Sneak Peak - Amiga Atari Design...

[Tempest]

Ray even had this whole plan to make them in multiple colors and such to appeal to women as stated below.

Worked for the iMac.

 

Tempest

[HiroProX]

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

 

Not really. Many PC clones of the day were priced at $2000+ and were vastly underpowered even compared to an original Mac or 520ST. At its intro price the Amiga 1000 was vastly more powerful than an AT class PC and cost a good bit less.

[oky2000]

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

 

Not really. Many PC clones of the day were priced at $2000+ and were vastly underpowered even compared to an original Mac or 520ST. At its intro price the Amiga 1000 was vastly more powerful than an AT class PC and cost a good bit less.

 

No this is simply not true, in RAW CPU terms an AT spec PC, especially with 287 co-processor to complement the 286 CPU, @ even 8mhz was probably 3x faster (my exact MIPs ratings for all x86 vs 680x0 CPUs are in the ST area) and so if you actually wanted to do any business work or mathematical calculations etc you plumped for this setup.

 

As a multimedia machine and games machine or even just a plain simple cheap and dirty Fairlight sampler system type unit it was the ultimate machine, but in raw CPU speed it wasn't as there was simply too much of a speed difference. This is why to numbnutz at Commodores surprise businesses did not flock to buy an over priced medium/small business machine as they did with the original PET (which was a superior business machine on launch come to think of it).

[oky2000]

You must be kidding, for having sold so many you very seldom if ever saw them here in the U.S.

 

I suppose you, selling mostly Atari's, almost never saw them. But they sold a lot, so they were there.

 

Perhaps, not looking for them, YOU didn't see them. Some of us did. Quite often...

 

 

..and there was zero,zip, nada for software to buy. NOBODY carried it.

 

Not true, many department and toy stores carried Vic software. Just not many computer stores, where I assume you spent more time.

 

As mentioned before, people buy cheap, though it would appear with VIC it never sold that well in the US and what did was mostly doorstops for the curious.

 

Obviously not true, based on the number of Vic 20's sold. You really didn't get out of your store much, did you?

 

When you pick something that sold as many units as the Vic 20 did and say it didn't sell well, you realize what that does for the other stuff you say, right?

 

You didn't see a lot of Vic 20's. Fine. Doesn't mean they weren't out there.

You didn't sell a lot of Vic 20's. Fine. Doesn't mean they didn't sell.

 

You know, it is possible that your store and life experiences don't mirror the rest of the USA exactly. It's just possible.

 

But the Atari's are great machines, and I won't say anything against them.

 

The "doorstop" line was kind of funny the first time. It's mostly annoying and childish now. IMHO.

 

This isn't a "SLAM the Vic-20" thread. It's a thread about an Amiga-Atari design btw. A design I'm interested to hear about, as a fan of both technologies.

 

I'd appreciate your perspective as it relates to the topic. These CBM bashing posts tho, make me question whether there's anything to your technical posts, which is a shame because there might be some good information there.

 

desiv

 

When a troll counteracts known facts written in print and sanctioned by Jack Tramiel as truth with rubbish you should just ignore his posts like most level headed Atari users here do

 

I bet the Atari 400 didn't do much better than the VIC in America and was quite quickly palmed off as clearance stock when the 800 was slashed in price (and never restocked) in the UK as early as 83/84 boom. The simple fact is Jack was a worldwide business strategist, and history shows him to be one of the most ruthless in his time given sufficient capital to put his plans into effect (which he didn't have at Atari hence the XE being the same compromised machine as the 800 and the ST having no custom silicon etc etc). Americans didn't buy any budget machines FACT, Timex failed, the 264 series failed, etc etc as disposable income and the fact buying a home computer in the 80s was not a casual act.

 

It is all documented on video and in books, Jack was more worried about clones from the far east or the Japanese invasion of consumer electronics than the compromised design of the A8 (which cost Atari more to manufacture $/performance btw) Even the VIC does a better job of playing back SID tunes via the SIDVICIOUS program than Pokey too. Yes it was a cheap and chearful machine but cheap is the operative word there.

[oky2000]

I liked the Mega ST's and the MegaFiles... I wish Atari had stayed along those lines, then of course there is the big St - the EST:

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/est.html

 

Now THAT is a cool looking ST system that says 'RESPECT'

 

 

Curt

 

 

Sure looks a lot like a Sun Ultra 5

 

I remember seeing that machine design a couple of years ago and thinking how lovely it looked too. $3000 sounds a lot but then I suppose it depends what the custom chips could do and when it was supposed to be launched. 16mhz 020 cards were about 350 sterling in 87ish (ie for the A1000) from memory.

[HiroProX]

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

 

Not really. Many PC clones of the day were priced at $2000+ and were vastly underpowered even compared to an original Mac or 520ST. At its intro price the Amiga 1000 was vastly more powerful than an AT class PC and cost a good bit less.

 

No this is simply not true, in RAW CPU terms an AT spec PC, especially with 287 co-processor to complement the 286 CPU, @ even 8mhz was probably 3x faster (my exact MIPs ratings for all x86 vs 680x0 CPUs are in the ST area) and so if you actually wanted to do any business work or mathematical calculations etc you plumped for this setup.

 

As a multimedia machine and games machine or even just a plain simple cheap and dirty Fairlight sampler system type unit it was the ultimate machine, but in raw CPU speed it wasn't as there was simply too much of a speed difference. This is why to numbnutz at Commodores surprise businesses did not flock to buy an over priced medium/small business machine as they did with the original PET (which was a superior business machine on launch come to think of it).

 

Actually, my experience on 68000 vs. 80286 was much different> When I had an Amiga, my dad had a PC's Limited 8MHz 286. Both machines had (initially, I upgraded the Amiga in short order) 1Mb RAM and my Amiga frequently stomped the 286 (8MHz 286, 1Mb Ram, 40Mb HDD, EGA). And adding the 287 to the equation makes no sense, unless you add a 68881/2 to the 68000 machine. Back then, 287s were rather rare as little to no software made use of it. In addition, 286 machines ran MS-DOS, which made taking advantage of the additional address range or modes an excruciating headache from both the end user and programmer perspectives.

 

And, at the time of the 520ST and Amiga 1000's introductions, pricing was as follows...

 

Atari 520ST $799.95 (Mono), $999.95 (Color)

Amiga 1000 $1795

Macintosh 512K $2795

IBM PC/AT 256K, $4875 (And pretty bare-bones too)

 

 

[Lynxpro]

No, as stated it was Ray. That came direct from my talks with Joe Decuir. Ray and some of the other management were the ones who pushed the whole thing in to a closed architecture system, and drove for it to be a "consumer appliance" device complete with "smart peripherals". Ray even had this whole plan to make them in multiple colors and such to appeal to women as stated below. The FCC is what caused them to have the heavy metal shielding.

 

 

That means the whole accepted story behind the creation of the SIO is a myth. There's gotta be more to it than that.

 

Atari Corp. also tried to lay claim to the color scheme idea. Red for 8-bit, Blue for the ST.

 

There's a posted interview with James Morgan from 1984 indicating he also subscribed to the smart peripherals idea. I would love to interview that man today. I'm sure he really wishes he could've been permitted to turn Atari around back in the day. It certainly would be better to be remembered for that versus his testimony in Congress over tobacco addiction and the "gummy bears" comment.

 

Will Ray talk about anything yet regarding Atari? He [still] seems to be an avid art collector based upon his website. He was good at snagging licensing deals...too bad they didn't include original source code...

 

 

I wouldn't say that, I'm sure Jobs had no idea about any of this. Jobs actually is more of a Nolan 2.0, with some of the past shticks of his. Regarding Ray and how mos said he was ridiculed - at the time he pushed for all this, it's what caused a number of people to resign at the time though.

 

There's probably Apple employees that know all about this that could've informed him. At this point, there shouldn't be much about the past that's a secret in Silicon Valley. Especially with so many employees moving from company to company even with NDAs to contend with.

 

 

Actually, my experience on 68000 vs. 80286 was much different> When I had an Amiga, my dad had a PC's Limited 8MHz 286. Both machines had (initially, I upgraded the Amiga in short order) 1Mb RAM and my Amiga frequently stomped the 286 (8MHz 286, 1Mb Ram, 40Mb HDD, EGA). And adding the 287 to the equation makes no sense, unless you add a 68881/2 to the 68000 machine. Back then, 287s were rather rare as little to no software made use of it. In addition, 286 machines ran MS-DOS, which made taking advantage of the additional address range or modes an excruciating headache from both the end user and programmer perspectives.

 

 

This is the first time online I've ever seen anyone [no, not you, the person you were replying to] argue for Intel over Motorola back in the days prior to the 486. Sure, x86 generally had much higher clock speeds but it was conventional wisdom - whether from Atari users, Mac users, or Amiga users - that the 680x0 series spanked the pants off x86, with or without math co-processors.

 

As for raw speed, I thought it was also conventional wisdom that both the ST and Amiga were faster than Macs, that all 3 were faster than PCs, and the ST in terms of raw speed was faster than the Amiga but didn't do graphics or sound as good. Of course, they [Amiga] had viruses and we didn't. They had multitasking and we didn't until MiNT.

[Lynxpro]

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.

 

 

Curt should found a non-profit to advance his Atari Museum that we all love. Then we could all donate to it, he could get paid, we could have good tax write-offs, and the history of Atari is preserved. I suggest that the non-profit entity be named the Advanced Technology And Research Institute.

 

 

Atari was offered the apple and declined as they has thier own in dev. Commodore 64 did not arrive until 82.Not sure anyone paid any attention to VIC and never heard of CBM/PET here in the US back at that time. Atari was 78/89. Atari ended up competing with Apple,personally I thing the Atari was a heck of alot better machine.

 

 

As others have stated, computers were homebrew back then. Nolan wanted to fund the Apple - and it would've been a project/division of Atari - but he didn't have the money at the time. Everything was going into paying for the VCS development but Nolan did refer Steve to a venture capitalist [Don Valentine?] that got him those needed funds. It wasn't an oversight on Atari's part, they just couldn't do it. Plus, Steve wasn't really well liked at Atari back then, from all the accounts I've read.

 

Nolan often mentions that the stock market wasn't a friendly place to raise money - through going public - which was why he sought out a buyer for the company [ultimately Warner]. Has anyone ever asked him if he looked into junk bonds? That's about the time they took off and Ted Turner certainly had massive success from going that route.

 

As for Commodore, it took them 5 years to match - and somewhat best - what Jay Miner achieved back in 78/79 when they released the C64.

 

What I've found extremely interesting was Al Alcorn's comments at the Commodore 64 celebration that he and others at Atari wanted to purchase MOS Technologies prior to the Commodore takeover. He alluded to Warner nixing that request but from what I've read online, it looks like Commodore acquired MOS the month before Warner purchased Atari. Man, had Atari pulled that off back then it would've been lights out on Commodore and the industry would be much much different today. Sometimes I think we're living in the sucky timeline/universe.

 

Of course, in hindsight, it's too bad Atari didn't include some more custom chips in the 2600 design. That would've prevented Coleco later cloning them and a lock out chip could've prevented Custer's Revenge.

 

SIO should've been licensed to other computer manufacturers, that way it wouldn't have been an albatross that it was for Atari 8 bit peripherals.

 

 

Interesting to know that Atari employees of any kind were using Macs for work back then. It was before the ST, so I guess they could do it without internal company shame.

 

Well, you do remember that Lynx game development required Amigas. Heck, early Xbox360 game development required PowerMac G5s.

 

 

It is difficult to say... the timeline still has the breakdown of talks between Amiga to Atari just days prior to the June 30th deadline. The Tramiels did look at using the AMY sound processor, however they did not use the Silver & Gold graphics chipset. Why? Its unknown without getting input from specific individuals with whom we are awaiting responses from.

 

So had the Amiga chipset in fact been a part of the available technologies afforded to the Tramiels, the agreement only allowed the chipset for use in a video game console until June of 1985, at that time, then a keyboard could be added to the system, the system could have no more then 128K and no 2nd floppy drive. This of course would highly limit the system - 3rd parties of course could've done whatever they wanted... It wouldn't be until 1986 when Atari under the license could then produce a standalone computer. So since the Tramiels were not focusing on video games until financial resources permitted, they would've still forged ahead with their ST computers most likely.

 

 

Curt, didn't your site link to an interview with some of the staff that created the AMY? Didn't they say that another company licensed the AMY design but then the Tramiels turned around and sued them once they produced it in silicon and then the left over chips from the defunct company were then later destroyed in a fire? The Tramiels also sold off [or at least licensed] the holographic IP Atari Inc. owned to Sega which is why Sega later produced that "holographic" laser disc game in the late 80s.

 

 

One quick question, the Amy sound processor was the chip intended to be used in the special xe or am I remembering it wrong? Was it more advanced than Amiga's Paula? Was PAula even part of the original Amiga design?

 

Wasn't Paula limited to 4 voices? And the AMY had 32+. I seem to recall Yamaha showing off a "music computer" [probably ran MSX] at the 1985 CES that had 50+ voices in it. My memory is cloudy on it but it, the ST, and the Amiga were all covered in a Boy's Life magazine I had at the time... Actually, that issue also covered the C128, the 130XE, the 65XE, the 65XEM, and the 65XEP. I think I later barfed on the magazine at school so I no longer have it...

 

 

AMY had originally been intended by the Tramiels for use in the "RBP" (Rock Bottom Price - aka Atari ST) but it still needed some finalized work and with such an aggressive schedule to complete the ST the AMY was moved to the 65XEM instead while the ST used an off the shelf audio chip. Paula is the descendant of the original Lorriane audio processor - Portia.

 

It's a shame they never finished it. They could've marketed it as a much needed sound upgrade for the 7800 via the Expansion Port, and to the ST via the cartridge port too. Tsk tsk.

 

 

not to be confused with the MigST

 

Dare I ask what a MigST is? Is that an Amiga 500 in a 1040ST case?

 

 

 

They weren't laid off. A lot of the research people (including Alan Kay) left for greener pastures and didn't want to be hired at Atari Corp.

 

 

Seems a lot of people didn't want to work for the Tramiels.

 

 

Ray was ridiculed for this in Stella at 20. The implication was that Ray was more interested in style than substance.

 

 

Pardon me but what does "Stella at 20" mean? Is that online slang?

 

 

I agree with Ken.

I don't think it's the only fan of XE/ST design.

Design appreciation is very subjective.

You can like or dislike the 3 Atari designs (by Kevin McKinsey, Regan Cheng and Ira Valensky) but I think Curt's sentence "Atari XE and ST are ugly grey monstrousities..." is wrong, in particular from an historical objective point of view.

 

There was once an Atari store in Woodland CA that used to spray paint the ST cases in a variety of colors. They looked pretty snazzy when they were black, graphic, or zebra stripes.

Edited March 2, 2010 by Lynxpro

[HiroProX]

 

This is the first time online I've ever seen anyone [no, not you, the person you were replying to] argue for Intel over Motorola back in the days prior to the 486. Sure, x86 generally had much higher clock speeds but it was conventional wisdom - whether from Atari users, Mac users, or Amiga users - that the 680x0 series spanked the pants off x86, with or without math co-processors.

 

As for raw speed, I thought it was also conventional wisdom that both the ST and Amiga were faster than Macs, that all 3 were faster than PCs, and the ST in terms of raw speed was faster than the Amiga but didn't do graphics or sound as good. Of course, they [Amiga] had viruses and we didn't. They had multitasking and we didn't until MiNT.

 

Well, in a way Tramiel was responsible for the PC winning. He started a race to the bottom in price, and the machine that's built from nothing but off-the-shelf parts will always beat a design relying on custom silicon in a price war. The only reason the C64 succeeded was because Commodore owned MOS, so their costs for custom silicon were lower. But this came back to bite them in the backside when off-the-shelf PC parts managed to start reaching Amiga levels of performance, though that was more Irving Gould's fault since he practically strangled R&D in favor of tax shelters in the Bahamas. At Atari, Tramiel didn't have that luxury, and hence the high comparative cost of the Falcon 030 compared to 386SX/DX PCs or even the A1200.

 

Guess one could say Atari and Commodore died due to the same cause, idiotic corporate management.

Edited March 2, 2010 by HiroProX

[Kernal]

"Guess one could say Atari and Commodore died due to the same cause, idiotic corporate management."

 

A saying that could also be put to our current economic problems.

[+wood_jl]

I bet the Atari 400 didn't do much better than the VIC in America and was quite quickly palmed off as clearance stock when the 800 was slashed in price (and never restocked) in the UK as early as 83/84 boom.

I would be surprised if the 400 did better than the VIC in America at all. Despite the vastly superior capabilities, the 400 was so much more expensive and hobbled with the McDonald's Cash Register Keyboard. Isn't the VIC the first computer to sell a million? I seriously doubt they even manufactured a million 400s. I'm guessing the "million" figure is worldwide, but I'd like to see how many 400s were manufactured/sold worldwide and/or in the US.

 

Americans didn't buy any budget machines FACT, Timex failed, the 264 series failed, etc etc as disposable income and the fact buying a home computer in the 80s was not a casual act.

Yankees buy budget machines just like anybody else. The Timex failed because it was a sucky toy. The 264 series failed because the C64 price fell so fast there was no savings - only an incompatible machine that lost the C64's strengths. The C64 was a Yankee-selling budget machine, was it not?

 

It is all documented on video and in books, Jack was more worried about clones from the far east or the Japanese invasion of consumer electronics than the compromised design of the A8 (which cost Atari more to manufacture $/performance btw) Even the VIC does a better job of playing back SID tunes via the SIDVICIOUS program than Pokey too. Yes it was a cheap and chearful machine but cheap is the operative word there.

I don't see the point in faulting a Pokey machine because it doesn't play SID tunes to your satisfaction. Fortunately, Pokey does a better job of playing Pokey tunes than a VIC....but that's equally pointless.

[+wood_jl]

"Guess one could say Atari and Commodore died due to the same cause, idiotic corporate management."

 

A saying that could also be put to our current economic problems.

 

Atari undoubtedly made mistakes, but it was always an uphill battle to sell - or even speak about - Atari computers in the U.S. I'm sure any long-term Atari user knows what I'm talking about....happened all through the 1980s.... Someone asks what kind of computer you have (doesn't matter if it was A8 or ST) and you tell them "Atari" and they come back with some dumb shit like "No,,,,,I mean 'computer'" Then you explain to someone (who's not really interested anyway) that Atari did sell 'actual' computers.... Repeat this experience ad nauseum.

 

Commodore had an advantage in this regard.

 

Regardless of criticism of the management practices, what kind of fancy management would you have suggested for either to take to abate the onslaught of PC clones?

[oky2000]

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

 

Not really. Many PC clones of the day were priced at $2000+ and were vastly underpowered even compared to an original Mac or 520ST. At its intro price the Amiga 1000 was vastly more powerful than an AT class PC and cost a good bit less.

 

No this is simply not true, in RAW CPU terms an AT spec PC, especially with 287 co-processor to complement the 286 CPU, @ even 8mhz was probably 3x faster (my exact MIPs ratings for all x86 vs 680x0 CPUs are in the ST area) and so if you actually wanted to do any business work or mathematical calculations etc you plumped for this setup.

 

As a multimedia machine and games machine or even just a plain simple cheap and dirty Fairlight sampler system type unit it was the ultimate machine, but in raw CPU speed it wasn't as there was simply too much of a speed difference. This is why to numbnutz at Commodores surprise businesses did not flock to buy an over priced medium/small business machine as they did with the original PET (which was a superior business machine on launch come to think of it).

 

Actually, my experience on 68000 vs. 80286 was much different> When I had an Amiga, my dad had a PC's Limited 8MHz 286. Both machines had (initially, I upgraded the Amiga in short order) 1Mb RAM and my Amiga frequently stomped the 286 (8MHz 286, 1Mb Ram, 40Mb HDD, EGA). And adding the 287 to the equation makes no sense, unless you add a 68881/2 to the 68000 machine. Back then, 287s were rather rare as little to no software made use of it. In addition, 286 machines ran MS-DOS, which made taking advantage of the additional address range or modes an excruciating headache from both the end user and programmer perspectives.

 

And, at the time of the 520ST and Amiga 1000's introductions, pricing was as follows...

 

Atari 520ST $799.95 (Mono), $999.95 (Color)

Amiga 1000 $1795

Macintosh 512K $2795

IBM PC/AT 256K, $4875 (And pretty bare-bones too)

 

 

 

Erm.. you missed the point about raw CPU speed only. Try computing a huge complex spreadsheet, compiling a complex bit of code or just reorganising and reindexing a huge database in memory (to negate disk i/o speed differences) and you will clearly see the result. the simple fact is the CPU speed was better, even though nothing else was better on a PC. As a machine in use overall I have no doubt the smart money went on an Amiga 1000 in 1985/86 as ALL the industry technical experts for every non-PC specific/multiformat magazines concluded that never has the gap between the most advanced machine (A1000) and its rivals been so large both in technical terms overall and the price/performance equation.

[oky2000]

I bet the Atari 400 didn't do much better than the VIC in America and was quite quickly palmed off as clearance stock when the 800 was slashed in price (and never restocked) in the UK as early as 83/84 boom.

I would be surprised if the 400 did better than the VIC in America at all. Despite the vastly superior capabilities, the 400 was so much more expensive and hobbled with the McDonald's Cash Register Keyboard. Isn't the VIC the first computer to sell a million? I seriously doubt they even manufactured a million 400s. I'm guessing the "million" figure is worldwide, but I'd like to see how many 400s were manufactured/sold worldwide and/or in the US.

 

Americans didn't buy any budget machines FACT, Timex failed, the 264 series failed, etc etc as disposable income and the fact buying a home computer in the 80s was not a casual act.

Yankees buy budget machines just like anybody else. The Timex failed because it was a sucky toy. The 264 series failed because the C64 price fell so fast there was no savings - only an incompatible machine that lost the C64's strengths. The C64 was a Yankee-selling budget machine, was it not?

 

It is all documented on video and in books, Jack was more worried about clones from the far east or the Japanese invasion of consumer electronics than the compromised design of the A8 (which cost Atari more to manufacture $/performance btw) Even the VIC does a better job of playing back SID tunes via the SIDVICIOUS program than Pokey too. Yes it was a cheap and chearful machine but cheap is the operative word there.

I don't see the point in faulting a Pokey machine because it doesn't play SID tunes to your satisfaction. Fortunately, Pokey does a better job of playing Pokey tunes than a VIC....but that's equally pointless.

 

I don't know of a single budget machine that took off in the early 80s in the USA, because there isn't one. The Atari 400 was hugely cheaper than the 800 but nobody wanted it and it isn't due to the keyboard, yes the Timex machines were crap but they sold by the millions in the poorer EU with lower disposable incomes. From the country that invented the IBM PC Jr and had $1000 A8/Apple II/PC setups just for home computing I doubt very much ANY budget machine would get a look in....simply because buying a computer was the act of fanatics and not a casual purchase as it was in the 90s and today.

 

Satisfaction? you mean a lack of overall technical sophistication in Pokey to replicate the SID sound as well as a Tandy CoCo or VIC20 does, and the reason it can't is due to lack of features....those same features present in a SID chip and any early 80s or late 70s analogue synthesizers which were used to push out that crap 70s rubbish and usher in a new age of synth music pioneered in Germany and the UK. Despite what Atari specific fanboys say on this forum, in the real world both technically and by personal preference the SID chip is widely regarded as the most sophisticated and least compromised general purpose sound chip. Show me any other sound chip that can both simulate a general synth sound AND a fantastic electric guitar sound WITHOUT using samples. Replicating its vast array of effects/features/ADSR controls and waveforms all of which are 100% analogue synth in nature to come close to it on a non SID chip is a good test of how good an analogue synth it is. Nobody really cares about the VCS sounding Pokey hence nobody has written a Pokey emulator for a C64/VIC/IIgs/Amstrad/Tandy/TI99

[frogstar_robot]

Erm.. you missed the point about raw CPU speed only. Try computing a huge complex spreadsheet, compiling a complex bit of code or just reorganising and reindexing a huge database in memory (to negate disk i/o speed differences) and you will clearly see the result. the simple fact is the CPU speed was better, even though nothing else was better on a PC. As a machine in use overall I have no doubt the smart money went on an Amiga 1000 in 1985/86 as ALL the industry technical experts for every non-PC specific/multiformat magazines concluded that never has the gap between the most advanced machine (A1000) and its rivals been so large both in technical terms overall and the price/performance equation.

 

Sounds like the "megahertz myth" to me. The 68000 didn't have brain damage like segmented memory, a plethora of modes and rings where instructions behave differently, or an ISA where the number of clocks per instruction could and did vary radically depending on the instruction. It also had more and sanely designed registers and operated 32 bits internally. I suspect this is rather like comparing a Z-80 to a 6502 or even worse for the Z-80 a 6809. A Z-80 at 4Mhz is roughly equivalent in performance to a 6502 at 2Mhz.

 

I could not find a clock-for-clock comparison of the two but I did find this:

 

http://www.faqs.org/.../68k-chips-faq/

 

There it shows a 8Mhz 68000 benchmarking at 2100 dhrystones. One example of an AT clone running at 10Mhz 286 comes in at 1889 dhrystones which suggests that 286s have to be clocked WAY faster than an ST or an Amiga to get an edge in raw calculating prowess. Add the sound and graphics of either and typical 286 PCs are clearly every bit as backward as we thought they were then. Of course once clones started coming with 386s they started outstripping Motorola based machines though 030 and 040 Amigas could still hold their own against the 486s and 60-75Mhz Pentiums. After that, only the PowerPC put up any real sort desktop fight.

[mellis]

Sounds like the "megahertz myth" to me. The 68000 didn't have brain damage like segmented memory, a plethora of modes and rings where instructions behave differently, or an ISA where the number of clocks per instruction could and did vary radically depending on the instruction. It also had more and sanely designed registers and operated 32 bits internally. I suspect this is rather like comparing a Z-80 to a 6502 or even worse for the Z-80 a 6809. A Z-80 at 4Mhz is roughly equivalent in performance to a 6502 at 2Mhz.

 

I could not find a clock-for-clock comparison of the two but I did find this:

 

http://www.faqs.org/.../68k-chips-faq/

 

There it shows a 8Mhz 68000 benchmarking at 2100 dhrystones. One example of an AT clone running at 10Mhz 286 comes in at 1889 dhrystones which suggests that 286s have to be clocked WAY faster than an ST or an Amiga to get an edge in raw calculating prowess. Add the sound and graphics of either and typical 286 PCs are clearly every bit as backward as we thought they were then. Of course once clones started coming with 386s they started outstripping Motorola based machines though 030 and 040 Amigas could still hold their own against the 486s and 60-75Mhz Pentiums. After that, only the PowerPC put up any real sort desktop fight.

 

I concur.

 

I developed software for both the ST and the PC during that time period, and the ST would easily outperform a similarly clocked PC. It wasn't until the flood of 16MHz 386 machines that the 8MHz STs started to have trouble keeping up.

[+wood_jl]

Satisfaction? you mean a lack of overall technical sophistication in Pokey to replicate the SID sound as well as a Tandy CoCo or VIC20 does, and the reason it can't is due to lack of features....those same features present in a SID chip and any early 80s or late 70s analogue synthesizers which were used to push out that crap 70s rubbish and usher in a new age of synth music pioneered in Germany and the UK. Despite what Atari specific fanboys say on this forum, in the real world both technically and by personal preference the SID chip is widely regarded as the most sophisticated and least compromised general purpose sound chip. Show me any other sound chip that can both simulate a general synth sound AND a fantastic electric guitar sound WITHOUT using samples. Replicating its vast array of effects/features/ADSR controls and waveforms all of which are 100% analogue synth in nature to come close to it on a non SID chip is a good test of how good an analogue synth it is. Nobody really cares about the VCS sounding Pokey hence nobody has written a Pokey emulator for a C64/VIC/IIgs/Amstrad/Tandy/TI99

 

I have 2 Commodore 64s - one 1541U and I am waiting on a 1541U-II - so let me state plainly that I like the Commodore 64. Unlike some, I really like the SID and I think it sounds nifty. That having been said, I really like the POKEY sounds, I think it can still sound impressive. For 8-bit arcade games, I think the POKEY sound is better suited. The "synthy" sound of Pacman on the C64 is not close to the arcade Pacman; the A8 version sounds almost like it. So let's be clear that "liking" POKEY and SID are not mutually exclusive, as is your implication.

 

As well - I find it hard to believe anybody who claims POKEY is "VCS-sounding." Anybody who can not tell the difference between Atari 2600 sound and 5200/8-bit sound is probably not a suitable judge of sound to be voicing opinions on the matter. The Atari 7800 is VCS sounding....except for "Ballblazer" which contains a POKEY. It sounds quite different. Did you know they put the POKEY chip in the cartridge to make it sound different? Do you think they would have put a POKEY in there if it would still sound "VCS sounding" when they could have just used the standard sound hardware?

 

Furthermore, if I want to listen to a SID I turn on the Commodore 64. It's an interesting tech demo and proof-of-concept that some of the other machines have been able to emulate SID sound. It's no big deal at all. Can the Tandy do it in a game? What would be the point...when you can just play a C64 if that's what you want. Attempting to characterize the ability of a system to emulate a SID as a criterion for for validation makes absolutely no sense to me. Yes, interesting tech demo....that is all. Why not just listen to SIDs on a C64? Would it prove some point if I unplugged my C64 and used my VIC-20 to listen to SIDs? Would A8 Donkey Kong be inferior to Vic-20 Donkey Kong, because in a separate operation, I can play SIDs on the Vic-20?

[Loyal Atarian]

How It kills me to think of what could of been.

Its sad after all these years that Im still in love with my 1000.

It was the turning point for me in so many ways...I still love to animate on it.

I really cant wait to hear more on this.

Thanks Curt for sharing.

 

 

This is exactly how I feel. So many enormous letdowns after Tramiel took over Atari. I wonder if Tramiel or his sons get any hate mail after all these years? I hate to say it, but the Tramiel regime faintly reminds me of the Saddam Hussein regime with his sons running around the country causing mayhem and murder. Tramiel and his sons did this to what could have been the Atari Amiga 1850XLD. I wish someone could deliver this computer today, to make good on the promises that have left us wondering what could have been.

[LoTonah]

How It kills me to think of what could of been.

Its sad after all these years that Im still in love with my 1000.

It was the turning point for me in so many ways...I still love to animate on it.

I really cant wait to hear more on this.

Thanks Curt for sharing.

 

 

This is exactly how I feel. So many enormous letdowns after Tramiel took over Atari. I wonder if Tramiel or his sons get any hate mail after all these years? I hate to say it, but the Tramiel regime faintly reminds me of the Saddam Hussein regime with his sons running around the country causing mayhem and murder. Tramiel and his sons did this to what could have been the Atari Amiga 1850XLD. I wish someone could deliver this computer today, to make good on the promises that have left us wondering what could have been.

 

 

Seriously? You'd compare the Tramiels to a murdering dictator? WTF is wrong with you?!?

 

We may not agree with all the steps that Jack and sons took, but I think considering the shape Atari was in when they stepped in, they did a pretty amazing job. Yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff that was shelved, and they let a lot of good people go, but Atari wasn't going to last much longer without some serious axe-swinging. Don't get me started on advertising and stale technology, either.

 

Besides, I seriously wonder if Amiga would have gone with Atari with or without Jack appearing on the scene. From what I've been able to gather, Jay Miner and company weren't exactly in love with Atari in the first place... a lot of them were ex-Atari employees FOR A REASON. The way that they were treated caused them to leave, after all.

 

Yes, there's a lot of stuff I'd have loved to have seen come out of Atari. The 8-bit expansion card box comes to mind. The ST line took forever to get multitasking and font scaling (GDOS took ages!). Super cheap/debugged development tools would have been wicked. 68020 based STs should have replaced the 68000 units by 1989, selling for the same price. Dealer support in Canada was a joke, I remember waiting weeks for my back-ordered STe. They shouldn't have bothered with all of the Transputer B.S. Jaguar developer tools were a joke, too.

 

All in all, though, I think that Atari lasted about as long as the rest of the market let it. Any of those extra steps would have just kept them going for a year, maybe two, longer. The majority of the computer users out there were already picking their favorite architectures to back--Windows and Mac.

[Bryan]

It was a lousy comparison, but to his credit he did use the word faintly.

[Lynxpro]

Well, in a way Tramiel was responsible for the PC winning. He started a race to the bottom in price, and the machine that's built from nothing but off-the-shelf parts will always beat a design relying on custom silicon in a price war. The only reason the C64 succeeded was because Commodore owned MOS, so their costs for custom silicon were lower. But this came back to bite them in the backside when off-the-shelf PC parts managed to start reaching Amiga levels of performance, though that was more Irving Gould's fault since he practically strangled R&D in favor of tax shelters in the Bahamas. At Atari, Tramiel didn't have that luxury, and hence the high comparative cost of the Falcon 030 compared to 386SX/DX PCs or even the A1200.

Guess one could say Atari and Commodore died due to the same cause, idiotic corporate management.

 

 

I seriously believe that had Atari acquired MOS - as Al Alcorn claims some in the company wanted - Commodore would've fizzled long before the debut of the C64. One can easily assert that Apple and Atari subsidized Commodore by purchasing 6502s from them. Actually, Atari even more so since it sold far more products with 6502s in them than Apple, plus, from what I've read, a lot of the VCS game cart ROMs came from MOS. Had Atari kept all that in-house, Commodore would not have generated the profits they did that in turn subsidized the low prices that the Vic-20 and the C64 enjoyed.

 

Maybe Tramiel would've tried to buy Zilog to get his precious vertical integration, but then their computers would've been even worse.

 

Think about it... An Atari owned MOS would've created the SID themselves. The SID was created by a MOS employee, not by an actual Commodore engineer like Shiraz.

 

 

Atari undoubtedly made mistakes, but it was always an uphill battle to sell - or even speak about - Atari computers in the U.S. I'm sure any long-term Atari user knows what I'm talking about....happened all through the 1980s.... Someone asks what kind of computer you have (doesn't matter if it was A8 or ST) and you tell them "Atari" and they come back with some dumb shit like "No,,,,,I mean 'computer'" Then you explain to someone (who's not really interested anyway) that Atari did sell 'actual' computers.... Repeat this experience ad nauseum.

 

Commodore had a reputation of making toy computers, so it wasn't exactly like they had better street cred than Atari. Atari had a much lower defective rate on their products, video games and computers. Atari touted a 0.5% defective rate near the end of XL production.

 

Had the ST been advertised better - instead of at 4am - perhaps they would've had a better reputation from the ignorant masses.

 

 

I don't know of a single budget machine that took off in the early 80s in the USA, because there isn't one. The Atari 400 was hugely cheaper than the 800 but nobody wanted it and it isn't due to the keyboard, yes the Timex machines were crap but they sold by the millions in the poorer EU with lower disposable incomes. From the country that invented the IBM PC Jr and had $1000 A8/Apple II/PC setups just for home computing I doubt very much ANY budget machine would get a look in....simply because buying a computer was the act of fanatics and not a casual purchase as it was in the 90s and today.

 

The EU back then? It didn't exist. It was the EEC and then the EC before it had its current federalist trappings post Maastricht which ruined the trade organization. The UK and Ireland should withdraw and just go back to being in the EFTA which is part of the EEA.

 

 

Satisfaction? you mean a lack of overall technical sophistication in Pokey to replicate the SID sound as well as a Tandy CoCo or VIC20 does, and the reason it can't is due to lack of features....those same features present in a SID chip and any early 80s or late 70s analogue synthesizers which were used to push out that crap 70s rubbish and usher in a new age of synth music pioneered in Germany and the UK. Despite what Atari specific fanboys say on this forum, in the real world both technically and by personal preference the SID chip is widely regarded as the most sophisticated and least compromised general purpose sound chip. Show me any other sound chip that can both simulate a general synth sound AND a fantastic electric guitar sound WITHOUT using samples. Replicating its vast array of effects/features/ADSR controls and waveforms all of which are 100% analogue synth in nature to come close to it on a non SID chip is a good test of how good an analogue synth it is. Nobody really cares about the VCS sounding Pokey hence nobody has written a Pokey emulator for a C64/VIC/IIgs/Amstrad/Tandy/TI99

 

 

Here's the thing about SID. It took Commodore 5 years to beat Pokey. It took Warner Atari less than 2 years to top the SID with the AMY.

 

And had Warner or Tramiel Atari had just slapped in a second Pokey into the machines, it is arguable how much "better" the SID was. 2xPokey was what Atari coin-op used on lots of their arcade games.

 

 

As well - I find it hard to believe anybody who claims POKEY is "VCS-sounding." Anybody who can not tell the difference between Atari 2600 sound and 5200/8-bit sound is probably not a suitable judge of sound to be voicing opinions on the matter. The Atari 7800 is VCS sounding....except for "Ballblazer" which contains a POKEY. It sounds quite different. Did you know they put the POKEY chip in the cartridge to make it sound different? Do you think they would have put a POKEY in there if it would still sound "VCS sounding" when they could have just used the standard sound hardware?

 

Yet somehow the music and sound effects in the 7800 version of Xevious sounds far beyond anything done in a 2600 specific title using the very same sound chip.

 

 

 

Furthermore, if I want to listen to a SID I turn on the Commodore 64. It's an interesting tech demo and proof-of-concept that some of the other machines have been able to emulate SID sound. It's no big deal at all. Can the Tandy do it in a game? What would be the point...when you can just play a C64 if that's what you want. Attempting to characterize the ability of a system to emulate a SID as a criterion for for validation makes absolutely no sense to me. Yes, interesting tech demo....that is all. Why not just listen to SIDs on a C64? Would it prove some point if I unplugged my C64 and used my VIC-20 to listen to SIDs? Would A8 Donkey Kong be inferior to Vic-20 Donkey Kong, because in a separate operation, I can play SIDs on the Vic-20?

 

 

I'm just not sold on the SID being totally superior to POKEY. The SID music for MULE and Ballblazer sounds more "synth" than the POKEY versions but that doesn't mean it sound better. But versions are posted on YouTube.

 

 

Seriously? You'd compare the Tramiels to a murdering dictator? WTF is wrong with you?!?

 

The Tramiels came close to destroying an entire industry. How many suicides were caused by people losing their jobs at companies that went under because of his price cuts? Did anyone commit suicide at Atari Inc? But I think the author was pointing out the similarities between Saddam's often insane leadership and his sons doing an even worse job than their father.

 

Wouldn't you consider Bernie Madoff a monster having stole $32 billion?

 

 

We may not agree with all the steps that Jack and sons took, but I think considering the shape Atari was in when they stepped in, they did a pretty amazing job. Yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff that was shelved, and they let a lot of good people go, but Atari wasn't going to last much longer without some serious axe-swinging. Don't get me started on advertising and stale technology, either.

 

 

Had it not been for Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempt against Warner Communications, Steve Ross wouldn't have sold Atari to the Tramiels. James Morgan would've remained in place and Atari would've naturally recovered on its own without the massive cuts.

 

The more I think about it, the more I think of Tramiel as "The Mule" from the Foundation book series.

 

 

Besides, I seriously wonder if Amiga would have gone with Atari with or without Jack appearing on the scene. From what I've been able to gather, Jay Miner and company weren't exactly in love with Atari in the first place... a lot of them were ex-Atari employees FOR A REASON. The way that they were treated caused them to leave, after all.

 

But where else could Jay have brought his dog to work and had an ID badge made for him? Probably only at Atari. As for RJ, he never liked Atari to begin with. He was a Williams Electronics partisan.

 

 

Yes, there's a lot of stuff I'd have loved to have seen come out of Atari. The 8-bit expansion card box comes to mind. The ST line took forever to get multitasking and font scaling (GDOS took ages!). Super cheap/debugged development tools would have been wicked. 68020 based STs should have replaced the 68000 units by 1989, selling for the same price. Dealer support in Canada was a joke, I remember waiting weeks for my back-ordered STe. They shouldn't have bothered with all of the Transputer B.S. Jaguar developer tools were a joke, too.

 

 

The ST and the Amiga both probably should've used a 68010 from the start. GDOS should've been added directly to TOS 1.2 or 1.4. The BLiTTER should've been made available as part of the TOS upgrade kits [as the Tramiels originally promised and then did not fulfill], the STE custom chips should've beaten the standard Amiga chipset and it should've shipped with a 68020. Just as soon as the Panther and Jaguar custom chips had been finished, they should've been incorporated into the computer line. The money wasted on the Federated Group should've been used to finish up the AMY chip, buying the Atari Games Corp., and acquiring an actual chip fab plant.

 

 

WTF was Styra Semiconductor? It appeared as that in one annual report and then the following year was listed as the "Atari Dallas Corp." or something like that. I took it that it was like Cyan Engineering and not an actual fab plant.

Edited March 3, 2010 by Lynxpro

[Loyal Atarian]

Commodore had a reputation of making toy computers, so it wasn't exactly like they had better street cred than Atari. Atari had a much lower defective rate on their products, video games and computers. Atari touted a 0.5% defective rate near the end of XL production.

 

Had the ST been advertised better - instead of at 4am - perhaps they would've had a better reputation from the ignorant masses.

 

This is what I remember from that time as well, that a lot of people were saying Atari simply didn't have enough advertising to get across to people, that this ST is a powerful new computing platform, and that it wasn't just about games, but about all the great possibilities of what you, the user, could come up with and create with such a powerful machine above all others in your hands. The power without the price was quite true and real then.

 

Also, I remember a lot of people simply insisting that the IBM compatible PC was just a "real world" computer; that to have one of these is to have what their parents used at work, to be able to afford a PC at $4000 and understand how to use it to do something (after graduating from a 'home computer') was just the next step. I didn't agree with this at all. I was totally faithful to the fact Atari was out there saving the world, determined to give the people power without a costly price. Empowering people in this way seemed such a very noble thing for Atari to do.

 

Seriously? You'd compare the Tramiels to a murdering dictator? WTF is wrong with you?!?

 

The Tramiels came close to destroying an entire industry. How many suicides were caused by people losing their jobs at companies that went under because of his price cuts? Did anyone commit suicide at Atari Inc? But I think the author was pointing out the similarities between Saddam's often insane leadership and his sons doing an even worse job than their father.

 

I was expressing how deeply I felt about the situation and agreeing. Yes, I did say faintly. It is just a comparison to show how deeply I felt about Atari's computer line fading to black in the '90s. If they were going to call it quits a second time, I wish they would have at least put out a 16/32 bit supermachine and/or a 8/16/32 bit supermachine to close all gaps and allow user expansion into the future to not leave people hanging like they did, for a second time.

 

We may not agree with all the steps that Jack and sons took, but I think considering the shape Atari was in when they stepped in, they did a pretty amazing job. Yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff that was shelved, and they let a lot of good people go, but Atari wasn't going to last much longer without some serious axe-swinging. Don't get me started on advertising and stale technology, either.

 

Had it not been for Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempt against Warner Communications, Steve Ross wouldn't have sold Atari to the Tramiels. James Morgan would've remained in place and Atari would've naturally recovered on its own without the massive cuts.

 

And then we would have eventually had things like the XL expansion kit.

 

The more I think about it, the more I think of Tramiel as "The Mule" from the Foundation book series.

 

I might write a hate letter to the Tramiels if I knew where to reach them. The reason I have to blame them is because they are the ones who after taking over Atari very publicly acted like, oh yeah, we are saving Atari, but, it in reality was a radically different Atari under them. I don't think Tramiel understood the loyalty and the followers Atari had. Otherwise he might not have changed things so drastically.. Where are Tramiel and his boys now, anyway? Hiding in a bunker in some sandy area? At least I've found this place with other people thinking about the same thing...but with the added bonus that here is where the mover and shakers are really doing something about it. Unlike the Tramiels who left Atarians cold for the second time... It still kind of disgusts me what happened, but now I can see what could have happened to save everything.

[Lynxpro]

This is what I remember from that time as well, that a lot of people were saying Atari simply didn't have enough advertising to get across to people, that this ST is a powerful new computing platform, and that it wasn't just about games, but about all the great possibilities of what you, the user, could come up with and create with such a powerful machine above all others in your hands. The power without the price was quite true and real then.

 

 

Atari has always been the Mopar - or even Tucker - choice of the computer world. Most people were stuck between GM [iBM, Microsoft, etc.] and Ford [Apple]. Of course, since then, the Imports [all other PC clones] have taken over the market.

 

 

And then we would have eventually had things like the XL expansion kit.

 

 

The 7800 on time, no splitting of Atari Consumer and Atari Games, the 1400XL/1450XLD, XL Expansion Kit, 1600XL, 1850XL. Had Atari Consumer and Atari Games stayed together, there's no way the NES would've gained a foothold in the US.

 

 

I might write a hate letter to the Tramiels if I knew where to reach them. The reason I have to blame them is because they are the ones who after taking over Atari very publicly acted like, oh yeah, we are saving Atari, but, it in reality was a radically different Atari under them. I don't think Tramiel understood the loyalty and the followers Atari had. Otherwise he might not have changed things so drastically.. Where are Tramiel and his boys now, anyway? Hiding in a bunker in some sandy area? At least I've found this place with other people thinking about the same thing...but with the added bonus that here is where the mover and shakers are really doing something about it. Unlike the Tramiels who left Atarians cold for the second time... It still kind of disgusts me what happened, but now I can see what could have happened to save everything.

 

 

They got into real estate. Leonard corrects bad science in public school text books and Sam works to bring Israeli tech companies to the US.

 

I still say they've got the Swordquest sword. I'd like to liberate that sword. That and Lord Cornwallice's sword.

 

The thing about them is they never valued Atari as a true slice of Americana nor did they ever honor the history behind it. Why would they? They founded Commodore. But despite the love for the C64, I don't see people wearing Commodore logo t-shirts, wear Commodore logo sweat pants, or drink liquor for Commodore logo shot glasses. But you see all of that from Atari. Hell, you can buy most of that stuff at Target today.

[Rybags]

No. No. No.

 

Apple is the Volvo of the computing world (disregarding the fact that in fact Volvo's market share would be <2% and Ford actually owns Volvo anyhow).

[atarian63]

You must be kidding, for having sold so many you very seldom if ever saw them here in the U.S.

 

I suppose you, selling mostly Atari's, almost never saw them. But they sold a lot, so they were there.

 

Perhaps, not looking for them, YOU didn't see them. Some of us did. Quite often...

 

 

..and there was zero,zip, nada for software to buy. NOBODY carried it.

 

Not true, many department and toy stores carried Vic software. Just not many computer stores, where I assume you spent more time.

 

As mentioned before, people buy cheap, though it would appear with VIC it never sold that well in the US and what did was mostly doorstops for the curious.

 

Obviously not true, based on the number of Vic 20's sold. You really didn't get out of your store much, did you?

 

When you pick something that sold as many units as the Vic 20 did and say it didn't sell well, you realize what that does for the other stuff you say, right?

 

You didn't see a lot of Vic 20's. Fine. Doesn't mean they weren't out there.

You didn't sell a lot of Vic 20's. Fine. Doesn't mean they didn't sell.

 

You know, it is possible that your store and life experiences don't mirror the rest of the USA exactly. It's just possible.

 

But the Atari's are great machines, and I won't say anything against them.

 

The "doorstop" line was kind of funny the first time. It's mostly annoying and childish now. IMHO.

 

This isn't a "SLAM the Vic-20" thread. It's a thread about an Amiga-Atari design btw. A design I'm interested to hear about, as a fan of both technologies.

 

I'd appreciate your perspective as it relates to the topic. These CBM bashing posts tho, make me question whether there's anything to your technical posts, which is a shame because there might be some good information there.

 

desiv

 

When a troll counteracts known facts written in print and sanctioned by Jack Tramiel as truth with rubbish you should just ignore his posts like most level headed Atari users here do

 

I bet the Atari 400 didn't do much better than the VIC in America and was quite quickly palmed off as clearance stock when the 800 was slashed in price (and never restocked) in the UK as early as 83/84 boom. The simple fact is Jack was a worldwide business strategist, and history shows him to be one of the most ruthless in his time given sufficient capital to put his plans into effect (which he didn't have at Atari hence the XE being the same compromised machine as the 800 and the ST having no custom silicon etc etc). Americans didn't buy any budget machines FACT, Timex failed, the 264 series failed, etc etc as disposable income and the fact buying a home computer in the 80s was not a casual act.

 

It is all documented on video and in books, Jack was more worried about clones from the far east or the Japanese invasion of consumer electronics than the compromised design of the A8 (which cost Atari more to manufacture $/performance btw) Even the VIC does a better job of playing back SID tunes via the SIDVICIOUS program than Pokey too. Yes it was a cheap and chearful machine but cheap is the operative word there.

Speaking of a troll I see you are back from your banishment and trolling again.Guess you never learn.

Uk was a VERY small market compared to the USA. Where Vic doorstops sold but were mainly unused. Just a feel good box for most to think they had bought a pc (not a real one). As said before Nobody here carried software for it, it was rare indeed. Where Atari was to be found at any local Sears or Service merchandise, Lechmeres etc across all 50 states.

I will say Jack did know later what he was doing from a marketing standpoint and learn from the Vic 20 mistake. Though c64 was poorly made and inferior in many ways,also having virtually no software or support it did have one thing. Cheap. With Atari the same thing happened however since pc's had shown you dont need tons of console related chips to do business and other tasks quickly, just drive it all with a fast cpu. Provide a cheap price and there you have it! The ST stomped Amiga in the early years 2-1.

SID, the angry bee of sound..Yucko!