Another missed opportunity by Atari?

[Hwlngmad]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I know it's been contentious here recently to say Jack wasn't interested in games.   But I think it's fair to say his main interest was in selling STs.   The legacy Atari products seemed to be seen mostly as a way to generate cash to keep the lights on while they built the ST business.

Totally correct and accurate.  Jack bought Atari to get back at Commodore.  Atari only switch backed to console's exclusively with the Jaguar as a 'Hail Mary' to stay alive as their computer business had the bottom come out underneath it.

[Lynxpro]

On 12/22/2020 at 7:58 AM, Hwlngmad said:

I do not know the particulars, but I know it had to do with a cross-licensing issue.

 

It was over second-source suppliers for 68000 chips since Motorola couldn't guarantee IBM enough chips versus Intel with the 8088. If IBM needed more 8088s, AMD could provide them and IBM also licensed the chips so they could built them in-house as well. However, that was not the primary goal since IBM was still under the antitrust investigation at the time. Second-source concerns were also another reason why IBM passed on suggestions to use Motorola's 6809 as well [and the 68008 too].

 

This thread is repeating a lot of information that has been cleared up in recent years.

 

MOS didn't make chips for others because Commodore didn't invest money in improving their chip production techniques as well as keeping up with the shrinking nanometers so the previous cost advantages that MOS had previously evaporated. MOS originally tried to get a second source license for the 8088/8086 and Intel turned them down. Fears of Jack Tramiel not continuing to invest in MOS was one of the reasons why Bill Mensch left the company right before Commodore's takeover and why he set up Western Design Center, the original fabless chip company. It was also one of the reasons why MOS' managers had asked Al Alcorn to plead with Manny Gerard at Warner to give the green light for Atari Inc to submit a rival offer to acquire MOS back in 1976.  And while MOS/CSG were great at designing chips and had a very fast turn-around for cranking out prototype chips for Commodore's engineers, their quality control left a lot to be desired as Commodore enthusiasts have noticed over the years when comparing 650x chips made by MOS/CSG versus the likes of the other licensees like Rockwell, Synertek, WDC, etc. Contrary to the press and what Commodore enthusiasts like to spin about Commodore owned MOS, Atari didn't buy many chips from MOS other than the initial 50,000 chips they bought from MOS in order to gain the 6502 license - along with the complementing chipset - back in 1976. Atari Inc had made it clear to MOS that they were going to work closely with Synertek which they already had a relationship and in comparison to MOS in terms of geographic proximity, Synertek was basically their next door neighbors and relatives at that.

 

The deal with Nintendo was between Atari Inc and Nintendo. It was a bad deal because as usual, Nintendo were a$$holes. Plus just about everyone at Atari Inc thought GGC's 7800 - err 3600 at the time - was more powerful. One of the few people at Atari who preferred the Famicom was Ed Logg. Of course, there were a lot of people at Atari unhappy with Warner selecting GCC to design a next gen console instead of going in-house. Jerry Jessop and Tod Frye were two of 'em. Both of them tried getting the Warner execs' interests because they said they could design systems more powerful than the 7800 with off-the-shelf parts already in use at Atari, such as a console that used 4 TIA chips to independently draw a quarter of a combined screen as well as basically a "Super 5200" that had all of the chips - with some other enhancements - with double their normal clock speeds.

 

Nolan Bushnell authorized the immediate creation of a successor to the VCS [2600] because tech had progressed and RAM had dramatically dropped in price between the time of the VCS' development and release. He wanted the VCS replaced for Christmas 1979. Manny Gerard disagreed and said he could still make it a success even after the abysmal Christmas 1978 sales. Ray Kassar was the one who decided to change the project to replace the VCS into a computer project to compete with Apple and to earn the profit margins that the Apple II had received. Not that that had upset Jay Miner any since he wanted to design computers. 

 

Jay Miner left Atari over impatience with Warner. He immediately wanted to build a 68000 based system. Warner said no. Now we can throw dirt at Warner over this but the Atari 8-bit computer line was just getting finished up at the time and here was Miner and others demanding to start working on a 68000 system when in truth, they should've been working on enhancements to the A8 line like making more powerful versions of the CGIA/GTIA, ANTIC, and POKEY chips. Not to mention creating their own ALU/FPU, a Blitter, 80-column graphics modes, and an MMU. And some of Atari's engineers were working with Synertek to design the "6510" - not to be confused with the MOS/CSG 6510 in the C64 - which was a 6502 with extended 16-bit instructions. That was also back in 1979 but apparently Synertek failed and the project was dropped. That project was probably also the reason why Atari didn't shift gears and adopt the Motorola 6809 at the time. Well, that and Motorola's painful second-source licensing issues which was still an issue back when Epyx was designing the Handy/Lynx nearly a decade later.

 

Jack Tramiel was never against "Atari" selling video games. His point of contention was that his Atari Corp shouldn't have had to pay GCC for the development of the 7800 because it should've been included with the purchase of Atari Inc's Consumer Division assets in the first place and Warner should pay the development costs instead. He also wanted to sell the 7800 for $59.99 for Christmas 1984. GCC refused which caused the delay of the 7800 being released until January 1986 which cost the 7800 at being first to be released of the next-gen consoles. GCC can say all they want but they were the greedy party that greatly contributed to the 7800 not being as huge as the NES. Their greed was the reason why the POKEY wasn't included standard with each 7800. They claimed they couldn't fit a POKEY on the same motherboard if Warner insisted that the 7800 fit inside what was essentially the Atari 2800/Sears Video Arcade II case so instead, they designed the cartridges to support sound chips. That was the consolation to Warner. And then they told Warner that they could design a cheaper yet more powerful soundchip than the POKEY that they would call GUMBY and that it could be included in all future 7800 cartridge releases. Warner bought that hook line and sinker while GCC thought about the profits they'd earn for every GUMBY that would be sold per cartridge. Of course, they never finished the GUMBY and it's unclear just how far they got with that project [if anything].

 

There was at least 1 IBM exec who was impressed with the Atari 800 in the 1979-1980 period who suggested that IBM should just contract with Atari to create their PC or remarket the Atari 800 as an IBM product with an IBM badge. The problems were that the Atari 800 didn't have 80-column graphics and they didn't want to use the 6502. They wanted a 16-bit CPU even if the version they ultimately selected - Intel's 8088 - was a gimped 8-bit version of the 16-bit 8086. Steve Ross, the Chairman and CEO of Warner, was also trying to convince IBM to purchase a 50% stake in Atari Inc at the time. He liked to reduce Warner's liabilities in subsidiaries while trying to 100% control the subsidiaries. Warner/Amex Cable - now the independent Time Warner Cable - was a prime example of that strategy.

 

Atari Inc did do R&D with early VR. Jaron Lanier was one of the Atari Inc staff who worked on that and later worked for NASA and others in VR and smart television tech. Atari Inc did R&D in just about every field one can imagine for the early 1980s.

 

As for Amiga, let us remember that Amiga defrauded Atari Inc and Warner, not Tramiel's later Atari Corp. Leonard Tramiel discovered the contract in the Atari Inc files after the acquisition and then Atari Corp counter-sued Commodore over it since Commodore had been suing Jack, Shiraz, and just about every other ex-Commodore employee who was working at Atari Corp at the time for allegedly stealing Commodore's IP and trade secrets. Commodore was trying to cripple the RBP/ST project so they had their own medicine returned to them two fold...

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Lynxpro