The Tramiels

[SpaceDice2010]

 

No, Atari needed to boost their image in the computer market: that was a huge mistake on Warner's part. The very fact that Atari wasn't known as a computer company almost as much as a game company by 1984 is a testament of their faults in managing the excellent 8-bit computer line.

 

Why did Atari need to boost their image in the computer market? Wasn't the goal to sell computers? Changing your brand from a games company to a computer company costs money, something that Atari at the time did not have. If Nintendo decided to enter the US computer market today do you really think they would use the name Nintendo? I can see the press release now...

[Lynxpro]

Agreed. But what I wrote and postulated on was the two companies sharing the platform instead of spending a ton of money battling each other in the courts over it. Even in 1987ish when the two companies finally settled their legal cases, they should've agreed to combine the platforms together. After all, IBM and Apple later decided to try something similar with Taligent, not that that came to much fruition. My point is had the ST and Amiga become a single platform, the combined user base would have been sufficient to keep it going and we might have a viable 3rd platform today in competition with Windows and Mac OS X. [and no, I'm not considering Linux]. The rivalry between Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould made that impossible and the computer industry today is poorer because of it.

 

The joys of a capitalist society and freedom of choice and I'm presuming that when you say "sharing the platform" you mean both companies, sitting down, holding hands, sharing a smoke and deciding between them which one (the ST or the Amiga or a combination of bits from both) they were going to go with? That sort of thing doesn't seem to fly these days as governments think of it as anti-competitive.

 

 

Are you kidding me? Did the Feds step in when Apple and IBM set up Taligent to hammer out a combined OS? What about all the companies that donate code to Linux and other shared open source software projects?

 

Did the Feds bust the cooperation amongst the PC Cloners in developing IDE?

 

Did the Feds ban the importation of the Compact Disc, DVD, DCC, and Blu-ray because all were developed amongst multiple companies?

 

The answer is no to all of the above. The only area the Feds stepped in - and it was the Supreme Court - that blocked IBM's "US Memories" consortium plan.

 

Atari and Commodore could've pooled their OS resources together and decided they both would build computers using a common OS and specs. One company could've marketed to the consumer market and the other to business. That is perfectly legal. But that never dawned upon Gould or Tramiel. That's my point.

 

 

 

IMHO, the Atari ST was a horrible computer.

 

Maybe so but it was the least horrible of a bunch of horrible choices. I'd certainly rather GEM existed as a viable GUI instead of Windows.

 

 

I can't see licensing being of any assistance at all to Atari. They'd moved so few units and the platform was so closed I can't imagine anyone would have been interested. By comparison the PC was a free for all, with high margins and high demand, and open to pretty much anybody who wanted in.

 

 

Windows Phone 7 is a dismal failure but it appears that won't stop Nokia from licensing it just so it can distinguish itself from all the other companies pushing Android based smart phones.

 

The PCs of that era sucked. Microsoft CLI instead of a decent GUI, CGA graphics, sound so bad it made the ST's Yamaha chip sound good, the 640k limitation, slow hardware, etc.

 

 

I disagree. I think the Tramiels made a big mistake trying to launch a 68000 based Macintosh clone on a shoestring budget without a definite hardware advantage over the Mac. They came to market about two years later with an inferior product at razor thin margins, one they couldn't really afford to promote well and one they weren't making enough money off of to effectively improve.

 

 

The ST was color and the Mac was B&W. The ST had a monochrome monitor with higher res than the Mac. The ST was faster than the Mac. The ST had better sound than the Mac. The ST had MIDI built in. The ST was also about half the price as the Mac. If you used a Mac emulator on the ST, it ran faster than a regular Mac. The STacy was the best "Mac" laptop on the market when it debuted.

 

The only thing that the Mac excelled at over the ST - besides being far more expensive - was that it had system fonts built into the OS [unlike the ST and the often delayed GDOS]... So, what was your point?

 

 

And then Windows 3.0 and 3.1 rolled along, pretty much rendering the ST and Amigas totally obsolete.

 

 

Have you ever used an ST before? Windows didn't eclipse TOS 1.0 in functionality and ease until Windows 95, 10 years after the ST debuted.

 

 

IBM manufactured the Jaguar, not Atari...thought that was common knowledge (Atari only marketed the games system, since it had already closed down/stopped hardware manufacturing)

 

 

IBM was a contractor who built the Jag for Atari. Atari and Flare designed the Jag.

 

Your statement if applied to the current industry would mean that HP and most of the other PC companies only market their brand wares that are built by Chinese subcontractors.

 

 

 

What you're suggesting could also be considered collusion, and may have resulted in anti-trust suits or other legal action.

 

 

See my comments above. Several computer and consumer electronics companies "colluded" during that time period with no such legal action.

 

 

Again, the lack of cooperation was a totally separate issue from the weaker management/marketing at CBM (unless you're suggesting that Jack at Atari Corp would have an influence at CBM again), and also has nothing to do with the lack of licensing the chipsets to expand the platforms as market-wide standards. (or other mistakes/missed opportunities from limiting expansion -especially on the ST, to slow/poor evolutionary design, to Sam Tramiel's weak management from '89 onward, etc)

 

 

No, what I was saying is that Atari and Commodore could've came to an agreement in 87 when they settled their lawsuits against each other. They could've opted to design a new platform that took the strengths of the ST and the Amiga and made it a common platform for both of them to ship products from. That isn't collusion any more than Philips and Sony "colluding" on Compact Disc and DVD.

 

As for Sam's management, I'd say Irving Gould was correct in preventing Tramiel nepotism to be practiced at Commodore.

 

 

 

They should have had 10/12/16 MHz models from the start with console and desktop form factors, or at least by '86 (maybe just 8 and 16 MHz),

 

 

Atari and Amiga both probably should've went with the 68010 from the start so both platforms would've been 32-bit from the start...

 

The biggest blunder with the ST was shipping the SF354 drive. They should've only shipped the SF314 so all STs would've had 720k disk capacity. Splitting ownership between two different disk sizes meant the majority of the software shipped on the 360k disks. The Amiga platform didn't have that problem; they all did 880k with their "unique" disk format.

 

The Mega ST and the STe line should've shipped with the 68020.

 

And I do wonder how much games would've been better had Atari - or Amiga - had shipped with the 68881/2 math coprocessors standard. After all, PC platform gaming did leap once Intel harmonized their math coprocessors with the CPU directly with the 486DX.

 

 

Did MOS ever create a math co-processor for the 6502?

 

 

Already rehashed the Atari name business enough. Already discussed the keyboards. In your estimation, an early horrible (no function keys, no cursor control keys, no numeric keypad) keyboard or a late horrible (flimsy-ass chicklet-keyed disposable fly-away) keyboard both get a pass, if they're from the brand that YOU have chosen. Understood, fully. I thought the version of GEM they used was pretty good. I thought the MAC OS licked balls up until Mac OSX. But that's just my opinion, and it's no more or less valid than yours.

 

 

I felt the same way. I hated Macs until Mac OS X. And to think Mac OS X is Apple's goodness layered atop BSD just as Atari's ATG was probably aiming for via BSD+Snowcap all those years ago...

 

 

quote name='SpaceDice2010' date='Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:53 PM' timestamp='1297403630' post='2207100']

 

No, Atari needed to boost their image in the computer market: that was a huge mistake on Warner's part. The very fact that Atari wasn't known as a computer company almost as much as a game company by 1984 is a testament of their faults in managing the excellent 8-bit computer line.

 

Why did Atari need to boost their image in the computer market? Wasn't the goal to sell computers? Changing your brand from a games company to a computer company costs money, something that Atari at the time did not have. If Nintendo decided to enter the US computer market today do you really think they would use the name Nintendo? I can see the press release now...

 

 

Atari could've done it with "Amiga" had they acquired the company and the tech. After all, when the Amiga 1000 was released, you didn't see the name "Commodore" attached to it in the fliers except at the bottom and listed as "Commodore-Amiga Inc."

 

One of the worst things about the Amiga 500 on was having that cheap Commodore logo affixed to the case.

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

 

The only thing that the Mac excelled at over the ST - besides being far more expensive - was that it had system fonts built into the OS [unlike the ST and the often delayed GDOS]... So, what was your point?

 

 

And software that people wanted to use. That was pretty important.

 

Out of curiosity what was the killer app for the ST line? (Asking as I am not overly familiar with the software side.) I know the ST carved a small niche market in music.

 

It's hard to really compare the Mac to the ST. It really is. The Mac was a $2000 business machine or a $1000 Higher Education machine. The ST was a $1000 Home Computer (at least in the US). It's easier to sell a $2000 business computer from a company known for making computers than it is to sell a $1000 computer from a company known for video games.

[SpaceDice2010]

 

Atari could've done it with "Amiga" had they acquired the company and the tech. After all, when the Amiga 1000 was released, you didn't see the name "Commodore" attached to it in the fliers except at the bottom and listed as "Commodore-Amiga Inc."

 

One of the worst things about the Amiga 500 on was having that cheap Commodore logo affixed to the case.

 

This is kinda my point. Commodore became known for low cost computers. So when they launched the Amiga line they didn't push the Commodore name that much. The Amiga was a more high end computer and I believe that it was smart for Commodore to toss aside the low end image and stick with the Amiga name.

 

How do you convince a business buyer that he is not buying a computer that is a gaming computer when the name Atari is on it? Would I buy laptops for my employees with the name Nintendo on them? Hell no. I don't care how good the specs are and how low the cost. Not gonna happen.

 

Now, as far as this failed Amiga - Atari deal does anyone have the REAL truth about the stock price? Rumor had it that Atari was going to pay something like $4 per share then it went down to close to $1. Is this a total myth?

[svenski]

They could've had a deal where Atari had "home" computer market exclusivity on the Amiga for a good 2 years while Commodore had an exclusivity in the pro market for that same time period. That would've technically worked since Atari bolted out the gate with the 520ST at the lower price point while Commodore went with the Amiga 1000 at a considerably higher price point at the start.

 

Imagine what could have been done had the talents of both companies had essentially worked together on this. The eventual end users would have been on a single platform and they could've better devoted their combined bile against Apple and the PC cloners. The demo scene certainly would've been different!

 

That stinks of anti-competitive practices, it stinks of a cartel. Who cares if the "Feds" did this or didn't do that?, in many cases the "Feds" (and other not necessarily US Gov. bodies) only act when someone decides to file a formal complaint. Just because they might not have acted against two companies developing a joint OS (which is a far cry from two companies deciding to carve up the market between them and agree not to compete against each other) doesn't mean they wouldn't have acted against your idealized vision.

 

Moving on slightly, to the second point of the above - even if they had just decided to smoke the peace pipe and come up with a common platform they'd still have been competing with each other just like the Japs had done with the MSX - otherwise why else be in business? It would be a case of which machine came with the most RAM, the fanciest buttons, the coolest case etc etc - .

Edited February 11, 2011 by svenski

[SpaceDice2010]

Commodore and Atari would have never worked together. And even if they did it wouldn't have changed history that much.

 

But, what was proposed is in no way anti-competitive. In fact it is in many ways what the supposedly original contract was with the Amiga chipset. Atari getting it only in use for game machines for a period of time before they could release a computer, while Amiga could use it in a computer. Anti-competitive practices would be not allowing a manufacturer of computer systems to sell computers with an OS from company Y as long as they sold an OS from company X.

[high voltage]

In the US I think it is fair to say from a marketing point of view Atari's brand was way more known with games than computers. Atari was games. Commodore was low cost computers. How many households in the US either didn't have an Atari video game system at one time or knew someone that did? Or had played one of their arcade games? Sure as heck can't say that about their computers. (At least in the US.) And the US is a damn big market.

 

I guess you would have to define what "taken seriously" actually means. Sure, companies released software/products. Some companies actually released software/products for the NEXT. I am not sure if that computer was taken seriously as anything except an extension of Job's ego.

Microsoft made Multiplan for the Commodore 64; but I wouldn't say that means the C64 was taken seriously as a business computer.

 

Rather than have me troll through the Internet looking for stuff, why not just show me somewhere what percentage of businesses used the ST. What percentage of Fortune 1000 companies? (Atari did eventually hire a sales team to target them.)

 

Once again, I am speaking from a US point of view. When I tell friends that I collect Atari, I get responses like, "Pitfall rocked" or "I loved Pac Man in the arcades." I never get "OMG! I loved their computers...." Weird.

 

Apple really tried hard to make the MAC a business machine, even Microsoft was heavily invested with Excel and other products. Being a college student at Harvard at the time it made sense to get a Mac. It was cheap and it had the software that I needed. (I am not even sure where the ST's were sold; distribution was that bad in the US.)

 

The Mac survived on Apple II's profits and the fact that it made a mark in the design field and the higher education field as well. Something that hasn't been mentioned about the Mac display is that the pixels were square on the screen which was a blessing for designers.

 

I believe I have read about 10 books on the history of Apple and I can't remember one time where the ST was mentioned at all. For all the marketing that Atari did to compare it to the Mac at a lower price, it seemed not to affect Mac sales.

 

 

Hehe I actually own that:

Miscrosoft also made Basic for Atari 800

 

But I think C64 was games too, and Apple ][ was business.

 

As for ST, as already said many musicians and studios used STs, so there's already business for you.

Edited February 11, 2011 by high voltage

[carmel_andrews]

Ultimately the only system(s) that was truly 'Atari' from the tramiel period was the XE and the rejigged vcs, everything else was bought in

 

St and anything based on that tech (i.e stacey/ste/tt/falcon,st book&pad, ATW etc, though i accept the ATW was originally dev'd by UK company Perhillion based on a product it originally intended releasing on the amiga)...TTL

Lynx=Epyx, Jaguar/Panther=Flare, Portfolio=DIP (who made their own version), 7800=GCC, Calculators/Data organisers (some canadian company apparently, somewhat ironic would'nt you say)

 

Looking at things logically, There would be nothing to stop the Present 'bastardised' atari from letting it's name be prostituted by a smallish hardware company for it's product range (so long as it was competitive against any current/future gaming tech)...i.e imagine an xbox 360 with an atari banner on it or a ds knockoff again with an atari motif on it....quite possible, after all, tramiel did it and probably saved atari a ton of money

Edited February 11, 2011 by carmel_andrews

[carmel_andrews]

Additionally, Looks like KK and Dracisback missed the point i made

 

Atari stopped making/Manufacturing hardware in 1993

 

Commodore went into administration (they did not go out of business) in 1994, commodore still had some operating divisions like germany and the UK (infact the UK division was one of the early front runners to get the commodore spoils, unfoprtunately their plans collapsed as they could'nt get funding from their asian partners) also commodore were still producing amigas (and c64s etc) right through the administration period, right up till escom acquired the rights and decided to split commodore up (the amiga becoming an independent entity)

 

in 1996 when Atari RM'd with JTS they stopped selling/marketing the jaguar, once hasbro acquired atari they basically put certain jaguar developments into the public domain (clearly indicating that atari were'nt interested in returning to the hardware field)

 

Just to point out, the Amiga (formerly made by commodore) only ceased to be a hardware platform a few years into gateway buying them out

 

 

And unless i am missing something, arent the present commodore company making hardware (including amiga badged hardware)

[svenski]

Additionally, Looks like KK and Dracisback missed the point i made

 

Atari stopped making/Manufacturing hardware in 1993

 

Commodore went into administration (they did not go out of business) in 1994, commodore still had some operating divisions like germany and the UK (infact the UK division was one of the early front runners to get the commodore spoils, unfoprtunately their plans collapsed as they could'nt get funding from their asian partners) also commodore were still producing amigas (and c64s etc) right through the administration period, right up till escom acquired the rights and decided to split commodore up (the amiga becoming an independent entity)

 

in 1996 when Atari RM'd with JTS they stopped selling/marketing the jaguar, once hasbro acquired atari they basically put certain jaguar developments into the public domain (clearly indicating that atari were'nt interested in returning to the hardware field)

 

Just to point out, the Amiga (formerly made by commodore) only ceased to be a hardware platform a few years into gateway buying them out

 

 

And unless i am missing something, arent the present commodore company making hardware (including amiga badged hardware)

 

 

The problem with Commodore is you have the Commodore brand/license owned by one company and the Amiga brand owned by another - both seem to exist really (IMO) to make money off of the brand and suck as much money as they can from those who want to do anything using the respective brands.

[Innovative Leisure]

Ultimately the only system(s) that was truly 'Atari' from the tramiel period was the XE and the rejigged vcs, everything else was bought in

 

It depends on what you consider to be the "true" Atari. The XE was developed by TTL/Atari Corp. and the 2600jr (2100) by Atari Inc.

[+wood_jl]

When IBM entered the market with the $700 PCjr, it was Tramiel that said more people will spend $200 on a home computer than $700. He was right then and he was also right when he introduced his own $700+ home computer.

 

This is non sequitur. The PCjr was a castrated PC, and the C64 could kick the crap out of it for $200. The ST could kick the crap out of a full-blown PC, at a fraction of the price. It also bested the Mac of the time, in almost every quantifiable measure, at a fraction of the price. It was referred to as "Color Mac for 1/3 the price." As has well-been revealed, it was also capable of running both PC and MAC software with add-ons.

 

 

In the US I think it is fair to say from a marketing point of view Atari's brand was way more known with games than computers. Atari was games. Commodore was low cost computers. How many households in the US either didn't have an Atari video game system at one time or knew someone that did? Or had played one of their arcade games? Sure as heck can't say that about their computers. (At least in the US.) And the US is a damn big market.

 

Everybody knows this. This has been rehashed for decades. Focus your argument and stick to it. Whether or not the ST was a "horrible" computer IN ESSENCE and on its merits, and consumer perceptions of the Atari brand - are 2 separate arguments and those distinct issues should not be befuddled.

 

It took me a while to get use to the last gen keyboards on the Imac. And I am not crazy about their mice. But, the XE/ST keyboards really suck imho. Not only do they suck but you are forced to type on top of the machine. IBM nailed it with their early keyboards. I just can't picture a secretary typing letters all day on an ST keyboard.

 

I am actually pretty use the new Mac keyboards...

 

....and I am actually pretty used to the XE/ST keyboards. So what? What's your point? You think XE/ST keyboards totally suck, and I think your new Mac keyboard totally sucks. You've made it plain you don't like the ST keyboard, and not everybody is going to agree with you, to that magnitude. Who cares?

 

 

Rather than have me troll through the Internet looking for stuff, why not just show me somewhere what percentage of businesses used the ST. What percentage of Fortune 1000 companies? (Atari did eventually hire a sales team to target them.)

 

Who cares what percentage of Fortune 1000 companies used them? In the U.S., probably nearly non-existent. What's your point? This is a separate issue from what makes a horrible computer.

 

In your opinion, something **YOU** don't like is horrible, and you're really digging for ways to qualify your opinion to others. Why? I think it's an ignorant opinion to call something "horrible" simply because it was not YOUR CHOICE. A REASONABLE opinon of a "horrible" computer would be one that is/was overpriced, under-performing, and unreliable. The ST was NONE of those things. Another reasonable opinion would be, "I don't like the ST." Fine. But just because you don't like something, and more importantly, because it wasn't YOUR choice - doesn't make it horrible. That's extremely juvenile, 4th-grade thinking: "Everything I have is the best!!!!"

 

Apple really tried hard to make the MAC a business machine, even Microsoft was heavily invested with Excel and other products. Being a college student at Harvard at the time it made sense to get a Mac. It was cheap and it had the software that I needed. (I am not even sure where the ST's were sold; distribution was that bad in the US.)

 

Cheap is a relative term. Relative to the ST, the Mac was NOT cheap. Relative to the Amiga, the Mac was NOT cheap. It was probably wise for you to get a Mac, since it met your needs so well, and since you could easily afford it. However, this is a far cry from (for a reasonable person) relegating competing machines as "horrible."

 

The Mac survived on Apple II's profits and the fact that it made a mark in the design field and the higher education field as well. Something that hasn't been mentioned about the Mac display is that the pixels were square on the screen which was a blessing for designers.

 

I used a Mac Plus (I think it was) on the school newspaper, in high school. Yeah, it was really good for that, along with the Laserwriter I. I distinctly remember standing next to a pallet of Laserwriters at the computer store in 1985 with a price tag of $9995, and I don't remember what the Mac was, but it was not cheap, either.

 

I believe I have read about 10 books on the history of Apple and I can't remember one time where the ST was mentioned at all. For all the marketing that Atari did to compare it to the Mac at a lower price, it seemed not to affect Mac sales.

 

Undoubtedly it affected Mac sales in a fairly small way. Doesn't mean it was horrible.

 

 

Seriously. If I were ever to release a computer that cost $700+ I don't think I would have slapped the Atari name on it. Atari was known as a video game company. How much did the "Atari" brand cost the ST when they tried to move in the business market? And that horrible keyboard. And the version of Gem that they used. But, why develop a computer that they tried to market to the business market with the Atari name? Doesn't make sense to me.

 

Already rehashed the Atari name business enough. Already discussed the keyboards. In your estimation, an early horrible (no function keys, no cursor control keys, no numeric keypad) keyboard or a late horrible (flimsy-ass chicklet-keyed disposable fly-away) keyboard both get a pass, if they're from the brand that YOU have chosen. Understood, fully. I thought the version of GEM they used was pretty good. I thought the MAC OS licked balls up until Mac OSX. But that's just my opinion, and it's no more or less valid than yours.

 

Dude. Take a chill pill...

 

Dude.....use some of that keen Harvard intellect and address the issues.

[Pilsner73]

Ultimately the only system(s) that was truly 'Atari' from the tramiel period was the XE and the rejigged vcs, everything else was bought in

 

St and anything based on that tech (i.e stacey/ste/tt/falcon,st book&pad, ATW etc, though i accept the ATW was originally dev'd by UK company Perhillion based on a product it originally intended releasing on the amiga)...TTL

Lynx=Epyx, Jaguar/Panther=Flare, Portfolio=DIP (who made their own version), 7800=GCC, Calculators/Data organisers (some canadian company apparently, somewhat ironic would'nt you say)

 

Looking at things logically, There would be nothing to stop the Present 'bastardised' atari from letting it's name be prostituted by a smallish hardware company for it's product range (so long as it was competitive against any current/future gaming tech)...i.e imagine an xbox 360 with an atari banner on it or a ds knockoff again with an atari motif on it....quite possible, after all, tramiel did it and probably saved atari a ton of money

as developed by Atari Corp but really was started/done under the Tramiel Technologies but really since The Tramiels bought Atari and put staff on board I would say those are Atari computers. I checked this site http://www.dataairlines.net/tech/a-brief-history-of-the-atari-st/

Edited February 11, 2011 by Pilsner73

[SpaceDice2010]

All the issues that you raised were addressed by the marketplace over 20 years ago. How many ST's are sold each year now?

[Lynxpro]

Just to point out, the Amiga (formerly made by commodore) only ceased to be a hardware platform a few years into gateway buying them out

 

 

And its been downhill ever since. The guy that owns [the name] Amiga Inc. makes Al Davis [Oakland Raiders] look like a competent businessman. Actually, Sam Tramiel is probably one thousand times smarter than that guy.

 

 

And unless i am missing something, arent the present commodore company making hardware (including amiga badged hardware)

 

 

You mean that lame "Commodore USA" company run out of a furniture store with the vaporware website threatening to rebadge a bunch of low-tier [junk] computer equipment from China with the Commodore and Amiga brands?

 

Selling a rebadged "Amiga" computer would lack the AmigaOS to go along with it since Amiga Inc. is barred from selling it since Hyperion Entertainment owns all the AmigaOS IP past 3.x.

[SpaceDice2010]

At least the Amiga OS has been updated since Commodore's demise. Damn good OS to. Was the first OS to have pre-emptive multitasking as well as other features. If I am not mistaken Hyperion had partnered with another company to make a PPC computer running Amiga OS about a year ago. Not sure what the status of that is. Guess it's been a while since I have been on the Amiga boards. The main point is that the Amiga OS has evolved into a modern OS that is actually feasible for a company to manufacture a computer around.

[kool kitty89]

As I've said before people's perceptions are all different but because a person wasn't party to something happening it doesn't mean it didn't happen. There is nothing wrong with someone associating the Atari brand only with the 2600, or with Pac-Man, but if that person was the say that all Atari did was develop the 2600 then that would be inaccurate.

 

I'm not going to trawl through the internet for you. All you have to do is look through some old (US) magazines to see what was designed, written and developed for the Atari ST - in many cases by US companies.

Yes, but it's in Europe where the ST was really and truly a massive success from business to home computing and gaming. (in fact, for a time, Atari Corp was diverting stock to Europe at the expense of US shortages iirc: a bold move, but a smart one since the US market was more niche vs the EU market where they really had respectable mass market business -a shame they didn't push that with the Jaguar)

 

Even in the early 1980's people were using Atari computers for business - going "online" and retrieving stock information from the Dow Jones, running databases, doing mailing lists, accounting etc - there was even a US newspaper that relied heavily on Atari 8-bit computers.

Yep, and if Atari Inc had been more aggressive marketing it, not only would Atari have been better known as a computer company (or rather the broad, multidivision company they truly were and NOT just a game company), but they'd also have had far greater success in market saturation with the A8 line. (of course, they needed to cater to the US and EU/UK markets separately)

 

 

 

One thing I have heard many times over is for a lot of companies an established name and brand is easier and cheaper to market for than a new one.

 

Yes in some ways Atari might of benefited making another brand name and marketing computers under that but it would of required a considerable investment to not only market this new brand but also set up supply chains, dealers, and various other things that go with a new brand/label. Actually me memory is a bit hazy but didn't Atari Corp try that with their line of PC clones? Would it of worked, maybe but Atari had enough trouble marketing under an established brand name.

 

You ever wonder why car companies keep bringing back car names/model lines from the past? They already have those names trademarked and a lot of times have name recongition with consumers.

Yes, and Atari WAS already a computer company, it just hadn't marketed that side of things well enough under Atari Inc to have it definitively ingrained in the public. (one of Warner's shortcomings)

 

And Atari DID have a few million computer users out there by '85 and enough people who at least knew of the computers to build a usable market onto. (though not nearly as strong as it should have been: Atari should have had a reputation ahead of Apple and Tandy at that point, though probably not IBM -maybe above Commodore as well, though it would also have depended how CBM responded to Atari's competition -CBM also made the mistake in losing their early niche in education, scientific, and business computing from the PET line: they should have held onto that while going forward with the lower to mid range consumer market -the C64 was initially a higher end consumer model at launch, granted, and much more so in Europe where it was considered a true high end personal computer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is non sequitur. The PCjr was a castrated PC, and the C64 could kick the crap out of it for $200. The ST could kick the crap out of a full-blown PC, at a fraction of the price. It also bested the Mac of the time, in almost every quantifiable measure, at a fraction of the price. It was referred to as "Color Mac for 1/3 the price." As has well-been revealed, it was also capable of running both PC and MAC software with add-ons.

The PCJr could have been a very good product from IBM, but they screwed it up in so many ways... Tandy did it right, though they limited themselves with Radioshack distribution only. (had IBM had the Tandy 1000's minimum standards with the PCJr -128k minimum, 1 floppy drive minimum, full ISA motherboard and internal expansion, normal peripheral ports -aside from the tandy joysticks, and a DOS GUI -albeit rudimentary- on top of all that, the PCJr could have been a much different machine -more expensive in the minimal form factor, but also a much better value and probably 1/2 the price of the Mac in '84, probably even less compared to 128k Mac models vs the lower-end 64k units)

A successful PCJr would have bolstered the Tandy 1000 as well (and pushed for other clones of the standard).

But I'm just repeating what I said above.

 

IBM failed to offer a definitive wide range of PCs in that sense (low end consumer up to mid range to high end to high end professional to workstation), though as I also mentioned, others made the same mistakes. (ST and Amiga both did that, Apple failed to make low-end Apple IIs -even though they could have undercut CBM with their simple and cheap hardware even without vertical integration, Apple failed again with the Mac -more or less, Atari came close with the A8 but fell short in hardware and more so in marketing, Atari Corp didn't offer higher end ST models or desktop form factor models until later, CBM shifted its market position in odd ways from the PET to VIC to C64 to 128 to Amiga, etc, etc)

 

....and I am actually pretty used to the XE/ST keyboards. So what? What's your point? You think XE/ST keyboards totally suck, and I think your new Mac keyboard totally sucks. You've made it plain you don't like the ST keyboard, and not everybody is going to agree with you, to that magnitude. Who cares?

And I'm pretty sure I can get used to the Atari 400's keyboard, but that doesn't mean it's not pretty crappy to use as well. (looks cool though, and it obviously had a purpose for cost saving -a shame they didn't make the keys domed at least though, like some other membrane buttons -intellivision keypad and such)

 

Who cares what percentage of Fortune 1000 companies used them? In the U.S., probably nearly non-existent. What's your point? This is a separate issue from what makes a horrible computer.

If that was the case, PC would be the best computers ever made, bar none. (unless you look to Japan or Europe, then the ST, Amiga, and NEC's 8 and 16-bit computers were the best ever at the time -albeit NEC's Z80 and X86 machines were pretty PC-like in some respects)

 

Cheap is a relative term. Relative to the ST, the Mac was NOT cheap. Relative to the Amiga, the Mac was NOT cheap. It was probably wise for you to get a Mac, since it met your needs so well, and since you could easily afford it. However, this is a far cry from (for a reasonable person) relegating competing machines as "horrible."

The Mac wasn't cheap compared to any direct competition, not even lower-end PC clones. And none of those machines were cheap, only 8-bits were cheap at the time, and even then "cheap" is relative. (the ZX Spectrum in 1983 wasn't even cheap, relatively speaking, unless you compared it to the top end 8-bits and 16-bit machines but it was relatively cheap for a 48k home computer at the time -or even in '82- but not cheap in general terms)

 

If you wanted an affordable computer in the mid 80s, you got an 8-bit machine, even in the US. If you had a bit more money to spend on it (ie approaching $1000 at the time), you could push into the lower cost 16-bit machines along with the necessary accessories. (at the time, the Apple II or even TRS-80 were still viable platforms -the TRS-80 Model 2 still had some relatively decent performance in the business role as well at that point, and some decent expandability on top of that)

In Europe, that trend would persist into the late 80s, but by that time in the US, anything save the low-end home market had switched to 16-bit (and 32-bit) PCs and a couple other computers. (Amiga was there, but a bit niche, and the ST was even more niche by that point iirc -in Europe, Amiga was just starting to finally compete on the level of the ST towards the end of the 80s -1988 was the start of that)

 

The Mac survived on Apple II's profits and the fact that it made a mark in the design field and the higher education field as well. Something that hasn't been mentioned about the Mac display is that the pixels were square on the screen which was a blessing for designers.

 

I used a Mac Plus (I think it was) on the school newspaper, in high school. Yeah, it was really good for that, along with the Laserwriter I. I distinctly remember standing next to a pallet of Laserwriters at the computer store in 1985 with a price tag of $9995, and I don't remember what the Mac was, but it was not cheap, either.

A properly adjusted ST with mono monitor should have had square pixels as well (with a bit of a vertical boarder) and significantly higher resolution: hell, even on normal PAL TVs, you'd have nearly perfect square pixels in 320x200 mode. (that's oen thing the Amiga couldn't do early on, only interlace if you wanted more than 200-256 lines -the latter only in the flickerier 50 Hz PAL resolutions)

 

Undoubtedly it affected Mac sales in a fairly small way. Doesn't mean it was horrible.

It probably had a much bigger impact on Amiga sales. The Mac sort of had its own niche that was not goign to be too heavily impacted by competition (though also fundamentally limited the market saturation of the machine), and at the prices they were asking, it wasn't going anywhere in Europe either. (the ST and Amiga closed the gap on that one for sure)

 

Apple made the same mistake with the Mac as the Apple II: they had a pretty simple, low cost piece of hardware on their hands (or at least potentially low-cost with added integration -the Apple II got that with the IIe chipset), but they never pushed for a low-end range that could have dominated the market. (Atari Corp made the mistake of not pushing for a higher end desktop form factor early on)

The Mac should have been able to undercut the ST's price point just as the Apple II could have undercut the C64 (probably close to the CoCo's price point if not cheaper).

They could have covered the low-end market up into the hing end market with a variety of form factors beyond the compact desktop models. (a consolidated single board design in a pizza box for factor would have been nice)

Let alone offering models with general expansion, built-in parallel hard drives, etc, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ST was color and the Mac was B&W. The ST had a monochrome monitor with higher res than the Mac. The ST was faster than the Mac. The ST had better sound than the Mac. The ST had MIDI built in. The ST was also about half the price as the Mac. If you used a Mac emulator on the ST, it ran faster than a regular Mac. The STacy was the best "Mac" laptop on the market when it debuted.

I think you could argue the single 8-bit DMA sound channel was better than the ST's PSG, but there's a lot of trade-offs. (you could do software MOD and sample playback with much less overhead -DMA loading but still software mixing and scaling- but you wouldn't have the option of pure PSG use with negligible CPU overhead -you could stream PCM with next to no overhead, or loop fixed pitch samples, but that's pretty limited especially since you've got to use CPU resource to drive all graphics operations aside from spitting the bitmap framebuffer out to the screen)

Interestign that the MAC actually had 2 channel stereo DMA from day 1, but one of the DMA sound channels was sacrificed to drive the square wave for the drive motor. (probably should have chucked in a YM2149/AY and made use of the parallel ports as well -or an AY8912 if you only needed 8 I/O lines, or the sound only AY8913 -all AYs have 3 separate sound channel output lines too, so you could have one driving the floppy with 2 others wired to the sound output, wired to stereo if you wanted )

 

And then Windows 3.0 and 3.1 rolled along, pretty much rendering the ST and Amigas totally obsolete.

 

Have you ever used an ST before? Windows didn't eclipse TOS 1.0 in functionality and ease until Windows 95, 10 years after the ST debuted.

OS/2 would be a better example, or GEM on PC for that matter.

 

No, what I was saying is that Atari and Commodore could've came to an agreement in 87 when they settled their lawsuits against each other. They could've opted to design a new platform that took the strengths of the ST and the Amiga and made it a common platform for both of them to ship products from. That isn't collusion any more than Philips and Sony "colluding" on Compact Disc and DVD.

Yes, but I still don't see either company pushing for that, and in any cases there's much bigger problems independent of those that meant for other missed opportunities:

Commodore's generally weaker management and marketing after Jack left, both companies failing to push for a licensed standard with their hardware, and both failing to push more into the PC clone market in the US when they had the chance. (CBM had the vertical integration to do so, but their PC designs were actually weaker in general -and poorer values as far as I can see- than Atari's PC-1 and later PC-3/4/5/ABC, of course at some point CBM's vertical integration would be moot and they'd have to opt for off the shelf hardware as well -or a mix of things, like in-house video and sound cards plugged into a generic motherboard and generic case with CBM branding -Atari had a rather nice ASIC in '87 that supported CGA+MDA+Hercules+EGA and a unified monitor port that worked with all of those monitors -rather like ATi's EGA Wonder cards, and it may not have been a bad idea to keep that ASIC but switch to it being on an ISA card along with the generic motherboards of the later machines -maybe even sell the standalone card, assuming they hadn't licensed it from ATi or such with specific limits on use)

 

As for Sam's management, I'd say Irving Gould was correct in preventing Tramiel nepotism to be practiced at Commodore.

Both Commodore and Atari Corp declined after Tramiel left though. Whether or not CBM would have definitively doen better is a broader argument, but it's really hard to see him making many of the mistakes Sam did. (and CBM definitely needed better management regardless of if that was needed from the likes of Jack or someone else)

 

Atari and Amiga both probably should've went with the 68010 from the start so both platforms would've been 32-bit from the start...

WTF? The 68010 wasn't a very good value and wasn't nearly as widely licensed as the 68000, the same problem with all of motorola's later 68k arch chips as well. (a shame no 3rd party vendors opted to extend the architecture separately unlicensed like NEC, Cyrix, or -to some extent- IBM and AMD with x86 -even faster rated 68ks would have been great -ie 25-32 MHz and beyond, let alone full expansions of the architecture)

The 68010 was no more 32-bit than the 68000, it just made a small change to the ISA that made it a little closet to the 020, but still had the conflict of the 24-bit address bus that some programs wouldn't like. (both issues could be patched pretty easily, so it wasn't a major issue -and was only an issue to begin with due to sloppier programmers, just as other compatibility issues formed with due to developers not complying with the official development docs)

 

Hell, simply pushing for 68020 models early on would have given devs a wakeup call to make sure things stayed compatible. (and offerign 16 MHz models eraly on would also mean less timing sensitive software that would run too fast)

 

The biggest blunder with the ST was shipping the SF354 drive. They should've only shipped the SF314 so all STs would've had 720k disk capacity. Splitting ownership between two different disk sizes meant the majority of the software shipped on the 360k disks. The Amiga platform didn't have that problem; they all did 880k with their "unique" disk format.

Not if it made it more expensive . . . this came up in my 5.25" floppy thread a while back.

 

However, they should have added it as an option from day 1 and had it standard on all higher end models -ie the desk tops they should have had from day 1 as well. (maybe even all STF models too -or at least have them clearly marked to avoid confusion of whether you had a SS or DS drive)

 

The Mega ST and the STe line should've shipped with the 68020.

They would have been too expensive . . . having 020 models is great, but should have been retained alongside the 68k versions. (and definitely push for 16 MHz 68k versions across the board ASAP -and discontinue the 8 MHz models) Adding a fast RAM bus like the A2000 and 500 did would be pretty significant as well. (allow 16 MHz 68ks and 020s with 0 wait states)

Let alone faster 68000 models . . . if they were available. (I wonder if they could have had any influence on pushing their vendors to provide higher speed grades -especially since it would mean more business with those vendors vs motorola's exclusive 32-bit models, same for Amiga) Hell, with commodity 120 ns FMP DRAM of the late 80s (what the lynx used) on a separate bus, you should be able to have a 25 MHz 68000 with zero wait states (so long as there's a latch to allow memory to take advantage of the 68k's slower bus accesses -doesn't need data on the bus until the end of the 3rd cycle of a memory request iirc), or 100 ns RAM for 30 MHz, 80 ns for 37.5 MHz (or 40 MHz with some wait states), etc, etc. (even with wait states you still accelerate some internal operations of the CPU, so also significant for machines with slower RAM -hence why even an ST stuck with interleaved DMA could have a boost from an overclock)

Sure, higher speed grades would be more expensive, but should have been far cheaper than the full 32-bit options. (and the performance of the 32 bit versions was often less than 2x clock for clock, though that depended on use of the cache wait states, etc, etc)

 

There were 3rd parties regrading CPUs close to the 30 MHz range, but that's not the same as a mass market vendor doing such. (granted, Atari could do some tests to see if a very high percentage of new 16/16.7 MHz rated CMOS models were stable at much higher speeds and take a bit of a hit on the occasional unstable example -or shift that down to a lower-end machine depending on whether they re-graded the CPUs themselves or assumed they'd be mainly OK)

Hell a 26.6 MHz 68000 would have been really significant in the Jaguar. (let alone a 39.9 MHz one -which would still have close to zero wait states in fast page mode, though 26.6 would make more sense to the regrading option with normal 16 MHz models)

 

Plenty of other areas to upgrade too. (scrolling for all shifters prior to the blitter's release -which would be limtied to higher end models initially-, DMA sound plus YM2203, more bitplanes and extended addressing of the SHIFTER, perhaps dual playfield modes with separate scroll planes, etc, etc) Hell, take the STe, swap in a YM2203 and 16 MHz 68k (with optional fastRAM), and dual 4-bit playfields would have been enough to offer some significant advantages over the A500 of the time. (alongside higher end models being pushed)

One of the issues with the TT030 was lack of lower end models... they should have had 16 and 24/25 MHz 020/EC020 models as well as 16 MHz 68000 models. (all with blitters, especially 16 MHz MEGA STE type blitters -let alone faster 68k models if they could get a source for those)

 

 

And I do wonder how much games would've been better had Atari - or Amiga - had shipped with the 68881/2 math coprocessors standard. After all, PC platform gaming did leap once Intel harmonized their math coprocessors with the CPU directly with the 486DX.

That didn't happen until 1995 and only mattered for 3D games... and only for a handful of cases (like Quake) early on since A. a big chunk of the market had 386s and 486SX machines, and B. many cases favored faster games on pure fixed point math. (floating point performance would have to beat integer performance considerably to favor that -albeit some cases like quad renderers made that more extreme, btu triangles are not nearly as troublesome with fixed point math)

 

In that sense though, a fast (relatively low cost) fixed point DSP would be far more significant than a FPU coprocessor. Not just for 3D stuff, but also scaling, rotation, and general blitting operations as well. (though dedicated hardware would be faster still, a DSP would be much faster than a CPU of similar cost -and very nice coupled with a blitter on top of that)

That's one nice thing about the falcon that didn't get exploited very much. The 56000 should have been very capable at accelerating 3D as well as 2D scaling, ray-casting height maps, etc, etc. (many of which have no use for an FPU, and n many cases also weren't accelerated by common 3D accelerators either -the Jaguar's GPU is a DSP/CPU hybrid of sorts that's more like modern GPUs in some respects -along with the OPL and Blitter logic- and was thus very flexible, like a DSP that was programmable more like a CPU)

A lower end Motorla or TI DSP (or related graphics oriented coprocessor) might have been nice earlier on, let alone some possible cheaper offerings from overseas.

 

A custom version of Doom using the DSP of the Falcon would probably be pretty competitive with mid-range PCs of the time.

 

I felt the same way. I hated Macs until Mac OS X. And to think Mac OS X is Apple's goodness layered atop BSD just as Atari's ATG was probably aiming for via BSD+Snowcap all those years ago...

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in seeing the full details that Curt and Marty have on that. (a real shame Warner threw it away with the mess they created with the split: Tramiel might have been able to salvage the situation better than he did, but they seem to have done pretty well given the circumstances -could have been far worse for sure; it still doesn't change the fact that Warner should have been much more prudent about the organization of a real transition with the split -they shot themselves in the foot, let alone TTL/Atari Corp, with that move)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know, maybe in the UK Atari was known as a computer company. But, I would place a hefty bet that if you asked a random sample of 1000 people what they associated Atari with it would be video games, at least in the US.

Atari was much better known as a computer comapny than a game company in Europe. Their arcade and (especially) console stuff hadn't been nearly as popular and they failed to market the A8 very well in the Warner years, so Atari wasn't even that well known at all until Atari Corp pushed in. (the surge of price cut 800XLs was the first stage of that followed by the ST and XE -but it was too late for the A8 to really compete with the Spectrum and C64 -and to lesser extent Amstrad)

 

Sure, they were known for video games, but it hadn't been massive like in the US. (hence why Europe wasn't much help in supporting Atari Inc after the NA crash in '83: consoles weren't huge sellers in Europe and Atari had failed to market their 8-bits properly)

Edited February 11, 2011 by kool kitty89

[carmel_andrews]

Ultimately the only system(s) that was truly 'Atari' from the tramiel period was the XE and the rejigged vcs, everything else was bought in

 

It depends on what you consider to be the "true" Atari. The XE was developed by TTL/Atari Corp. and the 2600jr (2100) by Atari Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nope only the case and the keyboard was a TTL design, everything else was based of the XL-F apparently (or if you want to get real technical the 4/800, as thats where the atari 8bit hardware originated)

 

Also tramiel didn't design the 2600jnr, it was already ready for release in 1983 according to wikipedia

 

Atari 2600 Jr.

The Atari 2600 in its 1984 cost-reduced version, also known as the "2600 Jr."

 

In 1985, a new version of the 2600 was released (although it was planned for release two years earlier). The new redesigned version of the 2600, unofficially referred to as the 2600 Jr., featured a smaller cost-reduced form factor with a modernized Atari 7800-like appearance. The redesigned 2600 was advertised as a budget gaming system (under $50) that had the ability to run a large collection of classic games. With its introduction came a resurgence in software development both from Atari Corp. and from a few third parties (notably, Activision, Absolute Entertainment, Froggo, Epyx, and Exus). The Atari 2600 continued to sell in the USA and Europe until 1991, and in Asia until the early 1990s. Its final Atari-licensed release was KLAX in 1990. Over its lifetime, an estimated 40 million units were shipped, and its video game library reportedly numbers more than 900 titles with commercial games released for this system all the way until 1991. In Brazil, the console became extremely popular in the mid-1980s. The Atari 2600 was officially retired by Atari Corp. on January 1, 1992,[citation needed] making it the longest-lived home video game console (14 years, 2 months) in Video game history.

 

 

 

As for svenski, i suggest you look at commodore's website, there it has some mention that commodore and Amiga inc have some cross licensing agreement going

[kool kitty89]

 

No, Atari needed to boost their image in the computer market: that was a huge mistake on Warner's part. The very fact that Atari wasn't known as a computer company almost as much as a game company by 1984 is a testament of their faults in managing the excellent 8-bit computer line.

 

Why did Atari need to boost their image in the computer market? Wasn't the goal to sell computers? Changing your brand from a games company to a computer company costs money, something that Atari at the time did not have. If Nintendo decided to enter the US computer market today do you really think they would use the name Nintendo? I can see the press release now...

Atari needed to boost their image back in 1980 onward, they missed out on so much in the US and Europe/UK with the 8-bit line, but that's just one among many problems in the Warner years.

 

They should have been pushing for a balanced computer and games market from then on out and also pushed for a range of computers from the low-end consumer machine up to high-end business. (as it was they had machines that kicked the ass of everything on the market aside from the TRS-80 model 2 in the high-end business role and the Apple II's expandability -and existing software of the Apple, PET, and TRS-80 model 1)

Removing the Apple-II style expansion from the 800 was a bad idea though. (not even PBI type expansion)

The 800 also probably should have been a pure computer that did away with the expensive and bulky RF shielding (monitor only, FCC class A) and multi-board design in favor of somethign closer to the Apple II with a much more consolidated main board, lower price than the 800, let alone Apple II. (and included apple II expansion ports plus a mid-range model with single port for an external expansion module option and finally the low-end 400 -and a revised series for Europe dropping shielding on all models and modified form factors -and greater emphasis on casettes among other things like 3rd party and homebrew development)

 

But marketing was the bigger issue all around for the A8 line in the US and even Europe.

 

 

The ST got most of that right except for lack of higher end models from the start, lack of built-in expansion support from the start, and marketing. (which was limited by funding, though also much better in Europe -but also much easier to manage due to the smaller nature and much denser population in European countries)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately the only system(s) that was truly 'Atari' from the tramiel period was the XE and the rejigged vcs, everything else was bought in

 

It depends on what you consider to be the "true" Atari. The XE was developed by TTL/Atari Corp. and the 2600jr (2100) by Atari Inc.

 

Nope only the case and the keyboard was a TTL design, everything else was based of the XL-F apparently (or if you want to get real technical the 4/800, as thats where the atari 8bit hardware originated)

So they outsourced the PCB design of the XE computers?

 

Also tramiel didn't design the 2600jnr, it was already ready for release in 1983 according to wikipedia

AFIK it was in development in '83, but not yet ready for release. (unless it was one of the things halted by Morgan) It was planned for release in fall of '84 along with the 7800 and Amiga based console. (and 1090XL among other things)

 

The JAN ASIC (VCS on a chip) was also prototyped by '83, but didn't go into full production until well after the release of the 2600 Jr. (probably due to back stock of TIA if not 6532s and 6507s as well -and/or problems with producing the ASIC, either of those situations may also have been the case for why CGIA was never used -ie may have been too many ANTIC+GTIA chips left over or they may have had production problems with CGIA after the split)

Edited February 11, 2011 by kool kitty89

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

 

As for svenski, i suggest you look at commodore's website, there it has some mention that commodore and Amiga inc have some cross licensing agreement going

 

Only for the name Amiga. I believe that Commodore is going to use Aros for Amiga emulation. The Amiga fanboys are not impressed by Commodore at all.

[SpaceDice2010]

A properly adjusted ST with mono monitor should have had square pixels as well (with a bit of a vertical boarder) and significantly higher resolution: hell, even on normal PAL TVs, you'd have nearly perfect square pixels in 320x200 mode. (that's oen thing the Amiga couldn't do early on, only interlace if you wanted more than 200-256 lines -the latter only in the flickerier 50 Hz PAL resolutions)

 

 

Can you explain how?

[+wood_jl]

All the issues that you raised were addressed by the marketplace over 20 years ago. How many ST's are sold each year now?

 

The issue I was raising was your feeble attempt to qualify your opinion of the ST as a "horrible" computer, in stark contrast with (amongst other things, perhaps) what a reasonable person would use to qualify any computer as horrible: overpriced, underpowered, unreliable. All those issues were raised yesterday. What the marketplace was doing 20 years ago doesn't have jacks*it to do with this point, but somehow you keep bringing it up, rather than counter the points that were made to yours.

 

As for "How many STs are sold each year now," I'll leave that to your Ivy League brilliance to sort that out. What's your first guess? Furthermore, what does that have to do with anything?

Edited February 12, 2011 by wood_jl

[kool kitty89]

A properly adjusted ST with mono monitor should have had square pixels as well (with a bit of a vertical boarder) and significantly higher resolution: hell, even on normal PAL TVs, you'd have nearly perfect square pixels in 320x200 mode. (that's oen thing the Amiga couldn't do early on, only interlace if you wanted more than 200-256 lines -the latter only in the flickerier 50 Hz PAL resolutions)

 

 

Can you explain how?

??? An 8 MHz dot clock (320 wide mode) is very close to what PAL (50 Hz vsync 15.6 kHz Hsync) needs for square pixels with standard calibration, they'll be a little bit tall normally, but barely. Amiga (and A8/C64/etc in 7.16 MHz dot mode) is the opposite, very slightly wide pixels in PAL. (ideal square pixels is ~7.5 MHz)

In NTSC, they're all way, way off from square without custom calibration: you'd need to ajust the V/H overscan to get the PAR (pixel aspect ratio) you want, and some monitors only did that internally (ie opening the case), others didn't.

With an SD (15 kHz) monitor at NTSC spec, you'll have tall pixels for the Amiga and ST (taller for ST), and also a considerable boarder on all sides (it should be a 320x200 window while the screen is actually showing 224 lines -or closer to 240 in some cases- and either ~382 pixels wide or ~342 pixels wide for Amiga with NTSC calibration)

CGA is identical to Amiga in that respect. (320 wide is 7.16 MHz, 640 is 14.3 MHz)

 

With custom calibration you could have square pixels, or a screen that is stretched exactly to the edge with almost 0 overscan. You can't get 720x200/400i on the Amiga withotu custom calibration since normal NTSC (or PAL) calibration would have much of those 720 pixels in overscan. (at 14.3 MHz, you'd have a max of ~684 pixels visible with normal calibration)

 

 

Some older TVs had external pots (on the back usually) to adjust the overscan (talking 60s and 70s TVs here, maybe early 80s), and many monitors do, most newer TVs offer it in the service menu. I'm not sure what the Amiga and ST had to offer on average, but I know some had the POTs internally. A lot of PC monitors had external knobs (and later digital menus) to adjust the overscan manually. (especially multi-sync monitors where it's a necessity)

 

 

You see a ton of ST and Amiga monitors calibrated way off from NTSC or PAL spec, more like manually adjusted PC monitors where you fill to the edge of the screen. (a normally calibrated monitor should have a pretty massive boarder on the ST or Amiga -like on a TV)

There's also a lot of Amiga software that assumes something roughly like 320x200 stretched to 320x240 (.83:1 PAR), which would obviously look very wrong for PAL users, rather like this image with square pixels: http://toastytech.com/guis/wb_10.gif

 

 

The high-res monitors are totally separate from the SD calibration though, but in any case, this random example seems pretty close to square:

http://www.jeffn.com/vintage/sm124.jpg

 

That's also how modern VGA monitors will display it by default:

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 320526274539 (albeit in this case, it has the boarder all at the bottom)

 

Hmm, actually, if this is anything to go by, average ST calbibration is closer to square than the Mac monitor.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/tg/geosteve_99/ST-Mac.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in the end, it's really up to the monitor you've got and/or if you're willing to open it up if it doesn't have scan adjustment pots externally.

You could even have square pixels with 640x200 (amiga, ST, CGA, EGA, etc), but that would mean a pretty short display (huge letterboxing), something like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Arachne_CGA_Mode.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hell, the Apple II and IIGS could easily have square pixels if calibrated as such, at least in the 280x192/320x200 mode (in PAL, they'd be almost perfectly square as-is, like the A6/C64/Amiga in 320 wide res mode).

[+wood_jl]

At least the Amiga OS has been updated since Commodore's demise.

 

At least? What's the argument you're attempting with "at least?"

 

Damn good OS to

 

So you're using it, then? That's how you know that Amiga OS4 (or whatever they're up to now) is good? I thought you were using a Mac. If you're not using Amiga OS4, then how do you know it's so good?

 

Was the first OS to have pre-emptive multitasking as well as other features.

 

Yawn. Who doesn't know that? I'll use your own line "All the issues that you raised were addressed by the marketplace over 20 years ago."

 

If I am not mistaken Hyperion had partnered with another company to make a PPC computer running Amiga OS about a year ago. Not sure what the status of that is. Guess it's been a while since I have been on the Amiga boards. The main point is that the Amiga OS has evolved into a modern OS that is actually feasible for a company to manufacture a computer around.

 

So you have one, or you're getting one, or you're just arguing without warrant? How feasible is it for a company to manufacture a computer around? Is that the latest thing, then, we're all going to abandon our PCs and Macs and get PPC Amigas? Or is it just a fringe/novelty computer, kind of like the similarly novel Atari Coldfire Project? Yeah, novelty computers. The effect of either will be so negligible to the market, it's ridiculous to cite them in any meaningful argument. What is your point in bringing up the Amiga OS/PPC computer, unless you plan on ditching your Mac for one?

 

You're just grasping for straws in all directions, rather than address the well-placed criticism of your highly-opinionated charge that the ST was "horrible" simply because it wasn't what YOU had, rather than any quantifiable criticism, which you've amply demonstrated complete impotence in manufacturing. Chill pill taken. Now answer the questions.

[Rybags]

The ~ 7.2 Mhz pixel clock used by A8/Amiga gives as near to square pixels as you're likely to get in PAL.

 

An 8 MHz pixel clock ala ST/C64 gives tall pixels.

 

Including border, you get around 336 x 256 visible pixels on an A8 PAL display. Doing the maths, a 4:3 aspect ratio means you should have 1.333 times as many pixels H vs V. 336/256 gives 1.3125. Pretty close to 1.333~ but slightly "fat" pixels although you'd never really notice it.

 

The ST/64 has considerable border space left/right. Vertically it will be identical. So, for argument's sake say 376 x 256 (using the clock speed difference as basis of that estimate). 376/256 gives 1.46875, which means noticably tall pixels, easily noticed.