Jack Tramiel failed to save Atari.
Rich Hutnik
Jack bought the company. What you can say is he failed to say Atari,
but as for killing it? Well, that is another story. People don't
remember the problems Atari had when Jack got ahold of it.
- Rich
jt august
Rich Hutnik <get...@1upandup.com> wrote:
It is the general consensus of classic video game collectors over the
last 10-12 years (particularly in r.g.v.classic, r.g.v.atari and their
alt.* cousins) that a properly motivated investor could have saved Atari
and put it in a more powerful position in the 16-bit and beyond eras.
Jack, however, only wanted a recognizable name, and what he did from day
one doomed Atari to what it became. For the simple fact that he cut a
machine as powerful as the 7800 as fast as he did, and moved to shut
down the Atari 8-bit family at the time when it was in a position to
compete favourably against the C=64, and with its R&D so much further
along than C='s, Jack put Atari dead centre down a short dead end street.
No, we cannot say just that Jack failed to save Atari. He moved to kill
Atari, although he did not WANT to kill it, he just didn't have any
intentions to retain Atari's prior loyalties.
Anyone who takes over a company and eliminates its entire customer base
so harshly and quickly is not recognizing a company strength that must
be preserved.
And FWIW, a lot of companies in the 80's did similar, and suffered
similar fates.
jt
Mr. Maddog
indirectly. You have to look at Atari in both the Video game and
computer divisions during the time of the Crash.
Nearly all of Atari's woes were due to the blunders of Warner
management who only saw short term results. They prolong the 2600's
lifespan for too long instead of retiring it when it should have been,
didn't want any 3rd party software for the 400/800 computers or even
the 2600 came back to haunt them and rushed alot of games out without
doing too much QA...and made too many of them expecting even existing
VCS owners to buy another unit for their "summer home". (rolls eyes)
However you also have to account Jack Tramiel's role in all of this.
Yes the C-64 is the best selling and affordable computer of it's
time. Mainly because Commodore owned the chip factories instead of
outsourcing. The reason is because when they sold calculators, they
bought the chips from TI only to have that company make their own
calculators at a much cheaper price. So when Tramiel got in the home
computer market, he didn't want to make that mistake again.
When they came out with the VIC-20, they actually priced it near to
what the game consoles cost and agressively competed against them. (Go
look up that William Shatner commercial on YouTube if you don't
believe me). And when the C-64 came out, so did TI's own home
computer. Uh-oh, now Jack declares war and slashes the price of the
C-64 to undermine the TI-94. And when TI slashed their price, so did
Commodore...and every other home computer maker including Atari.
Atari had to manufacture computers in Taiwan just to make them
affordable while still trying to stay in business to compete with
Commdore's "easy" advantage of owning the chip factories. And the
aggressive marketing and price slashing targeted both the video game
and home computer markets. A double whammy against Atari which was
loosing millions every month. Only companies that weren't affected
were IBM, which sold PC's to the business sector, and Apple who wanted
to beat IBM with the Macintosh and mostly sold Apple II's the school
districts anyway.
Even Commodore wasn't immune because they lost a lot of profit selling
the C-64 at below cost. The board members including Irvin Gould
weren't happy about this, and now Jack not only wants to do the same
thing against Apple & IBM with a cheap 16-bit computer but also out
his three sons on the board. So now Jack got packed and started his
own company to build his ST computer on the cheap. Meanwhile Warner
just wanted to get rid of Atari as soon as possible. Didn't even
mattered that the 7800 could have turned the game industry around or
that they were working on innovative computers to replace the 8-bits
(possibly the Amiga). Nobody even wanted to have anything to do with
Atari now, especially those who got burnt in the gaming market.
Atari was selling at a cheap price and they already have the Asian
factories to manufacture computers at a low cost. How could Jack pass
it up?
The Tramiels were only concerned about making their ST and nothing
else, so all other projects were canceled and many were laid off.
Before they bought Atari, Amiga Inc. approached them for funding but
Tramiel only wanted the design and not the designers. Atari under
Warner had an aggreement with Amiga Inc. to have it ready at a certain
time or return the half million dollars, or Atari takes them over.
Commodore saved them by merging with Amiga Inc. and now Commodre-Amiga
paud Warner Aatri the money back. When Jack found out about much
later, he made a personal vendetta against his old company who sued
him for stealing away engineers. So now the ST was to become an Amiga
killer and the "new" 8-bits were redesign to compete against the C-64c
and C-128.
Now when the ST came out, it really was a good computer for the time,
affordable and had a decent Mac-like interface. For the first couple
years Atari really did market the machine right. Everything
afterwards were nothing but total F' ups...
When Nintendo revitalized the video game industry, Atari tried to get
back into it long after it declared video gaming dead. Three redesign
game consoles which were already obsolete (including the 2600 of all
things!) to compete against the NES which captured nearly the entire
market.
Since home computers were used for gaming instead of consoles in
Europe, Atari focused the ST mainly over there instead of America
leaving it open for Apple & IBM. Commdore did the same thing with the
Amiga. Plus it's now just a pissing contest between Atari and
Commodore because of Jack Tramiel. No wonder the Microsoft monopoly
swept them away nearly a decade later.
And when Atari tried to get back in video games exclusively, first
with the Lynx and then the Jaguar, they totally blew it with marketing
because they didn't have much money to begin with! They could hardly
even compete with Nintendo and Sega who both had the whole market
locked up. And when Sony came on the scene...
So Jack got bored with running Atari and allowed a small hard drive
company to buy it out just for Atari's large cash reserve, which was
mostly from patent lawsuits against Sega & Nintendo. JTS licensed
Atari assets to other companies and later sold them to Hasbro which
sold to Infogrammes and both of them lost too much money on the brand
name.
You're right in saying that Jack Tramiel didn't purposely tried to
kill Atari both competing against and running it. Sadly this is a
case of what once was business savy turning into utter stupidity on
everyone's part.
(And for the record, I owned the Atari 2600, 8-bit computer and ST so
I saw the devestation first hand...)
winston...@yahoo.com
Umm - the bit about TI-94?
Sure you mean the TI-99/4A...
It was out in 1979 as the TI-99/4, the 4A came out in '81, so was a
contemporary of the Vic-20.
TI made the mistake of positioning themselves against the Vic, so when
the 64 came out, people saw it as more advanced than the Vic (and by
association, the TI-99). Granted, the C64 _was_ more advanced (being
about 2-3 years newer than the TI design), but I'd argue the TI was
more advanced than the Vic. Commodore suckered TI in on doing
themselves in by setting up a price-war against a lesser machine that
was produced more cheaply...
jt august
"winston...@yahoo.com" <winston...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> It was out in 1979 as the TI-99/4, the 4A came out in '81, so was a
> contemporary of the Vic-20.
> TI made the mistake of positioning themselves against the Vic, so when
> the 64 came out, people saw it as more advanced than the Vic (and by
> association, the TI-99). Granted, the C64 _was_ more advanced (being
> about 2-3 years newer than the TI design), but I'd argue the TI was
> more advanced than the Vic. Commodore suckered TI in on doing
> themselves in by setting up a price-war against a lesser machine that
> was produced more cheaply.
I would argue, first, that even though the TI was older than the C=64,
the TI was still more advanced. It is debatable, but I would say the TI
sound chip was more powerful, as it had a wider dynamic range and was
easier to program, both in TI BASIC and in assy. The graphics chip was
more powerful, as characters could be redefined, and in assy and
x-basic, the sprites were easily manipulated. And the TI had a 16-bit
cpu that was far more powerful and twice as fast as the cpu of the C=64.
While TI did hurt themselves in price competing with the Vic 20, they
made plenty of other mistakes that added up to self destroy the 99/4a
package from day 1.
To C='s credit, they brought the C=64 out with great timing and a just
right marketing campaign. Once again, great marketing overcomes a
products potential shortcomings to bring out a success. In both cases,
it was more marketing of the two companies, but with different results.
TI made numerous marketing and product errors, and lost. C=64 made all
the right marketing moves with the C=64 and worked successfully around a
few product errors, and won.
jt
Mr. Maddog
<winston19842...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Umm - the bit about TI-94?
> Sure you mean the TI-99/4A...
> It was out in 1979 as the TI-99/4, the 4A came out in '81, so was a
> contemporary of the Vic-20.
Yeah you're right, it was the TI-99/4A. Just forgot what it was
called and did a sloppy look up so my bad. :)
> Commodore suckered TI in on doing
> themselves in by setting up a price-war against a lesser machine that
> was produced more cheaply...
Yep that's so true. I'm surprised that the home computer market
didn't crash like the video game one in '83-'84. The 8-bit ones were
used as game machines for a while till the NES came out (except in
Europe).
winston...@yahoo.com
> In article <1193720607.731527.71...@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
TI always had a penchant for making their own products look bad...
But you are right - the TI-99 wouldn't have been 16-bit if the TMS9985
microprocessor had been a success. It failed, so they had to stick in
a huge 9900, with static RAM chips to provide memory (the 9985 had an
on-board 256 byte cache, like the later 9995) and added logic (a
demultiplexer to interface with 8-bit peripherals) and added wait
states that REALLY slowed the 9900 down.
I would've imagined the 9985 would've been faster because of the
cache, and it may have had instruction pipelining (like the 9995), but
TI didn't even fully use the 9995 on the unreleased TI-99/8 from what
I've read.
Closest thing to a fully-realized system using a 9995 would be the
clone from Myarc, the 9640 (or Geneve)...
la...@portcommodore.com
The TI was expensive, closed access, and from what I read kinda slow
for being a 16 bit computer.
The Commodore VIC was inexpensive, the VIC sold because for the price
of s stock 16k Atari 400 without BASIC or a anything else you could
get the VIC, a tape deck and some books (which was the comparison I
made back then and what I did) I got a computer storage, BASIC, a
real keyboard, and many years of fun and limited memory programming
experience.
The 64 blew the atari out of the water with the sound and graphics,
sure the Atari had four voices, which were OK and the graphics had
more colors but you could not use to many of them in one place all at
once
As an example here's Donkey Kong for the 64
http://www.c64gg.com/Images/D/Donkey_Kong_Nin.ss.gif
And Donkey Kong for the Atari:
http://www.backntime.net/Atari%20Computers/8bit/Emulators/800Win_DK.jpg
What gave Atari some advantage was the exclusive licensing of games
such as Missile Command, Star Raiders, or Asteroids, having something
no one else has (and making sure they don't) is a good tactic (MS
plays it very well).
One thing I really liked about the 800 was the four joyports, but that
alone didn't justify the cost.
Bruce Tomlin
jt august <star...@net.att> wrote:
> I would argue, first, that even though the TI was older than the C=64,
> the TI was still more advanced. It is debatable, but I would say the TI
> sound chip was more powerful, as it had a wider dynamic range and was
> easier to program, both in TI BASIC and in assy. The graphics chip was
> more powerful, as characters could be redefined, and in assy and
> x-basic, the sprites were easily manipulated. And the TI had a 16-bit
> cpu that was far more powerful and twice as fast as the cpu of the C=64.
Except for one thing. They put in very little CPU RAM (256 bytes!), and
used the VDP RAM for storing BASIC programs. This made for very slow
performance without having an expansion unit. (Once in a Best catalog
store, I found a TI 99/4A sitting at the READY prompt. I hit the ENTER
key. It took a whole freaking second for it to do *nothing*!) It didn't
help performance any that the "registers" were kept in RAM. And while it
used a 16-bit CPU, it still had a 16-bit address bus and had the same
memory limitations as 8-bit computers in a day when a full 64K of DRAM
was becoming affordable.
TI's insistence on the PEB being the only official expansion option made
it unlikely that anyone would experience it in any other way than its
basic configuration, with tapes and cartridges. (There were third-party
options, but most TI owners wouldn't have known about them.) Even if it
was with IMHO a much less than perfect design, Commodore did make it
possible to hook up an affordable floppy disk drive without having to
buy a boat anchor first.
Bruce Tomlin
"winston...@yahoo.com" <winston...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> TI always had a penchant for making their own products look bad...
> But you are right - the TI-99 wouldn't have been 16-bit if the TMS9985
> microprocessor had been a success. It failed, so they had to stick in
> a huge 9900, with static RAM chips to provide memory (the 9985 had an
> on-board 256 byte cache, like the later 9995) and added logic (a
> demultiplexer to interface with 8-bit peripherals) and added wait
> states that REALLY slowed the 9900 down.
That wasn't a cache.
Those 256 bytes were the only RAM on the CPU bus, and were necessary
because the 9900 put most of its registers in RAM. Everything else had
to go through the VDP interface to use its RAM (which would be
fragmented and rather limited if you used its highest-resolution modes),
and which was quite slow, especially during non-retrace when video was
being displayed. (I know a lot about the 9928 from having done some
Colecovision programming in the past few years.)
winston...@yahoo.com
> In article <1193828008.996379.17...@o38g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
It was a "register cache", a place to store the "software" registers.
The 9995 also did instruction pipelining (9985? maybe).
winston...@yahoo.com
> In article <starsabre-F253ED.05082531102...@inetnews.worldnet.att.net>,
> jt august <starsa...@net.att> wrote:
>
> > I would argue, first, that even though the TI was older than the C=64,
> > the TI was still more advanced. It is debatable, but I would say the TI
> > sound chip was more powerful, as it had a wider dynamic range and was
> > easier to program, both in TI BASIC and in assy. The graphics chip was
> > more powerful, as characters could be redefined, and in assy and
> > x-basic, the sprites were easily manipulated. And the TI had a 16-bit
> > cpu that was far more powerful and twice as fast as the cpu of the C=64.
>
> Except for one thing. They put in very little CPU RAM (256 bytes!), and
> used the VDP RAM for storing BASIC programs. This made for very slow
> performance without having an expansion unit. (Once in a Best catalog
> store, I found a TI 99/4A sitting at the READY prompt. I hit the ENTER
> key. It took a whole freaking second for it to do *nothing*!)
(Great, where'd my cursor go!) Anyway, must've been a brain-dead
console. Never had that issue with any consoles...
>
> TI's insistence on the PEB being the only official expansion option made
> it unlikely that anyone would experience it in any other way than its
> basic configuration, with tapes and cartridges. (There were third-party
> options, but most TI owners wouldn't have known about them.) Even if it
> was with IMHO a much less than perfect design, Commodore did make it
> possible to hook up an affordable floppy disk drive without having to
> buy a boat anchor first.
TI originally marketed "sidecar" devices, which many third-party
vendors marketed as well. Just take a look at old issues of 99'er
magazine (Ultracomp, Dyan(?), and several others offered memory,
RS232), Percom offered a disk drive/controller (really crappy compared
to a TI), etc.
Even after the PEB became a "better solution", companies like Corcomp,
Myarc, MorningStar, Foundation and others offered cards for the box...
winston...@yahoo.com
It was comparable in cost with the Vic (started at $500 in 1981, down
to $300 by June '82, and then started competing price-wise in a price
war with the Vic).
It had 3 times the amount of RAM available for Basic programming. And
could interface with off-the-shelf tape decks.
Slow? Yes, the Basic was slow because of double-interpretation.
Extended Basic (a $99 add-on) was a very full-featured Basic. And it
added access to 28 of the machines 32 built-in sprites, with auto-
motion...
> The 64 blew the atari out of the water with the sound and graphics,
> sure the Atari had four voices, which were OK and the graphics had
> more colors but you could not use to many of them in one place all at
> once
>
> As an example here's Donkey Kong for the 64http://www.c64gg.com/Images/D/Donkey_Kong_Nin.ss.gif
>
> And Donkey Kong for the Atari:http://www.backntime.net/Atari%20Computers/8bit/Emulators/800Win_DK.jpg
Could not access that link...
jt august
<bruce#fanboy.net-45D5A...@news.newsreader.com>,
Bruce Tomlin <bruce#fanbo...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> Except for one thing. They put in very little CPU RAM (256 bytes!), and
> used the VDP RAM for storing BASIC programs. This made for very slow
> performance without having an expansion unit. (Once in a Best catalog
> store, I found a TI 99/4A sitting at the READY prompt. I hit the ENTER
> key. It took a whole freaking second for it to do *nothing*!) It didn't
> help performance any that the "registers" were kept in RAM. And while it
> used a 16-bit CPU, it still had a 16-bit address bus and had the same
> memory limitations as 8-bit computers in a day when a full 64K of DRAM
> was becoming affordable.
Again, more of the litany of product errors that TI saddled itself with.
Had they employed more of an engineering design, and the internal
politics hadn't dictated what the 99/4(a) was, the machine itself could
have been so terribly much more.
> TI's insistence on the PEB being the only official expansion option made
> it unlikely that anyone would experience it in any other way than its
> basic configuration, with tapes and cartridges. (There were third-party
> options, but most TI owners wouldn't have known about them.) Even if it
> was with IMHO a much less than perfect design, Commodore did make it
> possible to hook up an affordable floppy disk drive without having to
> buy a boat anchor first.
Which shows why in the final analysis, the C=64 campaign was successful,
and the TI campaign was ultimately self-destructive.
jt
winston...@yahoo.com
> In article
The disk drive being an example of marketing - it wasn't better than
the TI disk system, being slower than slow, but it was cheaper... and
nobody really knew it when it was introduced...
Guess it was "good enough".
jt august
la...@portcommodore.com wrote:
> The 64 blew the atari out of the water with the sound and graphics,
> sure the Atari had four voices, which were OK and the graphics had
> more colors but you could not use to many of them in one place all at
> once
Actually, if you got down into the assy. level programming and mastered
horizontal interrupts, you could easily mix graphic modes and put all
256 colors on the screen each pass. And with the 4 voices, music could
be much more elaborate.
ALSO, there is an program floating around out there that was a digitized
audio clip of Van Halen's Girl You Really Got Me Now. It had to disable
the video to ensure the sound played fluidly, but it did sound very
good. I never saw that sound trick executed on the C=64. I don't think
you could manipulate the SID fast enough to pull it off.
jt
Edward S. Baiz Jr.
I agree, but the company could have been saved if Jack had just spent some
money. Instead, he kept most of it and left the company high and dry. When the
Lynx came out, there were retailers who sold out as soon as it hit the
shelves. They wanted more, but Atari could not supply the demand because of
Jack. Same thing goes for the Jaguar. It was just starting to catch on when
Atari folded.
--
Edward S. Baiz Jr.
(Gamer)
Falcon 030 16meg of Ram
Ensor
>....digitized audio clip of Van Halen's Girl You Really Got Me
>Now....
>....I never saw that sound trick executed on the C=64. I don't
>think you could manipulate the SID fast enough to pull it off.
That program is almost certainly using the POKEYs' "volume only" (VO) mode -
which essentially turns it into an 8-bit(?) DtoA converter.
I never did get around to poking around inside SID, but I don't believe it
has an equivalent mode?
TTFN - Pete.
Gareth
"Edward S. Baiz Jr." <edba...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:472d928...@comcast.net...
Unfortunately it wasn't starting to "catch on". Quite the opposite - it was
being slated in respectable magazines as a consequence of the very poor
quality games that were being produced for it and the investment in
technology (vapourware VR headset and toilet seat style CD unit) wasn't
reaping good returns despite media attention (positive for the VR headset
and negative for the rather crap CD unit).
The Tramiels, ironically, only realised Atari's greatest asset when the
company failed - that Atari was a repository of very profitable patents that
could (and were and have been) licensed to other companies.
In many territories the Jaguar, at release, sold for $500 in 1995. Fucking
crazy if you think about that price point fact ($500 was a lot of money for
console hardware in 1995) and the reality that the Jaguar was going head to
head with the Playstation and the Saturn whose pixel pushing power was far
superior and impressive by comparison. Compare Fight for Life with Tekken
(or VF) and you, or anyone with even a single functional brain cell, will
see that the Jaguar was doomed. I bought Fight for Life on eBay a few years
ago (curiosity got the better of me). What a joke the game is. PS1 Tekken by
contrast is still more than merely playable. Talking of doom...
There was a small window of opportunity for the Jaguar with the arrival of
the exceptionally good Jaguar Doom - an opportunity, surely, for Atari to
develop a relationship with ID Software that would welcome the arrival of
similar games or mission packs. What did Jaguar owners actually get? Bubsy
the fucking Bobcat and a stupidly crap version of Defender that was/is
almost unplayable.
I pumped more money in to the bullshit of Atari Corp than I care to think
about. The 800XL was decent kit and the ST did a good job as an affordable
and powerful home computer (cheaper than the Amiga). But there was
ultimately no way that Atari could compete with Sony - just as, it may turn
out, there's little realistic long term prospect for Sony to compete today
with M$.
Gareth.
super_...@yahoo.com
> On Oct 31, 3:24 am, "Mr. Maddog" <MrMaddog...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The 64 blew the atari out of the water with the sound and graphics,
> sure the Atari had four voices, which were OK and the graphics had
> more colors but you could not use to many of them in one place all at
> once
Depends on what game. I've seen plenty to make the argue for either.
For example, the Atari version of Rescue on Fractalus is superior in
everything (sound, graphics, gameplay). Even though the C-64 came out
3 years after the Atari 800, its specs matched up pretty good (and by
1983 the 800XL came with 64K memory stock):
Atari 800
http://www.vintage-computer.com/atari_800.shtml
C-64
http://www.vintage-computer.com/commodore64.shtml
The one area that the C-64 *should* win flat out is sound, but (as
with the graphics), the quality of the games usually came down to the
programmer, and today's 8-bit programmers continue to push the
hardware beyond what most felt were "impossible" (much like some of
today's VCS/2600 programmers).
>
> As an example here's Donkey Kong for the 64http://www.c64gg.com/Images/D/Donkey_Kong_Nin.ss.gif
>
> And Donkey Kong for the Atari:http://www.backntime.net/Atari%20Computers/8bit/Emulators/800Win_DK.jpg
>
Bad links. Try these:
Atari
http://www.digitpress.com/dpsightz/atari8bit/donkeykong.gif
C-64 (Atarisoft)
http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=2260&d=18&h=0
C-64 (Ocean)
http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=2261&d=18&h=0
Arcade
http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242103213.png
Granted, none of the ports are arcade-perfect. The graphics in
Ocean's version are the most accurate, but in this case, the sound f/x
in the Atari 800 version are by far the best (both C-64 versions have
horrible sound f/x). Plus the C-64 Atarisoft version is agonizingly
slow to play (for some reason my ViceC64 emulator refuses to recognize
the controller with Ocean's version, so I can't tell how it plays).
The Atari version actually plays too fast (again, this might be an
emulator issue), and yeah, the damn ape is on the wrong side of the
screen on the first level :) Plus it's missing all the little extras
(like the opening sequence, or the ending sequence on the rivet
screen). But if you're trying to make a case that the C-64 is
superior, Donkey Kong isn't the game to use :)
super_...@yahoo.com
> ALSO, there is an program floating around out there that was a digitized
> audio clip of Van Halen's Girl You Really Got Me Now. It had to disable
> the video to ensure the sound played fluidly, but it did sound very
> good. I never saw that sound trick executed on the C=64. I don't think
> you could manipulate the SID fast enough to pull it off.
>
> jt
There's a clip of it on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRQ9Csb_Er0
There's also a few threads over in comp.sys.atari.8bit (just do a
search for "van halen"). I remember getting a copy of this back in
the day from a software catalog ("Marrs" or something like that),
which is long gone, and I don't have a copy on my PC (if anyone has
it, can they send me a copy?). It might have also been available from
Antic's catalog at some point. I know were were at least a dozen or 2
digitized song samples at the same time the Van Halen clip appeared.
jt august
"super_...@yahoo.com" <super_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Nov 1, 7:24 pm, jt august <starsa...@net.att> wrote:
>
> > ALSO, there is an program floating around out there that was a digitized
> > audio clip of Van Halen's Girl You Really Got Me Now. It had to disable
> > the video to ensure the sound played fluidly, but it did sound very
> > good. I never saw that sound trick executed on the C=64. I don't think
> > you could manipulate the SID fast enough to pull it off.
> >
> > jt
>
> There's a clip of it on Youtube:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRQ9Csb_Er0
Thanks for the URL. Best way to prove the point was the actual
demonstration. Now, could the C=64 do that? Of course, compared to
today's Macs and Windoze, this is pathetic. But keep in mind that it
was on an 8-bit 6502 at 1.8 Mhz. And DA/AD technology was in its
infancy.
jt