immune to all this because I came back to the Atari scene in 1999.

 

ICD covered a lot of ground in the Atari world. I wish, just wish one day Tom would hunt down all the people that prepaid and work to make it right with them.

 

Sure people would say "Man, took him 10 years to get the money back to me" but then five to ten years from now we would look at the ICD saga and say "Well, there was this dark time in the ICD history, but aside from that, ICD provided many fine products for the Atari community."

 

Unfortunately as it stands ICD made many fine products, and ended on a dark note. A Shame. Hope one day Tom will try to correct this story.

[atarifan49]

Unfortunately as it stands ICD made many fine products, and ended on a dark note. A Shame. Hope one day Tom will try to correct this story.

 

I have to agree with you. ICD in their days produce some of the highest quality products for the Atari line of systems (8bit to Jaguar). I recently restored some tape backups of some FA*ST archives that were made back in 1991-1992. Even after 15 years those backups were still recoverable with no data loss.

 

I would be happy if I could just have the pieces to assemble my own Catbox. Even just key pieces like circuit boards and the PAL chip.

 

Glenn

[guitarmas]

From the ICD website

 

The return of a sell-out! The CatBox will soon again be available for a limited time. Due to renewed interest in multi-player Jaguar gaming surrounding the release of AirCars and in anticipation of future releases (such as BattleSphere), ICD/BCD is making one more run of this videogamer's Swiss Army Knife

Edited January 10, 2008 by guitarmas

[Albert]

From the ICD website

 

The return of a sell-out! The CatBox will soon again be available for a limited time. Due to renewed interest in multi-player Jaguar gaming surrounding the release of AirCars and in anticipation of future releases (such as BattleSphere), ICD/BCD is making one more run of this videogamer's Swiss Army Knife

That page has basically been unchanged since 2000.

 

Here's what it looked like on January 18th, 2000 (nearly eight years ago):

 

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://icd.co...guar/index.html

 

..Al

[doctorclu]

Wow only $8 shipping and handling.

[GeekGod]

I was one of the fortunate ones that did get a Catbox. I knew Tom as well from many years of business dealings and although I don't remember the details, I recall there was some crazy stuff going on in his life back then and all the stress and problems finally got the better of him and he had to walk away from it or lose his sanity. It was an unfortunate situation, and believe me he was very hurt by it all too.

 

Tom was one of many who got caught in the vortex of Atari's collapse and tried to stay in the game longer than he should have. He and ICD were once highly respected supporters of all things Atari, but now he is remembered only for his unfulfilled Catbox orders. I'm sorry for all the people that did not receive their Catbox. It really was a great product, as was all of the many ICD products I purchased over the years (most of which I still have, and still work).

 

...and speaking of my Catbox; hey Crash, were you able to troubleshoot yours?

[DracIsBack]

Just discovered that Tom did an interview on the Antic podcast a little while ago

 

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-125-tom