csc@watmath.UUCP (Computer Sci Club) (11/29/84)
I heard rumours at the Canadian Computer Show that atari is coming
out with five new machines in january. Three of them will be along
the line of the 800XL (one the same as the 800, except different
colour, another like the 800XL but with a better sound chip, and the
third one is a 128k version). The other two machines are supposedly
Mac like (colour and mouse, I doubt that a monitor is included) and
run an OS by Digital Research... There are two versions: a 128k
version and a 512k version. The 128k one is supposed to retail for
~$550 Cdn. and the 512k for about $650 Cdn. (somewhat hard to believe)
It should be interesting to see what they finally come out with...
David Rowley
..utzoo!watmath!csccc@ucla-cs.UUCP (01/07/85)
Here's more speculation with which to fuel the rumor mills: Infoworld, Jan. 7 & 14, 1985 Reprinted here without permission, natch'. Atari Awash In Product Rumors Several Machines Expected at January Show With the Consumer Electronics Show only a week away, the home computer industry is awash in speculation concerning Atari Corp.'s promised line of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit machines. But Atari, through marketing manager Bryan Kerr, will confirm only that the 8-bit computers are a continuation of the XL series and will be fully compatible with the Atari 800XL, which was recently reduced in price from $180 to less than $120. While Kerr would not comment further, sources close to the Sunnyvale, California, firm say Atari is preparing an 8-bit, 128K computer, probably to cost less than $250. To cut costs, Atari will not put a parallel bus on the new machine. This means that users won't be able to plug in an 80-column card but will have to settle for a 40-column monitor display. (The Atari 800XL comes with a parallel bus). The new machine will use a Motorola chip from the 6500 family, probably the 6509, says a software manufacturer. The 800XL uses the 6502. Several other 8-bit machines are also being developed. Atari boss Jack Tramiel may revive the Atari 1450XLD, one of Atari's higher end computers with a built-in modem, a project killed by former Atari chairman James Morgan. Sources overseas say that on Tramiel's recent trip to Amsterdam, Holland, he told developers he was working on a portable computer as well as a microcomputer with outstanding music capabilities. These machines will sell for between $100 and $300. The greatest interest among industry observers has been concentrated on the firm's more powerful 16-bit "Jackintosh" computer, a system based on the Motorola 68000 chip used in Apple's Macintosh. Pundits are calling the Atari brainchild a "color Macintosh". The computer will feature a version of Graphics Environment Manager (GEM), Digital Research's newly announced software operating environment. GEM features icons, pull-down menus, and overlapping windows. It is not yet known whether the 16-bit system will include a mouse. Developers at the Pacific Grove, California, software firm say the operating environment works best with one. Digital Research says it has also worked on the Atari proprietary operating system. The new 16-bit machines, which will have either 128K or 192K of random- access memory, is expected to be sold in three configurations: the basic computer for $399; the second unit with a built-in, 3-1/2 inch Sony disk drive for $599; and the third package, with a disk drive and color monitor, for $799. By comparison, the 128K IBM PCjr with one disk drive and color monitor and the 128K Apple IIc with one disk drive and no monitor both sell for about $900. Atari's computer will feature "full synthesizer sound," says one East Coast software executive. Yet another Atari machine is reportedly in the works. According to one Atari insider, the firm is planning to license the technology from Mindset, a start- up company based in Sunnyvale, California. In March, Mindset announced the Mindset micro, and IBM PC compatible offering superior graphics capabilities as a result of two custom graphics coprocessors made from VLSI technology. The machine, however, never made a dent in the market, and Tramiel has been interested in the Mindset computer since he came to Atari in July. Atari may show the Mindset micro with an Atari label on it at the Consumer Electronics Show. Atari executives remain tight-lipped about their high-performance, 32-bit computer scheduled to be unveiled in April at a Hanover, West Germany, computer show. Some sources say the computer will run on the National Semiconductor 32032 chip, a chip so powerful that it will make the computer "functionally equivalent to a DEC VAX." Other sources at Atari insist the 68020 chip will be used. Meanwhile, Atari reports that the 800XL sales have been astronomical since the November price cut. Stores such as Service Merchandise in San Jose, California, say they have sold out. By the end of 1984, the Atari 800XL will have sold more than 600,000 units since its introduction more than a year ago, according to Kenneth Lim of Dataquest, a market research firm in San Jose. "Our top accountants are telling us that the computer is outselling the Commodore 64," says Atari's Kerr. "We've had to expand our volume shipments to our distributors." Since November, orders for Atari software have been exceptionally strong, according to Michael Reichmann, director of product development at Batteries Included, a Toronto software firm. "The demand has been unbelievable," Reichmann says. "I think Commodore is really running scared. Tramiel shows that he is willing to fight tooth and nail with Commodore." Stores that didn't want to carry Atari software are now placing orders. Tom Bennett, head of an Atari users group in San Leandro, California, says he gets calls daily from owners who bought the 800XL because of the price and now want to know what can be done with it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's hope Atari makes its new high-end machines open and expandable (gimme slots! Lots o' slots!), increases the 128K RAM to AT LEAST 512K, and uses FAST AND RELIABLE disk drives. After all, Atari should have learned from the complaints about Apple's Mac. Let's hope Commodore pays attention when it comes out with its new machines, too. We certainly don't need a repeat of the 1541 disk drive troubles (slow and unreliable).
calway@ecsvax.UUCP (James Calloway) (01/11/85)
x
The InfoWorld article came pretty close. Here is what Atari's marketing manager, Bryan Kerr, described
during and after the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show:
Atari's new ST line is based on the 68000 chip, running at 8 megahertz.
The 130ST will have 128K and sell for $399. The 520ST will have 512K, $599.
If there is demand, there may be an in-between model, the 260ST.
These machines will use external Sony 3 1/2-inch drives, priced at about $150
each. The computers will have build-in interfaces for floppy disk AND hard disk.
The hard disk is due later in the year, 10 megabytes, $600.
The operating system was developed jointly by Atari and Digital Research and
is stored with DR's Graphics Environment Manager in 192K of ROM.
The new low-end machines are the 65XE, a replacement for the 800XL, the 130XE
with 128K and the 65XEP, a portable with a small CRT screen.
If Atari can deliver the goods, this should be an interesting year.
--
James Calloway
The News and Observer
Box 191
Raleigh, N.C. 27602
(919) 829-4570
{akgua,decvax}!mcnc!ecsvax!calwayfred@mot.UUCP (Fred Christiansen) (01/11/85)
there have been references to the Atari 130ST for $299 on the net,
but i don't think i've yet seen mention of the 520ST (with 512K RAM)
which, as i recall, will come in around $599. the printers are from
$150 and up, and the disk drives (3 1/2" floppy or hard) also from
$150 and up. color and hi-res monochrome monitors will also be available.
perhaps someone who actually went to CES can correct my figures in case
my recall of what i heard 3rd or 4th hand is inaccurate.
GEM and the CP/M-68k derived TOS are in 192K ROM. interesting thing
about this architecture is that it does admit cloning, something much more
difficult to achieve with the Mac (due to proprietary OS).
speculation about the unit to be revealed at Hanover will probably
continue to vacillate between 32032 and 68020. National people are saying
the 32032, but then again there's what we're hearing ...
home UNIX? quite possibly with the 520ST or the next model. in the
mean time, there is HP's Integral PC, a portable UNIX machine for $5K.
p.s. it's the 6809, not the 6509, that comes from Motorola's 6800 family.
--------------------
Fred Christiansen, Motorola Microsystems, 2900 S Diablo Way, Tempe, AZ 85282
{allegra,ihnp4}!sftig!mot!fred {ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!oakhill!mot!fred
{ihnp4,amdahl}!drivax!mot!fred arizona!asuvax!mot!fredkurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) (01/18/85)
[go ahead bug, make my day]
Some notes on the 'possibility' of Atari marketing those new machines.
1. Atari has been talking to National for years about the 32000. When I
was talking to National, there was always this one particular company in
California who was going to produce a consumer machine based on the 32000.
Of course they could not tell me who it was, but it couldn't have been Apple
and they said (indirectly) it wasn't IBM sooo...... This doesn't mean Atari
couldn't use the 68020. That's the neat thing about the 32-bit processors.
If you have a C compiler, they're all alike.
2. A hard disk for $400 is quite reasonable. Just because the IBM crowd
wants a minimum $1000 for a 10Mb disk doesn't mean that represents a
reasonable markup. We were able to buy a 10Mb disk (drive+drive electronics
only) for $300 in quantity one. If you want to talk about volumes of 500K
units/year I bet the price gets even lower. Also, the consumer industry
operates on a relatively narrow markup over factory cost.
Apple can sell Macintoshes to the universities for $1000. You can bet
they aren't selling at a loss. The Atari's don't have an expensive high
quality CRT included either, so they should be cheaper. The pricing is
reasonable, assuming a high volume product.
3. What design to finance? They bought the OS from DRI. No development
there. I bet they could even get DRI to do the port for them (wouldn't you,
for the kind of volume they could deliver? Remember, this is the product
that could make CP/M-68K and GEM household words.) Designing the PCB's is
not that big a deal, the plastic case couldn't cost more than $5 million if
it was the most intricate possible design. Fancy gate arrays have design
times of a couple of man months and the production cost for prototypes is
really negligable for a company of Atari's size. The only thing that could
get expensive is VLSI for things like fancy video and sound chips. These
designs may have been proceeding for some time now (it is pretty clear they
have been) so unless Atari goes belly-up this morning they will not be
affected.
Besides, remember Traniel fired most of the staff when he took over. The
engineering design may have been nearly complete when he came in. All Atari
has to worry about is keeping their current products profitable (even in
bankruptcy, the creditors won't close him down if it looks like he has turned
the corner and might pay them back).
No, I think this product is coming. I can hardly wait.
--
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurtfred@mot.UUCP (Fred Christiansen) (01/24/85)
[]
Computer Systems News for this week indicates that Atari, Commodore,
ACT, and Apricot (ACT USA) have all signed up for GEM. Moreover,
GEM and Concurrent DOS are being readied, the article continues, for
licensing by anybody for about anything. [Shades of Unix?]
The story then says Atari's business machine will be based upon
the 68020. This is the first public reference I have seen on this,
and it is stated quite positively. Considering the previous press items
suggesting it would be Series 32000 based, it looks like the rumor mills
are about balanced between the two, now.
--------------------
Fred Christiansen, Motorola Microsystems, 2900 S Diablo Way, Tempe, AZ 85282
{allegra,ihnp4}!sftig!mot!fred {ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!oakhill!mot!fred
{ihnp4,amdahl}!drivax!mot!fred ucbvax!arizona!asuvax!mot!fred
--
--------------------
Fred Christiansen, Motorola Microsystems, 2900 S Diablo Way, Tempe, AZ 85282
{allegra,ihnp4}!sftig!mot!fred {ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!oakhill!mot!fred
{ihnp4,amdahl}!drivax!mot!fred ucbvax!arizona!asuvax!mot!freddoug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (01/25/85)
Before I get on about the business of supplying witty rejoinders, a couple of questions -- According to the press, the new "XE" systems are based on the 6502C CPU chip. Question 1: is it indeed the 6502C, or is it the 65C02? Question 2: is there anybody producing the 6502C chip, now that Honeywell has closed down Synertek? > 1. Atari has been talking to National for years about the 32000. > This doesn't mean Atari > couldn't use the 68020. I go out on a very thick and strong limb and predict that neither Motorola nor National are capable of producing their 32-bit CPU's in Atari-size quantities any time this year. Neither one is even in *limited* production yet -- but you CAN get engineering samples. > 2. A hard disk for $400 is quite reasonable. Yes. As IBM is finding out with their PC-AT, cheap hard disks are plentiful and terribly unreliable. I predict that this won't stop Tramiel, who foisted the *cheap* but nearly unusable 1541 floppy disk drive on C-64 users. And made a pile of loot on it. > Fancy gate arrays have design > times of a couple of man months Wow! I'd better tell my boss about THIS! Here we've been ignoring gate arrays because even the folks that make them claim best case turn-around of 6 months to first prototype, and maybe a year or more until a working design is stabilized. > The only thing that could > get expensive is VLSI for things like fancy video and sound chips. These > designs may have been proceeding for some time now (it is pretty clear they > have been) Some (maybe all?) of the designs that were proceeding were being done on contract by Amiga. Late last year Amiga returned all of the money to Atari because they were "unable" to produce such chips. (A point of contention between Atari and Commodore). Did Atari have any "Plan B" going on? I don't know. > No, I think this product is coming. I can hardly wait. Well, you'll just have to. Sure, the time WILL come when you'll be able to buy a 68K-based system for a few hundred smackers. Somebody, whether Atari or someone else, is bound to do it. But not this year. So why not enjoy what you CAN get this year? Even when such a system is actually available on your dealer's shelves, ask yourself if you want one of the first units. Do YOU want to be the first person to report every bug? Do you remember CTIA's? If you had bought a Commodore 64 for $595 (the original price), how would you feel about someone else buying one for $195 (10 months later)? I, for one, wouldn't buy a micro manufactured in the first 6 months of production. Why pay top dollar for the first-try design? When you can't even buy software for it? Not only that, but consider that by then Atari or someone else already will have "announced" some even more stupendous product, which will make the ST look obsolete. That's the way the game is played. Each manufacturer tries to announce something that will keep you, the consumer, from buying someone else's machine NOW. "State-of-the-art means it'll be obsolete just as soon as somebody comes out with something better." -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
tucker@ccvaxa.UUCP (02/06/85)
On the point of Atari designing there own Video chips for the ST, I don't think so. The specs given for the ST machine look exactly like those for Motorola's new RMS/X color video controller chip set. A nice chip set that has everything one could want for a personal computer. The only question of mine is availability. The chip set isn't going to be available in production numbers for a few months still at least I think. The same for the floppy/harddisk interface that is supposed to come standard. Motorola has a new VLSI chip set designed to handle that too. All these chips were designed with the 68000 in mind. Now if someone like Atari would only use them for something...
mercury@ut-ngp.UUCP (Larry E. Baker) (03/01/85)
[eat white-hot, flaming text!]
For those of us who haven't been around long enough to follow the
discussion regarding the new Atari computers, the following is
blatantly excerpted (without permission) from this month's
'What's New' in BYTE:
'Two New Color Computers from Atari'
Atari has two new color computer lines: the 68000-based ST and
the 800-compatible XE.
The ST comes with a two-button mouse and Digital Research's GEM,
a user interface that has pull-down menus, icons, and overlapping
windows. GEM is embedded in 192K bytes of ROM along with TOS
(Tramiel operating system, named for Atari president Jack Tram-
iel) and a game. For more on GEM, see page 39 of the December
1984 BYTE.
The ST, which can handle television, composite color, monochrome,
and RGB outputs, produces graphic resolutions ranging from 640 by
400 pixels (monochrome) to 320 by 200 pixels (16-color mode).
Its 84-key keyboard is augmented with a numeric keypad and 10
function keys. Rom cartridge, RS-232C serial, Centronics paral-
lel, and floppy- and hard-disk drive interfaces are supplied.
Also, the ST carries a three-voice sound chip and a MIDI port for
linking it to musical instruments and synthesizers.
The 128K-byte Model 130ST will sell for approximately $400, and
the 512K-byte model 520ST will be about $600. Shipments are to
begin shortly. Atari plans to offer a 10-megabyte ST hard-disk
drive for about $600. Both a composite color monitor and a 3 1/2
inch disk drive will be priced in the $150 range.
Four versions of the Atari XE computer will soon go on sale. The
basic XE comprises a 57-key keyboard, five special-function keys,
a ROM cartridge slot, BASIC in ROM, and four-voice sound. Graph-
ic resolution is 320 by 192 pixels. Atari's 11 graphics modes
and Player Missile Graphics are provided.
The Model 65XE, with 64K bytes of RAM, will cost $120. The $400
portable 65XEP comes with a built-in floppy disk drive and a 5-
inch monochrome monitor. The 128K-byte 130XE will be under $200.
The 65XEM will be outfitted with an eight-voice music synthesizer
chip. Its pricing had not been finalized at press time.
Contact Atari Corp....
//
Only two comments:
1. If this machine is everything the above says it is, the
Mac better watch out. Even the consortum prices can't
beat that....
2. A 512K, 68000-based computer w/mouse, 10-meg hard disk
for *less than* $1,500? Comments, IBM?
--
"It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar
mistake, but it is also very memorable." -- F. P. Brooks, Jr.
Larry Baker @ The University of Texas at Austin
...{seismo!ut-sally | decvax!allegra | ihnp4}!ut-ngp!mercury