One friday afternoon in July, 1984 the rumor floated through the halls: Jack Tramiel had bought Atari, and we were all going to be killed. Or laid-off. Or something. My office-mate had worked at Commodore a few years earlier (where Jack had been CEO) and said “If this is true, I’m quitting. I’m not working for Jack again; he’s a monster.” I didn’t know anything about Jack, but this wasn’t a good sign.
On Monday the rumor turned out to be true. Like all important happenings at Atari — layoffs, major management shake-ups, bad financial news and so on — we found out through the San Jose Mercury News rather than an official internal announcement. The paper said that Jack Tramiel had bought Atari from Warner Communications, and he and his people were on the way to San Jose to take the company apart and kill us. Or lay us off. Or something. The Merc didn’t exactly say that Jack was a monster, but that he had a hard, no-nonsense management style. This wasn’t a good sign.
I remember spending a crazy couple of days trying to concentrate on my current project; I sure didn’t feel like doing much (I was working on a computerized Trivial Pursuit game, something we’d code-named “Trivial Compute,” and was learning a lot about data compression algorithms, but my heart just wasn’t in it). The hallways were buzzing with rumors of entire buildings-full of people who had been nuked.
It took a little while for them to get to us. On Wednesday two of Jack’s “lieutenants” arrived at our building (we consumer games folks had been co-located with the coin-op division to save money). Someone had phoned ahead and said that the Tramiels were coming over and that news spread like wildfire. When they showed up, someone said, “I see them! They’re walking in the front door!”. I dialed-up the building’s intercom system and announced:
“Imperial storm troopers have entered the base! Imperial storm troopers have — Urk!”
then hung up abruptly. (Later, one of the two said that the timing couldn’t have been more perfect; my announcement happened as they had begun marching down the main hallway on the way to meet with the people they were going to lay off…).
There were interviews. Fast interviews that might better be described as grillings. We each had about five minutes to talk with Leonard Tramiel (Jack’s son) and John Feagans (a long-time Commodore employee, and someone that the Tramiels trusted). They asked questions like: Do you have any experience writing operating systems? I told them that I’d read Lion’s notes on Unix, and about my CS coursework at Maryland and the tools work that I liked to do. Did I want to work on a new computer? Sure, that sounded kind of exciting. I might have mentioned Soul of a New Machine and stuff about compilers. My memory of this is rather vague; I recall having a private conversation with the two of them, but others have said that we were interviewed in groups of five or six. It might have been both.
A couple hours later we were told to meet in a common area. There were about sixty of us. “Do you want the news individually, or all at once?” We took a vote, and most of us (veterans of many, many layoffs) just wanted to get things over with quickly. Leonard read two lists of names. Those on the longer list, about two thirds of the people there, were the ones getting a package. Those on the shorter list would be working for the Tramiels, at least for a while. My name was on the shorter list.
It was unclear if it would be better to be laid-off or to work for these people; they were tight-lipped and nearly complete ciphers. Who were the lucky ones? There was no way to tell. I helped my now-ex-cow-orkers pack their offices and load boxes into their cars. Out of the cluster of six programmers and an artist, people who I’d worked with and survived layoffs with for years, I was the only one left.
There was a lot of stuff left behind, and a bunch of VAXes that I could mess around with nearly all by myself. It wasn’t all that much fun.
- – - -
All of us programmers got VP desks.
The Tramiels had bought a lot of stuff — by contract they could have anything they wanted of the Warner Atari’s assets — and we needed to set up our offices in the new building that engineering was being consolidated in. We were moving from the coin-op building (since Jack hadn’t purchased the coin-op business, the doors to that part of the building, now a separate company, had been locked) to a building in Sunnyvale that had belonged to Corporate Research. Most of the people in Research had been let go; Lisp Machines and Vaxes were humming away without anyone to use them. Jack wasn’t interested in academics.
It turned out that we could have nearly anything from the old Atari that we wanted, since it didn’t cost anything extra. While the Tramiels were selling the more expensive items (like the Vaxes and Symbolics Lisp Machines that the researchers had been using), more mundane stuff could be had for the asking. You could have just about anything you wanted, and as long as Jack didn’t have to write a check for it (and was something that he couldn’t sell to make quick cash), he didn’t care.
Anything?
“Well,” said somebody, “There’s this warehouse full of stuff in Santa Clara…”
So we went over there. Remember the last scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark where they wheel the boxed-up Ark into a gigantic warehouse with acres of huge boxes and whatnot? This was like that, but for real. This warehouse (and others like it) was where the office equipment from all of the now-empty Atari buildings had gone; maybe fifty or sixty buildings’ worth.
I think that Jim Eisenstein, one of our graphics guys, started it. “I’ll take that one, there,” he said to one of the warehouse workers. Jim pointed at a really nice, large desk. “Okay,” said the fellow with the forklift, and he got it down. No argument. Pretty soon we had all chosen really nice, large desks (and some nice chairs) and tagged them for delivery. The guys running the forklifts didn’t care.
Dave Getreu and I shared an office for over a year (he was the guy whose version of Centipede I had bettered, but he was pretty decent about that). Our two desks barely fit, but it seemed worth it; a symbolic finger in the eye of the old, crappy Warner-Atari management. I don’t know who had used my desk before me, but it was sure nicer than anything I’d had, and my guess was that for every dollar that my efforts had earned the company that the former owner had blown at least two bucks down the toilet in bad deals and clueless management.
Rule of thumb: If your company has more VPs than it does bathrooms, you’re in trouble.
- – - -
The Tramiels had bought Atari with a plan to make a little money immediately by quickly selling off assets, and more intermediate-term money by making minor updates to the existing Atari product lines (the 400/800/1200 series of 8-bit computers), but the biggest effort was going to be a completely new line of cheap computers. There were some other products in various stages of development (the Atari 7800, whose major engineering work had actually been done outside Atari, at a small company named General Computer, a new sound chip code-named Amy, and some others) that the Tramiels kept lightly staffed.
The new computer was going to be based on a 16-bit or 32-bit processor. The Tramiels were initially pretty closed-mouthed about things; they had brought some folks from Commodore with them, and I got the impression that they didn’t trust us that much, and in addition there was a legal fight going on with Commodore over trade secrets. During the next month or two the design of the new system solidified. It was going to be based on a 32-bit processor, have a 16-bit bus (thus ST, for “Sixteen, Thirty-two”), have 256K of RAM and 128K of ROM. It was going to have a mouse and a graphical interface of some kind. At first the National 32000 series processor was a serious possibility, but in the end the Motorola 68000 won out. [In retrospect this was a good choice; National chips looked great on paper and had a nice, clean instruction set, like itty bitty Vaxes, but in reality they were very buggy and quite slow].
There were a number of candidates for the ST operating system. Leonard Tramiel gave us some GEOS documents to evaluate, as well as some specs on something called Crystal (from Digital Research Inc), and there were one or two other contenders. Frankly, none of the choices seemed all that great. Ultimately the Tramiels signed a contract with DRI to port CP/M-68K and the still-being-developed GEM user interface to our still-being-developed hardware.
The schedule for the ST was very aggressive; we were starting in August, more or less, and working systems needed to be ready for the Consumer Electronics Show in January. With lead-time for the custom chips measured in many weeks (I don’t remember exactly, perhaps 6 to 8 ), this didn’t leave much time for development. So while the hardware guys were spending 20 hour days frantically designing chips and wire-wrapping prototypes, the software guys were spending a lot of time at the beach.
No, really. The software team temporarily relocated to Monterey, 70 miles south of Silly Valley and on the California coast, which was where Digital Research was located. Initially we stayed in hotel rooms a short walk from the DRI campus, but after a few weeks Atari rented some houses for us in Carmel, just a few blocks from the world-class beaches there. I used to leave work around 5, watch the sunset over the ocean (because it would have been a shame to waste those), then go back and work really late.
Our first meeting with the folks from DRI did not go very well. One of their engineers tried to give us a chalkboard introduction to C (which I’d been using for five or six years at that point), and his “this is a for loop, this is a struct” talk didn’t go over very well (you can’t effectively teach a language in an hour like this anyway). Another engineer attempted a tutorial on assembly language (to video game programmers, ha). This attitude colored the whole Atari-DRI engineering relationship; in addition to the project’s incredibly short schedule, which put everyone under a lot of pressure, there was an uneasy division of turf: DRI got to call the shots on their code and architecture, while Atari had to make it work. Things didn’t always go smoothly; when we found bugs or design problems, egos sometimes got in the way and there was an occasional temper flare-up.
Stress: A number of us learned how to juggle. One of the DRI people had a nervous tick in the form of a “quacking” sound, and this spread through the group (a year later some of us were still doing it a little). The word “fine” became a pejorative: “Don’t worry, everthing will work out just fine.” How are you feeling? Fine, okay?
Getting access to working hardware was a problem. There was a wire-wrap prototype of the hardware in Sunnyvale, but it was flaky as hell and certainly not transportable. You could run something, have it crash, then wiggle a board slightly and have the code work just fine. There were attempts to get the software engineers hardware earlier, but they were always unreliable (e.g., big, expensive machine-wire-wrapped boards that almost worked, but that turned out to be just too dodgy to trust).
Wire-wrap: Imagine a board, say two feet by three feet, crammed with chips. On the flip side of the board are thousands of half-inch metal pins. Now, the pins have to wired-up to each other in order for the chips to talk, and the way you do this is to wrap a fine wire tightly around a one pin, run the wire up and about, then wrap it around the other pin and cut the wire. Hilarity ensues. There are thousands of wires to keep track of, and only so many colors of wire available. Little bits of wire will flake off, get buried and short out contacts. Wires will work themselves loose. Wires carrying signals at high speed will interfere with each other and cause ghost signals. Wires will break internally and invisibly, become unwrapped, mysteriously stop conducting electricity (sometimes), and this is all behavior that doesn’t include the simple boneheaded mistake of somebody mis-wiring two pins out of those thousands because they were short on sleep.
The nasty thing about wire-wrap prototypes was, if your code didn’t work, you could just shake the boards (there were three or four of them you could do this to), and if everything settled down right your code might actually run. Or bomb in a different, exciting way. Software progress was slow. There were attempts to get us more stable prototypes, but they never really worked that well.
Sometime in December we started getting chips from the fabs and the real hardware began to come to life. We booted the ST for the first time (it was exhilarating to see the floppy disk spin and seek under OS control — this is something that you take for utterly for granted until you have to make it work yourself).
The original budget of 128K of ROM was blown pretty early on, and we targeted 192K. Initially this was so that the machine could incorporate a built-in BASIC interpreter. Up until this point it was virtually unthinkable that you could ship a consumer computer without BASIC in ROM (the Apple II, the Commodore line, and all of the Atari computers had built-in BASIC).
DRI had a version of BASIC available, and one of our engineers (someone the Tramiels knew) was hired and given the task of porting it. I don’t remember precisely what went wrong, but it just didn’t happen. It’s possible that the DRI BASIC wasn’t very good, or was too full of platform-specific garbage to easily port, and it’s also possible that the engineer given the job just wasn’t up to it. Regardless, we started to realize that just the operating system alone was going to use up the entire 192K (and in fact, blew past it and had to be pared down during a 2-3 week crunching period just before we shipped the ROMs), and BASIC simply would not fit.
The other thing that was clear was that the software was going to be late; the ROM version wasn’t going to make it in time for CES. We had disk-based versions of the OS (called TOS, for “The Operating System” — catchy) booting, and that’s what we showed. The hardware guys doubled the amount of RAM in the system so the OS could live in RAM with room left over for applications.
Jack didn’t pay for all of the engineers to fly to Las Vegas, but he was willing to put us up in a hotel and get us CES badges if we arranged our own transportation, so a few of us did a road-trip. The show was fun; there was a lot of excitement and speculation about Atari’s new products. What people didn’t know is that there were only about five working ST systems in existence, and they kept dying on the show floor (possibly due to heat problems, bad connections, or barely-working custom chips going south) and had to be resurrected from time to time in a back room where techs were hidden away with soldering irons, a limited number of spare chips, and a liberal supply of invective.
We’d shown the ST to the public. Now we had to make it work.
I have been part of more than enough ‘restructures’ than I care to admit. Thanks for the catharcism
When I was 11, I got a Commodore VIC20 for Christmas, and thus began my foray into the world of computers. This computer came with BASIC built in, and in no time I was writing programs. Very long programs. I soaked up anything I could get my hands on that detailed the ins and outs of BASIC programming. So, my dad thinks I’m a computer genius, and tells a lady he knows all about how good I am on computers.
She says, “Hey, I just got a new computer but I don’t know how to use it. Could he come over and show me?” Of course, my dad volunteers me for the job. I’m thinking, “a computer is a computer, they’re all the same, right?”. RIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
So, we get over to her house, and she has this new IBM PC, with floppies and a real monitor (not using her TV set) and a very cool keyboard. A very expensive system. So, I sit down in front of it, flip it on, and the screen comes up to a flashing command prompt. I start typing out BASIC code. Let the laughing commence…
Obviously nothing worked, and i began to get very nervous. “Why isn’t this working?”, I thought. I knew I was typing the correct “syntax”. Well, after about 10 minutes of this, I just looked up at her and said “Uh, I don’t know how to use this computer”, which I thought had to be the ultimate humiliation. But she gave me 20 dollars for the time of coming out and looking at it. This was actually my first ever payment for computer work, even though no work was performed…
Thanks for posting on your blog. I wonder if you are aware of the joy and amazement you have given to people all over the world. I was one of those little kids who derived a great bit of happiness from the sweat of your brow. Thank you…
Regards,
Kevin Cornett
Wow. I love the story. I’m a Commodore fan from way back, and it’s nice to hear an Atari insider’s stories about the Tramiels (the opinions of the Commodore engineers are pretty well documented–I believe one of them, seeing Jack Tramiel years later, told him that he ruined his career, his marriage, and his life).
One question. I read somewhere, probably either in Compute or Byte, that one early contender as an OS for the ST was Microsoft Windows, and that Microsoft was annoyed that DRI got the contract, and this was the reason Microsoft never developed for the ST. Do you know if there’s any truth to that story?
I love “in the video game trenches” stories from the times of yore! Thanks for this.
Awesome story! It’s amazing to think that was only 25 years ago. Now days were dealing with gigabytes and terabytes, makes you wonder where will be in after the next 25 years.
Don’t. Stop. Writing.
(Also, to the commenter a few posts back: “So many cut corners it could have been a dodecahedron” is a fantastic turn of phrase and I’m planning to expend quite a bit of energy attempting to awkwardly work it into conversation. )
Gee, Landon… I wondered what happened to you…. Workin’ for the man, huh?
Thanks so much, I echo most of the great sentiments here! I had an 800xl and a 1040ST. So many hours of programming fun (remember coding in from a magazine! argh.. like 3-5 page of code!…)
Please keep it up, this is great!
display list interrupts, anyone?
When I got my first ST I managed to borrow someone’s copy of DevPac and wrote some assembler to scroll the screen to see how fast it was. From memory it was something like
scroll
lea a0, TOP_OF_SCREEN
lea a1, TOP_OF_SCREEN+SIZE_OF_ONE_LINE_BYTES
mov d0, #SIZE_OF_SCREEN_BYTES/4
loop
mov.l (a1)+, (a0+)
dbra d0
jmp scroll
And then sat and watched the very slow scroll vertical scroll.Even if you unrolled the loop, it wasn’t very quick or very smooth. Hmmph, Atari 8 bits could scroll the screen around faster than you could see it.
It’s hard to beat hardware scrolling (where you’re just changing a display list pointer and maybe a register or two, and not having to schlep a bunch of bytes around).
But I can’t resist pointing out, if you unroll the above loop into a series of MOVEM.L instructions and burn (say) everything but a counter register, source, destination and SP on intermediate values, you can get within a percent or so of bus speed (the DBRA above is costing a fair amount – remember that the 68000 doesn’t have a cache, and I’m pretty sure that even DBRA didn’t get any kind of speed-up until the 68010).
Reading this was just plain weird! “Damn, that sounds like Judy Bogart!” “Damn, *I* was working on Trivial Compute!” Who is this guy? Well I know who it is. I just can’t rememeber his name. Oh yeah, Landon! I haven’t thought of let alone heard the name “Dave Getreu” in 20+ years. Dave and I worked together on the aborted “Worms of Doom from OuterSpace” (working title) for the 800.
I was only at Atari for 18 months, but memories of times that strange sure stick with you.
Thanks for the story its a “page turner” keep up the writing.
thanks again
Interesting.
The ST was really a rip-off of the Commodore Amiga without
the custom chips. What a stingy bastard Tramiel was, but you have to give him credit for that great and affordable machine, the C64.
I would make the ST owners envious back in the day when loading up a game or a demo on the Amiga. They would go all silent. hahaha
This is such a great read! I had a pair of STFMs back in the early 90s, but until then only had a Commodore 64 with its infernal tape drive (I had a few games of the “press load, hit space and back away out of the room carefully, hoping it makes some difference and the game will work after 4 minutes of loading” variety). I only started to get programming with GFA Basic on the STs, and what a blast that was!
A very nice read.
Having been around for those heady days of early home computer development it is refreshing to hear your insider tales.
Early on, while I was turning time on a system 360, I decided I would side with the smaller dogs in personal computers as that was where the innovation was – and started out on the very nice-to-kitbash OSI C1P. But I kept a stable of other machines, mostly for their chipsets and languages, and both Commodore and Atari were represented.
My favorite though had to be the Sinclair ZX81 – when I got it, it was a cardboard box-o-parts and when I was done with it years later the little plastic box was almost unrecognizable amidst all the rainbow ribbon cable and aluminum project boxes… One of which was a kitbashed robotic arm. :)
I still use Z80 ASM nearly every day… Wonderful little process controllers.
As for Atari I progressed though the 800XL (an awesome little machine by the way) and then agonized over schematics and details for the ST and Amiga – eventually siding with the Amiga for it’s better graphics chipset. The ST had the Amiga beat hands down on sound though, but I was more into the fledgling rendering scene at the time.
when I was 16 I worked at Montgomery Wards selling the TI-99, Atari 400 and 800, and C64. I sold mostly C64 (or was it Vic20 back then) because I personally played with them all, programmed in BASIC on them, and felt Commodore had the best bang for the buck. I remember those days of Compute! and typing in programs, then came the Amiga, what a powerhouse! Of course, BASIC was no longer the same, and where did my beloved PEEK and POKE go? It was at the time I left programming behind and pursued something of greater value and interest….WOMEN! =)
[...] I came across this blog, then stumbled upon this entry. It’s an utterly fascinating insider’s recollection of the Atari ST, from its infancy to the debut at CES 1985. For those of you who aren’t familiar, this was a really sweet machine that, along with the Mac 512k (my first love computer) and the Commodore Amiga (many, many people’s first computer) broke ground on a new step forward for personal computers. This was the first computer with an actual Color GUI, based off Digital Research’s GEM operating system. It had a number of innovations, such as the ability to use the full system memory to render graphics (alternating cycles with the processing jobs), and the first home computer with midi support. Long story short, this is one of the most important nerdboxes in history (especially if you’re an 808 State fan, because they used these boxes back in their glory days). It really was a remarkable and important machine. [...]
[...] I’m a sucker for engineering in the trenches stories … some good ones I found today: here, here and here. There aren’t enough of them documented. If you’ve got any I’m all ears. Engineers and engineering should be celebrated not just be the whipping boys for the sales and marketing folks. [...]
Utterly fascinating. Thanks for sharing all this, it’s interesting to get a look into these days from an inside view.
I added you to my blogroll, whatever that means. When it makes you rich and famous, remember to mail me the check.
[...] Landon Dyer discusses his early involvement in the creation of the Atari ST, the Tramiel's response to the Commodore Amiga: [...]
Disclaimer: I worked at Atari from 1987 to 1993 and also worked for Leonard Tramiel in the Atari R&D group. I worked on the MEGA, STE, MEGA STE, TT, Falcon030, Panther, Jaguar, as well as things like TOS 1.4. Landon was at Atari when I was there and I joined the R&D group shortly after he left.
This story brings back some great memories of the past. Reading about wire-wrapped boards reminds me of Jim Tittsler, an Atari Hardware Engineer that had an amazing talent in bringing new boards to life. I am sure that Landon has fond memories of Jim! I know that I do.
I have tons of memories working on the TT boards when they first came to life. I worked on a bunch of tests for making sure that the Graphics subsystem (VDI) was working properly. I still remember having test cases that had all sorts of fuzzy video showing up and we would spray freon onto the custom chips to cool them down and the video would clear up :-)
During the bring up of the TT prototypes, Jim and a number of people were performing their usual magic and doing all sorts of wire-wrapping adjustments to work around issues with the chips. A bunch of us on the software side were anxious to get our hands on this super fast hardware and see what it could do. At one point, we started to discuss how much revenue the TT should be generating for Atari and how much each day the TT was late was costing us. Someone came up with a number close to $10/second.
Being the annoying kids that we were, we would stand behind Jim and remind him that each and every second that he took fixing up these boards was costing Atari $10. (hurry up, Jim.. that’s another $50! :) I am still surprised that Jim didn’t kill us.
I have other stories of working with Jim in the labs, but I am not sure that he would appreciate us telling them :-)
I will say that I know the feeling that Landon talks about in his message: The first time you see the OS boot successfully on a new board and see what the board can do, its truly exciting stuff. We would work crazy hours for days just to be around the board. When we only had 2 working TT prototypes, I would often eat dinner and hang out late so that I could get time to test out of the graphics subsystem on the boards and was excited to do so.
Working with Leonard and the rest of the team at Atari was truly a memorable experience. Parts of working for the Tramiels were crazy, but I have to say working for Leonard was a great experience. If you worked at Atari, you know that some great people came through those doors over the years. And some pretty good products came out there as well.
Anyway, thanks for sharing, Landon. Can’t wait to read the next installment.
–> towns
[...] On the same subject, I came across a couple of other stories that I found very interesting (via the Blog for the Sportsgamer), both from the site DadHacker (a true industry insider). Those of you in my “middle aged” demographic will find them to be relevant reading, as they deal with development for the Atari 400/800 series of computers. “DadHacker” actually wrote the Donkey Kong code for the system. It’s a great read. [...]
Thank you, love this.
I myself was a Sinclair fan and user (got one in 1988), learned assembler etc, then I’ve got used ST in I think 1994 and used it for MIDI stuff (Cubase & sound librarians), and then I bought in 2000 Falcon MkII and still use it for MIDI, it is from my point of view one of the most beautiful machines all time. I am still a little sad that all this wintel won, we (Atari) were way ahead of them.
Your stories are reliably fascinating. Thanks for putting in all those hours of frustration so I could run Sundog, Goldrunner, Starglider, and oh yes Degas Graphics on my 520ST.
I looved the Atari ST. Someone said that the Mac had better hardware. Initially this was not the case … they were pretty much on par.
The problem with Atari is that they were too often cash-strapped and were real penny pinchers. The Mega-ST could have been promoted more and the Falcon should have been in a real computer case. The delays with the TT were a big problem … sadly both Atari and Commodore bit the dust …
Some of us want to see Atari come back as a computer and video game company …
Incredible story, thanks for sharing ! :)
Very nice read! I was a teen back then and my first machine was the 800XL. Shorly there after I got a 130XE and eventually a 520STm! I loved Atari computers, and even today I still like to mess around with them.
Loved Atari ST -> times! My Falcon should still be in working order, though not sure anymore, gotta check ;)
Anyway, waiting for the part 2… Nice to read about what happened at that time. Keep it up!
Holy f*cking crap man, you got to write a book.
Where is part 2
Spent years learning basic on my 800xl before getting one of the first 520ste’s
Must set it up again.Still around somewhere
Hello:
We are a group of Majorca (Balearic islands Spain) who we artisan made hardware for the users of Commodore Amiga, C64/128, which they need new and exclusive hardware.
You can visit to us in our Web:
http://www.retro-data.com
Then that, would be a pleasure to be in contact with the enemy to comment any question on the legendary Amigas.
Greetings, Juan J. Costa
Wow – I’m late to the thread, but I just _have_ to say Thank You!
Not just for posting this great history of the development of the ST, but also for your part in developing the machine. The ST (ST, STE and Falcon) was my main machine from 1986 to about 1994 and I still miss those times. I did a lot of programming on the ST and the internal architecture, the TOS and the simplicity of the overall concept had me in awe. It was a beautiful piece of engineering. Thanks!
Where’s the 2nd one!! I wanna read the 2nd one!! We want more!!
[...] A blast from the past: the building of the Atari ST. I had one, and still fondly remember its monochrome bit mapped screen. The ST character set included an Easter egg of sorts, four characters that (properly combined) depicted the smiling face of J. R. Bob Dobbs. [...]
interesting story, he has to be around my age 47 as I was in school during the 80s video craze.
He sounds a bit bitter. Probably sick of working with idiots that he was smarter than but had to suck up to. Its been a long time, wonder if the Atari thing scarred him?
Atari was not very good to programmers egos. Everyone knows who wrote Quake, MULE etc. Who wrote Donkey Kong for Atari???? Keep the programmers hidden so they do not get snatched up by the competition.
Nothing that a little prozac can’t fix. :)
I thought this was an absorbing and thoroughly interesting story and cannot wait for the next part, or book even! ;) I was also part of the home computer generation in the 1970s and 1980s (I’m 37yrs old this year). I started with my uncle’s homemade Nascom kit housed in a makeshift case, running a Z80 CPU, then a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, later a Amstrad CPC464 and finally the Atari 1040 STe. However I have used many other computers like the Commodore Vic 20, 64, 16, +4, Oric 1, Sinclair ZX81, ZX Spectrum 128+2, Amstrad CPC6128, BBC Micro A & B, Acorn Electron, MSX 1, Psion Series 3 and many more.
I have used many variants of ST and I currently own a 1040 STe upgraded to 4MB. Even though I have powerful PC desktop machines that can do anything I want, I really feel more comfortable and attached to my old STe and I plan to upgrade this with large hard drives or flash media. I’ll get a PS/2 mouse interface and also something to allow connection to a TFT LCD monitor. Someone once gave me a Replay sampling cartridge but I wonder, what was the very best audio expansion option for the ST? I’d love something with multitrack capability, even if it was only four tracks (I’ve tried Quartet by the way).
I started off with a Vic 20, then went to an Atari 400 (they did NOT have basic – you needed to buy a cartridge), and then the C64. Always wanted an ST, but ended up with an Amiga… man, that was a fun time – new ideas, new tech. I guess that’s why I like Linux now – I mean, the Vic 20 actually came with a WIRING DIAGRAM!!! WOW! what computer does that these days?
Ahh … the prototype ST’s dying at CES sounds like the PRODUCTION Amiga 500’s I owned … 3 of them in fact. All blew their Agnus chips regularly. All the while the in-laws 520ST … yep he got one of the first with a single sided external disk drive … never faltered or missed a beat as did his 800XL. I grew to love those computers of his.
Not long ago I decided to renew my love affair with the Atari’s of yesteryear. I now own an 800XL, 130XE, 1040STf, 1040STe and a Mega 4 along with assorted Atari drives, monitors, tape drives etc…. all working just fine. The wife just sighs when another box from EBAY or New Zealand’s equivalent auction site arrives on the doorstep.
Oh well … back to that game of Jet Boot Jack I go.
Happy computing fellow Atarian’s :-)
Wow, thanks for the trip down memory lane (should that be RAM lane?)! I started out with a 1040 in ‘86, shortly after I got out of the navy. What an awesome machine! I remember sitting up til 3 or 4 in the morning learning all there was to know about the ST. Anyone remember Current Notes? The Atari consumer shows? I went to one in Worchester, mass in 88 or 89. Fun times ! Frustrating at the same time, watching Atari throwing away opportunity after opportunity to get the ST into the American computing mainstream due to their refusal to market it seriously. Still. Fun times.
G’day,
I am trying to respond to an email sent to me by John Feagans which I unfortunately lost before I had a chance to reply. Posting here is a long shot because I see that the last entry was made two years ago so I doubt anybody is looking at this forum any longer but here goes anyway….
John, I lost the original email you sent to me and cannot find your current email address. Anyway, yes, of course I remember you and no I never became a famous opera singer! Obviously, because if I had you would have heard about me. Right?
Anyway, getting an email from you out of the blue after 30 years seemed a bit strange to me but now curiosity has gotten the better of me and I would like to respond.
I did not become an opera singer but did become a graphic artist and had a career working in Silicon Valley for over 20 years in that field. So, I was always there.
If you see this or if anybody out there knows John would you please direct him to this site and ask him to email me again at the address on my web page? http://www.petportraitsbypaula.com/
Thanks, and sorry about this being off topic.