Atari Falcon, Sinclair Spectrum and PS2 connected?

[catharton]

I was amazed when I saw someone post that the PlayStation 2's vertical design patent acknowledges the Atari Falcon Microbox. Can someone confirm this? All I have is this image file:

 

http://www.atari-explorer.com/images/sonyps2-large.gif

 

Looking at a picture of a real Microbox though does remind me of the PS2, so I guess it's just about possible.

 

But then after I saw that, I remembered a couple of things. If I remember correctly, Atari's Jaguar included technology from Loki, a computer project at Sinclair aimed at making a next gen replacement for the ZX Spectrum. The Loki was cancelled when Sinclair was taken over by Amstrad, who shelved all future development projects and just sold Spectrums.

 

But Loki wasn't the only computer project Sinclair was working on when they were taken over, there were several others including a very secret project called Janus. The only public information about Janus is a single photo of a mockup of what it would look like (look very closely and you can see the grilles at the back):

 

Janus mockup

 

That was a design from 1986 at the latest, well before the Falcon or PlayStation series were even conceived of.

 

(There was also one other project, Pandora, which did see the light of day as the Z88 laptop, so these weren't all vapourware.)

 

Now, I'd be perfectly willing to believe it's just coincidence that Janus, the Falcon Microbox and the PS2 all went for a vaguely similar stand and casing design, it's a sort of obvious shape to build.

 

But it just brought to my mind the interesting, if unlikely, possibility that if Atari hired former Sinclair staff to do hardware in the Jaguar, maybe they had hired former Sinclair staff to their design department. If so, the design of the PlayStation 2 could possibly be a twice recycled proposed design for the ZX Spectrum 2, via staff at Sinclair and Atari, and Sony's apparent acknowledgement of the Microbox in the patent.

Edited January 31, 2006 by catharton

[Womble76]

Fancy seeing you here!

[The_Laird]

Very interesting . . . . I heard many rumours that Atari designs and tecnology was used in the development of the PS2 but never seen any kind of conformation of it.

[catharton]

Fancy seeing you here!

1010532[/snapback]

 

Tsk, you just put yourself about a bit too much...

[Womble76]

Not at all - am highly selective in my haunts.