Atari's Landfill Adventures, I now have the proof it's true.

[2600lover]

Yeah, that makes sence

[A.J. Franzman]

@ Rik: I still don't see how Atari programmer (a.k.a. peon) HSW was in a position to say with such certainty that he must have known whether it did or did not happen. As has been said many times before, much of what Atari did, now appears to defy logic (as apparently almost as much did at the time it happened!) This renders his argument of the logic of recycling moot. I think he's more likely to say that it didn't happen, in an attempt to protect his own reputation.

 

Regarding the odds, given the original Alomogordo newspaper article, I'm about 95% certain that Atari buried something out there. Hoaxing such an article doesn't appear to serve any purpose, unless the article's author let her imagination run away with her on a slow news day. (Is every day a slow news day in Alamogordo?)

Edited September 17, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[moycon]

Regarding the odds, given the original Alomogordo newspaper article, I'm about 95% certain that Atari buried something out there.

 

I'm with you on this one, probably reems and reems of that old used white printer paper with the light green horizontal lines across it. The old carpeting left over when they carpeted the building. Broken office chairs. Blown monitors. A leaky hot-tub. The list goes on and on.

[supercat]

Tax laws sometimes encourage waste in this way. Atari could not have gotten that tax writeoff via recycling the parts into new products. They would have to make the inventory completely unusable.

 

Huge numbers of books are routinely destroyed by bookstores and publishers as a result of tax laws. From what I understand (someone help me out if I'm wrong here), the IRS considers corporate income from a book to be sold when it's produced, rather than when it's sold to end consumers. If a publisher makes 100,000 copies of a book that wholesales for $3ea, the IRS considers that as $300,000 of immediate taxable income (with printing costs deducted against that). If the half books are destroyed unsold ten years later, the publisher can claim a $150,000 loss for tax purposes at that time, but in the mean time the IRS has held the publisher's money.

 

The net effect of this is that the tax codes increase effective inventory costs for publishers. Many books that were produced a few years ago are no longer available new, because publishers didn't want to bear the costs of keeping them. To be sure, physical inventory space isn't free, but adding an extra 1-2%/year on top of that doesn't help.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Atari wanted a tax writeoff. I'm sure they crunched the numbers and they would save more money by dumping the carts than they would have by recycling them. Tax laws sometimes encourage waste in this way. Atari could not have gotten that tax writeoff via recycling the parts into new products. They would have to make the inventory completely unusable. Even if Atari could have saved more money via recycling, Atari was always making the wrong decision. Why expect them to suddenly make the right one about the overstock of ET carts?

 

However, I do agree there is enough controversy to merit an investigation.

Apple dumped the last couple of thousand Lisa computers in a landfill. They were just worth more scrapped for a tax break than sold on the surplus market.

[A.J. Franzman]

Regarding the odds, given the original Alomogordo newspaper article, I'm about 95% certain that Atari buried something out there.

I'm with you on this one, probably reems and reems of that old used white printer paper with the light green horizontal lines across it. The old carpeting left over when they carpeted the building. Broken office chairs. Blown monitors. A leaky hot-tub. The list goes on and on.

No, no - that sounds like you're describing stuff from Sunnyvale, where the hardware and software development was done. Remember, the trucks supposedly came from an El Paso warehouse (likely a product distribution center). From that point of view, "office" stuff like most of what you listed would have been minimal - certainly not 14 truckloads. The stuff that was buried must have been mostly retail product of some kind. I doubt even the Sunnyvale offices could have filled 14 semi-trailers with their castoffs. Even if they did, why ship it to Alamogordo via El Paso?

Edited September 18, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[rbudrick]

Has anyone actually contacted the editor or a writer of the paper?

 

-Rob

[moycon]

No, no - that sounds like you're describing stuff from Sunnyvale, where the hardware and software development was done. Remember, the trucks supposedly came from an El Paso warehouse (likely a product distribution center). From that point of view, "office" stuff like most of what you listed would have been minimal - certainly not 14 truckloads. The stuff that was buried must have been mostly retail product of some kind. I doubt even the Sunnyvale offices could have filled 14 semi-trailers with their castoffs. Even if they did, why ship it to Alamogordo via El Paso?

 

"supposedly" being the key word in that entire paragraph. I'm not taking the point of view of the reporters story or any of the "facts" in it , because I'm of the opinion that's what it was, a story.

 

Atari might have buried something that week, but what it was could be anything just to seal the fact that something was buried.

[A.J. Franzman]

Well, make up your mind if you want to agree or disagree. Now it seems like you're contradicting your own post # 628 above. You want to agree that they buried something, but say it didn't come from El Paso??? Where did it come from then? Don't say "Sunnyvale", because that's just ridiculous. I doubt that even Atari would be so silly as to truck stuff halfway across the country expressly for the purpose of dumping it in a landfill, especially if, as you want us to believe, it was just old office supplies.

Edited September 19, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[moycon]

Now I'm confused. What part of my original comment didn't you grasp?

I agreed that they probably buried something in that landfill.

 

Why would they truck it to such a remote and desolate area if they were trying to pull a fast one?? Is that what you don't understand?? I guess I could explain to you if you need me to, but honestly it seems very rudimentary.

 

Rest assured my mind is made up. Read through this very thread for the full details.

[A.J. Franzman]

So now you're saying that you don't believe the "official" version of events due to lack of evidence, but based on your own imagination and even less evidence, that Atari faked the inventory disposal, bribed or otherwise coerced a reporter to write their version of events (and somehow get the article to also appear in the New York times), and took a tax write-off for inventory that was in fact not disposed of?

 

It's back to the looney bin for you!

Edited September 19, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[moycon]

I doubt the New York Times article was anything more then the dozens of other articles that appeared in local papers. That is they had a story from somewhere else and ran it with minimal research...unless you are telling me that they flew a reporter out to the area for the story? In that case then I would have an even harder time believing there's not more evidence in the form of pictures and video.

 

As far as the rest of the story, yes that's exactly what I'm saying. Let me re-affirm. Atari did not crush, pour concrete over and then bury millions of perfectly working carts and then produce more a few months later. The story written by the local reporter was BS and the other stories that appeared in local papers was based on that original story with no actual evidence to back up the story. (Hence the stock footage of landfills we got as photographic proof)

 

Also this isn't a case of "So now you're saying that" it's a case of that's what I've been saying all along. LOL Get with the program.

 

And nope I don't have any more evidence then you do, Just speculating. Although I will admit to going out of my way to try and verify the original story as it was presented to the public, unfortunantly all I came up with was the classic example of an urban legend. Heard about that's it. So that makes me loony? Is this just a character flaw you have, that anyone that doesn't agree with your belief's is loony?

 

Nice.

[A.J. Franzman]

No, it's the "even less evidence" part that IMO makes you a looney. You'd rather believe that someone was up to no good, without one shred of supporting evidence, than believe the (admittedly minimal) evidence that they were following standard business practices. You'd rather go out of your way to promote this unsubstantiated belief to anyone reading this thread, than allow them to reach a conclusion based on the logic of what evidence there is.

 

Also, I never said anything about other newspapers sending their own reporters; that was your claim. What I believe is that the NY Times (and any other newspaper that carried the story) merely copied it from the wire services.

Edited September 19, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[moycon]

Nope I'm not claiming they sent anyone. I agree with you on this point.

 

And yes I fully believe that in the face of huge loses for the first time Atari would try and save the ship by doing something they knew wasn’t on the level. I know it's a stretch to imagine a company would engage in illegal activity but it has in fact happened one or twice throughout history. The actual story and “evidence” we have makes it suspect. The fact that no-one (So far) can collaborate the story, no one that worked for Atari, no one in the area, the alternate stories (I was in touch with one prior Atari employee that stated the rumor around the office back in the day was that the carts were buried…not in Alamogordo landfill but another landfill altogether!!! LOL Sounds to me the snoops were starting to question the whole thing and alternate stories were having to be fabricated??

 

I dunno the answer to be honest, but I don’t think my belief is any more off the wall than yours. Also I myself would consider the crap news photo’s and employee and local people’s testimony as evidence against the event happening. So I’m not sure where the “even less evidence” is coming from. You got a small town newspaper article that other news papers and magazines reprinted, I got people that were there at the time saying they heard this and they heard that and none of it adds up to millions of carts getting crushed and buried. Like I said believe whatever you want. Personally I don’t see why I’m loony though....

 

well….at least not for that.

Edited September 19, 2006 by moycon

[Philflound]

Hasn't this been locked and buried yet?

[A.J. Franzman]

Nope I'm not claiming they sent anyone. I agree with you on this point.

 

And yes I fully believe that in the face of huge loses for the first time Atari would try and save the ship by doing something they knew wasn’t on the level. I know it's a stretch to imagine a company would engage in illegal activity but it has in fact happened one or twice throughout history.

I'm not saying that Atari didn't or wouldn't have done something illegal, I'm simply saying that you're inventing illegal acivity in relation to this incident, with absolutley no evidence on which to make such a claim.

 

 

The actual story and “evidence” we have makes it suspect. The fact that no-one (So far) can collaborate the story, no one that worked for Atari, no one in the area, the alternate stories (I was in touch with one prior Atari employee that stated the rumor around the office back in the day was that the carts were buried…not in Alamogordo landfill but another landfill altogether!!! LOL Sounds to me the snoops were starting to question the whole thing and alternate stories were having to be fabricated??

Wait a minute, you don't count people quoted in the articles (Ed Moore, Jack Keating, the Alamogordo Department of Public Services, Dan Malone, etc.) as corroborating the story? Don't you think there would be a much larger story if McQuiddy's original articles fabricated events, people and quotes?

 

 

I dunno the answer to be honest, but I don’t think my belief is any more off the wall than yours. Also I myself would consider the crap news photo’s and employee and local people’s testimony as evidence against the event happening. So I’m not sure where the “even less evidence” is coming from. You got a small town newspaper article that other news papers and magazines reprinted, I got people that were there at the time saying they heard this and they heard that and none of it adds up to millions of carts getting crushed and buried. Like I said believe whatever you want. Personally I don’t see why I’m loony though....

Why do you disbelieve the testimony of the employees and local people? Do you automatically assume that everything anyone says is a lie until proven otherwise? How can there be any proof of anything under such circumstances?

 

You see, in the case of a story which is suspected of being an urban legend, archival records such as this series of articles is what's known as "corroborating evidence". For example, in the case of the better-known urban legend of the Arizona JATO car, what leads us to know now that it's merely a myth, is the complete lack of any such records dating to the time the incident supposedly took place. Since the articles in this case do exist, are definitely from the appropriate time period, and did not lead to a debacle regarding journalistic integrity at that time (which they certainly would have if, as you say, they were merely a tissue of lies), we can infer that to a high degree of certainty, something very closely resembling the events as described in the article must have taken place. I rest my case!

[moycon]

Why do you disbelieve the testimony of the employees and local people? Do you automatically assume that everything anyone says is a lie until proven otherwise? How can there be any proof of anything under such circumstances?

 

What? You're losing me, either that or your not grasping what I'm telling you. I've been in touch with several employee's and heard from people local to the area at the time...I DO believe them. All the stories about this whole thing we've heard can't seem to be verified even by folks that were there. There were no kids coming to school with free ET carts, the pawn shops weren't full of E.T's. They all heard about the story but that's it.

Like I said the one Employee even said that he heard the carts weren't buried in Alamogordo.

I don't believe the that news report or all the stories. Sorry.

 

Honestly what else can I say?

Why do you keep babbling on? Just go out there and find this proof that certainly exists if it happened.

I'll give my undivided attention to anything tangible you find.

Just stop trying to figure out why I DON'T believe this bunk (because you obviously aren't getting it) and start changing my mind with your wealth of new information. Looking forward to what you dig up.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Dammit, all we need is for someone to go down there with a ground sounder (and permission) to look for the big blob of concrete.

 

Of course even that may not be conclusive, since big chunks of concrete from demolition might have ended up there too.

[Rik]

@ Rik: I still don't see how Atari programmer (a.k.a. peon) HSW was in a position to say with such certainty that he must have known whether it did or did not happen. As has been said many times before, much of what Atari did, now appears to defy logic (as apparently almost as much did at the time it happened!) This renders his argument of the logic of recycling moot. I think he's more likely to say that it didn't happen, in an attempt to protect his own reputation.

 

Regarding the odds, given the original Alomogordo newspaper article, I'm about 95% certain that Atari buried something out there. Hoaxing such an article doesn't appear to serve any purpose, unless the article's author let her imagination run away with her on a slow news day. (Is every day a slow news day in Alamogordo?)

Yes,good points you have brought up,I see what you mean

[mos6507]

Warner Brothers the movie studio may have funky accounting, but I know of no incidents of corporate corruption at Warner Atari. Waste and incompetence, yes, but otherwise sticking to normal corporate policies.

 

The Tramiels, I could see trying to pull this IRS trick, but not Warner Communications.

 

I think it would have been too risky and for not enough gain to try to recycle the carts.

[mos6507]

Dammit, all we need is for someone to go down there with a ground sounder (and permission) to look for the big blob of concrete.

 

Of course even that may not be conclusive, since big chunks of concrete from demolition might have ended up there too.

 

One day, it's going to happen. It may take a long time, but I think the curiosity will just be too strong to resist.

[+Andrew Davie]

Urban Legend at it's finest.

865772[/snapback]

 

Not so quick, pardner. I traveled to Texas briefly on my sojourns in the USA this past week or so, and had an interesting chat with an engineer who, despite not being an Atari collector -- has quite a few interesting Atari items. He told me that he had at least one -- and probably several ET cartridges which he picked from a large box of similar cartridges from an electronics fleamarket in Texas in the 80s. The interesting thing is that these cartridges did not have cases -- just the bare boards. And *most* of them were ET. He only picked up a couple -- and some internal Atari diagnostic and multi-rom boards as well.

 

It just seemed possible to me that these ET cartridges were indeed the surviving remnants of the fabled hoard of dumped units. It is certainly unusual that they had no cases, were mostly the same game, and included internal Atari items.

 

Just my 2c. Hi Mike, if you're reading

 

Cheers

A

878468[/snapback]

 

 

 

Mike did eventually write back to me with some pictures. I'll just copy the whole message verbatim, and let this add to the mystery.

 

Cheers

A

 

 

 

Andrew:

 

Sorry for taking an extra week to get these pictures to you.

 

I had an enjoyable afternoon talking to you about calculators, video game

programming, and Atari's ET cartridge fiasco.

 

Attached is a picture of the ET cartridge PCB I purchased at the Dallas

electronic flea market during the mid-80s. Also attached the picture of an

Atari Diagnostic cartridge (Version 2.6D) that I purchased at the same

time from the same person.

 

As I related to you, the ET cartridge PCB came from a box of cartridge PCBs.

The box was approximately one foot square, and filled at least six inches

deep with PCBs without any plastic case. The guy selling them was asking

twenty-five cents each (IIRC), and I got 4 or 5 of them hoping for some

variety. (I believe they were all either ET or didn't work because I don't

have any other cartridges that I put in an empty case and taped a hand

written label onto.)

 

The metal shield has two small dents that are visible inside the top edge

(the right side of the image). This could suggest that the cartridges had

been crushed or damaged in some way - but that would just be speculation

as to the origin of the dents.

 

I believe the diagnostic cartridge cost a dollar or two.

 

I don't know were the other PCBs I purchased are located, other than I

doubt that I intentionally threw them away.

 

I hope you are enjoying the last few days of your US vaction.

 

Later,

 

Mike

 

 

I don't believe the above post by yours truly drew much if any comments. These pictures purport to be (or are the closest thing we're likely to see) actual cartridges rescued from the landfill. Comments?

[SpaceInvader]

Miss the part about being crushed with cement poured on top?

 

A few may have survived but it sure would'nt be worth the effort.

 

You know, a cement-crushed E.T. cart from the actual New Mexico landfill would probably be more valuable than a common E.T. cart...

 

I'm falling out of my chair laughing at this one...

 

But wait, you may have a point... I'll start the opening bid at $1...

 

Anyone want to bid higher???

[SpaceInvader]

Lets see if Discovery Channels Myth Busters will take this one on....

 

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbust...ythbusters.html

[Rik]

Lets see if Discovery Channels Myth Busters will take this one on....

 

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbust...ythbusters.html

Dont hold your breath