Sam Tramiel interview - Next Generation 1995

[Gorf]

True enough, the Playstation was the best in the field... until the N64 came out But both were completely different types of systems. Love the Jag, PS and N64. Honestly not much of a Saturn fan... Loved the Genesis though.

 

Yeah - the N64 was an amazing piece of h/w in terms of both it's graphics capabilities, and it's CPU - It actually had a similar architecture to the Jaguar in some ways.

The CPU was 3x faster than the PS1 , and it had floating point in h/w , and the graphics geometry engine was similar to the GPU in the jag , and the rasteriser was actually similar in some ways to the blitter on the Jaguar2 ( a lot faster though ) , way better in features than the PS1 GPU.

 

 

Another highly flawed texture mapper. Now you are going to try to convince me that the

N64 textures were impressive? 4k Texture ram really shows.

[Gorf]

The Jag was almost the ultimate 2D machine - it could take everything that a NeoGeo could handle, and then add extra effects, but it was stifled

Imagine if Trevor McFur had been programmed by Irem

There were mega talented programmers working on it - Carmac did the Doom port, and it was way better than the other versions out at that time - and Rayman was a glimpse at what could have been a host of 2D games, also Tempest showed off the pixel pushing/feedback effects combined with an awesome old school arcade game.

Without texture mapping I think the Jag could have given a perfect version of VF1 - that would have been really cool at launch.. Fight for Life was just too late, the frame rate sucked when compared to tekken at 60fps.

 

 

In your car comparision I'd say the Jag is like a lotus - small engine, but really tuned - and the Playstation is like a Ferrari, the best in it's field

 

 

And the Lotus is a much NICER looking car too.

[Crazyace]

I'm not a PS1 expert admitedly but I do know enough about it specs to see that it has

it's own limitations.

No problem

 

The problem with the Playstation is it is what it is....The hardware triangles are all you get.

The quads are still two triangles. To add NON hardware effects you need software....this

gets very exspensive for the ONE Mips processor. You lose the hardware advantage and the

only compensation is blockiness...yes you have more effects but you also have more pixelization.

When you draw sprites they are drawn as quads, not 2 triangles.

The H/W supports gourard shading, texture mapping, and alphablending as standard - What non hardware effects do you want. I can think of the 'pixel' effects used in jaguar explosions, or maybe 'correct' texturing or lighting - but they are rarely used all the time.

 

The T&J have to share a bus with an OPL, Blitter and a 1/2 speed 1/4 bus 68k that all too often is

over used. The PS1 has a two year technological advantage.....It should have been mipmapping in

hardware as well by then. Jaguar: the machine never stood a chance and had nothing in the way

of development compared to the tools the PS1 had.So far all of the PS1 title have shown me one thing.

it can throw a lot of texture mapped polies around at 60 FPS.....they look like shit.

I guess the most the 68k slows other things down is 2x - it only accesses the bus 50% of the time after all. But it is a bottleneck - Atari ( Sam Tramiel in particular ) knew this and wanted less 68k use in games, but I think having the 68k actually helped...

The PS1 only has a 1 year advantage - Jag was Nov 93, and PS1 was Dec 94 ..

Some games look like shit - but not all, do you really think Crash Bandicut looks shit? How about the demos...

 

This looks quite nice to me:

 

and there are these...

,

, and

Even tursi has some PS1 demos

 

To make them look better you lose the hardware advantage and it shows. The later PS1 games started using

mirror mapping and stuff but at a pixel size cost. It;s very noticable. Impressive, sure but very noticable.

HoverStrikes(CD) Not the cart....Has much better stuff going on. A better frame rate would be nice. But Tom

and Jerry are not restricted to a hardwired advantage like the PS1 is. HSCD was mostly 68k code...the sources

are out ther to prove this.

Mirror mapping is just texture mapping - at most it costs an extra pass. You would do exactly the same thing on the Jag.

I've only got hoverstrike CD - I haven't seen the original to compare it. How much faster would it go if it didn't use the 68k ( was it draw bound or calculate bound? )

 

You cant get decent anything from the Jag if you insist on choking the bus with the 68k. The tools

provide no such avenue away from the 68k. If fact they moreso encourage its use.

 

The new tools are here now....as they get tweeked you will see the improvements I've been saying

are possible.

 

The 68k will only take 50% of the bus at max though. ( That still sucks - and isn't the 68k low priority anyway, so it uses the bus when it's free.

I'm looking forward to seeing the improvements from the new tools - however there are already games that dont use the 68k as much ( like Doom )

[Crazyace]

The Jag was almost the ultimate 2D machine - it could take everything that a NeoGeo could handle, and then add extra effects, but it was stifled

Imagine if Trevor McFur had been programmed by Irem

There were mega talented programmers working on it - Carmac did the Doom port, and it was way better than the other versions out at that time - and Rayman was a glimpse at what could have been a host of 2D games, also Tempest showed off the pixel pushing/feedback effects combined with an awesome old school arcade game.

Without texture mapping I think the Jag could have given a perfect version of VF1 - that would have been really cool at launch.. Fight for Life was just too late, the frame rate sucked when compared to tekken at 60fps.

 

 

In your car comparision I'd say the Jag is like a lotus - small engine, but really tuned - and the Playstation is like a Ferrari, the best in it's field

 

 

And the Lotus is a much NICER looking car too.

 

Cant argue with that

[Crazyace]

True enough, the Playstation was the best in the field... until the N64 came out But both were completely different types of systems. Love the Jag, PS and N64. Honestly not much of a Saturn fan... Loved the Genesis though.

 

Yeah - the N64 was an amazing piece of h/w in terms of both it's graphics capabilities, and it's CPU - It actually had a similar architecture to the Jaguar in some ways.

The CPU was 3x faster than the PS1 , and it had floating point in h/w , and the graphics geometry engine was similar to the GPU in the jag , and the rasteriser was actually similar in some ways to the blitter on the Jaguar2 ( a lot faster though ) , way better in features than the PS1 GPU.

 

 

Another highly flawed texture mapper. Now you are going to try to convince me that the

N64 textures were impressive? 4k Texture ram really shows.

 

I dont think it was really that flawed - just tuned for performance. Some of the Boss stuff and Factor 5 stuff pushed it quite far... , it also supported trilinear filtering ( even the 3dfx only supported bilinear ) and MSAA.

The 4k was the biggest weakness though - a lot of N64 games at the start were 'big triangle with small texture' - Even with the Jag 2 blitter there's a limit to the internal texture size.

[DracIsBack]

I think a more accurate statement would be that every single PS1 game had better texture mapping than almost all Jaguar games

 

Wherever did you find the time to play every single PS1 game and then analyze their texture mapping to compare to the Jaguar?

 

 

Just razzing you. The PS1 sure had a lot of games.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_1_games

[Crazyace]

It's easy, most Jaguar games didn't have any texture mapping

 

I spent a lot of time playing PS1 games - and a lot of time looking at bus analysis on the MIPS and GPU

( I'm even worse now - I sometimes buy a game just to see a particular rendering technique )

[Gorf]

It's easy, most Jaguar games didn't have any texture mapping

 

I spent a lot of time playing PS1 games - and a lot of time looking at bus analysis on the MIPS and GPU

( I'm even worse now - I sometimes buy a game just to see a particular rendering technique )

 

 

Speaking of lighting Hoverstrike uses 6 light sources, BTW. Well the source shows

that many but I think its the head light and the weapons( I suppose you can have a few shots

fired and coming at you.)

 

As a system the PS1 is more power(oh and the Jagur was developed by '91..I have the net files

right here.) Two years is a long time.....6 months is a long time especially when you have money

like Sony has. Compare than money with a penny pinching Atari.... I think T&J deserve a lot more

credit than you are willing to give them. Jag as a sysetm ahs many flaws....The T&J even with its

flaws, put in the right system would be rather awsome.

 

Im not arguing the fact that PS1 is more powerful....it just not a lot more powerful. It is more

efficient also due to the MUCH superior RAM bus(es)....Put seperate busses on Tom and Jerry

and you can even keep the 68k in there on its own bus....I think you'd see just how powerful

the T&J really are. Area 51.......The CoJag, still not seperate busses but a vast improvemt over

what the Jaguar should have been....at very least the 68020 part.....another 512k for the DSP

and 64 k for the 68k on seperate busses.

 

Oh hind sight.......

 

 

Also....JAgur II's blitter would beat the day light out of Ps1 and the N64. It have 8k texture

ram and a command cache as well....it could also texture from main...the N64 had to jump

through some hoops on the fly...(Rouge Squadron for instance). IT was supposed to be clocked

at 66 MHZ ans is had true 128 bit registers on all the RISC's. I think you need to look at the nets.

 

They are available...... Anyway, I 'm going back to coding my O2 game now...

[Gorf]

It's easy, most Jaguar games didn't have any texture mapping

 

Which is why it is really unfair to judge it since the only ones that did

made way too much use of the 68k.

 

A little math.

 

It is not 50%

 

The bus is ONE QUARTER the width of the MAIN system.

The is 75% data access slower right there.....

 

Then...take the clock rate and cut it in half again.....

 

Then take the many cycles per instruction on a CISC vs RISC

and you are probably hitting 80-85 percent inefficiency using the 68k.

 

I dont care if you use it minutely...it hurts BIG time... I wish it were

only a 50% hit.

[Crazyace]

The PSX gpu and CPU were finished well before the launch as well.

I like Tom and Jerry ( baring the annoying bugs.. ) - the system blitter was really nice, and the OP was a huge improvement over all of the previous consoles, and machines like the Amiga or Falcons.

I still haven't seen anything confirming 66MHz for the Jag II - all I knew at the time was the ~32MHz figure. However , as it wasn't completed maybe it could have been clocked higher. I never saw a board , Atari imploded and our contracts evaporated

Code on the 68k will run slower - but the 68k itself shouldn't ever take more than 50% of the bus, so if the code isn't critical it's probally not an issue.

 

How much of HS is running on the 68k anyway? It must still have a lot of the time critical stuff in GPU asm

[Gorf]

The PSX gpu and CPU were finished well before the launch as well.

I like Tom and Jerry ( baring the annoying bugs.. ) - the system blitter was really nice, and the OP was a huge improvement over all of the previous consoles, and machines like the Amiga or Falcons.

I still haven't seen anything confirming 66MHz for the Jag II - all I knew at the time was the ~32MHz figure. However , as it wasn't completed maybe it could have been clocked higher. I never saw a board , Atari imploded and our contracts evaporated

Code on the 68k will run slower - but the 68k itself shouldn't ever take more than 50% of the bus, so if the code isn't critical it's probally not an issue.

 

How much of HS is running on the 68k anyway? It must still have a lot of the time critical stuff in GPU asm

 

 

You dont know what you are saying. The 68k is pulling data at 75% less the bus width.

It is also running at half the system clock. Then add the many cycles per instruction.

 

Do all this out in main with the GPU and se a LARGE, like an 80-85 percent improvement.

Surrounded! when it was mostly 68k ran at about 10-15 frames per second at its best.

Once everything was moved to the GPU it maintains 60 FPS. The renderer is the supplied Atari

renderer with a few improvemtns but its hardly optimal.

 

The only time Surrounded! drops bellow 60 now is when there are more than 100 models on

screen at once(the big explosion of the star base.) That is because the renderer shows its lameness

when you tried to use to many models. The way whomever wrote it really was thinking like he was

coding a 16 bit 68k. Everything is done in 16 bit words, including pulling data in. It also reinitializes

a lot of things unecessarily for every model.

 

There is plenty of room left on the Jaguar for improvement. Plenty.

[Royalshin]

I am trying to read this article but man oh man it is making confused. The only bit of information I got from is that I should watch the "Secret Of NIHM" ...again

 

Wow I mean wo, just wow. Using words like

 

Uneven

 

Confused

 

Icon game

 

Saying things like.

 

When was the last time Nintendo created good hardware. The NES is just a 8-bit machine like the 2600.

 

Oh we shoudn't have done that.

 

Sony was like a Big Gorilla in a China Store.

 

It's against the law to lower the price in another country after raising it your own

 

Sony is quite confused as a coperation

 

3D0 lowering there prices is balony.

 

It is hard to compare a cartridge to a CD game

 

We want tobe the only publisher of our system.

 

Looking at this guys image looks like a train wreck. The reason why Atari failed is that they have limited creative support.

Nobody knew what a Jaguar or Atari was at the time but people who grewed up with Atari. Most of the consumers was ages

5-11. Then the games just makes no sense at all.

 

I remember the commercials of the game system for the 64-bit nonsense. I mean what the hell is this guy trying to pull. They were selling a system that had no ground. Or it has lots of ground but nobody wanted to plant the seeds. Also most of the games are on PC not to mention is just un fun or unknown.

 

It is called a mascot. Something that is respected and is well known threwout the world. Yeah Atari has the Rainbow as it's Icon while Robocop is on a rampage somewhere with the OCP logo on it. I mean who would want any character called Major Havoc as there Mascot?

 

Is Major Havoc even a reasonable name for any mascot or iconic? In responce to this a company in Japan is going to breakout the giganator?

 

The style has changed but they had stayed the same

 

I mean WTF. I got the following from trying to read whatever he was mentioning before that.

 

We are taking atari games and trying to make them more then a Mini game. We are trying to be indept and create dept for "hop scotch" and "poker"

 

Our games arent intresting without fancy special effects and invloving 3d would make it more intresting.

 

What is even sadder is how they compare Nintendo publishing to there own at the end

 

Somebody mentioned Virtual Fighter being a bad game

 

Well people did enjoy the game and so do I. However the game is very bare ( while being more challenging then that Smash Brothers on the Saturn ) and felt very un forfilling. Virtua Fighter greatest strenght is it's name. It is a 3d fighter basically that mimics real fighting. The reason why it is unpopular nowadays is that many other fighters have went 3d and has surpassed it.

 

Playing the game again gives a clean feeling. Unlike Street Fighter that has a very built up and well known story line. Battle Toshinden is just plain silly but looks fun to play with. Tekken is just weird. Virtual Fighter pretty much is a VR fighter and is of pure fiction. Even the comic adventure feels extremely bland. Dead or Alive has bouncy breasts and Ryu from Ninja Gaiden. Fatal Fury has a built up atmosphere at least. Lastly Rival Schools is something we all can relate to.

 

Basically Virtual Fighter is extremly bland right now. With Fatal Fury building a better Street Fighter where does that leaves Virtua Fighter?

 

I played the new game and asked myself does any of this make any sense at all? Even the 3d Fatal Fury games make more sense then VRF5.

[Crazyace]

You dont know what you are saying. The 68k is pulling data at 75% less the bus width.

It is also running at half the system clock. Then add the many cycles per instruction.

 

Do all this out in main with the GPU and se a LARGE, like an 80-85 percent improvement.

Surrounded! when it was mostly 68k ran at about 10-15 frames per second at its best.

Once everything was moved to the GPU it maintains 60 FPS. The renderer is the supplied Atari

renderer with a few improvemtns but its hardly optimal.

 

The only time Surrounded! drops bellow 60 now is when there are more than 100 models on

screen at once(the big explosion of the star base.) That is because the renderer shows its lameness

when you tried to use to many models. The way whomever wrote it really was thinking like he was

coding a 16 bit 68k. Everything is done in 16 bit words, including pulling data in. It also reinitializes

a lot of things unecessarily for every model.

 

There is plenty of room left on the Jaguar for improvement. Plenty.

 

That's cool - it show's how your coding has improved when moving from 68k to GPU code. Surrounded looks ok I guess, I've only seen a youtube.

I never used the Atari 3D code, so I cant comment on it's efficiency.

[Gorf]

You dont know what you are saying. The 68k is pulling data at 75% less the bus width.

It is also running at half the system clock. Then add the many cycles per instruction.

 

Do all this out in main with the GPU and se a LARGE, like an 80-85 percent improvement.

Surrounded! when it was mostly 68k ran at about 10-15 frames per second at its best.

Once everything was moved to the GPU it maintains 60 FPS. The renderer is the supplied Atari

renderer with a few improvemtns but its hardly optimal.

 

The only time Surrounded! drops bellow 60 now is when there are more than 100 models on

screen at once(the big explosion of the star base.) That is because the renderer shows its lameness

when you tried to use to many models. The way whomever wrote it really was thinking like he was

coding a 16 bit 68k. Everything is done in 16 bit words, including pulling data in. It also reinitializes

a lot of things unecessarily for every model.

 

There is plenty of room left on the Jaguar for improvement. Plenty.

 

That's cool - it show's how your coding has improved when moving from 68k to GPU code. Surrounded looks ok I guess, I've only seen a youtube.

I never used the Atari 3D code, so I cant comment on it's efficiency.

 

I was already well versed in GPU. The trouble writting code was with the tools is what the issue was.

The other part was that I did not find the main RAM workaround yet so I tried to get it running fast

using the 68k....was'nt happening.

[JagChris]

To be honest I'm playing HS now - and it looks pretty crap to me ... It hasn't aged that well. ( I'd love to play Battlesphere, but I couldn't bring myself to bid above $300 last time there was an ebay, just to see the graphics )

 

 

Your loss.

I've seen plenty of PS1 games and up close the textures suck worse than the old 256 color

PC games of back in the day. I dont know what games you are looking at.

Yes, I really did want to see it - as it get's the best comments here and at JaguarSector , maybe I'll catch it at at retro show sometime.

There are loads of crap PS1 games as well

 

I think that Scott maybe wasn't a good enough MIPs coder if he really made that statement - or else he made it before he worked on PS1

 

Now this is a laugh...

 

When you show me a peice of work on the Jagur that even comes close to BS, then you might have something

to say about Scott's abilities....a 10 time patent holder and PHD. I'll take his word over it anyday...unless you can

provide better Jaguar coding credentials, other than Battlechess...you should be a bit more humble when it comes

to Mr. Legrand.

I'm not saying anything about Scott's abilities on the Jag - I'm just crying bullshit about his comparision to the PS1. It would be interesting to see what he thinks of the machines nowadays.

 

That is what he thinks of the machines nowadays. Thats a fairly recent quote from 2006 or so. Not some ramble from back in the day.

[Crazyace]

Ok - didn't know where the original quote came from ( was it an old post here, or at JSII? ) - I wonder if anyone will have BattleSphere at JagFest 2009, It would be nice to play it and look in detail.

[kgenthe]

Interesting read (the NextGen interview). In 1995, what games were Jaguar owners looking forward too? AvP was released a year prior, what was next in the pipeline? Or were gamers excited about the Jag CD and VR stuff? Wish I had paid more attention back then...

 

Anyway, thanks for the scans kevincal.

[kevincal]

Thanks & glad you enjoyed the read kgenthe. Ok, I owned a Jag in 1995. If you were a hardcore gamer then, and read the various gaming magazine, it was IMPOSSIBLE not to be extremely excited about the Saturn, PlayStation & / or the Nintendo 64. Very little was said about the Jaguar CD... I loved my Jag, but the stuff I was seeing in the mags that was coming to the PlayStation made me, after much deliberation, sell my Jag and preorder a PS.

 

A friend of mine stuck with the Jag and bought the Jag CD. I vividly remember him showing me Blue Lightning on the Jag CD for the first time. I couldn't get over how the scenery looked like cardboard cutouts. It also didn't help that I had just bought and been playing the hell out of the awesome Air Combat on the PS. Blue Lightning pales in comparison to it... I don't think he showed me the VLM at that time, can't remember. He also showed me Highlander, and I was impressed with the background graphics in that. He was showing off Super Burnout as well, and that was cool.

 

Still, the PlayStation just had too many new and cool games to pass it up... Tekken, Ridge Racer, WipeOut, Destruction Derby, Toshinden, NFL GameDay, Twisted Metal, WarHawk, Resident Evil, Doom, Alien Trilogy, Tempest X3, Philosoma, Jumping Flash and many more great games that came out shortly after the PS launched.

Edited July 3, 2009 by kevincal

[Overlord]

Jaguar was always seen as the red headed stepchild of the market. Atari released it too soon! Too much potential gone to waste....

[JagChris]

Ok - didn't know where the original quote came from ( was it an old post here, or at JSII? ) - I wonder if anyone will have BattleSphere at JagFest 2009, It would be nice to play it and look in detail.

 

That was a quote he made for a Retro Gamer magazine interview a couple years ago.

[Pete5125]

IN 1995 if you had the Jag you were geared up for NBA JAM, Ultra Vortex, Super Burnout, Doom, A vs.P, Iron Soldier, Power Ralley had just came out.

 

You had faith that Atari had finaly got their crap together and along w/ the Jag CD (New system and CD's were cheap to make so even if it bombed Atari would still recieve suport) Atari at this point was releasing 3 or 4 games a month and had several in the pipeline including Mortal Kombat 3.

 

They were going to have a 3-D helment out that was going to revolutionalise the gaming market w/ something that has never been done in the home market.

 

Atari was at your local WalMart, they had finally done it they had become a legitment Video Game company again that was sold everywhere.

 

They had just won a lawsuit w/ Sega we would be getting 6 awsome Sega games a year, Atari was working on sports games....

 

Atari 2600 emulater was on the way...

 

They even had their own 3-D fighter that was made by the makers of Virtua Fighter.

 

I was excited and my friends into video games had faith...nobody thought that Atari would be #1 we were hoping for #3 that it could kick 3D0's butt this year and survive another year offering great arcade conversions, sports, and Atari Arcade games updates.

 

Everybody figured Sega Saturn would be #1, the new Sony PS1 would be #2, and #3 would be 3D0 and Atari fighting it out.

 

Nobody knew what 96 would bring.....

[Goochman]

IN 1995 if you had the Jag you were geared up for NBA JAM, Ultra Vortex, Super Burnout, Doom, A vs.P, Iron Soldier, Power Ralley had just came out.

 

You had faith that Atari had finaly got their crap together and along w/ the Jag CD (New system and CD's were cheap to make so even if it bombed Atari would still recieve suport) Atari at this point was releasing 3 or 4 games a month and had several in the pipeline including Mortal Kombat 3.

 

They were going to have a 3-D helment out that was going to revolutionalise the gaming market w/ something that has never been done in the home market.

 

Atari was at your local WalMart, they had finally done it they had become a legitment Video Game company again that was sold everywhere.

 

They had just won a lawsuit w/ Sega we would be getting 6 awsome Sega games a year, Atari was working on sports games....

 

Atari 2600 emulater was on the way...

 

They even had their own 3-D fighter that was made by the makers of Virtua Fighter.

 

I was excited and my friends into video games had faith...nobody thought that Atari would be #1 we were hoping for #3 that it could kick 3D0's butt this year and survive another year offering great arcade conversions, sports, and Atari Arcade games updates.

 

Everybody figured Sega Saturn would be #1, the new Sony PS1 would be #2, and #3 would be 3D0 and Atari fighting it out.

 

Nobody knew what 96 would bring.....

 

And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore.

[mcjakeqcool]

Shame the Jaguar failed. The world would be a much better place had it sucseeded!

[kool kitty89]

And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore.

 

Yeah, what if... There's the Duo to considder as well that could have come out (further pushing toward the Jag CD), and the impressive Jaguar II. (solving all the technical problems of the Jag in a powerful, backwards compatible system that would easily beat anything prior to the Dreamcast, at least technically speaking and still with some advantages over the DC and newer systems, mainly in flexibility and 2D capabilities, though not in raw polygon pushing power)

The only way they could have screwed up the Jag II is if they hadn't released it as cartridge based (requiring the Jag CD separately), and if the marketing/advertizing was poor.

 

If they'd really shaped things up in '96, perhaps they could have goten somewhere, better advetizing, continued low price points, maybe release the Duo and push the CD format (start phasing out the Classic Jag, with Dua standard, and CD unit readily available for current Jag owners), or skip the Duo unit entirely and go straight for the Jag II (as long as it isn't rushed out with unfinished hardware), and continue supporting the Jag carts as well as CD until it's release. And most importantly, shape up management, and don't make the same mistakes with developers as with the Jag. (both in terms of development tools and actual contracts with developers)

 

That would have been really cool, particularly as amazing as the Jag II apears to be.

[Retro Rogue]

And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore.

 

Truthfully, Leonard didn't have much to do with the daily operations, he was more involved with the products themselves. And I'm not sure that Sam would have been able to change things if he didn't have the heart attack. Every since he had taken over, the company itself was on a downward spiral. When Jack turned the company over to him, he had mananged to bring the company out of the red and in to the black - shedding all the debt they took on from Warner in the purchase. That was his dream after all, to be able to hand something solid over to his sons and retire. Sam managed to take it from a multi-division multi-product company to a single product company by the time Jack came back in. If they would have fought to the last $$$, there would have been nothing left of a legacy for his kids, hence the reverse merger to get out while they still could. Truthfully, I would rather have had Jack not retire back in the late 80's and have him stick around for the oncoming Wintel onslaught to see how he would have dealt with that. I can't picture just turning tail and closing down the computer division like that.