Alternate History: What Atari Could Have Done Differently?

[Ricky Spanish]

17 hours ago, reifsnyderb said:

1200XL and/or had a PBI with the 1200XL.

as I mentioned earlier, if only ATARI stuck with the sweet16 specs. Plus the had a few variants:

the 1200 16k RAM, & the 1200X 64K RAM.

[zzip]

18 hours ago, MaxZorin said:

I think Atari should have continued 8-bit series - the XE series should have had a fast 65816, new hi-res graphic modes, POKEY should have been more modern. Just enough...

Problem was the 65816 was late to the party, it showed up after everyone was already building these new 68000-based computers.  

 

17 hours ago, CommodoreDecker said:

I recall the 1400XL and 1450XLD and both looked sweet in the catalog, but those were shelved... would the intended voice synthesizer have saved the 1400 line? 

No, I'd say hardware voice synthesis was practically dead by 84 as developers started adding speech samples to games.  Even the low-sample rate speech samples sounded better than the "robot voice" of most speech synthesizers.

18 hours ago, MaxZorin said:

I believe all 16-bit computers were a mistake. I think the culprit was... Steve Jobs (even though I liked him), who believed that in the mid-80s you could just "reset" progress and make a computer "from scratch" (Macintosh '84), breaking backward compatibility (with Apple II). The same mistake was later repeated by Jack Tramiel when he made Atari ST and later by Commodore when they made Amiga. In the late 80s they realized they had made a mistake and tried to fix it (Apple IIGS, C65). But it was too late - their 16-bit computers did not sell that well.

 

If you break compatibility, you lose your user / fan base. Some of them waited out the time of 16-bit computers and later bought a 32-bit IBM-compatible.

The flip-side is if you produce enhanced models,  most developers will still code for the base model for the largest target audience, and most enhancements get underused.   That's why developers were still producing 48K Atari games on 810-compatible SS/SD disks well into the XE era.   STe similarly got ignored by many developers.    I guess you need a huge marketshare to overcome this,  So PC was able to,  and Mac.    On PC even well into the VGA era, you'd still see games offer CGA options to maximize sales

 

 

 

[Atari8guy]

I think recognition that they needed a significant upgrade in both consoles and computers every 3 years or so....would have helped a lot.  Backwards compatibility where possible, but at some point you have to junk that to drive your userbase forward. 

 

I've also long thought the ST was poorly marketed, you could easily work on the same spreadsheet at work and then at home with the Lotus/LDW packages.  I'm sure word processing would have been easy to do as well.  Take advantage of the fact your computer can read PC disks.  Then you've got a more multimedia machine at home for gaming, school but still able to cross-work with PC stuff at the office and you've got a winner.  My opinion only.  You probably still lose out to PCs in the mid 90's but you also sell a lot more units in the interim.  Maybe you become a PC manufacturer with scale and brand recognition something like Tandy did....

[zzip]

58 minutes ago, Atari8guy said:

I think recognition that they needed a significant upgrade in both consoles and computers every 3 years or so....would have helped a lot.  Backwards compatibility where possible, but at some point you have to junk that to drive your userbase forward. 

They did this in the beginning, that's why they started on the Colleen project as soon as the 2600 shipped.   But I think 3 years is too aggressive.  The average console generation is 5 years, and even the 2600 had its best years more than 3 years after release

1 hour ago, Atari8guy said:

I've also long thought the ST was poorly marketed, you could easily work on the same spreadsheet at work and then at home with the Lotus/LDW packages.  I'm sure word processing would have been easy to do as well.  Take advantage of the fact your computer can read PC disks.  Then you've got a more multimedia machine at home for gaming, school but still able to cross-work with PC stuff at the office and you've got a winner.  My opinion only.  You probably still lose out to PCs in the mid 90's but you also sell a lot more units in the interim.  Maybe you become a PC manufacturer with scale and brand recognition something like Tandy did....

True, especially when the ST started to get big-name apps like Wordperfect.    And there were PC-Ditto and other PC emulators that were a big deal in the ST world.    I was sharing files between ST and PC at college all the time, it was a no-brainer to me.    I think a hurdle might have been that  the average office worker was pretty non-technical and even somewhat technophobic.   Like it couldn't be just any brand of computer, it had to be the exact one you used at work or they'd feel lost.   And if you used MS-DOS at work,  GEM might be a non-starter.   But GEM is easier right?   Haha,  you'd be shocked!  I tried to help some people in the office who were used to MS-DOS transition to Windows and it was maddening!   They wanted to write out every step of the process on a notepad.   It is much easier to write out exact MS-DOS commands than mouse/GUI movements..   If one day the Windows popped up over here and the next day it popped up over there...  well their written notes didn't account for that and they were lost!   

 

Still the ST should have been able to capture some of this market segment,  especially ones looking for a bargain and wanted to game and had a little bit of technical knowledge.

[MaxZorin]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Problem was the 65816 was late to the party, it showed up after everyone was already building these new 68000-based computers.  

If Atari and Commodore had been more interested in developing newer versions of the 6502, such a processor would certainly have appeared earlier. It wouldn't necessarily have to be 65816.

Edited March 26 by MaxZorin

[Hawkeye68]

1 hour ago, Atari8guy said:

I've also long thought the ST was poorly marketed, you could easily work on the same spreadsheet at work and then at home with the Lotus/LDW packages.  I'm sure word processing would have been easy to do as well.  Take advantage of the fact your computer can read PC disks.  Then you've got a more multimedia machine at home for gaming, school but still able to cross-work with PC stuff at the office and you've got a winner.  My opinion only.  You probably still lose out to PCs in the mid 90's but you also sell a lot more units in the interim.  Maybe you become a PC manufacturer with scale and brand recognition something like Tandy did....

The ST had very few dealers outside of major cities.  For many people, mail order for something that costly was simply a non-starter in the 80s and early 90s.

[Atari8guy]

5 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

The ST had very few dealers outside of major cities.  For many people, mail order for something that costly was simply a non-starter in the 80s and early 90s.

True, but demand could have driven distribution chain.  Atari though, always had distribution issues...something else to be fixed in this Atariverse.

Edited March 26 by Atari8guy

[zzip]

Just now, Atari8guy said:

4 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

The ST had very few dealers outside of major cities.  For many people, mail order for something that costly was simply a non-starter in the 80s and early 90s.

True, but demand could have driven supply chain.  Atari though, always had supply chain issues...something else to be fixed in this Atariverse.

True but the other problem was the Tramiels kept burning bridges with retailers.    When the ST was released, you could find it in your local mall in the US.  I remember EB having them in stock and other places.   But a few years later you pretty much did have to mail-order it,  and the software for it.   There were few local dealers in my area

[_The Doctor__]

The Tramiels screwed over the retailers and the distribution network many times, not to mention the repair centers- because their dream was to do it all themselves. After Federated blew up, they had the nerve to ask the same people to outlay massive cash all over again to do what they already paid for and were doing before TramTari forced, bullied, and f*cked these folks out of business. No way your dropping 50K or more to go back into it with people who did that to you in the first place. They made war on the support, delivery, and repair streams of their product, then wanted what? Not a chance. While were at it, lets freeze and delay the release of key products and get rid of the engineers, programmers, and designers/architects. Yeah real smart, SMRT!

Edited March 26 by _The Doctor__

[oracle_jedi]

19 hours ago, CommodoreDecker said:

The 8-bits did need another hardware upgrade - either a better POKEY or improved graphics coprocessor.  I recall the 1400XL and 1450XLD and both looked sweet in the catalog, but those were shelved... would the intended voice synthesizer have saved the 1400 line? 

 

I ask myself the same question.  As much as I wanted a 1400XL or 1450XLD, had they come to market as planned, I expect the result would have been the Ford Edsel of home computing.  The lovechild of an Coleco Adam and a PCjr.

 

Imagine if you will.  Its January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas.  Jack Tramiel never left Commodore, Atari is still owned by Warner and James Morgan is still CEO.  After a brutal year, all eyes on are the show for what's going to save the two beleaguered micro manufacturers.

 

Amongst rumors of Commodore's upcoming 16-bit "ST" line, that will bring Macintosh power to a sub $1000 price point, Commodore is currently showing off their new C128.  With 128KB of RAM, an 80-column RGB display, a full ergonomic keyboard, massively improved Commodore BASIC 7, a claim of full C64 backward compatibility and the ability to run still-relevant (but admittedly rapidly declining) CP/M applications, the new machine creates a buzz with its ~$500 price point.  If you want to go online and explore the exciting new world of computer assisted communications, Commodore has a plug-in cartridge modem for ~$100 that also works on the existing C64. 

 

Meanwhile over at the Atari stand we have the all-new 1450XLD.  For ~$1000, Atari offers you a machine with 64K of RAM, a 40-column display, a built-in 300 baud modem (yawn), a speech synthesizer that sounds like a TI Speak and Spell from 1978, and an all-new disk drive the format of which is incompatible with the 810, the 815 and the 1050.  And should you decide to add the also new 1090XL expansion box, you will have a machine on your desk about the size of a small Honda.

 

 

[Atari8guy]

I like that most of us assumed what would have been done to be better...but the OP never actually specified in the title.  Your scenario is definitely a possibility.

Edited March 26 by Atari8guy

[pcrow]

On a more technical note, I wish Atari had considered the future more with software design.

 

In the OS, it would have been very easy to define a SIO return code for a read of 'M' meaning success, but more data available.  Then have a 'M' command that is a read to get the next data (which could also return a 'M' for even more).  This would have allowed the boot code to have worked with 256-byte sectors or even 512-byte sectors, simplifying the introduction of DD drives.  Considering that they were already looking at the 815 to be DD, this wouldn't have required looking very far forward.

[zzip]

29 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

I ask myself the same question.  As much as I wanted a 1400XL or 1450XLD, had they come to market as planned, I expect the result would have been the Ford Edsel of home computing.  The lovechild of an Coleco Adam and a PCjr.

 

Imagine if you will.  Its January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas.  Jack Tramiel never left Commodore, Atari is still owned by Warner and James Morgan is still CEO.  After a brutal year, all eyes on are the show for what's going to save the two beleaguered micro manufacturers.

 

30 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

 

Meanwhile over at the Atari stand we have the all-new 1450XLD.  For ~$1000, Atari offers you a machine with 64K of RAM, a 40-column display, a built-in 300 baud modem (yawn), a speech synthesizer that sounds like a TI Speak and Spell from 1978, and an all-new disk drive the format of which is incompatible with the 810, the 815 and the 1050.  And should you decide to add the also new 1090XL expansion box, you will have a machine on your desk about the size of a small Honda.

I don't think the situation was quite that bad.    Remember the 1400XL and 1450XLD were announced in 1983, not 1985.   2 years was a big difference in computing back the.

 

Sure 1400XL does seem kind of redundant,  the speech synthesizer and 300 baud modem alone won't upsell many people over an 800XL, unless the 1400XL has a much better build quality.

 

But I think the 1450XLD could have been a hit..   Some people would have wanted that all-in-one unit that you place a monitor on top of, and I think the drive was double-sided?   It would appeal to portion of the 8-bit userbase that saw Atari as a serious computing platform no doubt

 

And remember Atari had other things in development, if the company didn't change hands.   At that CES show they could maybe show off the 1600XL,  which was going to be an Atari8/PC hybrid that would have been at least as interesting as the C128 if not more so (PC > CP/M by then).   There was also the Atari 1850XLD Amiga system and Atari Sierra 16/32 bit computer that were in development that could bore fruit by then.

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

But I think the 1450XLD could have been a hit..   Some people would have wanted that all-in-one unit that you place a monitor on top of, and I think the drive was double-sided?   It would appeal to portion of the 8-bit userbase that saw Atari as a serious computing platform no doubt

That's a good point, and would have been even better if they had offered an Atari branded matching S-Video monitor for a perfect fit. And to take it a step farther, the 1450XLD could of had a stereo Pokey chip and that new monitor could have come with a built-in stereo amp and speakers. Not a giant leap to do this, since they already were experimenting with monitors around that time, and had been using dual Pokey chips in arcade machines. And the Gumby DIY upgrade had already set the addressing standard that is used to this day.

[oracle_jedi]

19 hours ago, zzip said:

But I think the 1450XLD could have been a hit..   Some people would have wanted that all-in-one unit that you place a monitor on top of, and I think the drive was double-sided?   It would appeal to portion of the 8-bit userbase that saw Atari as a serious computing platform no doubt

 

Exactly.   And even had Morgan not mothballed the project and it had been released in Spring 1984, that market might have seen Atari shift thousands of 1450XLDs.   But to be viable, they needed to shift tens of thousands and by Spring '84, more than a year after the introduction of the Apple IIe which had manufacturer supported 128K RAM/80-column mode/expansion slots, the only people who might contemplate a 64K/40-column system with a speech synthesizer, a slow modem and a weird disk drive as "serious computing platform" were die-hard Atari fans, most of whom are right here on this forum today.

 

I wanted a 1450XLD too.  But that doesn't change my conclusion that there wasn't a viable market for them.  Atari was right to kill it.

 

 

[oracle_jedi]

19 hours ago, zzip said:

And remember Atari had other things in development, if the company didn't change hands.   At that CES show they could maybe show off the 1600XL,  which was going to be an Atari8/PC hybrid that would have been at least as interesting as the C128 if not more so (PC > CP/M by then).   There was also the Atari 1850XLD Amiga system and Atari Sierra 16/32 bit computer that were in development that could bore fruit by then.

 

And that's a great example of what Atari might have done differently - to go back to the OP's original question.  "Focus."

 

In the example you've illustrated above, Atari might have rolled up to CES 1985 with the budget 2600, the now-available nationwide "Pro-System" 7800, a soon-to-be-released Amiga-based 16-bit game console, the Atari 600XL/800XL/1450XLD home computers, the 1600XL home-computer/IBM PC combo, and the Atari Sierra computer line.  Let's not leave out the also new Atari Holography game console and the AtariTel video phones.

 

They would have has more overlapping/competing/incompatible platforms than Compaq had after they acquired DEC and Tandon.  The portfolio would have been a muddled mess.   

 

Indeed Atari engineering was apparently so distracted by all the side shows, that the system they really did need to get out - the 7800 - had to be farmed out to a third-party.

 

Of course which of the above product initiatives they should have focused on is an interesting thought.  My heart says the Amiga chip set.  Since it is the spiritual descendent of the 400/800.  My pocket book tells me that Atari might have followed Tandy's model, releasing a series of PC compatible machines intended for home use, but with Atari audio/video extensions ala "Tandy Graphics".   I read somewhere that Tandy sold more 1000EX/HX machines in the U.S. in the back half of the 80s than Atari and Commodore sold STs and Amigas combined.  I don't know if that claim is true.  But Tandy sold a lot of computers.

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

The Tandy machines flew off the shelves, even Radio Shack locations were sometimes lucky to still have a floor display of the machines available to sell. That of course changed as people became less afraid to put in their own video and sound cards for other machines. Many graphics cards were a bit pricey and Tandy's solution bridged the gap. Their machines were very popular for a number of years as it was ready to go, looked and sounded great.

[zzip]

43 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

Exactly.   And even had Morgan not mothballed the project and it had been released in Spring 1984, that market might have seen Atari shift thousands of 1450XLDs.   But to be viable, they needed to shift tens of thousands and by Spring '84, more than a year after the introduction of the Apple IIe which had manufacturer supported 128K RAM/80-column mode/expansion slots, the only people who might contemplate a 64K/40-column system with a speech synthesizer, a slow modem and a weird disk drive as "serious computing platform" were die-hard Atari fans, most of whom are right here on this forum today.

 

I wanted a 1450XLD too.  But that doesn't change my conclusion that there wasn't a viable market for them.  Atari was right to kill it.

128K was unheard of in 1983, but Atari could have revamped it to have a 128K model.   The FREDDIE chip used for memory access in the 130XE was designed for the 1400XL and 1450XLD after all.   Atari had their thumb on the pulse of the computer market, so I'm sure under Warner  they would have had a a 128K model, maybe even sooner than the 130XE.

 

80 columns is another matter.   Perhaps under Warner they'd have come up with a better solution than the XEP80?   They had more 8-bit hardware engineers than Atari Corp had.

 

But the other implicit issue here,  is Atari computers were kind of at a crossroads at this point.     Should they serve the high-end like Apple II?   The Atari 800 started out that way.   Or should they serve the low-end like C64?   Or was it possible to target both?   If not then yeah the high-end models make no sense.    On the other hand, the price of floppy drive units would soon drop,  the cost of computers would continue to fall.   Maybe it would be possible to produce an all-in-one unit that didn't break the bank?  If not the 1450XLD maybe a cost-reduced model.    The market was heading that way anyway.   Computers built after 1985 generally had integrated floppies.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, oracle_jedi said:

And that's a great example of what Atari might have done differently - to go back to the OP's original question.  "Focus."

 

In the example you've illustrated above, Atari might have rolled up to CES 1985 with the budget 2600, the now-available nationwide "Pro-System" 7800, a soon-to-be-released Amiga-based 16-bit game console, the Atari 600XL/800XL/1450XLD home computers, the 1600XL home-computer/IBM PC combo, and the Atari Sierra computer line.  Let's not leave out the also new Atari Holography game console and the AtariTel video phones.

 

They would have has more overlapping/competing/incompatible platforms than Compaq had after they acquired DEC and Tandon.  The portfolio would have been a muddled mess.

I never said they should released all of that!   I was just listing the various things that we know were in development that could have been turned into products by 1985.   Some of it is redundant.  

 

And I do think Atari released too many consoles.     The 2600 should have had a single successor that lasted a good 4-5 years,  but instead Atari is talking to GCC about the 7800,  Nintendo about the NES,  early plans for an Amiga console by 1985.   Complete insanity!  

 

1 hour ago, oracle_jedi said:

Indeed Atari engineering was apparently so distracted by all the side shows, that the system they really did need to get out - the 7800 - had to be farmed out to a third-party.

 

They didn't farm out the 7800,   GCC created it without Atari's knowledge and brought it to Atari.   So it wasn't farmed out in the sense of being conceived and commissioned by Atari Marketing and given to a third party because their own R&D couldn't get it done.

Edited March 27 by zzip

[pcrow]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

128K was unheard of in 1983, but Atari could have revamped it to have a 128K model.   The FREDDIE chip used for memory access in the 130XE was designed for the 1400XL and 1450XLD after all.   Atari had their thumb on the pulse of the computer market, so I'm sure under Warner  they would have had a a 128K model, maybe even sooner than the 130XE.

I agree.  And if they had designed the 1400 for 128K, they always had the option of only populating 64K, preferably leaving sockets for easy home upgrades.  Several people in my users group had "quarter pounders" which were 800s with 256K.  That was awesome for copying disks, but I'm not sure what else it really did for them, but they did it anyway, and this was pre-XL, so those were expensive.

[Marius]

On 3/23/2024 at 7:54 PM, www.atarimania.com said:

Quite strange you should say such a thing. Considering the small market, I feel Atari Benelux did a pretty decent job. You had some software development and Aackosoft even took the trouble to import titles like Stealth or Ultima II so it probably wasn't that bad. Also, didn't the Dutch government choose the Atari for local schools at one point? 

It is my personal experience. Although The Netherlands is really small, even our country can be divided in zones where Atari was popular and zones where nobody had an atari. And of course I lived in a zone where nobody had an atari. I have never heard of Atari's in school. We had a C64 in our primary school. 

 

Most of the things that you mention by the way, are not the things I am referring to. The question was what Atari could have done differently. Aackosoft and the Dutch government aren't Atari, right?

 

In the Netherlands it seemed that everybody knew the 2600, but hardly anybody knew about the 8bit line. The ST was popular among musicians. In Germany The Atari 8bit was much more popular. Of course, there was an Atari 8bit scene in The Netherlands as well. I think of the Pokey Foundation, The Mega Magazine, the SAG (Stichting Atari Gebruikers -> The foundation of Atari Users), Atari Info (with Kees Beekhuis)... and there were also quite some Atari books released in Dutch language. It is all true. And now you mention it, I really wonder whether I am so wrong in my memories about this.

 

But from what I remember, there was not much marketing from Atari in my country. The only reason I had an Atari 800XL was because we actually did win one. If I hadn't won it, I would probably not even typing this message. That was for me where it all started, and for me my Atari 8bit computer was amazing... a life changing "tool" / "toy" ... whatever I should call it. 

I think, going back to the question from the topic starter... I still think that Atari could have done more in The Netherlands, especially in the marketing. But I am absolutely determined to dive into this matter. And I want to thank you for your reply, it really made me think. So to be continued!

Oh and we had of course the amazing High Tech Team, and Steve Zipp, and later a very active Atari 8bit BBS Network/Scene... and we had STACK BBS From Bo and Ernest Schreurs (who released the Pooldisk and Pooldisk Too)... and there was quite some activity around the Atari ST as well... so sure, The Netherlands was absolutely not an Atari-less country. That was also not what I meant with my initial reply. But... as written above... where I lived... it was nearly only C64, ZX Spectrum, MSX....

Edited March 27 by Marius

[Hawkeye68]

I've often wondered if there was any possible path for the 1978 Warner Atari to have survived to today.

 

Maybe their best option would been to stay out of home computers, and release the 8-bit chip set as a console for Christmas 1981.  And release high-margin software for home computers, but not for competing consoles.

 

I'm glad they didn't go this route, because my 400 and 800 were my favorite purchases ever.

[+slx]

Atari should have licensed BASIC XL and make it standard and/or sell a BASIC that allows P/M graphics without PEEK/POKE.

 

I also agree on the 180K floppies (plus they should have worked a bit to get a lower standard POKEY divisor).

 

I don’t think the 65816 would have made much of a difference. I can’t claim extensive programming experience on either but while it has some neat features it seems rather complicated compared to 68K assembler, especially if you need more memory.

 

While the ST wasn’t popular in the US it was much more so in Europe (where PCs were more expensive) and I don’t think the productivity software that became available would have happened without the possibility to program in C. But Atari could and should have had the Amiga as a successor to the 8-bits. 
 

A lot of things that seem obvious now were much less clear back then. Technical progress was faster yet it was much less clear/accepted than in the 90s that you’d need to buy a new computer/console every 2-3 years to stay at the leading edge. Parents would have balked at the idea to replace that rather expensive new “toy” for a better one after a year or two and general household use of computers was way into the future.

[pcrow]

4 hours ago, slx said:

Atari should have licensed BASIC XL and make it standard and/or sell a BASIC that allows P/M graphics without PEEK/POKE.

There are a lot of things Atari could have done to improve BASIC.  The problem is that they were happy at the start just to have something to sell, and saw no reason to throw money at it and pay for additional features or optimizations.  They could have probably gotten some of the particularly slow bits fixed before the ROMs had to be burned for sale, like the floating point slowness and the slow searching for line numbers for FOR/NEXT and GOTO/GOSUB, but there would have been a risk of a schedule slip or new bugs being introduced at the last minute, both of which would have been bad.  Once Atari committed to shipping, they didn't want to risk breaking compatibility.  While it would have been possible to put BASIC XL as an option in ROM and let users pick which to boot, that would have added to the cost, and being a bank-selecting cartridge, even more so.

 

Now if I were to time travel back, I would give them Altirra BASIC (and the associated fast floating point libraries), which I believe use the same code size,  is much faster, includes PMG commands, and includes my favorites, the DPEEK/DPOKE feature.

 

But Altrirra BASIC is still limited by the requirement for backwards compatibility.  In Atari BASIC, the operands $00-$11 are not used.  It would have made all sorts of sense for operands 00-09 to correspond to the constants zero through nine, so they would be one byte instead of seven, with 10 ($0A) saying the next byte is a one-byte constant, and 11 being for a two-byte constant.  Those changes would have saved a lot of memory in longer programs and avoided the need for hacks used in some programs like assigning frequent constants to variables to make references use two bytes instead of seven.  Integer variables would have been awesome, but probably not practical without a cartridge that consumed more memory (and cost more to produce).

 

Also, in retrospect, I think some commands were stupid, as CSAVE was just short for SAVE "C:" and LPRINT wasn't necessary.  That could have saved some bytes for the other improvements.

 

I didn't program the other 8-bits of the day much, so I can't really comment on what other BASIC flavors at the time offered that would have been nice, but in general, more speed would have been the critical thing to get better BASIC games from people who had good ideas but weren't able to do assembly code, which in the long run would have done the most to improve the platform from the BASIC side.

 

But, yeah, if not for the cost (licensing and hardware), it would have been awesome if the XL/XE computers had a better BASIC, and if Atari had put the same BASIC out as a cartridge at a nominal price for 400/800 owners.

[cathrynm]

On 3/23/2024 at 3:31 PM, phaeron said:

That leaves the C128-style hack approach of gluing a separate 80-column display output on the side, integrating poorly with the rest of the machine. Best approach would have been to build it into the machine, but the 1090 never made it and it wasn't in the 1400XL plans. The XEP80 shipped but was hobbled by using the awkward and slow joystick port interface instead of SIO, not to mention the marginal video timing.

 

C128 was hackish, but it did the job. To me, the logical progression from Atari 8-bit maybe would have been more like the Apple 2GS than the C128.  Compatibility with old 8-bit chips built into a single chip, but then a 16-bit 65816 mode with ST-ish/VGA-ish video modes and a SCSI port for hard drive, maybe a blitter. I do think Atari ST had basically a lot of the right decisions for features for the time.  Just GEM was a sloppy mess compared to MacOS, and Tramiel had burned a few too many bridges.