Interesting Leonard Tramiel interviews fresh on youtube

[ImmortalA1000]

Very interesting, some obvious questions were not asked (which would have helped my ST video I was going to do quite a fair bit!) but still fascinating. I am not promoting the channel or anything, nothing to do with me, just thought some of you might be interested as it covers Commodore and Atari and the bit inbetween

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[Gorf]

Indeed very interestring - 3 hours in total: wow!
But it was worth it.

Many known stories and facts, but also a lot of unknown details and views (at least for me).
Some things don't add up and are probably flawed or biased memories, but that is understandable after such a long time.

What questions would you have asked?

[TEG]

Thanks for those links.

Some points I retain from part II if I understood well what he said:
- The ST was intended to be delivered with the blitter but delay made it available only for the TT and of course the STe
- Midi ports was really an idea they found and added to try to have an advantage over the PC
- The Panther was prototyped but the first batch of chips did not worked so they decided to drop it in favour of the Jaguar
- They did realized that the Jaguar hardware was buggy but it was then too late. So poor development kit + new architecture of dual processors (Tom and Jerry) hard to master + easy 68000 programming + hardware bugs = road to failure

[ImmortalA1000]

The questions I would have asked would be

Stuff about the Atari Mickey project which was a Warner Atari thing that had a license to use Amiga chipset in a console (not a computer) IIRC 128k RAM.

I don't believe anything about the Rainbow chipset was mentioned, the Silver chip in particular was interesting in that it was halfway between blitter objects and hardware sprites and it was designed so higher end systems could have multiple Silver chips. And of course the infamous YM2151 rumour and also Atari 65XEM prototype and if it was just an empty case on display or there ever was a working motherboard.

Also, twice UK magazine talked about an ST based console. One was around 1987 and another time was late 88/early 89 after the DRAM crisis was over but Atari never gave much details about it. Atari were notorious with 'testing the water' by leaking ideas with no basis in prototype/project work to the press to gauge consumer reaction. One was worldwide other was probably a USA only project magazines were told.

I met Sam Tramiel a long time ago, he was on an Atari stand demonstrating the new Mega ST with the blitter chip, he showed me the updated version of the animated bird demo (white parrot flies over beach scene) which had about 8 or 10 birds now. Me and my friend used to get 'press passes' for shows as his Dad worked in the IT industry plus even when I was 16 I looked about 20

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The questions I would have asked would be

Stuff about the Atari Mickey project which was a Warner Atari thing that had a license to use Amiga chipset in a console (not a computer) IIRC 128k RAM.

I don't believe anything about the Rainbow chipset was mentioned, the Silver chip in particular was interesting in that it was halfway between blitter objects and hardware sprites and it was designed so higher end systems could have multiple Silver chips.

I would think the Answer to this questions would have been the same as to many others regarding pre-Tramiel Atari:
"I was not involved in that".
Leonard was occupied with the ST, and in general it seems the Tramiels wanted to get rid of all the side projects Atari had amounted in the years earlier.
They even shut down the 7800, that was already produced in 84 and sitting in the warehouse ... just to rerelease the exact same machine two years later, after Nintendo was gaining market share. Strategic mistake.

Sierra (Rainbow Chipset) or even Gaza, would have been absolute killer machines in 84/85. But sadly everything at old Atari was stuck in some kind of prototype-limbo and nothing was production ready ... and despite of so many promising in-house designs, they needed some external contractors to get the Maria chip for the 7800 done.


I would have asked about the purchase of the "Federated Group" (retailers), that almost ruined Atari im the late 80s.

And of course about the possibility of buying Commodore back in 94. It seems they would have had more than enough money to so!
(Won lawsuit against Sega)

[ImmortalA1000]

Not sure about the cash flow situation in 94 at Atari, they did after all end up being absorbed into the JT Storage hard drive manufacturer for peanuts before Escom even came out with the winning bid.

You are probably right about Mickey project etc. As for the Sierra/Gazza Rainbow chipset project, the was the horror of designing new technology by committee, they couldn't even agree on a CPU and the AMY chipset designers were basically having a huge jerk-off like some work-shy students at the expense of the company rather than working towards a cutting edge and very affordable custom chipset they were supposed to be working on.

Would have been nice to clear up the rumour whether the ST, allegedly being worked on before Tramiel Technology Ltd were approached to purchase Atari consumer division, had ever been considered with AMY or YM2151 as the conflicting rumours state. Of course he may not have remembered but that would have helped a lot to know that. I suspect it was just a rumour though as the ST prototype had no floppy drive controller and the YM2149 pretty much is the floppy drive controller with the added benefit of being able to make some noises.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Not sure about the cash flow situation in 94 at Atari, they did after all end up being absorbed into the JT Storage hard drive manufacturer for peanuts before Escom even came out with the winning bid.

You got your timeline wrong here:
Escom bought Commodore in 1995
Atari merged with JTS in 1996

It was a reverse merger, that was done because Atari did have cash but no products to sell and vice-versa.
The cash came from this:

"... a settlement was reached in September 1994 between both parties — Sega would acquire $40 million worth of stock in Atari and would also pay Atari $50 million for a license to use over 70 patents issued between 1977 and 1984."

http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index....Atari_vs._Sega

You are probably right about Mickey project etc. As for the Sierra/Gazza Rainbow chipset project, the was the horror of designing new technology by committee, they couldn't even agree on a CPU and the AMY chipset designers were basically having a huge jerk-off like some work-shy students at the expense of the company rather than working towards a cutting edge and very affordable custom chipset they were supposed to be working on.

AMY was at least finished and working and then sold off to a company called "Sight & Sound".
Only that company got sued by Tramiel's Atari as soon as they tried to ship the product - "Why" would be an other good question for an interview.

[ImmortalA1000]

Ahh OK I thought it was the second year that ESCOM finally got the stores opened and got the £399 A1200 back on the production line. Getting confused with their successor.

AMY was about as complete as the wire wrap boards of Lorraine OR the first prototype chips of the C65 chipset. None of the prototype chips were bug free. The design was fine but actually producing the chips was pushing the limits.

It worked on paper, it didn't work when it came out of the chip fab facility. The lead designer even admits he has no idea if it was commercially viable for any kind of home/serious computer that Atari might ever sell. Basically it was a massive student in sandals type goof off rather than anything Atari Corp would be able to use in a three digit price bracket. That's why it was sold off by the Tramiels I suspect. The entire Rainbow chipset development was like this actually.

It's sad because the sound of additive synthesis is very nice, if it had worked out then AMY would have been the 16bit era equivalent of the 1981 SID chip where a great musician who could also do good machine code would have pushed the boundaries.

Quite sad what happened to the AMY chip but making a chipset via committee meetings never works out the same way as the SID and VIC-II wiped the floor with the 8bit competition.

[Tigerskunk]

Too bad about the blitter being late.

But then, there are couple of other blunders in the STs design, that made scrolling a shit show anyway, so fast action games with lots of big objects would not have been feasable anyway.

It's a bit sad that the STE wasn't adapted as well as it should have been.