7800 On Fringe

[kool kitty89]

Accidentally edited this into a post in the wrong thread earlier: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/163658-7800-atari-corp-revival/page__st__200__p__2225079#entry2225079

 

Or IBM not using off the shelf parts for PC and partnering with DRI, or

 

 

Or IBM taking a 50% stake in Atari Inc. as Steve Ross was pressing them for...

Heh, there's your vertical integration.

 

Then again, they'd also be adding even more bureaucracy to the company. (I shudder to think what a wort case scenario would have been for Warner AND IBM management conflicts with Atari, especially given the mistakes/management issues IBM made on the consumer products side of things) You have examples like the PCJr, PS/2, OS/2, etc (many things having lots of potential but being screwed up in one way or another), in some cases taking longer to fail than others and still contributing to market standards. The PCJr was a pretty fast flop, but the Tandy 1000 is clearly more like what the PCJr should have been. ISA cards for normal PCs to add PCJr sound/video would also have been significant -possibly requiring a replacement BIOS for proper compatibility. (or developers having to cater to that with different software installation/configuration options)

 

It also probably would have made more sense if PCJr video had been directly EGA compatible for the CGA res modes, or if EGA had been directly derived from CGA using similar packed-pixel graphics and such and thus directly compatible with the PCJr's extended CGI by default. They also could have tacked PCJr video onto the EGA standard as CGA compatibility more or less was, but that's less cost effective for EGA. (then again, by the late 80s you had ASICs supporting CGA+EGA+Hercules anyway and the logic for TGA/PCJr video was directly built on CGA anyway -ATi's small Wonder series also included Plantronics Colorplus which was virtually identical in functionality to PCJr extended CGA) The lack of hardware scrolling with EGA was obviously a mistake as well, that and not allowing indexed 6-bit RGB in the lower res modes. (actually, with PCJr modes supported, they could have focused on those alone for catering to CGA monitors and put an emphasis on using the full 6-bit RGB for all EGA resolutions rather than catering to the CGA default palette for the 200 line modes)

 

The PS/2 line was just too proprietary and expensive at the wrong time. IBM tried to do what they could/should have put more emphasis on with the original PC at a time when they needed to be competing favorably on the terms of the clone market standards. (the PS/2s should have been more easily expandable using standard interfaces -including affordable 5.25" drives among other things- and on top of offering ISA slots -as the simplistic model 25 already did- they should have either made MCB cheap to license or pushed for something more like EISA and done the same license wise -EISA is reasonably close to MCB's performance, but keeps board clutter down and adds flexibility with any of those slots usable as 16-bit ISA slots as well)