Another 5 Q's : If Atari Corp did the deal with the NES or Genesis,would...

[zzip]

I think sometimes people think the ST had a shorter development cycle than it did. There was a post a while back about how long it took and it surprised people.

 

But like a lot of things from the era, the legends take on a life of their own, like "Atari was offered the NES and turned it down"

Just looking at the public timeline:

 

Jan 1984- Jack forced out of Commodore

Apr 1984- Starts planning new computer

Sum 1984- Jack buys Atari

Jan 1985- Shows off ST at Winter CES

Jun 1985- ST goes on sale

 

So they produced a working system within the space of 8 months they could demo, with a few extra months to get the kinks out.

 

The only way ST development could be longer was if it was started at Commodore. But they would likely be in legal hot water for stealing Commodore IP

Edited May 2, 2017 by zzip

[DracIsBack]

Just looking at the public timeline:

 

Jan 1984- Jack forced out of Commodore

Apr 1984- Starts planning new computer

Sum 1984- Jack buys Atari

Jan 1985- Shows off ST at Winter CES

Jun 1985- ST goes on sale

 

So they produced a working system within the space of 8 months they could demo, with a few extra months to get the kinks out.

 

The only way ST development could be longer was if it was started at Commodore. But they would likely be in legal hot water for stealing Commodore IP

Seems about right, though I'm not quite sure of a couple dates. Not sure if they started the ST earlier than April when they were still TTL.

 

Through the years, the story of the ST has been morphed into "Oh they just pulled it together in three months" and stuff like that. It was a surprisingly fast hardware cycle for what they pulled off, but still likely more than a year end-to-end.

 

Always found it a bit amusing that the ST was the tech child of the guy who made the Commodore 64, while the Amiga was the tech child of the guys who made the Atari 8bit. A reminder about the incestuous nature of tech.

Edited May 3, 2017 by DracIsBack

[DracIsBack]

Edit - you're right.

 

http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n1/threeyearsofst.html