rochman@ECF.TORONTO.EDU (ROCHMAN DANIEL) (02/09/90)
I requested information about the ATW from the Atari Canada head office here in Toronto, and they were kind enough to mail me a 4-page spec sheet. If I see enough interest, I can condense this info and post it in a note, but I'd already read most of it myself in various magazines. The most interesting bit is at the end, where it says stuff about an initial 50 development systems around the world (for software developers to produce the bare developers environment), followed by a limited pre-production release of "several hundred" systems during June 1989. While the pre-production release wasm not to be restricted, (the spec sheet is from March/April '89), companies producing commercial applications were to be given preference. It adds that full scale production "is expected to start during July 1989", and that the ATW is expected to retail (sans monitor) for less than $10,000 (Canadian Dollars, March '89). Now for the "live scoop": I have seen and used one in a commercial environment!! At SEVERAL Toronto-area tourist attractions, there are booths run by KODAK where you can have your picture taken (digitized), and then printed (in full colour!) on a T-shirt, or post card, or whatever. The interesting part is that they do all the digital bit-twiddling you want (eg: putting your face on George Bush's body in a White House press photo, etc...), and the machine they use for this is an ATW!!! Needless to say, I stayed at the stupid booth at Ontario Place (a local tourist trap) for HOURS, drooling openly. The graphics can't even be described. Workstation users will know what I mean, others can't even imagine. A $15-20,000 ATW setup, working with the KODAK color digitizing cameras and photo-quality colour printers, is a media magician's fantasy. I may even get a summer job at the rotten place, just to get my hot little hands on that magnificent piece of hardware. Tales of a silicon junkie... But I loooooove that machine. Daniel Rochman, 1st Year Chem Eng, soon to be 2nd Year Comp Sci... University of Toronto (Canada), Engineering Computing Facility rochman@ecf.toronto.edu (until May, at least) Disclaimer: I own a Mega 2. I'm not connected to Atari Corp. otherwise.