Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (11/17/88)
FROM COMPUSERVE:
Dateline: Las Vegas, NV November 15, 1988
Good News and Bad News from the Gold Room (Atari's full room
display).
Bad News:
1. Effective 10am 11/15 GFA has dropped MichTron to seek a new
US distributor or start its own. [I surmise that GFA had no
idea how lucky they were and made the mistake of assuming
that the bigger US market was being inadequately serviced by
MichTron!<dgg>] Dave Small was approached by GFA and
declined to pick up the distributorship.
2. No Atari 68030 box was shown.
3. Supra management reports that they are focusing their
development time and efforts on the Amiga due to the strong
support they get there, vs. the lack of support from Atari.
4. The "laptop" is still in breadboard and designer's model
stages.
5. Many of the developers are in a mood of gloom and dismay.
That's the bad news. In the main, it is discouraging but NOT
fatal, and the following Good News does tend to mitigate some of
the problems.
Good News:
1. Atari is holding a special developers conference tonight
(11/16) at 6pm (8pm EST). No one has been advised of the
topic(s) or of the reasons for the meeting, so some positive
surprises could be in the works.
2. The Atari booth is _loaded_ with developers and products
which will be focused on in a subsequent report.
3. Although the "laptop" is a mere prototype at this moment,
Atari is targeting release of a whole laptop line with
production runs starting in 2-3 months. The model has a
nearly ST sized keyboard, will have a blue LCD screen
(optionally backlit), a built-in track-ball mouse controler,
built-in 3.5" floppy (half meg with optional full meg
drive), and "at least 20 meg of HD" and 520 and 1040 RAM
options. The target price will be US$1,500.
4. The ATW (nee ABAQ) ATari Work station was shown. It should
be in production fairly soon.
5. MichTron is replacing GFA Basic with Hi-Soft Basic effective
yesterday morning. Hi-Soft Basic is extremely polished,
fast, and complete. It is Microsoft Compatible but also
allows labeling [and procedures?] and directly portable
to/from Amiga as well as MS-DOS machines. It has a great
compiler and doesn't require manual translation.
6. Supra has completed a $149.95 suggested retail 2400b
internal modem for IBM machines and is considering doing one
for the MEGA ST's.
7. Sam Tramiel has apologized for not responding to the many
Emails and messages since his CO. In an unusual move to
show his good faith with the existing user base, he has
announced _official_ online affiliation with CIS and the
Atari Fora, and a direct EasyPlex line to Sig and him will
be operational shortly. He reaffirmed his desire to hold
more CO's with our users and seems to recognize that we are
a potent and strongly pro-Atari force!
The "goods" seem to outnumber the "bads" and tonight's
conference with the developers in Las Vegas should bring more news
of note. It will be posted here as soon as we have it.
*** Overheard in passing Sam T. to Sandy Small, "Well, it looks
like we will have a laptop MAC before Apple does!" ***iadt2tg@pyr.gatech.EDU (Terry O. Greenlaw) (11/19/88)
In article <11426@cup.portal.com>, Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) writes:
--> Bad News:
--> ....
--> 2. No Atari 68030 box was shown.
I was under the impression that this was going to be Atari's big machine for
Comdex. It certainly would fill a niche (gap?) as far as under $5000.00 *NIX
boxes go. Everybody and their grandmother, including C= ;-} ,has a PClone
out. Sun and NeXT have the > 5000 market pretty much sewn up for now. Apple
has K through 12th grades for the educational market. A 68030 *NIX machine
aimed at the college crowd seems like the obvious choice for a company so
desperately looking for a gap to fill. I don't know of any students here at
Tech with 6500 burning a hole in their pocket to spend on a NeXT, but
2000-3000 would raise a few eyebrows.
Please Atari, do something to convince me that the ST shouldn't be the last
Atari product I buy. I was really looking forward to getting my hands on a
machine with a STANDARD bus architecture (VME), O.S. (*NIX), windowed
interface (X Windows), etc. with an ATARI pricetag. dlk0ms9s@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Mark Santora) (01/16/91)
Atari At COMDEX makes BIG impression Last week at Comdex Atari "Upstaged"(quote from monday's USA Today) Sega's announcement of it's Game Gear by drop the price of their LYNX game system from $180 to $100. Also when a person now purchases a new LYNX they will receive a free game from Atari with a copy of the purchase receipt. Atari also showed behing closed doors the new PANTHER 68000 based video game system. According to the few which were allowed to veiw the Panther, they could not keep their mouths closed. With the Panther was shown the LYNX adapter for it to allow LYNX games to be played on the TV. The panther will jump onto the scene this summer against the nintendo SFX 16 bit machine. THe panther will be priced "under $200" as apposed to the SFX $250 list price...