Falcon Designer

[DarkLord]

So looking forward to this!

(and please pass along best wishes for Curt!)

[calimero]

it is tragic that so many young people today have heart problems.

all best wishes to Curt! take all time it needed to regain strength to continue with your life work!

martyg, thank you for yours time and effort!

my apologies for being rude!

[oehansen]

The Atari vs. Apple was not a failure for apple, nor a win for atari. The reason for this, is very simple. People saw, the color screens of Amiga and Atari, as game toys. Not as professional computers. Which is why IBM and clones, dominated the market, with their Alphanumeric displays.

The Mac, with it's black/white screen made it into the office. Because business people, didn't want a computer like the Atari, into the office. Where they knew script kiddies were playing with them at home. Which is also a reason, why Linux has gotten a huge share of the market. It's not seen as a game computer, but as a professional system.

This is Tramiel's legacy, and failure. Steve Jobs, created Next ... and even though it failed, it gave Steve jobs means to succeed.

[christos]

Linux has gotten a foothold on the server market and not the desktop business market. There its use is minimal at best. You are right though that the business computers dominated the market, though I wouldn't call the market share of Apple on desktop large...

[oehansen]

You are right about apple's market not being large. But it's a faithful base, which selects Apple because it's not the popular game platform.

And the Server platform, a lot of server administrators like "alphanumeric displays" and loathe the Graphic desktops.

I think the graphics desktop, in general, needs a lot of work ...

[calimero]

I just find interview with Shiraz Shivji from 1988.: http://st-news.com/issues/st-news-volum ... az-shivji/

There are some very interesting facts:

- Atari (with Jack Tramiel and Shiraz Shivji) had planed to make next generation computer around Inmos Transputer T800! ST would be used as terminal connected to transputer over DMA port (ASCI).
- Inmos had graphic chip (Colour Lookup Table chip) that Atari used in Atari PC to get VGA display.
- Atari planed Atari EST computer (with 68000) with basically TT graphic modes (1280 x 960 in b/w to 640 x 480 in 16 cols and 640 x 240 in 256 cols)
- Atari also planed 020 computer but due " Motorola delayed the availability of such MMU" for 020 Atari change CPU to 030 (this come as Atari TT)


another interesting fact is from interview with Sam Tramiel from "Next Generation" (April 1995):

"NG: Atari's shifted its emphasis from computers to consoles. Is this a permanent shift or not?

Sam Tramiel: Around the end of 1989, Atari decided that the computer hardware business was too cut-throat, and a proprietary system could not succeed in the long run against the IBM/Intel juggernaut. We decided to focus on the interactive entertainment market."

http://www.metalstuff.com/area64/jaguar/ngtext.html

[calimero]

this is offtopic but since we do not have thread about Atari history facts I will post it here:

WHY ATARI SOLD ST IN EUROPE AND NOT IN USA ?

One of reasons are here: http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1 ... uotes.html

"Atari has had trouble getting the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips it needs ever since the U.S. government slapped trade restrictions on Japanese and other chip suppliers. The government objected to the Japanese selling so many memory chips in the U.S.; because of foreign competition, only two companies (Micron and Texas Instruments) still manufacture DRAM chips in this country.

Because Atari builds most of its computers in the Far East, the machines also face hefty tariffs when they're imported into the U.S.--and that means higher prices. As a result, most STs are now being shipped to Europe, where the ST is very popular and the tariff problems don't exist."

[calimero]

Another interesting article about future Atari computers from 1991.:

Much of the technology that we have developed for this (ATW Atari transputer workstation) will feed into future in products that can afford everybody. ... Within the next twelve months is one of the Display of color graphics with 24 or 32 bits per pixel ... In terms of Sound, standard CD-quality sound, so 16-bit stereo sound. ... DSPs are very important building blocks that will increasingly encounter in computers. ... See the end of 1991 all of these functions in computers that cost less than 1000 dollars."

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... rev=search

[Cyprian]

interesting

[shoggoth]

TOS was clearly heading towards support for alternative graphics solutions.

[1st1]

Hello, back to topic...

Years ago I found a website where former Atari engineer told his story about the last years/monthes of Atari. Unfortunatelly I didn't saved it to my other collection of such stories (about 370 pages copied from several websites, some long gone). Maybe you know the URL to that story. As far as I remember it was about the late Atari developer team that planned to implement the Jaguar chipset back into Falcon to make a revival. But there were some lazy guys and so they did not step ahead. When Tarmil finally asked about the advances of the project they had nothing to show so Tramil was very upset and shut down the project and gave everything to JTS. Do you know this story and where to find that?

By the way, what happened to "Business is war", when it will be published?

[mikro]

1st1: that's the first time I hear story like that.

I'm afraid the book will never be published, now with Curt's departure from our world. :( I think it was him who did most of the interviews and research (I may be wrong here).

[Total Eclipse]

Hello, back to topic...

Years ago I found a website where former Atari engineer told his story about the last years/monthes of Atari. Unfortunatelly I didn't saved it to my other collection of such stories (about 370 pages copied from several websites, some long gone). Maybe you know the URL to that story.

It's not on here is it? https://dadhacker-125488.ingress-alpha.easywp.com/ I remember reading some interesting info from around the time that Jack took over Atari, and there are some other articles on there regarding Atari.

[1st1]

Unfortunatelly it was not on dadhacker but somewhere else.

[1st1]

now with Curt's departure from our world.

That's sad, Has the manuscript and all the notes been archived? Maybe someone could continue.

[Cyprian]

Hello, back to topic...

Years ago I found a website where former Atari engineer told his story about the last years/monthes of Atari. Unfortunatelly I didn't saved it to my other collection of such stories (about 370 pages copied from several websites, some long gone). Maybe you know the URL to that story. As far as I remember it was about the late Atari developer team that planned to implement the Jaguar chipset back into Falcon to make a revival. But there were some lazy guys and so they did not step ahead. When Tarmil finally asked about the advances of the project they had nothing to show so Tramil was very upset and shut down the project and gave everything to JTS. Do you know this story and where to find that?

By the way, what happened to "Business is war", when it will be published?

1st1: that's the first time I hear story like that.

I also heard that Falcon with Jag chipsets story in 90s.
It seems that project was called "Atari Painter": Atari Painter - Falcon with Jaguar chips