What if....Atari 8bit

[+CharlieChaplin]

The hostility was largely due to the closed architecture of the 1200XL, even compared to the relatively closed setup of the 800XL. Plus the incompatabililty scare, which IMO was unfounded to a large degree.

 

The 800 was never really designed as an open system... the RAM slots were intended just for that (and only to 48K), it was only really due to ingenuity of 3rd party suppliers that a few devices like 80-column board and >48K RAM expansions became reality.

 

In the ideal world, they would have jumped straight from the 800 architecture to that of the 130XE, but in reality they persisted with multi-chip solutions to do memory selection before Freddie came along, allowing a much more compact board design.

 

 

Err well,

 

there were however some well known RAM expansions for the Atari 400/800 by Axlon. From what I have read, Axlon was a 100% subsidiary (or daughter) of Atari. Thus, I would not call Axlon a real third-party supplier, just another name for a firm that belonged to Atari (like Kee-Games)...

 

I also remember that Curt Vendel posted some information here about unreleased but more or less ready-designed chips, like e.g. the Kerry chip (Antic+GTIA in one chip), two Pokeys in one chip, four Pokeys in one chip and other new chips. Thanks to the videogame-crash in 1983/1984 and the massive losses at Atari and finally the take-over in 1985 by the Tramiels, these new chips never saw the light of day... the same happened to the 1090 expansion, the 65816 and many other nice A8 developments... but, if I ever become a Billionaire, I will produce all these things for you ;-)

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

Edit: Just found the old topic with the Masterlist of A8 chipsets:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...&hl=Rainbow

 

or here:

http://www.atarihq.com/danb/AtariChips.shtml

Edited July 27, 2009 by CharlieChaplin

[TheGreatPW]

The hostility was largely due to the closed architecture of the 1200XL, even compared to the relatively closed setup of the 800XL. Plus the incompatabililty scare, which IMO was unfounded to a large degree.

 

The 800 was never really designed as an open system... the RAM slots were intended just for that (and only to 48K), it was only really due to ingenuity of 3rd party suppliers that a few devices like 80-column board and >48K RAM expansions became reality.

 

In the ideal world, they would have jumped straight from the 800 architecture to that of the 130XE, but in reality they persisted with multi-chip solutions to do memory selection before Freddie came along, allowing a much more compact board design.

 

A lot of the hostility was against the stopping of the production of the Atari 800. Atari had a real winner with that system and people were saving up for it. Its cancellation really hurt Atari's computer reputation as a number of people thought Atari was exiting the computer business. Who cancels a computer only after a few years when you are selling to consumers who did not understand change? Atari should have just made cheaper variations of the Atari 400 & 800 without the public's knowledge like they did with the Atari 2600. The Atari 800XL looked like the lesser of two because the changes took out the extra cartridge and joystick ports.

 

It was a big mistake. You had this mystique about the Atari 800. It looks the part of a computer with its big computerized typewriter like keyboard with 2 cartridge ports under the hood and the 4 joystick/paddle ports. Moms would look at it and notice the cartridge ports and asked the salesman "Why does it need 2 cartridges instead of 1 like my Atari VCS at home?" and the salesman would reply, "Miss, that's the power of a computer!"

 

Kidding aside, the Atari 800 version of Pac-Man blew everyone's expectations away. Besides Star Raiders, Pac-Man was the game people talked about and it got their attention. They saw it and wished that was the Atari 2600 version at home. They get the public worked up with Pac-Man and then start announcing the next line?

 

The same hostility would be felt years later when Atari cancelled the XL line in favor of the XE line. I do not know of anyone who upgraded their XL to a XE or from a 400/800 to a XE. No one wants their computer line cancelled when they invested so much money in it. Instead of upgrading to the next line, people just abandoned Atari all together. It is only natural.

Edited July 28, 2009 by TheGreatPW

[sl0re]

It seems the topic is 'How could the 8-bit be a better value?' Some people are proposing more features for the same money, other people are proposing less money for the same features. Either way people want more value.

 

Maybe that's why the C64 comes up. The C64 was a great value, because in those days Commodore was totally organized around selling advanced technology cheaply.

 

In 1985 could have been more gfx upgrades (meaning even more colours, higher resolution), sound upgrades (e.g. AMY/Amie), memory upgrades (256k, 512k 1024k RAM), 3,5" floppy drives, a harddisk system and a new colour monitor, all coming from Atari...

 

Some systems of the 80s were good values and others weren't, but only two mass market platforms from the 80s are still alive today: PC and Macintosh. Neither started life as an 8-bit system.

 

I don't think the Atari 8-bit has any of the qualities that would allow it to evolve as the PC and Mac have. In 1985, I would not want to program a 6502 with 512K of RAM, especially with alternatives like the ST's 32-bit flat memory model. Even a PC from 1981 has a better memory model than the 65816.

 

So anything that makes the 8-bit hugely successful in 1985 would just make things harder on Atari when the ST came out. People would be demanding more 8-bits and Atari would be splitting their resources trying to nudge people toward the ST without killing the 8-bit cash cow. Apple had the same problem with the Mac and Apple II, and all it did was slow down Mac adoption and piss off loyal Apple customers.

 

Unless you're saying the ST should not have come out, it's a good thing the 8-bit was winding down by the time it did!

 

- KS

 

I thought the PC-XT was 8 bit. As to the Macs, today’s macs have nothing in common with the old macs except the name. They've jumped processors from Motorola to PowerPC to Intel. The current OS is a total break from the older OSes that only just looks somewhat similar to the old one (like if I wrote a Linux shell that looked like an Atari OS and called a PC running it an 8000xl). The early designs of both the XT and Mac were poor in several (hardware) ways. The Mac was really just thrown together with off the shelf parts (its claim to fame was all in its OS; which was pretty nice for its day). The XT grew because while a kluge, it had advantages (the card slot based architecture was the way people wanted to go).

[Crazyace]

I was just sitting here looking at my XE ( Games machine ) - and it struck me that a system like that would have been perfect in 1982. Supply a base unit ( a la 5200 ) cheaply - with a single socket - connect joysticks or keyboard to it.

( I'd still want an enhanced Antic/GTIA - not a faster cpu as such, but faster memory, so less cpu cycles are lost - and a '2600 emulation mode' via a cartridge adaptor

Have a socket for memory internally, and also a wider cartridge port ( old 8 bit games could run via an 'adapter' board - another money maker )

Then supply 2 machines that share pretty much everything...

 

1/ Games console... 16k , Joypads - compete with Intellivision / Colecovision and take on cheap computers ( with keyboard peripheral )

2/ Computer.. 16k + 128k ram expansion , Keyboard - Apple II market , ( 80 col support and faster disc drives important here )

 

Both machines would run all 400/800 games - but the memory and graphics improvements would be much higher - so the upgrade path for old users would be more attractive. Plus having support to run VCS games via an adapter would help sell the new console as an upgrade for the 2600

In 85/86 - another base unit could be released with a 68k/6502 dual processor , and a newer more enhanced Antic/GTIA style chip with better graphics

Edited July 28, 2009 by Crazyace

[carmel_andrews]

I was just sitting here looking at my XE ( Games machine ) - and it struck me that a system like that would have been perfect in 1982. Supply a base unit ( a la 5200 ) cheaply - with a single socket - connect joysticks or keyboard to it.

( I'd still want an enhanced Antic/GTIA - not a faster cpu as such, but faster memory, so less cpu cycles are lost - and a '2600 emulation mode' via a cartridge adaptor

Have a socket for memory internally, and also a wider cartridge port ( old 8 bit games could run via an 'adapter' board - another money maker )

Then supply 2 machines that share pretty much everything...

 

1/ Games console... 16k , Joypads - compete with Intellivision / Colecovision and take on cheap computers ( with keyboard peripheral )

2/ Computer.. 16k + 128k ram expansion , Keyboard - Apple II market , ( 80 col support and faster disc drives important here )

 

Both machines would run all 400/800 games - but the memory and graphics improvements would be much higher - so the upgrade path for old users would be more attractive. Plus having support to run VCS games via an adapter would help sell the new console as an upgrade for the 2600

In 85/86 - another base unit could be released with a 68k/6502 dual processor , and a newer more enhanced Antic/GTIA style chip with better graphics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was more thinking an FB2 cartridge for the A8, i.e both 2600 and 7800 emulation with both system hardware combined into an FPGA chip (like a nes/msx on a chip thing) and put on it an integrated development system so that A8 6502'rs can program 7800 and 2600 games on their A8's, case it in a cartridge housing and stick a couple of USB ports, one that comes out to a 2600/7800 cartridge interface (so you can write data to a cartridge) or or playing original 2600/7800 games and the other one for attaching usb memory sticks that you down load game images from the pc/mac on

 

Perhaps curt could do that as an FB3 type device

 

Or failing that an A8 cartridge for the 5200, i.e it has both 800 mode and xl/xe mode as a proper A8 and also the 5200 equivalent of the 800 (default) and the 5200 equivalent of the Xl/e) give the cartridge some internal memory (256k) so you can program higher mem capacity 5200 games (with xl/xe bank switching) stick it in a cartridge case and add 3 usb ports 1 that exitends out to either a standard atari jopystick connector, SIO connector or PC keyboard connector (f1-f5 keys are mapped like a800win+) 1 port to extend out to an a8 cartridge connector and 1 port for connecting to usb memory sticks for downloading to 5200 memory atari 8bit game files (that you got from a pc/mac etc), like the fb2 cartridge for the a8, the a8 cart for the 5200 would have an integrated development system so that they can program their own games on the 5200 (or for the A8)

[Crazyace]

Non of that would have worked in 1982 - ( Especially as a 'better' Antic/GTIA would have removed the need for a 7800 )

Making a TIA/GTIA should have been easy though ( and the cart adapter could just be a 'rewiring' )

 

Nowadays - If Curt had the schematic for Antic ( and for Maria ) - it would be easy to combine TIA, GTIA, Antic , Maria, and a 6502 onto a single FPGA

[ThomSW]

blah... blah... blah...

 

another car(a)mel's thread

 

(yawn)

[peteym5]

I think we are getting off center in this thread. One of the largest mistakes Atari made was doing the 5200 the way they did. Totally different cartridge slot, bad controllers, and putting the chips at different memory locations. I did mention that they should have combined the Antic/GTIA into one chip, maybe add the TIA along with it or do TIA emulation through some unused registers. The improvements I would have just done with having full 16 luminances always available and do away with the 4k boundary for the Antic Display Lists. Going higher resolution would have required more involved redesigning process and made the chips more expensive. Keep in mind Atari has trying to compete in both the home game counsel and home computer market and the last thing you want to do is make things much more expensive.

[kskunk]

I thought the PC-XT was 8 bit.

 

Only externally. It had a 16-bit CPU with an 8-bit external bus. This is similar to the 68000 (32-bit architecture, 16-bit bus).

 

The early designs of both the XT and Mac were poor in several (hardware) ways. The Mac was really just thrown together with off the shelf parts (its claim to fame was all in its OS; which was pretty nice for its day). The XT grew because while a kluge, it had advantages (the card slot based architecture was the way people wanted to go).

 

I won't argue that the hardware was primitive, but both the Mac and PC had CPUs with far more potential than a 6502. I don't mean to slam the 6502. It has a special place in my heart, which is why I'm here. And it's still fun to program, but I'm a special kind of nostalgic nut.

 

I also moved on to x86s and 68Ks in the 80s with the rest of the programming world, and so I'm pretty well-versed in all the comparative limitations of those old architectures. When I have to get real work done, it's great to have a CPU with lots of general purpose registers, relocatable code, and real relative addressing (without quirky zero page footwork). The 6502/816 weren't in the same league.

 

- KS

[kskunk]

One of the largest mistakes Atari made was doing the 5200 the way they did. Totally different cartridge slot ... and putting the chips at different memory locations.

But that wasn't an accident. The 5200 was a console, so it had to pay for itself by selling games -- games that Atari made or licensed for royalties. The bulk of the 800's software library was not made by or licensed by Atari, so there was no profit at all in allowing those games to be played.

 

Sure, it would be great for customers and 3rd party game developers to have a console-priced 800 with an 800 cart port and 800 memory map. But what's in it for Atari? It's just a recipe for losing money.

 

Keep in mind Atari has trying to compete in both the home game counsel and home computer market and the last thing you want to do is make things much more expensive.

No kidding! But in my (biased) opinion they should have split the company instead of trying to chase both at once. It was pretty confusing to hear that Atari was synonmous with Business Laser Desktop Publishing... 7800 SuperSystem... Under 50 Bucks... XE Game System... PC Clone... Multicore Transputer Workstation... 64-bit CD-based RISC Console...

 

Successful companies focus, but I guess the less successful ones don't get that luxury. :/

 

- KS

Edited July 29, 2009 by kskunk

[MEtalGuy66]

The ST was the "Apple II" of 16bit machines.. 90% of it was standard "off the shelf" parts, rather than custom logic. The AMIGA was the real "next gen" ATARI.. You wanna talk about BIG mistakes... Loosing AMIGA Technologies and going with the ST instead.. heh. that has the be the absolute biggest ever..

[GroovyBee]

The ST was the "Apple II" of 16bit machines.. 90% of it was standard "off the shelf" parts, rather than custom logic.

Thats not right :-

The ST has off the shelf parts for :-

CPU - 68000

Keyboard interface - 6850

Midi - 6850

Timers/serial&parallel ports - 68901

Sound - YM-2149

Floppy - WD 1772

DRAM - ??

 

Custom parts :-

DMA

SHIFTER

MMU

GLUE

BLITTER

ROM

 

So thats 7 off the shelf and 6 custom so lets say 54% off the shelf .

[Rybags]

There is nothing revolutionary about the proprietary parts in the original ST.

 

Aside from greater bit-depth and resolution, they're a giant leap backwards from what the 8-bit has.

 

It's been gone over hundreds of times, but the STe was what the ST should have been in the first place. For Atari to release what they must have known would be an "advanced" games box that did occasional serious stuff, but not have scrolling, the ability to set screenbase on a boundary under 256 bytes, or a decent onboard sound system is beyond belief.

 

I was reading another Atari Forum the other day... it's kinda amazing some of the tricks the demoscene discovered, like Syncscroll where variable scanline lengths and sacrificing some lines at the top allowed fudging a proper screenbase setup, problem is most of these things were found too late to be of use in games in the classic era and some of the tricks don't work on all machine versions.

[MEtalGuy66]

The ST was the "Apple II" of 16bit machines.. 90% of it was standard "off the shelf" parts, rather than custom logic.

Thats not right :-

The ST has off the shelf parts for :-

CPU - 68000

Keyboard interface - 6850

Midi - 6850

Timers/serial&parallel ports - 68901

Sound - YM-2149

Floppy - WD 1772

DRAM - ??

 

Custom parts :-

DMA

SHIFTER

MMU

GLUE

BLITTER

ROM

 

So thats 7 off the shelf and 6 custom so lets say 54% off the shelf .

 

I wasnt speaking in terms of chip-package count... I cant take 20 GALs and program them with "custom logic" and still not hold a candle to one decently engineered LSI chip. The ST is a very "bare bones" system in terms of custom hardware features/capabilities when compared to the Amiga or even the second gen macs of the day.. Break out the hardware reference manuals and start comparing... The Apple II:Atari 8-bit = Atari ST:AMIGA analogy is a pretty fair one..

[peteym5]

One of the largest mistakes Atari made was doing the 5200 the way they did. Totally different cartridge slot ... and putting the chips at different memory locations.

But that wasn't an accident. The 5200 was a console, so it had to pay for itself by selling games -- games that Atari made or licensed for royalties. The bulk of the 800's software library was not made by or licensed by Atari, so there was no profit at all in allowing those games to be played.

 

Sure, it would be great for customers and 3rd party game developers to have a console-priced 800 with an 800 cart port and 800 memory map. But what's in it for Atari? It's just a recipe for losing money.

 

Keep in mind Atari has trying to compete in both the home game counsel and home computer market and the last thing you want to do is make things much more expensive.

No kidding! But in my (biased) opinion they should have split the company instead of trying to chase both at once. It was pretty confusing to hear that Atari was synonmous with Business Laser Desktop Publishing... 7800 SuperSystem... Under 50 Bucks... XE Game System... PC Clone... Multicore Transputer Workstation... 64-bit CD-based RISC Console...

 

Successful companies focus, but I guess the less successful ones don't get that luxury. :/

 

- KS

I cannot disagree Atari lacked focus and were spreading themselves thin from the start. There were a few things they should not have invested in with development like the 1200XL, 5200. However the 1200xl with a pre-800xl and lead to it. They should have invested in getting the 600XL: & 800XL out sooner and cheaper to compete with Commodore Vic-20 & 64. Maybe with the 600XL, they could have made that like the XEGS instead of the 5200, optional Keyboard, can be used just as a game system, etc. I believe the 800XL would have given Commodore 64 some pretty stiff competition if it was priced near the same. But that is referring to what happened in the early 80s before ST, 7800, Amiga, etc.

 

Atari should have grabbed Amiga for their 16bit computer and did the 7800 as a replacement for the 2600. But the problems was not these were bad ideals, it was the people running Atari that messed everything up. First James Morgan wanted to shift Atari back to video games and started the 7800 and canceled the Amiga contracts opening up the door for Commodore. Before the 7800 has completed, Atari got sold to Jack Tremial and shelved the 7800 and Commodore already got a hold of Amiga. However the whole center of this thread is about the 8-bit.

 

The Atari 8-Bit always has great potential. They could have gone into making it into a 16bit system, but they decided to do a 68000 based system instead. I personally would have preferred that they done a 65816 system that could run existing software and still be able to move forward. WDC, MOS, and even Atari themselves could have done more in making a 16bit compatible 6502. Could have done a true 16bit bus, a separate internal stack, keep upping the speed, etc.

[oky2000]

But we are talking about Atari 8 bit machines....so what difference does it make if they made a 65816 based GTIA+Antic+Pokey machine or actually designed the ST properly with hardware scrolling, hardware sprites/blitter and at least a 2 channel hardware sample playback sound chip to compliment the rasping YM chip.

 

What Atari needed to do is take the 800 as a base specification and IMPROVE the sound and graphics (colour resolution on screen and sprites not palette) to a level that would compete with the later 8 bit machines. You could have kept backwards compatibility in the same way the 32bit Amiga chipset still runs 16bit chipset games fine 9/10.

 

More flexible ways of getting any 16 colours on screen at 160x200, larger more powerful hardware sprites, and more features into pokey to match the tricks that SID could pull off.

 

The 5200 I agree should not have been released, waste of money, all they had to do was slim down an A8 motherboard and remove the keyboard to reduce the costs and then share the 8 bit computer cartridges with the home console XEGS type machine.

 

Would be difficult though, remember Commodore owned MOS and so all their custom chips were produced at the hourly salary rate of an engineer and manufactured at cost price....it's not magic it's good business sense to purchase MOS.

 

However I don't agree the ST was a failure, there was such little 8 bit demand from the public compatibility was not a big issue, and if you compare it to the Mac it was a better machine with a better OS. Less cheap keyboard would have helped a lot but as a games machine with no sprites/good sound/hardware scrolling/blitter the ST was living on borrowed time as a games machine, which is a shame because as a business machine it was fantastic and writing friendly GEM programs using FAST Basic was a sinch

[Goochman]

But we are talking about Atari 8 bit machines....so what difference does it make if they made a 65816 based GTIA+Antic+Pokey machine or actually designed the ST properly with hardware scrolling, hardware sprites/blitter and at least a 2 channel hardware sample playback sound chip to compliment the rasping YM chip.

 

What Atari needed to do is take the 800 as a base specification and IMPROVE the sound and graphics (colour resolution on screen and sprites not palette) to a level that would compete with the later 8 bit machines. You could have kept backwards compatibility in the same way the 32bit Amiga chipset still runs 16bit chipset games fine 9/10.

 

More flexible ways of getting any 16 colours on screen at 160x200, larger more powerful hardware sprites, and more features into pokey to match the tricks that SID could pull off.

 

The 5200 I agree should not have been released, waste of money, all they had to do was slim down an A8 motherboard and remove the keyboard to reduce the costs and then share the 8 bit computer cartridges with the home console XEGS type machine.

 

Would be difficult though, remember Commodore owned MOS and so all their custom chips were produced at the hourly salary rate of an engineer and manufactured at cost price....it's not magic it's good business sense to purchase MOS.

 

However I don't agree the ST was a failure, there was such little 8 bit demand from the public compatibility was not a big issue, and if you compare it to the Mac it was a better machine with a better OS. Less cheap keyboard would have helped a lot but as a games machine with no sprites/good sound/hardware scrolling/blitter the ST was living on borrowed time as a games machine, which is a shame because as a business machine it was fantastic and writing friendly GEM programs using FAST Basic was a sinch

 

I have to disagree here. Atari did the right thing not moving the 8bit line forward. The Apple IIgs was a disaster IMHO and clearly didnt have a long term future. No one thought about backwards compatibility or extended a chips capability. What Atari needed to do was take the 8bit line into the console arena. If they released the XEGS instead of the 5200 one has to wonder if the dev shops wouldve abandoned the 8bit section so fast? Atari would've had an instant library, compatible sticks, and new mega carts.

 

With the 8bit effectively put on long term retirement and hopefully generating more profit per unit they could've focused on the Amiga for Atari back then (heck, even if it still was the ST maybe it wouldve been more like the STe from the start).

 

The 5200 was a disaster from all aspects on Atari's image (2600 owners were po'd, 5200 owners were po'd, 8bit owners were been left in the cold, game crsah was coming)

 

Just my $0.02

[oky2000]

But we are talking about Atari 8 bit machines....so what difference does it make if they made a 65816 based GTIA+Antic+Pokey machine or actually designed the ST properly with hardware scrolling, hardware sprites/blitter and at least a 2 channel hardware sample playback sound chip to compliment the rasping YM chip.

 

What Atari needed to do is take the 800 as a base specification and IMPROVE the sound and graphics (colour resolution on screen and sprites not palette) to a level that would compete with the later 8 bit machines. You could have kept backwards compatibility in the same way the 32bit Amiga chipset still runs 16bit chipset games fine 9/10.

 

More flexible ways of getting any 16 colours on screen at 160x200, larger more powerful hardware sprites, and more features into pokey to match the tricks that SID could pull off.

 

The 5200 I agree should not have been released, waste of money, all they had to do was slim down an A8 motherboard and remove the keyboard to reduce the costs and then share the 8 bit computer cartridges with the home console XEGS type machine.

 

Would be difficult though, remember Commodore owned MOS and so all their custom chips were produced at the hourly salary rate of an engineer and manufactured at cost price....it's not magic it's good business sense to purchase MOS.

 

However I don't agree the ST was a failure, there was such little 8 bit demand from the public compatibility was not a big issue, and if you compare it to the Mac it was a better machine with a better OS. Less cheap keyboard would have helped a lot but as a games machine with no sprites/good sound/hardware scrolling/blitter the ST was living on borrowed time as a games machine, which is a shame because as a business machine it was fantastic and writing friendly GEM programs using FAST Basic was a sinch

 

I have to disagree here. Atari did the right thing not moving the 8bit line forward. The Apple IIgs was a disaster IMHO and clearly didnt have a long term future. No one thought about backwards compatibility or extended a chips capability. What Atari needed to do was take the 8bit line into the console arena. If they released the XEGS instead of the 5200 one has to wonder if the dev shops wouldve abandoned the 8bit section so fast? Atari would've had an instant library, compatible sticks, and new mega carts.

 

With the 8bit effectively put on long term retirement and hopefully generating more profit per unit they could've focused on the Amiga for Atari back then (heck, even if it still was the ST maybe it wouldve been more like the STe from the start).

 

The 5200 was a disaster from all aspects on Atari's image (2600 owners were po'd, 5200 owners were po'd, 8bit owners were been left in the cold, game crsah was coming)

 

Just my $0.02

 

Ahh I think we are in agreement really.

 

I thought the ST was the right move, the 5200 a bad move and an Atari 400 simplified motherboard in a box the best bet for a console given cartridges were already present in large number in the early 80s.

 

My only comment about improving the A8 chipset was really for the time around or just before the release of the C64 so think of it as the bit between the Atari 400/800 and the first ST ie something that needed to be finished in late 81 early 82. And if they had improved it maybe it could have been put in the ST to give better hardware scrolling/sprites/sound too so win/win situation

[Crazyace]

The ST was way in the future...

 

The A8 was very fast in 1978 ( 1.79MHz ) - so it should have been possible to have a 'XL' series to be clocked at 2.38MHz ( Colclk * 2/3 ) - giving more memory cycles for a new Antic chip ( allowing 2x res/colour depth ) - No 7800 would exist, as the 'XL' console would outperform the CV and IntV machines handily, while still offering 2600 compatibility.

 

Then in 86 a new machine ( 68000+6502 ) could come out with 9.54MHz 68000 + 2.38MHz 6502 , allowing old software to run - and supporting 320x200x256 colours and 640x200x16 colours max. Again have high end ( computer ) and low end (console) versions - At this point the NES wouldn't be able to compete ( and the machine would be better placed to face the Genesis and SNES )

[Fletch]

These what if scenarios are so bizarre. The crash of '84 killed Atari as much as they killed themselves. I owned a 400 straight through a Falcon and after '84 Atari was never the same. The general public had assumed that Atari had gone out of business and the way the Tramiels treated Atari it is a wonder they lasted the 10 years that they did.

 

I suppose if I could get involved in this what if, I'd have had either Atari and Commodore merge at some point or Atari to have been bought out by Apple. Maybe a Joint Atari - Commodore could have survived or Apple could have learned about games.

[kool kitty89]

Don't bother modifying the chiset of the 800, or at least late 800 (with GTIA), but get something like the 600/800XL out by late '82. One definite change would be the case design, the massive cases with alumium castings were completely impractical to continue using...

 

As to hostility to discontinuing the 400/800, perhaps they should have kept the new models fully backwards compatible, with 4x joystick ports, and 2nd cart slot for the 800XL's equivelent. Maybe not even bother with 64 kB on the 800XL, just 48 kB soldered to the board. Adding the PBI would still be important to allow lower cost peripherals, though perhaps just stick with just the SIO port and work on newer models with on-board disk drives.

 

After that, don't bother with further development, just further cost reduction, inegrating chips, etc; continue to support the 8-bitters, but make a clean break for a new machine. (probably 68k based) From existing Atari projects, Sierra 68000 might have been along these lines, but the information on it is rather vague. (It's fairly clear that Gaza was more high-end workstation based, with dual 68k CPU's, so probably not a good option)

Move the 8-bitters into the budget market and gradualy phase them out while continuing customer support.

 

Then again, had Warner/Atari been handeled better from the start (perhaps split into development and marketing/consumer companies, maybe with bushnell even staying in charge of the development side -assuming other dissagreements didn't insue), maybe Atari employees wouldn't have gotten frustrated and ended up leaving to go out on their own (Amiga, Activision, etc). Rather, those people stayed and continued their projects at Atari. (then the Amiga becomes a non-issue, either being developed at Atari, or having the team involved with other projects like Sierra)

 

 

Keep games seperate, no 5200, go straight for the 7800 (possibly a little earlier if they approached GCC to develop it instead of the other way arround), probably add a pokey instead of the on-cart expansion (maybe use Pokey for reading pots too, otherwise done in software on the 7800 iirc), but the rest could probably be fine. (low cost, integrated, compact, and featuring lockout) Maybe make the new carts look significantly different from the 2600's to avoid confusion. (also, no 7800 computer/keyboad attachment, avoid blurring the market)

 

 

As to the gaming crash, Atari was responsible in big part for that, or rather Warner/Atari's mistakes and the highly inflated market with no control over 3rd parties on the 2600. Had they handeled things better, perhaps there still would have been the bubble of an inflated market, but not as bad, and had Activision not broken off, it probably would have taken longer for 3rd parties to start rabidly releasing games. (and once the 7800- or equivelent- was successfully establish -with lockout- these problems could be resolved, at least as far as Atari went, Coleco and Mattel may have stayed in the market too, if there wasn't a crash, or at least a more subdued one)

Edited August 1, 2009 by kool kitty89

[Curt Vendel]

Carmel.... seriously, where do you come up with this sh*t you piece together!?!?!?

 

 

Internally several projects were already in the works or done and presented, but Warner Management canned because it went against what they felt Atari should've been doing. There was no "all eggs in one basket" approach re: the Amiga/Lorraine.

 

Atari had several chips (Silver&Gold, Rainbow&Amy) and projects like the 68000 based notebook computer and other projects, Atari R&D was already working on extremely advanced replacements. Something I haven't yet revealed is a project called "Omni" and once I've finished collecting some final data and materials, I'll present it, but it was a bridging system - highly advanced, but backwards compatible with the 800.

 

What was wrong with the next step from the 800 was Atari was keenly focused on cost reduction, not creating new products - the VCS and the Atari 800 chipset, from there forward, nothing new was released based on new chipsets of enhancements until 1984 with the Atari ProSystem and the MARIA, a chipset developed by a 3rd party no less.

 

Atari had high end, high priced systems which were doing well, they should further improved the designs and went upward after the Apple ][ and IBM PC markets which were possible to compete against in 1982, and left Commodore to be a low end bottom feeder line.

 

The parts supplier deals were due to employee's doing sweetheart deals with their friends to make money, one such employee, who was a middle management, long term Atari employee got caught in a whole web of sweetheart deals for parts, plastic molding contractors and such and was fired, out of respect, I wont name names.

 

It is true, Atari leaned too heavily on its video game background, quite frankly as with the coin-op division which was literally run as a separate entity, the computer division should've completely broken free from Consumer Electronics and being a separate company on its own with its own management, marketing, R&D, etc... and not been shackled to Consumer and Warner managements video games only views.

 

Lastly - the Atari 5200 in and of itself was a major design mistake, for very little cost, the Atari 400 should've just been repackaged into a new set of plastics, combo joysticks such as the 2700, but hardwired could've been designed for it, they could've changed the cartridge pinouts and added some additional lines for external video/audio through the cartridge port, heck, maybe even ran the SIO lines up through the cartridge port and this way the new pin layouts and size wouldn't have allowed Atari 800 carts to be used in it, or vice-versa. There would've been a new high end home console, no major design investments, no worries about having to have coders work on a game console game and then have to re-write it to the home computers, they could be done in one shot and just time different release dates, given each platform an exclusive of a title for a few months and then for big sales games for the holidays, release them at the same time. There was never a reason to have gone through the convoluted nonsense of the Atari 5200 design the way it was done, period.

 

Heck an add-on option could've been a membrane keyboard and RAM module to make it into a simple computer (basically turning it into an actual Atari 400 again)

 

 

BTW - a former Atari manager who was unhappy with the direction the Atari 800 took, left Atari and started a company called Axlon which brought us 32K, 64K and 128K ram boards among other products for the Atari 800...

 

 

Carmel --- you really need to spend more time reading and researching, you tend of mix too many fact with wishlists, presumptions and wrong guesses, but still tend to present them as facts, you have to be careful, you spread too much misinformation many times.

 

 

Curt

Edited August 1, 2009 by Curt Vendel

[+remowilliams]

Carmel --- you really need to spend more time reading and researching, you tend of mix too many fact with wishlists, presumptions and wrong guesses, but still tend to present them as facts, you have to be careful, you spread too much misinformation many times.

Which is exactly what I've said several times in the past, only to be replied with such gems as 'I guess some peeps woke up on the wrong side of the bed'

 

Carmel - your nonsense like this is not contributing anything to the community. You are in fact causing harm by your utter lack of knowledge and history, and your apparent refusal to bother checking anything before you present it as fact. For the sake of those still part of this community, and those who may yet come in the future - please stop.

[Retro Rogue]

Carmel - your nonsense like this is not contributing anything to the community. You are in fact causing harm by your utter lack of knowledge and history, and your apparent refusal to bother checking anything before you present it as fact. For the sake of those still part of this community, and those who may yet come in the future - please stop.

 

I guess some peeps woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

[carmel_andrews]

Carmel.... seriously, where do you come up with this sh*t you piece together!?!?!?

 

 

......snip, if i am not taking things out of context

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to answer your post

 

 

Firstly...try looking at the title of the thread...doesn’t the first 2 words indicate ‘What if’...which unless i am much mistaken means exploring possbilities/ideas etc....not fact

Because i stated what if....I wanted to discuss possibilities and idea’s based on technology and product atari had or atari were still developing...and applying them to POSSIBLE real world practical scenarios...again i was NOT discussing FACT

 

And just incase you hadn’t noticed is...i used Terms like ‘Perhaps Atari could and should have’....or atarai could and should have...again in the context of taking whatever they were doing and applying it to POSSIBLE real world practical scenarios...again i was not discussing fact

 

Now, i seem to remember a particular thread (7800 section i recall) where certain poster(s) where trying to disrespect you in someway, I seem to recall mentioning that perhaps they should review their attitude towards you and the work you do for the atari community and here you are not only misinterpreting not only my post and the title and subject heading of the thread, but also disrespecting me and at the same time or throwing everything i said in regards to you in that particular thread, back in my face

Perhaps next time I will be a bit more careful when someone decides to jump on your case or disrespect you or something