steve@kontron.UUCP (Steve McIntosh) (05/22/85)
*** Replace this line! PLEASE! *** *********** This posting is the accumulation of rumors, news and * WARNING * wild speculation concerning the Atart ST and the *********** Commodore AMIGA as gathered by yours truly. My sources are newspapers, magazines, personal contacts, traffic on CompuServe, Usenet and bulletin boards, phone calls and dealings with Atari, Commodore and retailers and idle gossip picked up at parties and science fiction conventions. Some of these rumors are bound to be downright LIES told to me by otherwise reliable sources, or picked up from newspaper/magazine articles whose reporters were fed lies or misleading information. [ NOTE: I have carefully EXCLUDED facts/rumors/etc. that have come to me thru my current employment. The following is all my fault, and does not express..etc..of my current employer. ] Take all statements below with salt. Key: Each item is preceeded with [CN] where C is a character indicating the source of the item: F = fact, R = rumor and S = Speculation. N is a digit from 1 to 9 indicating the reliability of the item. As an example [F9] is an almost certain fact, whereas [S1] is a wild speculation. Statements made by company officials are listed as Facts despite past experience. These are subjective ratings. -- Atari -- [F9] Quotes from Tramiel as reported by EE times. " ... Our retailers know that Atari will [wisely] pocket the $500,000 we save by not exhibiting at CES and use it to offer them cheaper machines.." " Computers are for the young. Atari computers will be for fresh young minds. It's for us, the older generation, that we will have to turn to cumbersome IBMs and Apples to learn how computers work ... but not so with our children." " If Apple thinks they can compete with me, God help them! " [F9] ST configuration - Model 520 ST system - 512k ram, bundled with 640x400 monochrome monitor and 500kbyte microfloppy retail at $799. [R5] Operating system (Tramiel Operating System) built in, Basic or LOGO available on disk or ROM cartridge. [F6] Retail shipments to start in August. [F6] Shipments to Atari user groups in June. [F9] Units being built in the Atari factory in Taiwan at a labor cost of 2 percent. [F7] Third party hard disk available in August. (Price unspecified) [F5] 15 Megabyte winchester available from Atari for $399 sometime later. [R4] This 15 meg drive will be 20 meg drives that have too many media defects for the original manufacturer to ship, so Atari gets them cheap and uses a special controller to reconfigure it as a good 15 meg drive. [F5] Sony CD-ROM available for $499 in August. [R5] The CD-ROM should cost only $299 once in full production. [R3] A CD-ROM drive that doubles as an audio player is planned. [R5] Over 200 software vendors already developing packages, and 200 more to start development in June. [R4] Atari expects to have 100 software packages priced from $49 to $99 ready to ship by september. [R5] ST production financed by Tramiel "out of pocket" and will not seek outside capital. (Suspect smoky back-room financing) [R6] Atari is developing a 32032 workstation to compete with the UNIX PC. [R3] The 32032 workstation exists, but is back-burnered due to ST efforts. [R2] The 32032 workstation is being scrapped due to the UNIX bandwagon loosing most of its wheels. Might be ressurected it the AT&T machine does well. [F8] Atari is agressively seeking 3rd party (hacker) software for ST to be marketed at low cost (<$40) high volume under Atari logo. [R6] Software vendors now getting beta site versions at retail cost. [F6] First Sony CD-ROM application to be Encyclopedia Britannica. [F5] Later CD-ROMs to include common and technical dictionarys. [F5] Computer store versions of the ST will be more "business looking" in that they will have integrel monitors and drives, seperate keyboard, etc. [F4] Other than size of ram, Computer Store version will be functionally identical to Mass-Market version. [R5] ST motherboard to be set up for 256k Drams and pre-wired for 1Mbit drams. (Perhaps with custom chip package for 1mbit rams) [R4] Video ram and CPU ram are dual ported, but normally do not interfere with each other. Graphics blocks normally moved into video ram via DMA, but may be directly "memory mapped" at a performance penalty. [R3] CD-Rom to use MIDI interface as I/O link. [R4] GEM to be provided on disk as option, and if well accepted by buyers provided as a ROM cartridge later. Speculation is that GEM is not getting very good marks from IBM PC consumers, and Atari does not want to get locked into it. - Commodore - [R5] The Commodore Amiga is going into production on Sanyo production lines in Japan. [R5] Commodore will ship Amigas this summer. [F9] Commodore's offical response to questions concerning the Amiga is: "There is no information available at this time about the Amiga" (at least they don't deny it's existance.) [R3] Commodore is taking the Sanyo MB55 case and keyboard and simply putting in a 68000 main board and changing the logo. [R4] The Amiga is going to use the Hitachi HD63484 Advanced CRT controller instead of the Amiga chip set. [R3] Hitachi is also going to supply the 68000's. - Apple - [R6] Apple has 68020 based Mackintosh machines in the wings. [S5] The '020 based Mackintosh will have 1Meg memory, built in winchester and color capability. [R5] Apple is ready to drop the price of the "fat mac" to whatever is needed to compete with the ST and Amiga - till then the price will stay where it is. -- Wild speculations -- [S9] The ST is going to be the Next Big Gold Mine for 3rd party software and hardware vendors, assuming that they come out near the quoted (low) prices. [S5] The Amiga, if/when it comes out will be marketed mainly as a business machine, and cost more than the ST. [S5] IBM has a 68000 machine in the works. It may not see production due to managerial in-fighting. [S4] The window for the Japanese MS standard machines in the US has slammed shut. The Japanese now realize that in order to sell computers in the US, they have to build and sell US designs. This accounts for the Very Large Japanese involvement with Atari, Commodore and Apple. [S6] American computer manufacturers have learned (the hard way) that to get a large part of the mass market, they have to have Very Good graphics, and the horsepower to manipulate them. -- If you have heard any good rumors concerning the ST, Amiga or Super Mac, feel free to email them to me, and I will include them in the next rumor posting.