What COULD the 5200 have done?

[GroovyBee]

First, without a standard POKEY, you can't do straight sound ports from the Atari 8-bit computer versions [for the games that already existed on the 8-bit] so that means extra cost in creating new substandard audio on 7800 games.

 

You can't do straight ports anyway. The hardware differences between the 7800 and A8 range are many. To convert a game from A8 to the 7800 you'd need to :-

 

- Rewrite the sound FX and music player to support less notes and channels than POKEY.

- Maybe change the graphics format.

- Replace hardware collision detection with software collision detection.

- Move the PMG sprite system over to using MARIA sprites.

- Replace software sprites with MARIA sprites.

- Convert/adapt display lists.

- Convert sprite colours.

- Convert scrolling routines.

- Clip sprites Y coordinates in software.

- Replace/modify sequences of self modifying code.

- Reduce the RAM usage to 4K or less.

 

Is not a definitive list but gives an idea about the work involved.

[GroovyBee]

POKEY is one thing lacking, but lack of RAM also makes graphics suffer on A7800 although A5200 never took full advantage of bigger scrolling areas and interlaced modes especially GTIA. And nor did they take advantage of A5200's SIO/expansion port. So I would say A5200 has superior technology than A7800 although it wasn't taken advantage of in existing games.

 

The 5200 is not technologically superior to the 7800 in terms of graphics power. Nor is it faster in terms of raw CPU power either because they are clocked at the same frequency. It only has the edge in the amount of CPU processing time available due to the differences in how video DMA works.

[atariksi]

POKEY is one thing lacking, but lack of RAM also makes graphics suffer on A7800 although A5200 never took full advantage of bigger scrolling areas and interlaced modes especially GTIA. And nor did they take advantage of A5200's SIO/expansion port. So I would say A5200 has superior technology than A7800 although it wasn't taken advantage of in existing games.

 

The 5200 is not technologically superior to the 7800 in terms of graphics power. Nor is it faster in terms of raw CPU power either because they are clocked at the same frequency. It only has the edge in the amount of CPU processing time available due to the differences in how video DMA works.

 

I wasn't stating specifically graphics but overall 5200 has superior technology. But in graphics, you have some things hardware things 7800 doesn't have and vice versa. You just mentioned h/w collision detection. Then linear graphics w/interlace option, scrolling big areas, DLI-kernels w/GPRIOR mode 0, etc. Yeah, 7800 has more sprites and colors in high res. mode. DMA cycles comparison would be nice to do for various modes like 80*200, 160*200, and 320*200 and text modes. I am sure A5200 can use the extra cycles to do more colors with software effects.

[GroovyBee]

I wasn't stating specifically graphics but overall 5200 has superior technology. But in graphics, you have some things hardware things 7800 doesn't have and vice versa. You just mentioned h/w collision detection. Then linear graphics w/interlace option, scrolling big areas, DLI-kernels w/GPRIOR mode 0, etc.

 

For scrolling large areas I suggest you download and play my game Apple Snaffle on the 7800 (a screen shot of it is shown above). You can also have DLI kernels on the 7800. You can also make a linear frame buffer on the 7800. Check out my BBC Micro port of Tempest for an example of that.

 

I am sure A5200 can use the extra cycles to do more colors with software effects.

 

I doubt it. The 7800 can overlay a 13 colour sprite onto a 4 colour sprite with transparency on the same video scan line. It also works the other way around too. In fact you can mix and match 13 colour and 4 colour graphics on the same video scan line anyway you like (up to the available graphics clocks available to MARIA). The 7800 also has a 256 colour palette so the 5200 doesn't beat it there either.

 

The only advantages the stock 5200 has are RAM, built in sound support and more CPU cycles available due to the way the video DMA works.

 

If, as you say, the 5200 can do better than the 7800 in the graphics department I suggest that you play any of my games and then reproduce exactly the same game with the same colour depth, screen reolution etc. on the 5200.

[Lynxpro]

Tramiel Atari Corp. blew it when they tried to compete with Nintendo on the cheap. The 2 year hold up was detrimental enough without Jack Tramiel blundering every step of the way after going ahead with the release.

I don't think Nintendo has much to do with the 7800s eventual release, though they were competition, of course. Atari Corp showed an interest in selling game systems prior to that, other than selling off remaining A.Inc hardware stock (and manufacturing some odds and ends to complete packaging -like 5200 controllers iirc), they completed the 2600 Jr. project and released it in mid 1985, before Nintendo even made the (unsuccessful) test market in New York. I believe Curt and Marty have pointed this out several times before.

 

However, the bigger issue, and one to only become clearer with some recent information Curt Vendel uncovered (and has yet to grace Atarimuseum), is that the main reason for the protracted release of the 7800 was not due to Tramie's dislike for games, but rather contention over who's property the 7800 was as the contract was between GCC and Warner, not Atari Inc. and it took a while for things to get straightened out. (there's a lot of conflicting anecdotal information on this, but at lot of that can be explained by selective memory recalled many years after the event, and partial stories -the latest information comes from official Atari Corp documents and correspondence)

 

 

I am not referencing the 2 year delay in releasing the 7800 on Tramiel & Co. since that was complicated due to the contracts between GCC and Warner.

 

However, I am referencing:

 

*Jack Tramiel's decision to not acquire what became the Atari Games Corp. for an extra $10 million in promissory notes - and at Warner's behest - for whatever his personal reasons were.

 

*Not keeping relations with the Atari Games Corp. cordial. In "Game Over" it states that the two companies grew to hate each other during this period.

 

*Deciding not to release the 7800 adapter for 5200 owners as had been promised previously by Atari Inc.

 

*Continuing with this, not having enough common sense to realize that it was a blunder to release the 7800 without a licensing agreement with the Atari Games Corp. to ensure their arcade titles would appear on it, not only because the games were awesome [and popular] but also in order to prevent consumer confusion and disappointment [i.e. consumers buying the 7800 and expecting "Atari" arcade titles such as PAPERBOY and GAUNTLET to appear on "Atari" consoles. I know that happened to me!]. If this was common sense to a 12 year old at the time, it should've been common sense to a highly successful businessman and his sons. It was a kick in the teeth to 7800 owners when the "mysterious" Tengen started releasing such titles on the NES.

 

*Jack Tramiel vetoing the use of the POKEY in 7800 titles other than in BALLBLAZER and COMMANDO. The lack of the POKEY made most 7800 games sound inferior to their NES and SMS counterparts.

 

*Not releasing the 7800 Control Pads in North America.

 

*Putting too much emphasis on the 2600 (jr.) at the expense of the 7800. Commercials for the 2600 should've also mentioned the 7800 more often to raise awareness of the console.

 

*Not giving the 7800 a revision prior to the 1986 release in order to add the POKEY chip to it and/or increase memory. Perhaps adding DRAM in addition to the 4k SRAM. While the 1983 design was expensive for 1983/84, it certainly was not as expensive in 1986 and on. The same goes for only using the RF modulator as the audio/video connector when the NES had composite and audio output jacks. It made the unit looked dated, cheap, unprofessional, and inferior to the competition.

 

*Nixing higher capacity 7800 cartridges - memory wise - almost until the end of the console's production, again because Tramiel was trying to save a drachma. Again, putting the 7800 artificially at a disadvantage against the NES and SMS.

 

*Not securing resources to finish the AMY chip - and/or license the improved design from the company they sold it off to - in order for its use in later 7800 games and as a physical upgrade to the XE and ST computer lines.

 

*Not putting enough effort into securing the North American/European rights to the Sega Mega Drive.

 

*Sam Tramiel's testimony/cross examination in the Atari Corp. vs. Nintendo antitrust case that apparently blew the slam dunk lawsuit that Atari should've easily won. Per "Game Over".

 

*The alleged Froggo Games incident at Atari Corp. HQ.

 

Shall I continue?

 

 

 

I'm not aware of many specifics of the Amy chip other than the design team being among those who left after TTL acquired Atari Inc's consumer divisions (like the designers of the Sierra/Gaza/Rainboe etc chipsets) and that Tramiel attempted to have his own engineers complete Amy, and failed. I think AMY would have been most important with the ST. (but getting into that, there's the various 16-bit chipsets that Atari had prototyped already, but became lost in the formation of Atari Corp -which appear to be a good bit more capable than the ST -though sme may have been more expensive than Tramiel was aiming for)

 

 

http://www.atarimax.com/jindroush.atari.org/achamy.html

 

 

 

If, as you say, the 5200 can do better than the 7800 in the graphics department I suggest that you play any of my games and then reproduce exactly the same game with the same colour depth, screen reolution etc. on the 5200.

 

 

Xevious and other titles that appeared on both the 5200 and 7800 seem to illustrate the 7800 was superior [or the programmers and resources used were]. I am amazed the 7800 version's audio of Xevious seems to be better than the 5200's even though the 7800 lacks a POKEY.

Edited March 21, 2010 by Lynxpro

[DracIsBack]

While I will be the first to admit Jack Tramiel made many mistakes, hindsight is always 20-20. And while it's fun to be "armchair CEO", how many businesses have any of us run that generated the revenue that Commodore did or Atari Corp did at their peak? :-P

 

 

Jack Tramiel's decision to not acquire what became the Atari Games Corp. for an extra $10 million in promissory notes - and at Warner's behest - for whatever his personal reasons were.

 

It's easy to spend millions of dollars when they aren't yours.

 

 

*Not keeping relations with the Atari Games Corp. cordial. In "Game Over" it states that the two companies grew to hate each other during this period.

 

Why blame this on Jack? Were you there to personally witness what he did and what Atari Games did? There's an old expression of "taking two to tango."

 

 

*Continuing with this, not having enough common sense to realize that it was a blunder to release the 7800 without a licensing agreement with the Atari Games Corp. to ensure their arcade titles would appear on it, not only because the games were awesome [and popular] but also in order to prevent consumer confusion and disappointment [i.e. consumers buying the 7800 and expecting "Atari" arcade titles such as PAPERBOY and GAUNTLET to appear on "Atari" consoles. I know that happened to me!]. If this was common sense to a 12 year old at the time, it should've been common sense to a highly successful businessman and his sons. It was a kick in the teeth to 7800 owners when the "mysterious" Tengen started releasing such titles on the NES.

 

How do you know discussions weren't had with them? If they were had, do we know what the terms and conditions were for Atari Games?

 

For the record, they did sign an agreement with Atari Games, but it unfortunately happened too late for the 7800. That is why there are prototypes of Klax and Pit Fighter out there.

 

*Not releasing the 7800 Control Pads in North America.

 

The control pads didn't show up on price lists in North America until 1989. By that time, the 7800 was dying off at retail with the Genesis and TG-16 taking over shelf space. I wanted them more than you can imagine but that was also right around the time that I couldn't find the great games I'd been reading about in magazines like Atarian and Game Pro in the stores any more.

 

*Not putting enough effort into securing the North American/European rights to the Sega Mega Drive.

 

Corporate negotiations are no end of a long, drawn out, painful process when it comes to money, royalties, legalities, terms and conditions, indemnifications, exclusivity rights etc. Many fail for a variety of reasons. Without personally witnessing the negotiations, this is kind of unfair.

 

*Sam Tramiel's testimony/cross examination in the Atari Corp. vs. Nintendo antitrust case that apparently blew the slam dunk lawsuit that Atari should've easily won. Per "Game Over".

 

Rather than making assumptions about the case from a couple of pages of a book (also not written by a lawyer), it probably makes sense to go over the lengthy evidence submitted on both sides and get a lawyer's take.

 

*The alleged Froggo Games incident at Atari Corp. HQ.

 

If it's "alleged", why attack? It's kind of like saying, "I heard from someone, who heard from someone, who heard from someone that Lynxpro likes small forest animals". Doesn't mean it's true.

 

You raise a number of good points in your post. But the constant Tramiel bashing by armchair CEOs (and I've been guilty of it as well) can get taken too far.

Edited March 21, 2010 by DracIsBack

[atariksi]

I wasn't stating specifically graphics but overall 5200 has superior technology. But in graphics, you have some things hardware things 7800 doesn't have and vice versa. You just mentioned h/w collision detection. Then linear graphics w/interlace option, scrolling big areas, DLI-kernels w/GPRIOR mode 0, etc.

 

For scrolling large areas I suggest you download and play my game Apple Snaffle on the 7800 (a screen shot of it is shown above). You can also have DLI kernels on the 7800. You can also make a linear frame buffer on the 7800. Check out my BBC Micro port of Tempest for an example of that.

...

Better to take it logically than take some specific example. It doesn't have the RAM for doing large scrolling nor does it have the overscan capability to make it seem like infinite scrolls. Linear frame buffers same issue-- too complex to get GTIA type effects/modes and not enough RAM. If I set up a 16-color mode with transparent sprites on A5200, DLI kernels still have about 60 cycles free/scanline. Now tell me how many cycles you have left with such a mode set up on A7800.

 

I am sure A5200 can use the extra cycles to do more colors with software effects.

 

I doubt it. The 7800 can overlay a 13 colour sprite onto a 4 colour sprite with transparency on the same video scan line. It also works the other way around too. In fact you can mix and match 13 colour and 4 colour graphics on the same video scan line anyway you like (up to the available graphics clocks available to MARIA). The 7800 also has a 256 colour palette so the 5200 doesn't beat it there either.

...

Both machines have a 256-color palette and it's restricted in both machines. There's also transparency effects in GTIA modes on A5200. You can find specific cases of graphics on both machines which one can't do on the other.

 

The only advantages the stock 5200 has are RAM, built in sound support and more CPU cycles available due to the way the video DMA works.

...

Bullcrap. You yourself just stated it has no hardware collision detection. It has no overscan capability like A5200. It's GPRIOR mode 0 hardly requires any cycles to get more color effects on the screen.

 

If, as you say, the 5200 can do better than the 7800 in the graphics department I suggest that you play any of my games and then reproduce exactly the same game with the same colour depth, screen reolution etc. on the 5200.

 

No, you can judge by a specific example. If I see a few people with blue eyes, doesn't mean they all have blue eyes. AND I didn't say 5200 had superior graphics-- I said you can do graphical things on 5200 that 7800 can't do and vice versa. I can also show you a GTIA interlaced image on A5200 with translucent sprites that are IMPOSSIBLE to do on 7800.

[atariksi]

If, as you say, the 5200 can do better than the 7800 in the graphics department I suggest that you play any of my games and then reproduce exactly the same game with the same colour depth, screen reolution etc. on the 5200.

 

 

Xevious and other titles that appeared on both the 5200 and 7800 seem to illustrate the 7800 was superior [or the programmers and resources used were]. I am amazed the 7800 version's audio of Xevious seems to be better than the 5200's even though the 7800 lacks a POKEY.

 

That's my point as well that you can't judge by a specific example. I admitted that A5200's hardware wasn't really taken advantage of including the SIO/expansion port which would have allowed for peripherals to be connected to A5200 for more flexibility.

[DracIsBack]

I said you can do graphical things on 5200 that 7800 can't do and vice versa. I can also show you a GTIA interlaced image on A5200 with translucent sprites that are IMPOSSIBLE to do on 7800.

 

This is why I hate these "X is *more powerful* that Y" type arguments. As was noted either, systems of the same generation generally have strengths and weaknesses, advantages and tradeoffs.

 

If you really want to get down to it, I'm pretty sure that California Games on the Atari 2600 has more colors on screen in spots than any NES game or Colecovision game.

[Lynxpro]

While I will be the first to admit Jack Tramiel made many mistakes, hindsight is always 20-20. And while it's fun to be "armchair CEO", how many businesses have any of us run that generated the revenue that Commodore did or Atari Corp did at their peak? :-P

 

 

Hindsight? There was no hindsight needed. If Company A shares a popular brand with Company B and they each are one side of the coin in the same industry, then it is obvious that customers will get confused and disappointed. For another example, back in the late 80s/early 90s, Taco Bell licensed their brand for frozen supermarket versions of their meals. Those versions sucked and thus cast the "Taco Bell" brand in a bad light since Joe Average saw no distinction between the two whether or not they were from different companies or different divisions of the same conglomerate.

 

It was purely stupid to return to the home video game console market using the "Atari" brand and not first securing rights to the current "Atari" branded arcade games. It isn't playing armchair CEO or the miraculous powers of hindsight; it was friggin' common sense which they obviously lacked. Especially since more than just myself wrote to Atari Corp. stressing they needed to license those games at the time which then got dragged out all the way until after the release of the Lynx.

 

 

 

Jack Tramiel's decision to not acquire what became the Atari Games Corp. for an extra $10 million in promissory notes - and at Warner's behest - for whatever his personal reasons were.

It's easy to spend millions of dollars when they aren't yours.

 

 

They weren't Jack's either. They were promissory notes that Warner accepted merely to get Atari off their books in order to stop their stock depreciation slide and prevent Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempts. Had Warner truly wanted to get rid of Atari, they would've sold 100% to Philips at the time but Steve Ross wanted to retain a 25% stake in order to hopefully buy it back cheap once Tramiel turned the company around. Jack only sunk in some of his millions to keep Atari Corp. afloat during the development of the ST. He didn't repay the Warner promissory notes out of his pocket; that was through Atari's profits - generated from us Atari fans/owners - and ultimately the first sale of common shares with the Atari Corp. IPO.

 

When you get Atari Consumer - a formerly multi-billion dollar enterprise - for $350 million in Monopoly notes based upon the value of the merely the number of 800XLs sitting in the warehouse valued each at $80, an extra $10 million in such funny money notes does not really matter. Jack's decision not to buy what became Atari Games fatally hurt both companies and allowed Nintendo and others to steal the North American video game market. And I pointed to Sam Tramiel's testimony in the Atari Corp. v. Nintendo lawsuit because Nintendo's lawyers questioned him how Atari started out in 1985 with essentially having 100% of the market [since their prior competitors were destroyed] and then proceeded to allow Nintendo to whittle it down to less than 10% in two short years. Through their questioning, they made Sam Tramiel and Atari Corp. look like idiots which caused the jury to side with Nintendo even though their business practices were illegal and monopolistic [abusively].

Edited March 21, 2010 by Lynxpro

[GroovyBee]

Better to take it logically than take some specific example. It doesn't have the RAM for doing large scrolling nor does it have the overscan capability to make it seem like infinite scrolls.

 

The 7800 can take its character mode data from ROM. Normally its graphics data comes from ROM, so its easy to make the data seem infinite.

 

Linear frame buffers same issue-- too complex to get GTIA type effects/modes and not enough RAM. If I set up a 16-color mode with transparent sprites on A5200, DLI kernels still have about 60 cycles free/scanline. Now tell me how many cycles you have left with such a mode set up on A7800.

 

Conveniently you didn't mention horizontal resolution. At 160 pixel horizontal resolution and 4BPP :-

 

80 bytes of data at 3 MARIA clocks each = 3*80 =240

Needs 3 of MARIAs 4 byte Display List entries at 8 cycles each = 3 * 8

Total 264 MARIA clocks

 

Worst case number of clocks lost due to DMA setup/shutdown (assumes end of zone and a Display List List fetch) is 35 MARIA clocks.

 

Total clocks lost to MARIA is therefore 264+35 = 299

 

CPU clocks remaining = (452-299)/4 = 38.25

 

If the number of pixels are halved to be in line with graphics mode 9 or 11 on the 5200 :-

 

=(452-((3*40)+(2*8 )+35))/4=70.25

 

Bullcrap. You yourself just stated it has no hardware collision detection. It has no overscan capability like A5200. It's GPRIOR mode 0 hardly requires any cycles to get more color effects on the screen.

 

Hardware collision detection and overscan are not the be all and end all of game development. As soon as you need soft sprites or a sprite multiplexor the usefulness of hardware collision detection is much diminished.

 

I can also show you a GTIA interlaced image on A5200 with translucent sprites that are IMPOSSIBLE to do on 7800.

 

Please do! Translucent effects aren't the be all and end all of game development either.

[Lynxpro]

First, without a standard POKEY, you can't do straight sound ports from the Atari 8-bit computer versions [for the games that already existed on the 8-bit] so that means extra cost in creating new substandard audio on 7800 games.

You can't do straight ports anyway. The hardware differences between the 7800 and A8 range are many. To convert a game from A8 to the 7800 you'd need to :-

- Rewrite the sound FX and music player to support less notes and channels than POKEY.

 

 

 

That's why I specifically mentioned the audio portion. If the 7800 had a standard POKEY, then at least that would be one area that would not need a rewrite at least in terms of the sound fx and music player. You'd still have to adapt how the audio interacts with the other portions of the game mechanics and inputs...

[GroovyBee]

That's why I specifically mentioned the audio portion. If the 7800 had a standard POKEY, then at least that would be one area that would not need a rewrite at least in terms of the sound fx and music player. You'd still have to adapt how the audio interacts with the other portions of the game mechanics and inputs...

 

At its simplest level I'd expect sound FX to effectively be table driven and then periodically updated for volume/tone/channel (on interrupt, during VBLANK etc.). So changing from one sound chip to another isn't always hard providing that you are happy to lose/gain quality/channels.

 

I agree that POKEY (or a superior sound chip) would have been a good choice. However I can see why it wasn't included due to plastics reuse and the fact that the 7800 motherboard looks like a 2 layer board. Thus routing signals to/from another 40 pin chip like POKEY would have been difficult given the constraints of the case.

[DracIsBack]

Hindsight? There was no hindsight needed.

 

Dear Mr. Trump: Please point me in the direction of the multi-million dollar companies that you've created and run.

 

 

 

Sam Tramiel's testimony in the Atari Corp. v. Nintendo lawsuit because Nintendo's lawyers questioned him how Atari started out in 1985 with essentially having 100% of the market [since their prior competitors were destroyed] and then proceeded to allow Nintendo to whittle it down to less than 10% in two short years. Through their questioning, they made Sam Tramiel and Atari Corp. look like idiots which caused the jury to side with Nintendo even though their business practices were illegal and monopolistic [abusively].

 

You were personally there to witness the testimony were you? And you personally were there to go through all the evidence, were you?

 

I appreciate what you're getting at, but making assessments on the basis of a paragraph from David Scheff's "Game Over" book when there was likely hundreds of hours of testimony and evidence presented suggests your forming an opinion based upon a very limited amount of information.

 

Unless of course - in addition to being the CEO of several multi-national companies, you're also a high profile corporate law expert.

 

Again, while I think Jack made many mistakes, I think a few too many Atarians are very much ARMCHAIR CEOs and most definitely don't have visibility into all the variables experienced at the time.

Edited March 21, 2010 by DracIsBack

[Lynxpro]

Hindsight? There was no hindsight needed.

Dear Mr. Trump: Please point me in the direction of the multi-million dollar companies that you've created and run.

 

 

That's an "appeal to authority/false authority" fallacy in terms of arguments, much like the saying "well, if you were so smart, you'd be a millionaire".

 

The point is, many Atari owners stated way back then that the mistakes the Tramiels were making were indeed mistakes yet they went ahead and made them. If owners/users know better than the actual CEOs - and the CEOs won't listen to their customers, then there is a serious problem amongst management. Funny how so many people rake Warner over the coals - despite the fact the video game industry was still new at the time - for not listening to its customer base yet some people are willing to give the Tramiels the benefit of the doubt on what they did.

 

If anything, the Tramiels used the "appeal to false authority" fallacy in their own mindset because they were wholly convinced they could replicate their earlier Commodore 64 success over at their new Atari property despite the fact that they had practically no experience or knowledge of the video game industry and that they could not replicate the success of the C64 without owning their own chip fab production company. They often gave lip service over the years about acquiring such a fab company but they never did. Instead, they got suckered into buying the Federated Group and blew a quarter of a billion dollars on that fiasco.

 

I should've listed that [Federated] on that impromptu blunders list I wrote earlier.

 

Furthermore, had you ever met the Tramiels in person at the time, you probably could easily justify playing the armchair CEO role and successfully argue that you could have done a better job in their shoes.

[DracIsBack]

That's an "appeal to authority/false authority" fallacy in terms of arguments, much like the saying "well, if you were so smart, you'd be a millionaire

 

No. The point I'm getting at is that you (and I) have a very limited view of the world that Trammiel was experiencing at that time. It's easy to say "he's an idiot, he should have done this" without recognizing there may have been 15,000 factors we aren't aware of behind his decisions.

 

Regardless, I think we may just need to agree to disagree.

Edited March 21, 2010 by DracIsBack

[+wood_jl]

That's an "appeal to authority/false authority" fallacy in terms of arguments, much like the saying "well, if you were so smart, you'd be a millionaire

 

No. The point I'm getting at is that you (and I) have a very limited view of the world that Trammiel was experiencing at that time. It's easy to say "he's an idiot, he should have done this" without recognizing there may have been 15,000 factors we aren't aware of behind his decisions.

 

Bravo! Agree wholeheartedly. If you're going to claim wrong decisions were made, you must know the details of the situation and all of the factors that were considered. Let's see hard evidence of the proposals. That's pretty much impossible, isn't it? Indeed. So this whole point is not only moot, it is playing "armchair CEO with 25 years of hindsight" silly.

[kool kitty89]

While I will be the first to admit Jack Tramiel made many mistakes, hindsight is always 20-20. And while it's fun to be "armchair CEO", how many businesses have any of us run that generated the revenue that Commodore did or Atari Corp did at their peak? :-P

 

Plus, no matter who bought Atari, they'd still deal with certain losses due to the reorganization. (compared to what Morgan might have been able to accomplish of Warner Kept Atari) Unless perhaps, some very focused company obtained Atari in Whole, quickly became well informed of major projects and activities taking place, and kept on track with Morgan's reorganization plans. (and made sure to address any conflicts related to separation from warner -ie contracts tied between wardner-3rd-party to atari and would be in contention with Warner and Atari parted)

 

Tramiel obviously had his own plans to focus on, so was not dedicated to maintaining Atari as a whole, but in addition to that, there were general issues about Warner's sale of Atari Inc's properties which screwed things up. Warner had not made Morgan or Atari Inc aware of the planned sale, so there were a number of conflicts with what was being promised for Atari Inc at the time (for Morgan's reorganization) that really screwed things up for Atari personnel regardless of the buyer. This was Warner's fault for keeping Atari Inc and Morgan in the dark until quite literally the last minute more than anything to do with Tramiel Specifically.

This probably all ties into the reason for many Atari Inc project teams leaving, designs not materializing, etc. (not just Tramiel deciding to not re-hire the people to Atari Corp, but general disgruntled employees pissed off over the whole mess)

In addition to things like the 16-bit sierra/gaza/rainbow/silver&gold not being used (which should have been quite interesting to Tramiel, especially those fully prototyped compared to the simple and still incomplete ST), but probably related to the problems with AMY too.

 

I'm sure some of Tramiel's business goals and shift in interest effected things more than some other might have (certainly could have been worse), but there's a lot more to it than "Tramiel was an idiot and cocked things up for Atari." It seems more like another screw-up related to Warner management.

 

 

*Not keeping relations with the Atari Games Corp. cordial. In "Game Over" it states that the two companies grew to hate each other during this period.

 

Why blame this on Jack? Were you there to personally witness what he did and what Atari Games did? There's an old expression of "taking two to tango."

 

 

For the record, they did sign an agreement with Atari Games, but it unfortunately happened too late for the 7800. That is why there are prototypes of Klax and Pit Fighter out there.

Wasn't the ST getting a number of Atari games in the mid '80s? (Gauntlet was released for it in '87)

 

The control pads didn't show up on price lists in North America until 1989. By that time, the 7800 was dying off at retail with the Genesis and TG-16 taking over shelf space. I wanted them more than you can imagine but that was also right around the time that I couldn't find the great games I'd been reading about in magazines like Atarian and Game Pro in the stores any more.

Shouldn't they have started offering the gamepads in NA as soon as they were released in Europe? (even as accessories initially)

 

*Not putting enough effort into securing the North American/European rights to the Sega Mega Drive.

 

Corporate negotiations are no end of a long, drawn out, painful process when it comes to money, royalties, legalities, terms and conditions, indemnifications, exclusivity rights etc. Many fail for a variety of reasons. Without personally witnessing the negotiations, this is kind of unfair.

I've not seen many details on the proposed Atari corp-Sega deal, the most significant being a few short quotes from Mike Katz mentioning that Atari Corp was offered the Genesis to Market to North America and Jack turned it down, apparently more interested in focusing on the ST and current Atari projects. Of course, this is very vague and not a good description of how the arrangement may have been directed, how Sega of America was to be involved, and what kind of freedom/restrictions Atari would have had. Based on the Master Systems relative weakness in North America (in spite of extensive marketing compared to the 7800), it's hard to say the MegaDrive would have been a clear win, it would be taking a pretty big risk depending what kind of provisions Sega allotted them.

[atariksi]

Better to take it logically than take some specific example. It doesn't have the RAM for doing large scrolling nor does it have the overscan capability to make it seem like infinite scrolls.

 

The 7800 can take its character mode data from ROM. Normally its graphics data comes from ROM, so its easy to make the data seem infinite.

...

No, once graphics has to be in ROM, you already restricted yourself to what can be done with the graphics. Can't do any linear buffers involving painting stuff nor large scrolling areas that modify graphics data. Maria is crippled by lack of RAM in A7800 and also lacks some features present in GTIA/ANTIC.

 

Linear frame buffers same issue-- too complex to get GTIA type effects/modes and not enough RAM. If I set up a 16-color mode with transparent sprites on A5200, DLI kernels still have about 60 cycles free/scanline. Now tell me how many cycles you have left with such a mode set up on A7800.

 

Conveniently you didn't mention horizontal resolution. At 160 pixel horizontal resolution and 4BPP :-

...

No, you just don't understand how A5200 graphics hardware works. GPRIOR mode 0 works in 80*200, 160*200, and 320*200 and gives 16+ colors. GTIA can be mixed with other modes as well and interlaced to get 160*200*30 as well.

 

80 bytes of data at 3 MARIA clocks each = 3*80 =240

Needs 3 of MARIAs 4 byte Display List entries at 8 cycles each = 3 * 8

Total 264 MARIA clocks

 

Worst case number of clocks lost due to DMA setup/shutdown (assumes end of zone and a Display List List fetch) is 35 MARIA clocks.

 

Total clocks lost to MARIA is therefore 264+35 = 299

 

CPU clocks remaining = (452-299)/4 = 38.25

 

If the number of pixels are halved to be in line with graphics mode 9 or 11 on the 5200 :-

 

=(452-((3*40)+(2*8 )+35))/4=70.25

...

Conveniently, you divided by two forgetting that you don't have a 80*200*16 pixel mode so are forced to use 160*200 mode to mimic the GTIA modes so cycles doesn't drop. And what happened to sprite timing.

 

Bullcrap. You yourself just stated it has no hardware collision detection. It has no overscan capability like A5200. It's GPRIOR mode 0 hardly requires any cycles to get more color effects on the screen.

 

Hardware collision detection and overscan are not the be all and end all of game development. As soon as you need soft sprites or a sprite multiplexor the usefulness of hardware collision detection is much diminished.

...

You just don't get it. I said that there are things I can do on ANTIC/GTIA that are not do-able on A7800 and vice-versa. Yeah, to do the many sprites of Maria on A5200 would require more overhead. I already accepted that when I made my point. Sprites are not the be all and end all either. You made the point regarding splitting mode lines and I can give you many things that are undoable on A7800 but doable on A5200.

 

I can also show you a GTIA interlaced image on A5200 with translucent sprites that are IMPOSSIBLE to do on 7800.

 

Please do! Translucent effects aren't the be all and end all of game development either.

 

I already did for Atari 400 w/16K RAM like A5200 and since it doesn't involve PIA functions it can easily be converted for working on A5200 or even LOADED into A5200 RAM if the peripheral port interface existed.

 

Attached is the translucency example for GTIA gr. mode 9; press SELECT to start w/16 color translucency of part of the curtain.

CURTAIN2.zip

[GroovyBee]

No, once graphics has to be in ROM, you already restricted yourself to what can be done with the graphics. Can't do any linear buffers involving painting stuff nor large scrolling areas that modify graphics data. Maria is crippled by lack of RAM in A7800 and also lacks some features present in GTIA/ANTIC.

 

Hmmm.... Can't do a linear buffer with painting stuff eh? I must have dreamed that direct adaptation of the BBC Micro version of Tempest to the 7800 then. I did say "normally comes from ROM" but you can have data come from RAM too.

 

Can't do scrolling areas that modify graphics data? Hmmmm... I wonder how I remove the earth graphics in my 7800 game Apple Snaffle then?

 

Conveniently, you divided by two forgetting that you don't have a 80*200*16 pixel mode so are forced to use 160*200 mode to mimic the GTIA modes so cycles doesn't drop. And what happened to sprite timing.

 

Because the 7800 is moving double the data to the screen having less cycles available to the CPU is fine by me.

 

Nothing happens to sprite timing. Why would it?

 

You just don't get it. I said that there are things I can do on ANTIC/GTIA that are not do-able on A7800 and vice-versa. Yeah, to do the many sprites of Maria on A5200 would require more overhead.

 

How many 4 colour sprites is the upper limit?

 

You made the point regarding splitting mode lines and I can give you many things that are undoable on A7800 but doable on A5200.

 

The mode split isn't a programming trick or a silicon quirk its how MARIA works with its display lists.

 

I can also show you many things that the 7800 can do that the A5200 can't .

[DracIsBack]

Guys, I admire both of your passions for the architectures of each machine. Just keep it nice.

[atariksi]

No, once graphics has to be in ROM, you already restricted yourself to what can be done with the graphics. Can't do any linear buffers involving painting stuff nor large scrolling areas that modify graphics data. Maria is crippled by lack of RAM in A7800 and also lacks some features present in GTIA/ANTIC.

 

Hmmm.... Can't do a linear buffer with painting stuff eh? I must have dreamed that direct adaptation of the BBC Micro version of Tempest to the 7800 then. I did say "normally comes from ROM" but you can have data come from RAM too.

...

 

Because there's not enough RAM for a linear buffer; how did you mess that up. And even the 4K RAM is full of holes as to restrictions placed on it.

 

Can't do scrolling areas that modify graphics data? Hmmmm... I wonder how I remove the earth graphics in my 7800 game Apple Snaffle then?

...

No overscan proves A5200 will get larger scrolling areas. The point is *LARGE* scrolling areas. And even with 160*200, A5200 would win due to more RAM. You can scroll things in ROM-- more restricted.

 

Conveniently, you divided by two forgetting that you don't have a 80*200*16 pixel mode so are forced to use 160*200 mode to mimic the GTIA modes so cycles doesn't drop. And what happened to sprite timing.

 

Because the 7800 is moving double the data to the screen having less cycles available to the CPU is fine by me.

 

Nothing happens to sprite timing. Why would it?

...

Your point was that *I* conveniently halved the resolution but I did NOT. You have less cycles-- great-- I'm glad you agree to that fact. So A5200 wins in DLI kernel effects. I recall some software eating up too many DMA cycles due to graphics and sprites leaving near zero for CPU.

 

You just don't get it. I said that there are things I can do on ANTIC/GTIA that are not do-able on A7800 and vice-versa. Yeah, to do the many sprites of Maria on A5200 would require more overhead.

 

How many 4 colour sprites is the upper limit?

See the demo that I posted-- it has sprites, 16 color modes, and translucency and DLIs.

 

You made the point regarding splitting mode lines and I can give you many things that are undoable on A7800 but doable on A5200.

 

The mode split isn't a programming trick or a silicon quirk its how MARIA works with its display lists.

 

I can also show you many things that the 7800 can do that the A5200 can't .

 

What's so funny-- that means you lose. That's my point-- I can do things graphically on A5200 that are impossible or take a lot more overhead on A7800 and vice versa. Vertical mode splitting is built-in into ANTIC; horizontal splitting required DLIs w/WSYNC and can be done for several modes like GTIA modes 9,10,11 and Gr.8 and Gr.15.

 

Here's some things that are also true now that graphics issue is resolved:

 

Sound register programming slows down the clock to 1.19Mhz and same with I/O port access.

[GroovyBee]

Here's some things that are also true now that graphics issue is resolved:

 

I'll quite happily accept that the 5200 is superior in graphics if it can do the following tasks with no DLI kernel :-

 

1) It can display more than 29 different 8 pixel wide sprites in 3 colours every video scan line without using soft sprites and each sprite overlaps the previous one to the left by 4 to 8 pixels with transparency enabled. There must be 24 (or more) colours seen per horizontal scan line.

 

2) Displays two 12 colour (or even more colours) sprites which are both 64 pixels wide anywhere (under player control) on top of a 4 colour background with transparency enabled. The sprites may also be on the same video scan line so the transparency order must be correct. Each sprite contains unique colours compared to its brother but may share common colours with the background.

[Lynxpro]

Guys, I admire both of your passions for the architectures of each machine. Just keep it nice.

 

 

If Atari users fight this fiercely between the differences [and alleged] and superiority of various Atari platforms, there's no hope for the fanbois of the other non-Atari systems going up against them.

[DracIsBack]

If Atari users fight this fiercely between the differences [and alleged] and superiority of various Atari platforms, there's no hope for the fanbois of the other non-Atari systems going up against them.

 

That is true ...