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Jack Tramiel, Founder of Commodore Business Machines, Dies At Age 83
LoTonah writes "Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore Business Machines and later, the owner of Atari, died Easter Sunday. He was 83. He undoubtedly changed the computing landscape by bringing low cost computers to millions of people, and he started a price war that saw dozens of large companies leave the market. He also took a bankrupt Atari and managed to wring almost another decade out of it. The 6502 microprocessor would have withered on the vine if it weren't for Tramiel's support. Could anyone else have done all of that?"
Looking at every article and documentary on the late 70's and 80's computing scene these days, you would think that the only computers that existed were Apples and PC's out of Silicon Valley, and that everyone out there had $2,000 to spend on a new computer back when that was the price of a decent used car. But the most popular computer in the 80's wasn't a Mac, or a PC. Commodore was by far the most popular computer line of that era. And they made computers than didn't require a second mortgage for working-class people to buy. And they were EVERYWHERE (not just in the yuppie homes).
Not that you'll even find Commodore mentioned in The Pirates of Silicon Valley, or any other popular computing accounts about that time. You'd think everyone was going around back then just talking about IBM, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates--when most people hadn't even *seen* a PC or Apple outside of a school or business.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/1989_you_dont_know_jack.htm
seems he got around to do quite a lot.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_AMIGAmini.aspx .... The new AMIGA MINI comes with a 3.5 Ghz i-7 CPU, up to 16 GB RAM, GTX 430 GFX, 600 GB SSD, HDMI/DVI out and 8 USB ports. Sure, it isn't a real "AMIGA", but its cool that there is at least an "attempt" to put AMIGA branded computers back on the desktop.
Long live Commodore! And long live the C64 and Amiga 500! Good times...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The computer that started my love, and now my career, was an Atari ST. I would spend hours watching demos, playing (probably pirated) video games, and experimenting with voice synthesizers, drawing, and music programs.
TOS ERROR #35 in heaven, Jack.
I owned both Atari and Amiga pcs, without them I'd have been trying to figure out a way to lug a crt and an acoustic coupler home. Thank you Jack.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
http://xkcd.com/218/
for my childhood, thank you Jack.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Best game ever. RIP.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
I used my C64 almost exclusively for word processing It got me through college, plus I wrote a novel that was (justly) never published. The program was called SPEEDSCRIPT, and it took a little time to learn, but I've never seen a word processor for PC that was more powerful or more agile. The closest thing I know of today is probably emacs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedScript
One thing that's particularly interesting about Jack Tramiel is that, unlike some of the other 70s tech entrepreneurs (Woz, say), he was really from a previous generation, not natively a computer guy. But, he managed to anticipate and succeed over several technological transitions. He immigrated to the U.S. after surviving a concentration camp during WW2, and started a reasonably successful typewriter company in the 50s. That successfully transitioned to mechanical calculators in the early 60s after the typewriter market started getting too competitive and low-margin, and then once transistors started becoming affordable, he digified that line and put out a line of digital calculators in the late 60s. In fact Commodore in effect put out the first Texas Instruments calculator, using commodity circuits sourced from TI, which TI only later realized they could assemble under their own label, resulting in the now-famous TI calculator line.
Then, finally, he anticipated the home-computing trend, with Commodore releasing its first design in 1977, the same year as the Apple II.
It's not very difficult to imagine an alternate history where Commodore was a typewriter company that had a brief adding-machine phase before completely missing the digital-computing wave and going bankrupt by 1980.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Guru Meditaiton # 81070000.00524950
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
I can tell you unequivocally that being a supplier to both companies sucked big time. They never paid you. It got so bad that we (when I was a supplier to them) basically made any business with them COD because if you didn't you would never get your money. You may all love Jack but I couldn't stand doing business with them. Major PITA.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
Just don't blow your fuse.
(Nobody will get this.)
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
For it's name, at least, the name for the operating system on the Atari ST: T.ramiel O.perating S.ystem
As far as I recall, that thing was designed and produced by MOS technology (which was sadly a one-hit wonder).
Thank you, Jack, for your significant and underappreciated contribution to the computing field. I and many others like me cut our teeth coding for the Commodore 64 and have since made our own valuable contributions. You will be missed.
SYS64738
The first computer I ever programmed or had in my home was a Commodore PET model 2001 computer. My father was a teacher taking an 8 week course in microcomputers and he was able to bring a PET home with him for the duration of the course. That was in 1978. A few years later, the first computer I ever owned was a Commodore 64. In high school computer science class we used Commodore PET model 4032 computers with Waterloo Structured BASIC, until I introduced the teacher to COMAL, which ran on the new Commodore 64s the school had just acquired.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
No please. let it die. I love the C64, still got two on my desk, and I write software for the C64 and for emulator tools for it in my spare time. But it is over and done with. Either bring out a new computer with a new chip and new OS or bring out a linux box, but don't brand the linux box "commodore" or "amiga" because it is neither.
Did you price that so-called "Amiga"?
It's twice the price of a top end Mac Mini, a SFF computer that has similar enough specs that if you bump the Apple to the same specs, it's /still/ 500 bucks cheaper.
Just... no.
And it's not like you're getting an Amiga OS. You're getting Fuduntu with an emulator and a really gawd-awful skin.
--
BMO
Rest in peace, Jack Tramiel, famed for "The Jack Attack."
The Commodore 64 truly was The People's Computer, like the Volkswagen "bug" was The People's Car.
At a time when an Apple //e cost $2500 for monitor, CPU, extra RAM (necessary), and two disk drives, you could walk out of the store with a full Commodore system for $350 and hook it up to an old TV.
This is why C64 culture was so vital: people took risks with their computers instead of treating them like business machines or expensive curiosities. Back in the BBS days, the Commodore boards were where it was at. Total anarchy zones. If the feds or feebs swooped in to confiscate them, one paycheck later they were up and operating again.
I hope Jack gets the recognition he deserves in the great beyond. With any luck, he's just finished sliding a whoopee cushion onto Steve Jobs' easy chair and is watching from behind a corner with a devilish grin.
Futurist Traditionalism
I have to agree. Having learned my craft during those early years, I recall the times well. Jack was hated by Commodore dealers, hated by users... and I don't doubt hated by his own employees. The way I see it, he basically sucked all the money he could out of a successful company and reinvested very little to keep the success rolling. They were never able to move past their 6502-based designs (the Amiga design was purchased).
I have to recommend this is an outstanding read: http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/0973864907
Yes, this book details Jack purposefully not paying suppliers, nice to hear it repeated from someone first-hand. According to the book they made a point of not paying suppliers, especially if they were interested in acquiring the company. When the company was cash-strapped and desperate, Commodore would buy them out.
It made more money on the short-term, but was bad for the long-run because it burned bridges in the industry. This made it hard for Jack to get now-wary suppliers and dealers to help him grow his business when he saw an opportunity for a new market/device.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
The ST series could have been nice, but they made it and... did nothing. They never evolved it anywhere. Say what you will about the current OS players, but at least things are always evolving and growing as they duke it out.
I had an ST with the little box by David Small that turned it into a Mac. I used that for a year and then said WhyTF am I bothering with this hybrid monster and just got a Mac IIsi. I was pursuing my Master's degree at the time at USC, and they had amazing discounts for students an Apple stuff. Actually, on all stuff. I got Photoshop at 80% off.
Rather than spend $350 on a case containing a PC motherboard with no memory, no CPU, and no disk, I feel I'd get a much better "Amiga experience" by buying an Amiga Forever CD for $30 or so and running it on my existing machine.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
AMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! </scene reference>
But seriously, not it is not "cool that there is at least an "attempt"" to bring back the brand, with zero innovation besides a breadbox casemod. Note that all their other systems (including their "Amiga"s) are just cheap Chinese off-the-line volume machines available to anybody to throw their badge on it.
Commodore bought MOS technology in 1976 when they were on the verge of bankruptcy, Apple would not have had a source for chips if they had gone under.
The 6502 has had a very sorted past and changed hands many time. It ended up with Bill Mensch and the Western Design Center (http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/WDC_Founder.cfm) I worked with Bill when I was at VLSI Technology as we were fabricating the 65C816 for the Apple IICS. Let's just say it was "interesting" and leave it at that. Bill had his own idea what fabrication design rules "should be". Actually checking the design rules of the foundry you wanted to fabricate your parts at was a detail that was beneath him. Made for lots of "fun"........
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
The word on Jack was, "He's a great guy, and he'll pay you if he has to."
He bought Atari for a dollar down and a dollar when you catch me, 'cause Warner was a serious don't-wanter.
I don't think anyone with a softer nose could have kept Atari going, but let's remember him as he was, one tough sonovabitch.
It's funny how 50% of the posts in a thread about the founder of Commodore are nothing but bitching about Apple.
I never played with Commodore 64 or knew anyone who owned one. But I do remember Tramiel's holy war against the Amiga. After leaving Commodore he just went on the attack against his former company.
I think the real question is now. Who will get the sword from Swordquest. Maybe there
If Commodore hadn't bought MOStek, the Apple // would have probably had to use the 6800. Commodore bought them in 1976, just before the Apple came out. Of course, if Commodore hadn't strangled MOStek into being so broke, it likely wouldn't have had to sell itself to Tramiel.
So...if Apple had to use the 6800, the price of their computers would likely be around $200 higher.
It's important to note that the Commodore 64 incorporated graphics support hardware (aka the first "graphics card") which helped make the computer much faster than it's CPU speed would indicate, especially for gaming.
You Sir, must stop talking out of your ass.
Actually, he is correct. The C-64 did have "graphics support hardware" beyond offering a bitmap that programmer could directly manipulate. The GP is only mistaken in that he characterized the hardware as being like a "graphics card". The specialized C64 graphics hardware supported 8 sprites. It was a very handy thing.
You could also consider the reprogrammable character set as such graphics hardware that sped up games. Various VIC-20 and C-64 games used this technique to good effect.
Back then the Apple II had swappable video cards.
Huh? *If* such cards existed they were certainly so rare that hardly anyone had them, a real niche thing. Are you thinking of the 80 column card? It added 64K RAM too but I don't recall this card enhancing graphics. My recollection as a former Apple II, //e, and C-64 programmer is that on the Apple II you had bitmapped graphics and that on the C-64 you also had bitmapped graphics, but it was better, plus specialized hardware support for sprites. The Apple was primitive in comparison.
I hate the smell of noobs in the morning, It smells like ignorance.
You might want to check that attitude if you yourself aren't remembering things quite correctly either.
I was pursuing my Master's degree at the time at USC, and they had amazing discounts for students an Apple stuff. Actually, on all stuff. I got Photoshop at 80% off.
I believe that's called "the drug dealer model."
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Geez, Tramiel didn't come to your house and force you to buy it at gunpoint. The world couldn't help you from being a dumbass Atari fanboi, so why blame him for smacking you back to reality?
Atari couldn't afford to take three years to design the next Amiga. They did great considering the time/money constraints.
I think I would blame Irving Goulde rather than Tramiel for sucking the money out. Tramiel wanted new designs, he wasn't afraid of trashing an architecture in order to move on.
Commodore had all sorts of 68000, 8080 and Z8000 designs (although most were co-processors to the 650x) that never saw the light of day. But because they saved so much money on using MOStek processors, they kept going back to that well. I think their biggest failures were not forcing MOStek to come up with the 65816 themselves.
Okay, I'm forced to agree with this. Atari did very little to upgrade the ST, and it pissed me off too.
Its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. It was always said that Atari didn't want to confuse users by having to pay attention to hardware specs when buying software, but the rest of the industry was doing just fine with that dilemma.
I would have killed for an expansion slot on the ST. A cheaper Mega ST. Anything. I did some crazy upgrades to my ST (Stereo sound, 4096 colour video expansion, 4Mb memory). I got a 20Mb hard drive (bought it from Bill Wilkinson himself). You shouldn't have to jump through the hoops that I did to expand a machine. I had the Magic Sac, then the Spectre 128, then the Spectre GCR.
But then Windows 3.0 came out, and I got a 286 with a mono VGA card, 2Mb RAM, and a 20Mb internal hard drive. That's when Atari stopped being my main computer.
Thank you. :)
I never know what to think or say when I think about the last decade of Atari. Warner had no idea how to run a tech company, and there were too many projects going nowhere. They took a look at a few months-worth of profits and decided that they could spend money like that forever. Suddenly the videogame market, then the home computer market tanked.
So Jack comes in, and has a lot of hard decisions to make. Cut here, slash there. Discontinue products. Write off factories and warehouses full of product that isn't moving. Kind of like how Steve Jobs came back to Apple and had to gut things fast.
He knew that selling the Atari 8 bits wasn't going to work for long--PC compatibles and Macintoshes were starting to make inroads into homes and smaller businesses. Game machines were dead. He knew what Amiga had cooking, and when Commodore got ahold of that he knew he needed a counter-product. So, like the IBM PC, Atari used off-the-shelf components and built something quick and dirty.
A lot of people took him to task for not advertising. There was advertising, just not in expensive publications. Very little in Byte, for instance. There was a big campaign at first, but then it seemed like nothing. Atari turned inward, producing magazines like Atari Explorer instead. Besides, who is to say that spending $5 million dollars a month on advertising actually is effective? BTW, I heard that it cost $1 million to do a full page colour ad in Byte. So how much for Newsweek, Time, etc., and how effective is it?
I think Atari did a lot with the little money they had. I doubt Tramiel got any richer from his time there. He came into Atari with $40 million personal worth--how much did he leave with?
Apple would simply have found another source.
I have a story to tell about Mr. Tramiel. He touched my life in such an obvious way, with such a hackable C64, and I got the chance to thank him in person for his vision.
I used to work in Silicon Valley. When I first went there, I had visions of rubbing elbows with personal computing luminaries like Jobs, Wozniak, Tramiel, and Bushnell. Let me tell you, working in a startup is not the way to make this happen. Of course, Nolan Bushnell doesn't live in Silicon Valley, and Steve Jobs was busy running Apple, so they got scratched off my list. I did get to meet Steve Wozniak, simply because I was in the right place at the right time. But Jack Tramiel was... well, someone I wanted to meet badly enough to track down myself.
I had heard he still lived near Silicon Valley, but it was only by sheer luck that I came across a way to contact him (which I won't share here). It was my last week to work before moving back east, and I worked up the courage to initiate contact with him. Immediately, I found out he was someone who valued what privacy he could get, so I had to explain why I wanted to meet him in person. He graciously agreed to meet me for Thursday lunch. That gave me two days to think about what I wanted to say to him, and to ask him.
Not that it mattered. I got there a little bit before he did, got shown to his customary booth, and started tripping over my own tongue as soon as he showed up. Any photos you've seen of him reflect exactly how he looked: somewhat rotund, mostly bald, clearly Jewish, and very contented with life. The ease with which he greeted me showed I wasn't the first 37-year-old Commodore fanboi he'd ever met.
We ordered our meals, and began to chat. I tried to present myself as respectfully as I could, but... really, this was Jack Tramiel, and I was having lunch with him! He explained right away that he had just come from the gym, he always ate there after his workout, and that's how the restaurant host knew where to seat me. He worked out three times a week, as a way to stay somewhat active, but he had a good life, he knew it, and it showed.
We talked about how he had learned what American business was about, and how he had learned about America. When I told him I was from Ohio, he piped up immediately with, "Ah, my favorite city is Toledo, Ohio. Even though I've never been there." I knew he was a Holocaust survivor, but I didn't know that an American from Toledo, Ohio was the first Allied soldier to greet him when the Ahlem labor camp was liberated. This soldier taught him to speak basic English, talking about Toledo, Ohio enough that it essentially became young Jacek's understanding of what city life in the USA was like.
We talked about Commodore Business Machines, and how the design evolved from the early PET, through the VIC-20, C-64, and C-128. He had wanted economical designs from the beginning of his involvement with computers, and his products reflected that. He bore no ill will towards IBM, Apple, or any of the other competitors. It was all business; life is too short for animosity on any level. As the fortunes of CBM varied through time, that philosophy made it easier for him to stand aside and let history take its course. (I've heard that from a few other Holocaust survivors as well.)
We also talked a little politics. I asked him what he thought about the conservative/liberal polemic, and his response was simple: The government governs a nation, but it's a nation of people. When a government prefers the nation over her citizens, they suffer as he suffered. He asserted that no form of government was completely immune to this hazard, but some are less suceptible to it.
I had a website that the time, and said something about what an incredible brag I would have for it. He demurred a little, and asked that I refrain from speaking publicly about having lunch with him, at least while he was alive. So I did.
The hour and a half I spent
That is not an Amiga. It's a badge-engineered PC running an OS that has nothing to do with the Amiga OS.
THIS is an Amiga. It's expensive as hell, not very fast, and severely niche. But at least it runs AmigaOS and can run old Amiga code directly. http://acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7
There are other models in the works - the AmigaOne X1000, for instance - but they're even more hideously expensive, and they're still in beta.
Everyone seem to praise Jobs, which was arguably the best CEO in the IT business in the last decade, but Tramiels' legacy is impressive. He basically beat all offerings from Atari and Apple and managed to sell 17 *million* C-64s back in the eighties, which is mind boggling. His company paved the market for a real, usable and affordable home computer.
That little brown box opened a whole new world for me. Thank you Jack. You'll be missed.
READY. ...
Yeah, good memories. Thanks, Jack.
because he brought new technology to the populace by aiming to keep the price low by streamlining manufacturing; and selling gajillions of them.
Table-ized A.I.
Thank you. Classy post. (I remember PaperClip. And Dave Small, Dave Allen, the Codeheads, a whole bunch of fine people.)
Read the thread, I appreciate all who had actual, factual, memories of Mr. Tramiel, the tech and the times. Never met him, but exchanged a few emails after a RTC on GEnie. Found him to be no-nonsense and gracious.
A 520STfm was my first very own machine; had been involved with friends' stuff going back to Altair, Compucolor, Atari 800. Later bought a 1040, Atari gave me one (1040STe) and a friend years later gave me his old Mega. Wonderful learning, doing, playing - great memories.
RIP, Sam. Thanks, again.
Umm, the 6502 *did* wither because of Tamiel.
If you ever look at a MOS 65xx op-code map, you'll see that a good deal of codes are unused. Supposedly the original MOS 65xx team wanted to come back at a later time and develop a revised core that would be more friendly for non-embedded solutions. Commodore management balked at the idea and several members of the core 65xx eventually left. They saw in Commodore management the same short-sighted thinking that drove them from Motorola. The result was that the processor core used in the original 6501 remained relatively unchanged throughout all of Commodore's NMOS and CMOS variants, bugs and all.
Development of the 65xx series came from sources outside of Commodore. Bill Mensch, a former member of the MOS 65xx team, founded his own semiconductor company (Western Design Center), releasing upgraded cores such as the 65C02 and 65816. Undocumented ops went from weird behavior to NOPs, more ops were added for transferring values between registers, registers and memory locales could be zeroed out, the zero page and stack page could be relocated to offsets other than $0000 and $0100, the zero page index roll bug was fixed, flags had a predictable state after a RTI, etc...
It wasn't until the CSG 65CE02 and derived CSG 4510 processors that Commodore finally gained modern 65xx processors.
I sometimes wonder how nice the C64 would have been to program with a 65C02 or 65CE02.
According to the book, some speculate that the payment reputation is part of what doomed Atari when Jack took over because suppliers remembered being "hi-Jacked"*, and changed their contract/billing terms immediately.
Almost all legendary businessmen seem to have about 30% asshole in them. His penny-pinching spilled over the edges, just like Jobs' perfectionism and idealism created annoying side-effects, including possibly his death.
* Not sure of the exact phrase
Table-ized A.I.
My family couldn't afford a Mac, but could manage a 'Jackintosh' -- a 520ST with a single-sided floppy drive and a monochrome monitor. Sure, it wasn't as fancy as a Mac, but neither is a Toyota Corolla as fancy as a Ferrari. It had a mouse-driven GUI, didn't need a bunch of disks just to get to the desktop, could play some pretty cool games -- even in monochrome mode (Bolo anyone?) -- could use a standard printer, and the floppies were PC-compatible!
In terms of business, gaming and design and music, the ST was a really cheap way to touch on all of these when no other contemporary computer could, at an even-remotely similar price-point. Amiga for business? Yeah, right. Macintosh for home gaming? Not that inspiring, Dark Castle notwithstanding. PC for design? Bleah. Never mind MIDI. You can't really argue with the ST's flexibility -- and it was remarkably easy to sell the idea of buying one to parents who already felt burned when they discovered too late that using that 8-bit computer you talked them into had an extremely steep learning curve when it came to business and productivity applications.
The ST's only real failing was it wasn't marketed particularly well. Had Jack been willing to lift prices to cover advertising costs I expect that it would have done much better, but he seems to have always had a bit of a personal philosophy on that matter that in retrospect was perhaps a little naive.
Regardless, were it not for the ST I probably wouldn't have had a 16-bit computer until several years later. Thanks Jack.
My first experience of a proper Microcomputer was a Commodore PET at a wargaming convention. After that I got interested in what computers could do and have had a career of over 25 years in Computing as a result. I also bought an Atari ST which I used for several years.
Thank you, Jack, for your contribution to my life. You are one of the few people who I can genuinely say will be missed with thanks and gratitude.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Kinkade? That worthless hack in no way compares to Wallace or Tramiel.
Kinkade's mass-produced crap isn't good enough to hang in a gas station restroom. The world's a better place without that self-aggrandizing publicity whore.
The media has been felating his corpse, calling him the "painter of light" -- a title that he gave himself -- so I can see why you'd get confused.
The world is better off without him.
Required reading for internet skeptics
It's only a rumor that Jack had it hanging in his living room. My guess is that it was scrapped along with whatever the other prize was (the jade thing or the crown, maybe?).
A shame, really, they were the only thing good about the Sword Quest games. I had two of them as a kid. They didn't stand on their own. Without the comics and the contest, I doubt we'd remember them.
Required reading for internet skeptics
My wife dug up my old C-64 from that storage room in my mom's old house just a couple of weeks ago, and now the first real computer I ever owned now sits in my garage, along with the 1541 disk drive. I don't know if she also managed to dig up all the old cables that came with it so I can turn it on again for old times' sake. I have to wonder if it still works: that thing has been in storage for more than 20 years, and not in the best of conditions. That machine gave me my start in life in the world of computing, and I remember fondly the days of PEEKing and POKEing machine language opcodes from a photocopied 6502/6510 reference manual I managed to dig up from a shop somewhere (after having convinced my parents to pay a not insignificant sum for it). It's part of what made me what I am today, and I'm not like to forget it.
Well Jack, I'd like to thank you for that bit of hardware that gave me and a million other geeks the start of their lives today.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Hi Dan.
Did you eventually get paid for Synfile+? The wording of your sentence could lead someone to believe that either it took you three years to get paid, or that you did three years of work that you didn't get paid for. I sure hope you were paid.
Yup. It's about as cool as those C= branded MP3 players some years ago.
The C= brand is dead and buried. Some lowlife scum just keeps digging it up and raping it in the arse.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yes, but the makers of the 6502 were suffering massive problems early on in the history of the CPU, in part because of the lawsuits over the 6501 (essentially a 6800 clone.) Tramiel swooped in and bought the company.
The only other cheap CPU at around that period in history was the Z80, and that took a few years to appear. I'd suggest that the Atari 2600 would have taken a little while to appear without Tramiel's involvement; the Apple series would have continued, albeit at an even more expensive price, and on that note it's interesting to speculate what the computer world would have looked like with a 6502-sized hole in it.
Personally I couldn't stand that chip, but it was cheap, and its cheapness meant it kick started the home computer revolution.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'd have known a lot less about computers -- since the built-in decompiler came in handy when "compatibility" with C64 programs meant you had to recode because they moved the video addresses, among other things. I guess sometimes the best master is the one who throws you down a well and makes you find your own way out.
Some days I miss my old Atari 800 computer, with the 32MB ram
32MB? Yeah, *you* wish! Would've made one *heck* of a RAM disk, but you'd still have had to bank-switch it in 16KB chunks into the 6502's 64KB address space ;-)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Note that all their other systems (including their "Amiga"s) are just cheap Chinese off-the-line volume machines available to anybody to throw their badge on it.
Oh yes- I remember those same guys selling what appeared to be generic HTPC cases with absolutely *no* Amiga connection using the "classic" Amiga model numbers (e.g. A1000, A500, etc.)
And the clusterf*** that is the Amiga rights is shown up by the fact that they're selling a computer with the "Commodore" and "Amiga" badges on it, that has nothing to do with that line otherwise, yet different companies are selling the "real" successor to the Amiga, running Amiga OS4.0.
Except that even those Amigas aren't (AFAIK) directly compatible with the old Amigas, and they're basically just overpriced hardware that's been made to a proprietary design solely so they can monetise the latest Amiga OS (which is what people are really paying for), and possibly so the rabid hardcore buyers that it's meant to exploit can feel good that they haven't wasted all that money on a generic PC. Even though it would probably have been better to have the new Amiga OS run on masses-of-bang-per-buck commodity Wintel-compatible hardware instead.
But back to the point- the latter machines are sold under the "AmigaOne" name, apparently they don't have the rights to call it plain "Amiga", yet some generic name-exploiting toss gets to use it(!)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Well, I'm in the libertarian camp on drugs. ;-)
What he's trying to say is that you're completely wrong. Tramiel killed Atari. Remember his terrible decisions that destroyed the most pioneering company in video gaming history?
"Game machines were dead"?!?! No, Tramiel decided that game machines were dead, and he was absolutely wrong. He froze the 7800 right when it was ready for market in 1984. He gutted Atari's arcade and home console divisions to focus on computers.
Then, after the success of the NES, he decided Atari needed to make a console again. But did he commission a new design? Nope, he brought back the 7800, slashing the specs from its 1983 design so that it was even further behind the NES and Master System. Another puzzling decision in the name of saving money.
In 1984, the 7800 had the best ports of the most popular arcade games ever made. In 1987, it was light years behind the NES and Super Mario Bros. Atari would never recover from Jack's decisions.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Read the racist article in question. It starts out only very mildly racist (this is the "I'm totally not racist, but" section) and then once he gets to the numbered points, turns into a rocket-propelled rush to the top of Racist Mountain. Worth a read for entertainment value, your jaw will hit the floor at some of these points.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We're in agreement there. The issue I was referring to is the market saturation by dumping. Which we accuse China of, and levy huge tariffs. Why we don't on e.g. Microsoft/Adobe when they dump their products on our children, I'm not so sure.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.