Why is the ST being completely ignored by Atari in the 50th anniversary celebrations?

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

So, from what I have been able to ascertain Tramiel bought Atari with the understanding that he would take over the complete portfolio, which would have included Amiga.  However, Commodore proceeded to swoop in while the buyout was underway and got Amiga off of Atari's hook, which was a bit of dirty pool.  This would explain the successful countersuit that Atari had against Commodore which resulted in Atari getting cash and delaying the launch of the Amiga (1000).

One thing still doesn't make sense.

 

If Atari gave the money to Amiga in the form of a loan rather than say an investment, and the conditions were "pay it back by Jun 30 or else",  and Amiga paid it back by Jun 30 and met the conditions, then on what basis would Atari be able to successfully sue Commodore over this?  Why wouldn't the judge just throw it out?

 

If Jack believed he would get the Amiga chips when negotiating with Atari, and suddenly that was off the table, then maybe he has a case against Warner for misrepresenting their portfolio or something, but it would seem that Commmodore and Amiga would be free to work out a deal

[Steril707]

Anyway happy we got both, since they are both amazing machines.

[Hwlngmad]

16 hours ago, zzip said:

One thing still doesn't make sense.

 

If Atari gave the money to Amiga in the form of a loan rather than say an investment, and the conditions were "pay it back by Jun 30 or else",  and Amiga paid it back by Jun 30 and met the conditions, then on what basis would Atari be able to successfully sue Commodore over this?  Why wouldn't the judge just throw it out?

 

If Jack believed he would get the Amiga chips when negotiating with Atari, and suddenly that was off the table, then maybe he has a case against Warner for misrepresenting their portfolio or something, but it would seem that Commmodore and Amiga would be free to work out a deal

So, here is some additional information I have found.  Basically Commodore, reeling from management turnover and the loss of so many key employees to Atari, were nonetheless interested and decided to just buy Amiga outright and return Atari / Jack Tramiel's money with interest.  However, Commodore went further and decided to sue not only Atari for stealing trade secrets but also four ex-employees, including the lead designer of the ST.  However, on August 13th, 1984 Atari countersued for $100 million for fraud saying Commodore's purchase of Amiga violated Atari's contract with Amiga and that the chips Miner's team designed were Atari's.  The next day, on August 14th, Commodore then announced the purchase of Amiga Corporation for $24 million.  Finally, after the purchase of Amiga, Commodore canned the 900 project which was their long gestating 16-bit computer project.

[Hwlngmad]

4 hours ago, Steril707 said:

Anyway happy we got both, since they are both amazing machines.

Indeed!  Both ST and Amiga were great and we were blessed to have both.

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Based on this thread I'm starting to envision the Amiga/Commodore/Tramiel negotiations playing out like one of those comedy movies like Mrs. Doubtfire or something

 

At Amiga HQ,  Jack Tramiel is in one conference room negotiating, and the Commodore execs are in another and the Amiga people are doing everything to prevent them from finding out about each other.   In the meantime, the Tramiel Sons are working for both sides, and using disguises when slipping between Jack's room and the Commodore room so the Amiga people don't suspect anything and so Jack doesn't figure out they still work for Commodore.     They use increasingly bizarre excuses every time they need to leave one conference room and go to the other.

 

And the reason Leonard found the check in the drawer was because he's the one who put it there in the first place

 

[Hwlngmad]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Based on this thread I'm starting to envision the Amiga/Commodore/Tramiel negotiations playing out like one of those comedy movies like Mrs. Doubtfire or something

 

At Amiga HQ,  Jack Tramiel is in one conference room negotiating, and the Commodore execs are in another and the Amiga people are doing everything to prevent them from finding out about each other.   In the meantime, the Tramiel Sons are working for both sides, and using disguises when slipping between Jack's room and the Commodore room so the Amiga people don't suspect anything and so Jack doesn't figure out they still work for Commodore.     They use increasingly bizarre excuses every time they need to leave one conference room and go to the other.

 

And the reason Leonard found the check in the drawer was because he's the one who put it there in the first place

 

Considering that everything that transpired in 1984 for Atari and Commodore, there is some comedic elements there for sure.

[MrMaddog]

On 1/18/2023 at 6:10 PM, Cyprian said:

 

Another interesting quote, which is aligned with https://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/tramel_technology.html:

"By late July, Tramiel fired nearly everyone involved in the 8-bit product lines to focus on the RBP. Commodore’s injunction slowed down RBP development. He needed leverage against Commodore. Jack's son Leonard Tramiel found the $500,000 cheque from Amiga along with the loan agrement and showed it to his father."

https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/crash-and-burn-the-amiga-st-story

 

 

What!?  I'm crying BS right there because Jack was also working on releasing the 8-bit line as the XE computer, with a case to match the ST computer.

 

Even though they were still clearing out warehouses full of 800XL computers and stuff, there was still a market for new 8-bit home computers.  Not only was the 130XE (128K) released but there were plans for a laptop version and one with the AMY sound chip, though they never came out for...reasons.

 

And since when did this thread got hijacked by Amiga fans?  I thought we're discussing why the ST wasn't well represented by Atari 50...well it was mentioned in the Timeline along with the TT, Falcon and PC clones but just no games available which were bland arcade ports anyway.

[Cyprian]

there were a lot of great plans, unfortunately lack of money...

 

regarding Amiga fans hijacking this thread, I'm pure Atari fan. C64, Amstrad,Amiga or Spectrum are quite nice piece hardware but they are out of my scope

[zzip]

On 1/20/2023 at 4:57 PM, MrMaddog said:

What!?  I'm crying BS right there because Jack was also working on releasing the 8-bit line as the XE computer, with a case to match the ST computer.

It's not mutually exclusive.  They may have put the computer in a new case and called it the XE, but most of the engineering work on the internals was done before the sale.   

 

At one point in the 80s when we asked why it was taking so long for the promised 8-bit peripherals to come out, we were told they had a single engineer who was working on all of them. 

 

So I do think it's very likely that the Tramiels fired most of the 8-bit staff and kept it bare-bones.

 

 

[MrMaddog]

7 hours ago, zzip said:

It's not mutually exclusive.  They may have put the computer in a new case and called it the XE, but most of the engineering work on the internals was done before the sale.   

 

At one point in the 80s when we asked why it was taking so long for the promised 8-bit peripherals to come out, we were told they had a single engineer who was working on all of them. 

 

So I do think it's very likely that the Tramiels fired most of the 8-bit staff and kept it bare-bones.

 

 

 

Ah, now I see...yeah there were layoffs of people who A.) couldn't do work for a new computer and B.) didn't want to work for Jack.

 

From what I've read there was a "Legacy" group that continued the already-worked-on 8-bit line as the XE but the lack of XE peripherals being released was suspicious; very slow compared to the ones released for the ST line up.  So why there was still an 8-bit market it would always be secondary to the newer & shinier 16-bit computers (see Apple).

 

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

From what I've read there was a "Legacy" group that continued the already-worked-on 8-bit line as the XE but the lack of XE peripherals being released was suspicious; very slow compared to the ones released for the ST line up.  So why there was still an 8-bit market it would always be secondary to the newer & shinier 16-bit computers (see Apple).

Yes no doubt there was a group kept around, though probably much smaller than the group that previously existed.

Like I said, I heard through my local user group that there was one engineer working on all the new 8-bit peripherals,  the XEP-80, XF551 and I forget what else, but that was why they were slow forthcoming

[mutterminder]

On 1/19/2023 at 6:31 AM, zzip said:

It does seem like it was Jay Miner's brainchild,  they left Atari in 82.   The article below says they got their initial investment from 3 unnamed dentists .    They were also raising money by selling peripherals for the 2600 like Joysticks and the "Joyboard" (my friend had one of these)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation

I have one of these, and for the longest time I didn't realize that this was the same Amiga corporation.