Curt Vendel Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 (edited) After years of research, thanks to research teamwork of Marty Goldberg and myself - in 2 weeks a new page of information will be posted with a history of Atari's "Advanced Engineering Division" and how it all lead up to Atari developing its version of the Amiga Lorraine as an Atari console system. During the trip through this historical look through Atari's advanced designs - never before seen notes, photo's, documents and emails on Atari systems such as the 1600XL Atari IBM PC system, Gaza, Sierra, GUMP, Eskimo/Dogsled and Explorer. Atari's work on its own BSD Unix OS with its own GUI - codenamed "Snowcap" and then we lead up to project "Mickey" - Atari's Amiga powered system. Afterwards you'll be able to peruse through contracts and court documents and see what really transpired during the summer of 1984 which shatters the myths and mis-history of Jack Tramiels involvement with buying Amiga - but shows how in the end he sued the heck out of Amiga and then Commodore... So here is a juicy little treat to wet your appetite. http://www.atariage.com/forums/uploads/monthly_10_2009/post-23-125549102769_thumb.gif Curt Edited October 14, 2009 by Curt Vendel 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 After years of research, thanks to research teamwork of Marty Goldberg and myself - in 2 weeks a new page of information will be posted with a history of Atari's "Advanced Engineering Division" and how it all lead up to Atari developing its version of the Amiga Lorraine as an Atari console system. During the trip through this historical look through Atari's advanced designs - never before seen notes, photo's, documents and emails on Atari systems such as the 1600XL Atari IBM PC system, Gaza, Sierra, GUMP, Eskimo/Dogsled and Explorer. Atari's work on its own BSD Unix OS with its own GUI - codenamed "Snowcap" and then we lead up to project "Mickey" - Atari's Amiga powered system. Afterwards you'll be able to peruse through contracts and court documents and see what really transpired during the summer of 1984 which shatters the myths and mis-history of Jack Tramiels involvement with buying Amiga - but shows how in the end he sued the heck out of Amiga and then Commodore... So here is a juicy little treat to wet your appetite. http://www.atariage.com/forums/uploads/monthly_10_2009/post-23-125549102769_thumb.gif Curt Very,Very exciting!!! I can hardly wait. Thank you for doing this Curt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Sounds..... Intriguing... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Can't wait to read this - it's amazing what you keep digging up! Stephen Anderson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhod Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 :lust: hard to wait !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 This is what's really cool about the Atari Museum - all of the info that Curt's exposing. I notice a RF modulator - I remember an interview with Jay Minter where he said the commodore guys redid the video output, and HAM had been a happy accident - Maybe the Atari version was going to be NTSC colour generated directly on the chips, rather than RGB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Math You Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 I love this Atari history stuff! Thanksyou, Curt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteZoner Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Looking forward to it and the book you are working on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Looking forward to it and the book you are working on. Curt is working on an Atari book? Details? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 So here is a juicy little treat to whet your appetite. This gives me hope that maybe one day someone will find a bunch of Atari documents showing the exact release dates for a ton of Atari 2600 games (at least the month anyway). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 So here is a juicy little treat to whet your appetite. This gives me hope that maybe one day someone will find a bunch of Atari documents showing the exact release dates for a ton of Atari 2600 games (at least the month anyway). I see you inserted a small spelling correction... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 I guess that means that the gagging order (aka buttoning up people,legally) has been lifted Curt (or the material would have been released earlier) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 Okay here is sneak peak tease #2: Introducing "GUMP"... Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 No Carmel, It has to do with the fact that this has been a very extensive research project which actually had started in 1999 and had numerous stops and starts but in 2006 had become a front burner research project. If I hadn't of been laid up for nearly a year due to my heart operations, this may have culminated much sooner. However, chance has it that everything started to fall into place around August of this year which is funny, because that was just around the time 25 years ago that the whole Atari-Amiga controversy occurred. Curt I guess that means that the gagging order (aka buttoning up people,legally) has been lifted Curt (or the material would have been released earlier) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Introducing "GUMP"... It looks like a superior computer to the ST range to me. Looking at the size of the video RAM it would have allowed some interesting colour depths and/or resolutions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted October 15, 2009 Author Share Posted October 15, 2009 I was amazed that the system memory was 1mb, but yes - video ram at 1mb!!! I mean in the late 80's I remember installing VGA upgrade cards that had 256K on them and those were impressive video cards on IBM PC's, so to see a system from April of 1984 with that much memory it just mindblowing... Atari had a highly formidable arsenal of extremely capable 16bit systems already developed from Corporate Research and Advanced Engineering, however when the Tramiels walked into Atari with Shiraz, they already had a design that was well along and they're blinders were in full force and they focused on their own system and not on systems literally ready to go with extremely capable features, just look at AMY - the reports of the demo's of the sound processor show it to be a chip that was years ahead of its time, well ahead of anything else. Curt Introducing "GUMP"... It looks like a superior computer to the ST range to me. Looking at the size of the video RAM it would have allowed some interesting colour depths and/or resolutions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Okay here is sneak peak tease #2: Introducing "GUMP"... Curt So nice and AMY is there! So cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Cool! I wonder if there is some way to reconstruct some of this prototype stuff above (or at least emulate it on PC/MAC etc.). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Introducing "GUMP"... It looks like a superior computer to the ST range to me. Looking at the size of the video RAM it would have allowed some interesting colour depths and/or resolutions. To me it looks like a scheme drawn on a CAD computer. Drawn from a guy dreaming of a new computer while drinking coffee in the morning break or else. It's only some sketch, nothing to get wet If it only was some wiring schematics.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Okay here is sneak peak tease #2: Introducing "GUMP"... Curt Wow, a whole 8051 to drive AMY with That would have been some fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 What an impressive machine that would have been. It's such a shame that these great designs never make it into production for business reasons. The team/s working on the planned systems must have been disapointed to see them shelved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Okay here is sneak peak tease #2: Introducing "GUMP"... Curt 16032 - I remember using one of those at uni. ( Whitechapel workstation ) This info is very cool ... looking forward to seeing everything Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thelen Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Okay here is sneak peak tease #2: Introducing "GUMP"... Curt Very intresting stuff here ! What will GUMP mean ? It looks like that computer would cost a lot of $$$ in 1984 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jet-X Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 I was amazed that the system memory was 1mb, but yes - video ram at 1mb!!! I mean in the late 80's I remember installing VGA upgrade cards that had 256K on them and those were impressive video cards on IBM PC's, so to see a system from April of 1984 with that much memory it just mindblowing... Just to put this into perspective, the Sony Playstation (PS1, PSX whatever you wanna call it) shipped with only 1MB of video RAM. And that was a decade after these documents. I could only imagine what 1MB in 1984 or 1985 would have been like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 But wouldn't 1MB of video ram have been REALLY expensive? What's the point of the designing the ultimate computer if no one can afford it? That's what almost happened to the Amiga! Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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