The Tramiels

[svenski]

Opinion is divided over whether or not the Tramiels were white knights riding in to Atari's rescue or if they hammered the nails into Atari's coffin.

 

I'm probably biased, being an 8-bit fan since 1984. The 800XL was voted computer of the year, Atari box shifted tens of thousands of the things and it was getting some great recognition but then it seemed that their focus switched more or less completely to the ST and the 8-bit line, amongst others, seemed to get sidelined.

 

Atari, under the Tramiels, did bring us the 65XE, the 130XE, the XEGS and the fantastic XF551 but retailers at the time were complaining they could have sold as much as they could have got their hands on but there just wasn't the amount of product reaching the market.

 

You can say Atari did great things with the ST. It was a sales success, at least in Europe, and Commodore gave up the ghost before Atari did.

 

If Warner had held on and hadn't sold Atari's home divisions would things have been different?

 

What do you think?

[Rybags]

Warner were clueless at selling computers.

 

You may as well say Atari pulled out of the computer business by 1985 if Warner had held on. Even if the Amiga deal had gone the other way, they'd have found a way to make a balls-up of it.

 

Consoles - I'd reckon maybe they'd have kept them going, maybe the 7800 and Lynx would have come along.

 

Whatever bad you can say of the Tramiels, at least they breathed some life into the 8-bits which prolonged them that few extra years. But they repeated problems of past by not progressing with the times and updating the 8 and 16 bit lines in timely fashion.

 

Chances are that Atari as we knew it would have been dead 3 or 4 years earlier if Warner had kept it, so at least the way things did go saw Atari into the 1990s.

[kool kitty89]

Opinion is divided over whether or not the Tramiels were white knights riding in to Atari's rescue or if they hammered the nails into Atari's coffin.

Neither... Jack did an impressive job building a new company out of chunks of the old Atari and managed to do some really notable things (and hiring Mike Katz was a very good decision for the game side of things too)... Sam arguably ran it into the ground after he took over in '89. (Atari Corp lost both Jack and Katz that year with Jack retiring and Katz leaving and taking a vacation... but cutting that short to join Sega in late fall of '89 immediately following the launch of the Genesis and laid the groundwork for its later success)

 

But it's likely that Atari Inc could have been much more than Atari Corp had Warner not torn it apart in '84. James Morgan had been hard at work reforming the company and things looked very promising. There's no doubt that Jack Tramiel was the best president of Atari Corp (and almost certainly Commodore), but it's also almost certain that James Morgan was the best of Atari Inc with the only really unfortunate action being to halt Atari operations in the last quarter of 1983 (one of the worst possible times) to review Atari's situation and begin reorganization. (had he joined a year or even 6 months earlier, things could have been very different for fall of '83... and in the case of a year earlier it may have even put ET and the 5200 on hold given the timing and those might have ended up somewhat better -even if the 5200 had already entered production and with Warner pushing the ET license, Morgan may have been willing to play it safe and produce many fewer ET carts at the expense of taking a loss -but much less risk of overproduction and potential to overcome that loss with re-use of the license for other games... like ET Phone Home on the A8)

 

But as it was, things were looking up in '84 with the 5200 being carefully phased out, the 7800 on its way with positive reviews for the time, the 2600 Jr in the works, 7800 adapter for the 5200, 600 and 800XL finally gettign it right with the 1090XL module on the way, and the Amiga console planned for that Christmas as well. (though with Amiga defaulting on the chipset and lying about not having completed it for the June 28 delivery date would have more likely resulted in a lawsuit than Atari getting the chips in a timely fashion unless they could argue for a favorable settlement quickly enough -Atari could have opted to dust off one of its own very powerful 16-bit chipsets to use instead though)

 

And on top of that, Atari Inc had their own Unix BDS derivative with "Snowcap" GUI planned for the Amiga console/computer. (or their in-house 68000 machines)

 

I'm probably biased, being an 8-bit fan since 1984. The 800XL was voted computer of the year, Atari box shifted tens of thousands of the things and it was getting some great recognition but then it seemed that their focus switched more or less completely to the ST and the 8-bit line, amongst others, seemed to get sidelined.

Atari pretty much missed their chance to really compete with the A8 line in the US or Europe for that matter. Curt Vendel seems to surmise that they aimed at the wrong market in the US, at least in some respects: for one thing, engineers had originally wanted to add more comprehensive internal expansion lots to the 800 (a la Apple II) but Kassar wanted to push for a common consumer oriented machine with simply interfaced add-ons and "smart" peripherals with the aim of an appliance computer -including plans for color coordinated models later on. (sort of ironic that it was the Apple II that contrasted so heavily with its expansion -which IBM followed- yet Apple later pushed almost exclusively for that appliance computer niche -and the ST arguably fits the same role with it's all-in-one design and closed-box limited expansion)

The 1200XL showed how extreme of an issue that really was and what a mistake they made... though they really didn't fully correct that until 1984 with the planned 1090XL which was canceled after Atari Inc was broken up and TTL gained position of the consumer assets. (TTL was then renamed Atari Corp)

It's also interesting that Atari could have lucked out (more or less) and covered there bases with the 600 had that not been canceled (it had been fully prototyped to be released alongside the 1200, was smaller and sleeker -much like the 600XL but with an all black top- with cart slot on top and PBI port present that the 1200 lacked -presumably due to it not needed RAM expansion as it was a full 64k, but the PBI's presence on the 600 could have still addressed the "lack of expansion" problems and would have offered a cheaper, compact, lower-end unit to replace the 400 and beat all the lower-end contemporaries and possibly cut-in on the C64's market; cheaper to build than the 400 yet smaller and sleeker with a proper keyboard and simple expansion interface)

 

The problems in Europe had more to do with conflicting policies for 3rd party development support (many competitors commonly providing programming documents out of the box and built-in BASIC), not enough emphasis on tape based software, and not enough emphasis on a low-cost unit. (and they really could have made some cuts to make it fit the market with the lack of RFI restrictions meaning no need for the aluminum, so for a start they could probably have simply taken the 400, replaced the aluminum with some simple plastic mounting brackets, and instead of offering the 800 at all, just go with a low-end membrane key 400 and a mid-range version with a full-throw keyboard -maybe later replace the membrane with chicklet keys)

 

Atari, under the Tramiels, did bring us the 65XE, the 130XE, the XEGS and the fantastic XF551 but retailers at the time were complaining they could have sold as much as they could have got their hands on but there just wasn't the amount of product reaching the market.

Was there really still potential to really dig into the 8-bit market by '85/86? Software support started dropping in favor of the ST by '86 and the C64 had already attracted far more interest by '85. Were shortages ever really a problem as such? (at least from '85 onward)

 

 

If Warner had held on and hadn't sold Atari's home divisions would things have been different?

Yes, see above, though the 8-bits may not have done a ton better, probably a fair bit at least and the video game presence would have been much stronger and there was potential for some other things on the computer market. (7800 wouldn't have been delayed due to Warner/GCC/Tramiel conflict, Atari Inc would have stayed together with the arcade division and kept the game programmers and if not the Amiga chipset, they'd have likely pushed one of their own advanced chipsets -some of which would have handed the Amiga its ass)

 

But equally interesting is if Tramiel had stayed at Commodore without the conflicts of the Board of directors and had managed the Amiga and future of the C64 as well. (likely would have pushed for a lower-end version of the Amiga earlier if not other implementations in general, C16 and Plus/4 probably wouldn't have existed, maybe not C128 either, or not in the same manner... I wonder if something like the C65 might have been forthcoming in place of the C128 -ie hybrid C64/Amiga... let alone that on top of the Amiga and making the full Amiga backwards compatible with the "C65" as such)

Edited November 3, 2010 by kool kitty89

[svenski]

Kitty, I always enjoy reading your posts

 

My view on the 1200XL was it failed for a large part because it was the first , if you like, soldier to pop his head out from the trenches. It arrived first and represented a big shift away from the 800 but then the 600XL and the 800XL would follow and the 1200XL had already taken the fall. Obviously there are differences between the 1200XL and the 600/800XL but I do think the 1200XL was the fall guy.

 

I'm not sure if Atari did go in the wrong direction with the 8-bit. It made sense, and still does, to go for the largest market and you could still have a range of computers that appealed for different market sectors. Atari, during the last days of Warner, had some exciting projects for the 8-bit planned and I don't think the XL line was going to represent the end of the 8-bit as a "serious" computer line.

 

The 800 was amazing for its time, and how many computers even today are so easy to upgrade?

 

The 600/800XL were delayed and missed an important sales window and I read that in the US people were screaming to get hold of the 600XL when it was first released but had a hard job finding one.

 

As for Europe, yes the 400 and 800 retail prices were high but looking at my Atari catalogs they weren't exactly cheap to start with in the States although when you consider what Atari was offering way back then they were really leading the field. You can just imagine a kid saying to his Dad "hey Dad, you can run your business, buy and sell shares, go online and more" and the Dad turning round and saying "That's cool son but lets wait until the 1990s for the internet to arrive".

 

Atari could have sold a lot more 8-bit computers in the UK but , under the Tramiels, retailers did complain about stock availability - something which also happened with the Lynx as well to start with. Retailers couldn't get enough of the XE game system, despite Atari's poor marketing and there was a long painful gap between discontinuing the 1050 and the arrival of the XF551 - as examples.

 

What I do find very interesting are your "what if" comments regarding what would have happened if Warner had stayed and Jack had stayed at Commodore - maybe things would have been so much more exciting?

Edited November 3, 2010 by svenski

[+Larry]

To me it is very easy -- if the Tramiels had not stepped in, in all likelihood, we would not have this conversation today. As to "clueless," Jack built Commodore into a formidable force, much to Atari's and others ultimate detriment. And finally, the PC computer model changed everything. Essentially, it killed all others, except Apple, and certainly came close to that.

 

For a good perspective (and some fascinating reading), I recommend "The Home Computer Wars," "On the Edge," and "West of Eden," and "Apple Confidential." I have yet to find a good account of the development of the PC and unfortunately, our beloved Atari.

 

-Larry

[flashjazzcat]

I can verify that "Home Computer Wars" is a good read. I'll be hunting out the other titles.

 

The grainy picture of Jack on the back cover of the later A5 issues of New Atari User, with the vilifying, embittered captions underneath, always struck me as slightly misplaced, especially bearing in mind it was 1997/98 by this time.

Edited November 3, 2010 by flashjazzcat

[carmel_andrews]

The Tramiel's....Is that a failed Pop Group....Or a failed X factor/Pop Idol Act

[Bryan]

Atari's real problem was a lack of vision. There's a difference between focusing on what you'll be selling this year and planning where you want to be 5 or 10 years down the road. The Tramiels weren't really computer people, they were just shrewd (and some would say unethical) businessmen. They were able to turn things around in the short term, but they couldn't secure Atari a permanent place in the market. Few besides Apple accomplished that.

[Rybags]

The problem both Atari and Commodore had was they didn't really secure a position in the educational or corporate/government sectors.

 

So, dad used IBM at work, which meant home sales for them and the clones (eventually).

 

Apple always had good representation in schools, which led to home sales there, and the Mac's good representation in the print industry gave them inroads into the corporate/government sectors.

 

All Atari had was the flowon effect from the bottom end, ie consoles. They had every opportunity to create and expand the image and market for their computers, but of course we all know how that went.

 

Warners could have sewn the market up in 1979-81, but failed. Tramiels did a great job in the mid 1980s but the closed architecture and too slow evolution of the ST ultimately made it become redundant.

[sack-c0s]

Love or hate them I wouldn't be who I am today without their 'computers for the masses' attitude because during the 80s I was definitely one of the masses, so there's definitely room for a bit of gratitude there

[José Pereira]

A quickly kind of Anedote I discouve sometime ago here at AA on the ST Forum posted by Shinto:

 

"A vendor was at my office recently. I have small posters of several classic computers adorning my walls, among them an Atari 400 and an Atari 1040ST. This vendor looked at the ST and recalled the following story from his very first sales meeting.

 

He was in Sunnyvale, trying to sell disk drives to Atari (hard drives, I believe). At one point in the meeting with top Atari brass, Sam Tramiel took off his shoe and started banging it on the table, yelling, "the price has to come down! The price has to come down!"

 

Now, I've been to a lot of meetings, but I can't imagine seeing a top officer whip off his footwear and use it to bludgeon a presumably-innocent conference table. Sam must have been an, um, interesting man.

 

That's all I've got. Just thought I'd share. "

 

José Pereira.

[José Pereira]

A quickly kind of Anedote I discouve sometime ago here at AA on the ST Forum posted by Shinto:

 

"A vendor was at my office recently. I have small posters of several classic computers adorning my walls, among them an Atari 400 and an Atari 1040ST. This vendor looked at the ST and recalled the following story from his very first sales meeting.

 

He was in Sunnyvale, trying to sell disk drives to Atari (hard drives, I believe). At one point in the meeting with top Atari brass, Sam Tramiel took off his shoe and started banging it on the table, yelling, "the price has to come down! The price has to come down!"

 

Now, I've been to a lot of meetings, but I can't imagine seeing a top officer whip off his footwear and use it to bludgeon a presumably-innocent conference table. Sam must have been an, um, interesting man.

 

That's all I've got. Just thought I'd share. "

 

José Pereira.

 

 

Sam tramiel Anedote

[José Pereira]

A quickly kind of Anedote I discouve sometime ago here at AA on the ST Forum posted by Shinto:

 

"A vendor was at my office recently. I have small posters of several classic computers adorning my walls, among them an Atari 400 and an Atari 1040ST. This vendor looked at the ST and recalled the following story from his very first sales meeting.

 

He was in Sunnyvale, trying to sell disk drives to Atari (hard drives, I believe). At one point in the meeting with top Atari brass, Sam Tramiel took off his shoe and started banging it on the table, yelling, "the price has to come down! The price has to come down!"

 

Now, I've been to a lot of meetings, but I can't imagine seeing a top officer whip off his footwear and use it to bludgeon a presumably-innocent conference table. Sam must have been an, um, interesting man.

 

That's all I've got. Just thought I'd share. "

 

José Pereira.

 

 

Sam tramiel Anedote

 

 

 

Sorry, it is wrong.

Let's see now:

Sam's Tramiel Anedote

[José Pereira]

talking about Computer Bosses, this one is better (and a real Anedote):

Microssoft&Aplle Bosses anedote

 

 

 

José Pereira.

[OldAtarian]

"7800 adapter for the 5200,"

 

There was one of these?

[carmel_andrews]

talking about Computer Bosses, this one is better (and a real Anedote):

Microssoft&Aplle Bosses anedote

 

 

 

José Pereira.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the sales rep in that link was supposed to be pitching for business (he obviously didn't overcome that objection)

[kskunk]

Here's my two cents (my opinion only, I'm no historian):

 

I live and work right next to Atari's old headquarters, so I've had the good fortune to work with several ex-Atari employees who were around when the Tramiels took over.

 

The Tramiels were not liked by most of their employees. Atari was already a VERY dysfunctional organization by the time they took over, and employee morale was incredibly low. They weren't exactly welcomed with wide-eyed optimization, especially in the wake of the immediate layoffs which were entirely blamed on them. (Which does seem a little unfair, since they saved the company from 100% layoffs.)

 

They were not liked by their vendors either. As Commodore did, Atari tried to push toward opening up new channels such as mass retail and mail order, both of which were seen as PURE EVIL by obsolete computer dealers who knew they would go extinct. Atari later tried to deal with the computer dealers, but of course they went extinct anyway. Atari didn't get to benefit, the way the Dells and Gateway 2000s did.

 

The Tramiels couldn't have succeeded anyway, since the PC clones were an unstoppable force that killed EVERYBODY: From the #1 seller of PCs in the 80s (Commodore) to the biggest workstation vendors (SGI). Even IBM was forced out of the PC business... and Apple was on life support until they started selling iPods.

 

For all of these reasons, there are plenty of negative stories about the Tramiels, especially from their employees, dealers, and investors.

 

And yet, against all these odds, the Tramiels still managed to make money on Atari. They paid off Atari's billions of dollars of debts, and generated a decent profit when they finally wound things down. They kept a business alive for over a decade and kept people employed that wouldn't have had a chance under Warner.

 

From a business perspective, they staged an amazing recovery out of an awful situation.

 

- KS

Edited November 3, 2010 by kskunk

[russg]

After upgrading my 600XL to 64K, I thought about the marketing idea behind the 600XL.

I believe the 600XL was to be a cheap computer and they thought they'd make money selling the 1090 memory expansion.

A 64K 600XL can be made today with $3.00 worth DRAMs and three wires, it would have cost probably less than

$1.00 to make the 600XL 64K to start with, but I think they were looking to sell the 1090, sorta like

selling 16K modules for the 800. Hoping to make money on upgrades.

[kool kitty89]

The problem both Atari and Commodore had was they didn't really secure a position in the educational or corporate/government sectors.

The PET was initially fairly significant (especially in the education market), but that sort of languished in the early 80s and fell out of the market.

 

Tandy got into that too with the TRS-80 line and then their PC clones later on, for business, hobby, and education. (the Model II had a lot of potential as a higher-end business machine too)

 

Warners could have sewn the market up in 1979-81, but failed. Tramiels did a great job in the mid 1980s but the closed architecture and too slow evolution of the ST ultimately made it become redundant.

Pretty much, at least for the latter. (not sure Warner could have sewn it up as such due to the IBM name bing so big and the opportunities for clones -albiet had Apple clones pushed stronger sooner and more into the low-end, that might have been something really significant)

 

 

 

 

Kitty, I always enjoy reading your posts

 

My view on the 1200XL was it failed for a large part because it was the first , if you like, soldier to pop his head out from the trenches. It arrived first and represented a big shift away from the 800 but then the 600XL and the 800XL would follow and the 1200XL had already taken the fall. Obviously there are differences between the 1200XL and the 600/800XL but I do think the 1200XL was the fall guy.

 

 

I'm not sure if Atari did go in the wrong direction with the 8-bit. It made sense, and still does, to go for the largest market and you could still have a range of computers that appealed for different market sectors. Atari, during the last days of Warner, had some exciting projects for the 8-bit planned and I don't think the XL line was going to represent the end of the 8-bit as a "serious" computer line.

Some of that wasn't my own take on things, but more tied to what Curt and Marty have collected and presented on the subject.

 

And yes, it made sense to push for the mass market, it's what got Commodore big, and it's what Atari was already pushing with home video games.

However, they could have pushed for both ends a fair bit better (ie higher-end/serious/hobby/hardcore oriented and the "simpler" home/consumer mass market product), and they could have done that with an intercompatible line of machines. What they did was sort of neither here nor there much of the time. (more so if you look at Europe, but that's a separate context altogether)

With the original model 400 and 800, they got stuck with the heavy aluminum castings and segmented board design to qualify for NTSC class C, and the 800's second cart slot was rather unnecessary (more so in hindsight, but even at the time, with the full address range selectable in slot 1, it really wasn't necessary... unless some specific add-ons had been used through it, but that never happened). They had RAM expansion slots and the 800 had the CPU card as well for potential expansion (I think the 400's was socketed on the main board and with only 1 RAM slot -so up to 32k without modification). And the 400 was originally inteded as a higher-end game system more than a full computer, but the price point hurt that (at least until 1982), and marketing didn't seem to continue to push that direction either. (while the keyboard really was the biggest hardware issue for being a "proper" home computer)

They really didn't *need* the 4 joy ports either... but you could argue there was a lot more potential for pushing that too. (and with only 2 ports the 2nd 8-bit I/O port of PIA could have gone to an external parallel port... or maybe PIA could be omited entirely had the designers been willing to use POKEY's keyboard scanning to handle joystick pinouts more like the 5200 -with trade-offs, mainly tied to the programming side of things with mapped I/O being much faster -but probably transparent to the user, and the ST did the joysticks that way)

 

They probably could have separated things a fair bit more with the 400 and 800, especially if the 400 had had a slightly higher-end version with mechanical keyboard (which there were kits for) along with the base membrane unit. But on the 800 side, they could have pushed a bit more toward the Apple II range of things, or a "serious" computer, still compatible with the 400 but with more internal expandability and/or peripheral capabilities (maybe a parallel port or external expansion port -either would be more useful than the 2nd cart slot, short of more comprehensive external expansion slots). Plus, if the 800 was really pushed as more of a "pure" computer and could thus have also avoided the Class C FCC restriction by aiming at using a monitor only (composite and/or Y/C) and reducing cost/bulk of the cast aluminum shielding. (perhaps with the "cheat" of an external RF modulator like the Apple II did)

And one thing important for all models would be to include a luminance only video mode (either software triggered or a physical switch) as that would allow crisp (roughly RGB quality) grayscale video via composite or RF (RF still suffering ghosting/noise): that would be something few others were offering and something that IBM's GCA did offer as well as the PCJr and Tandy graphics modes. (something very important for Tandy in particular, with common use of composite monitors -and even more useful for even lower-end B/W composite monitors and TVs which wouldn't benefit from color but would still suffer artifacts in the video with color enabled -and it would be ideal if certain software specifically catered to grayscale modes using contrasting colors or the gray range of the palette)

They could have provided a single external expansion port on the 400 to add more of the 800's features as well. (sort of like PBI... though they could also have omitted the internal RAM slot in favor of a single, general purpose, external port, like PBI)

 

That would have covered all of their bases pretty much, though another problem was lagging a bit for getting cost-cut redesigns out. It should have been possible to jump ahead a bit beyond the full 600/1200XL single-board+MMU redesign and aim at purely consolidating the 400/800 as they were (with the 48k limit and all), with a single board and new case if possibly new casing. (without the RF sheilds, the 800 might have been single board already -but more room for consolidation... not sure about the 400) Short of that, with the existing board and cases, they should have been able to make simpler modifications to cut cost by removing the aluminum shields and replacing them with plastic braces and minimalistic RF shielding to qualify for class B... that and remove the RAM slots on the 800 in favor of modifying the existing PCBs (with riser board/jummers initially if necessary) to allow soldering RAM chips on the main board with 48k standard and putting 16k on the board of the 400 and keeping the single expansion slot to allow for expansion to 32/48k or simply leaving open sockets on the board. (making pre-installed 32 and 48k 400s also cheaper to produce)

 

 

The 1200 was a big case of being neither here nor there with a fairly high-end price and position with the built-in 64k, but limited expansion contradicting that... while the C64 did offer more expansion potential (to a point) and the lower price helped, though it was still on the higher-end side until dropping to $200 in '83.

But they missed out on the lower-end with a 400 replacement nowhere in sight and the old 400 being expensive to produce and with a poor keyboard. That could/would have been solved by the 600, though certainly not as cheap as the VIC-20 in '82, the feature set and existing software/userbase would be big pluses. (16k RAM, plenty of software, good keyboard, potential for expansion to at least 48k -64k had they used the MMU, tape drive loading 2x as fast as Commodore's, and exceptionally fast disk drive compared to Commodore's offerings -and rather competitive with Apple's drives I believe, and plenty of other peripherals available -and the 600 prototype looks pretty sleek with the all-black top) As it was, I think the 400 was pushed to $200 or lower by the end of '82 (at least with rebates), so with the 600 being more efficient to produce, it should at least have been in a similar price range. (that price range also opens up the option to push for the 400/600 instead of the 5200... though I think conflicts of the video game and computer divisions might have complicated that, but short of a proper lockout system or backwards compatibility, it could have made more sense to push forward with the computers -albeit with a cost-optimized console derivative, it should have been cheaper still without the keyboard -and the 5200 lacked PIA as well, but that didn't really end up the case with the 5200's launch price and less than cost-optimized form factor)

 

The 600/800XL were delayed and missed an important sales window and I read that in the US people were screaming to get hold of the 600XL when it was first released but had a hard job finding one.

The original 600 (counterpart to the 1200) wasn't delayed, but canceled outright in favor of only pushing the 1200. (ie cutting the "sweet 8" out of the sweet 8 and 16 projects) Though the 600/800XL weren't delayed so much themselves, but responded to the shortcomings of the 1200XL... they were hindered by the halt in Atari operations in fall of '83 though, but that was a delay after release. (albeit it delayed their European launch, which would have been significant in '83)

 

As for Europe, yes the 400 and 800 retail prices were high but looking at my Atari catalogs they weren't exactly cheap to start with in the States although when you consider what Atari was offering way back then they were really leading the field. You can just imagine a kid saying to his Dad "hey Dad, you can run your business, buy and sell shares, go online and more" and the Dad turning round and saying "That's cool son but lets wait until the 1990s for the internet to arrive".

Yes, but it was more than that, they had conflicts with how the European market worked in general, including 3rd party software support and emphasis on tapes. (even competing against higher-end machines like the BBC Micro, the 800 didn't mesh that well due to those other issues -and again it might have made sense to omit the 800 entirely in favor of a low-end and mid-range 400 -the latter likely including a monitor port and definitely a full keyboard, and the 4 joyports were unnecessary, let alone the dual cart slots... they really could have pushed an even lower-end derivative of the 400 as well)

 

And then you could argue they could have taken a different stance with the VCS in general for Europe, perhaps doing something like the Starpath supercharger to allow cheaper tape-based games and compete more with the home computer game market. (however that would have attracted piracy and 3rd parties and upset the razor and blade market model... unless Atari had been willing to break that model in favor of selling the VCS at a higher profit margin... they could have built-in the tape interface to save costs further as well)

And actually, had they gained 3rd party interest for the 2600, that could have meant better use of related programming tricks and general experience applied to the 8-bit computers.

 

 

But back to Tramiel, there were some of the same issues with the ST, without a broad enough range for use of the hardware. They got the low-end model down right (more or less, lack of a general expansion port being an exception), but were missing a higher-end unit until '87 and even then the MEGA was disappointing in some areas (could/should have been 16 MHz from the start... especially with the BLiTTER delayed), and general delay in upgrading hardware. And then they went the wrong way with the TT being too high-end and there no being a good lower-end counterpart, but that came after Jack had left.

 

Atari could have sold a lot more 8-bit computers in the UK but , under the Tramiels, retailers did complain about stock availability - something which also happened with the Lynx as well to start with. Retailers couldn't get enough of the XE game system, despite Atari's poor marketing and there was a long painful gap between discontinuing the 1050 and the arrival of the XF551 - as examples.

Hmm, interesting... from what I understand that was also a critical problem with the Jaguar as well, even after the full launch in '94 and especially in Europe. (where they had the best chance of actually establishing a niche in the market)

 

 

What I do find very interesting are your "what if" comments regarding what would have happened if Warner had stayed and Jack had stayed at Commodore - maybe things would have been so much more exciting?

Or if Warner had managed the sale better rather than the sloppy mess that it was without any warning or preparation time for Morgan or AInc staff and utter confusion resulting. That and/or if someone else had bought the company... or if Morgan himself had had the resources and interest to do so. (not that he was even given the opportunity as Warner had more or less kept things secret regarding their interest in selling the company)

 

But for another what-if: What if Jack had stayed at the helm beyond 1988/89? Or what if Katz had stayed or come back in time for the launch of the Lynx rather than moving on to Sega?

Or if Tramiel had stayed at CBM.

 

But without the ST and without Tramiel pushing such at CBM, there would have been a big hole in the European market in general and I doubt the QL would have filled it. (had Tandy's low-cost PC clones come to the EU market, that might have changed things substantially, but they had nothing like that and no decent PC clones at reasonable prices until the early 90s -more or less)

Edited November 3, 2010 by kool kitty89

[+wood_jl]

I agree with many above: I wish[ed] for more, but was very glad to get what I could from the Tramiels at Atari. The products they put out are up there on my short list of favorite computers, and selling Atari-branded computers has always been an uphill-battle from the first one ever sold.

 

What is ridiculous is all the childish "Tramiel-bashing" that pops up: As someone else in another thread called it: "Armchair CEOS with the benefit of hindsight." Completely laugable, but the bashers don't seem to respond to fact or ever give up; they need to get a life, quite badly.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,

 

in a dreamworld there is one thing in computer history that never happened: IBM had protected their BIOS and never ever had allowed for IBM compatibles (or clones). And since no IBM compatibles or clones exist then - no-one really uses an original IBM computer (since no-one can afford them)...

 

And without any IBM compatibles on the market there are still some 3-5 different "PC" producing companies -each "PC" incompatible to the others- active today (maybe Atari or Commodore among them)... but alas, one day we all woke up and left dreamworld...

 

We wanted IBM compatibles so we could continue our work (or job) at home. And they all gave us IBM compatibles so they needn`t pay us for working outside the office, which saved them a lot of money... ;-)

 

-Andreas Koch.

[Rybags]

You don't need their BIOS to create a "clone" in the rough sense though.

 

The problem with IBM was that the PC was off-the-shelf parts, so anyone could build one.

 

You could also say that if they'd gone closed architecture and specifically created patented custom ICs, that the end product mightn't have been capable of the stepped evolution that the PC has gone through in ~ 30 years.

[+pboland]

The problem both Atari and Commodore had was they didn't really secure a position in the educational or corporate/government sectors.

 

So, dad used IBM at work, which meant home sales for them and the clones (eventually).

 

Apple always had good representation in schools, which led to home sales there, and the Mac's good representation in the print industry gave them inroads into the corporate/government sectors.

 

All Atari had was the flowon effect from the bottom end, ie consoles. They had every opportunity to create and expand the image and market for their computers, but of course we all know how that went.

 

Warners could have sewn the market up in 1979-81, but failed. Tramiels did a great job in the mid 1980s but the closed architecture and too slow evolution of the ST ultimately made it become redundant.

In all fairness to Atari at the time, there was one market that they pretty much dominated during the ST years...Music. As a musician back in the late 80's early 90's if you did anything with music production/midi you used Atari. And you can see this advantage on the ST with the built in midi ports. Heck, I used an ST just for the midi. Back in the day I remember seeing articles about Fleetwood Mac and you would see all the atari equipment in the background of the photos from their studio. There was also the Jimmy Hotz stuff (Hotz Box). There are still many musician today who use Atari ST set-ups for their midi rigs.

 

I know the representation was not as large as schools, industry, or government but it was something.

[kool kitty89]

in a dreamworld there is one thing in computer history that never happened: IBM had protected their BIOS and never ever had allowed for IBM compatibles (or clones). And since no IBM compatibles or clones exist then - no-one really uses an original IBM computer (since no-one can afford them)...

Yeah, except a ROM is easy to copy, but a bit harder to legally reverse engineer to avoid copyright infringement, but in any case pretty much impossible to "protect" as such.

 

But had the PC remained uncloned (for whatever reason), it still would have sold substantially as it did up to 1984 as only in 1984 did more affordable clones start appearing (including IBM's own PCJr... which could have been far more significant had it used a normal keyboard and standard ISA expansion and peripheral ports like Tandy's 1000 did), but the only clones in '83 were as expensive or more expensive than IBM machines. (Compaq's portable may have been the first and was no exception in price)

 

And without any IBM compatibles on the market there are still some 3-5 different "PC" producing companies -each "PC" incompatible to the others- active today (maybe Atari or Commodore among them)... but alas, one day we all woke up and left dreamworld...

Without the PC, the Apple II would have been the clone of choice and it may have been mainly due to the PC that Apple II clones (especially lower-end ones) weren't more prevalent. (and given the very simple hardware, it should have been quite practical for clone manufacturers to push lower-end models into the sub-C64 price range for 48/64k machines, or even the VIC's price range for lower memory models -and it even had the advantages of much faster disk and tape drives than the C64)

 

Then again, machines like the PET or TRS-80 line could have ended up getting clones (simple enough hardware to make that attractive) had they continued to push into the market. (the CoCo would be even easier to clone given the more off the shelf hardware, but that wasn't aimed at the business/education side of things as much and/or wasn't seen as a "serious" machine, especially compared to the very capable Model II) Hell, with the TRS-80s (especially the Model II range) you had potential for CP/M as well. But one problem with the Tandy machines was being limited to Radio Shack for distribution. (albeit something which would have changed with clones)

And the TRS-80 model 1 related line was cloned as it was and I believe the CoCo was as well.

 

But prior to the PC, the most powerful serious business machine on the consumer market was almost certainly the TRS-80 model 2: 4 MHz Z80, 32 or 64k of RAM, 80x24 text, 500 kB capacity (flipped) 8" floppy dive, internal expansion slots, detachable full-throw mechanical keyboard with numeric keypad and cursor keys all in 1979!

It was expensive, sure, at over $3000 in '79, but again, that was in '79 and with exceptional capabilities for the time. (and aimed at a higher-end user with the older model 1 positioned for the hobby/home user as well as education -the later model III followed that but expanded upon it but remained less capable than the model II)

 

 

 

 

You don't need their BIOS to create a "clone" in the rough sense though.

 

The problem with IBM was that the PC was off-the-shelf parts, so anyone could build one.

It wasn't even fully off the shelf, but just easily reverse engineered like the Apple II and some others.

 

You could also say that if they'd gone closed architecture and specifically created patented custom ICs, that the end product mightn't have been capable of the stepped evolution that the PC has gone through in ~ 30 years.

OTOH the machine may have ended up far more capable (especially if IBM had used their in-house RISC ROMP chip ready for production in 1981), and again there were other popular machines that could (and likely would) be cloned.

 

 

 

In all fairness to Atari at the time, there was one market that they pretty much dominated during the ST years...Music. As a musician back in the late 80's early 90's if you did anything with music production/midi you used Atari. And you can see this advantage on the ST with the built in midi ports. Heck, I used an ST just for the midi. Back in the day I remember seeing articles about Fleetwood Mac and you would see all the atari equipment in the background of the photos from their studio. There was also the Jimmy Hotz stuff (Hotz Box). There are still many musician today who use Atari ST set-ups for their midi rigs.

Well, in the US perhaps, but in Europe they pretty much owned the 16-bit mass market into the late 80s when the Amiga started cutting in more prior to PCs startign to get popular in the early 90s. (business, games, you name it)

Edited November 4, 2010 by kool kitty89

[kskunk]

Without the PC, the Apple II would have been the clone of choice

I agree. Or if not the Apple II, the Atari ST. There's a machine that's very simple to clone!

 

It's almost inevitable that a single standard will emerge and dominate the market. At some point, you reach a level of complexity where one company alone can't build a whole computer. Building on the work of others yields faster, better, cheaper, computers than starting from scratch a thousand times over. And there really are thousands of companies working on the PC standard every year!

 

I think that's why PCs steamrolled everybody else: Even a huge and well-funded company like Apple couldn't continue to build custom computer architectures for long. Year by year they used more and more PC-industry components until finally their machines booted Windows like any other PC. The same story happened to SGI, who was selling million dollar supercomputers that became more and more PC-like, until they were just overpriced PCs with colorful cases. Nobody can afford to buck the dominant standard forever. (I know, I know, IBM will try...)

 

- KS

Edited November 4, 2010 by kskunk