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.