What the STE should've been under the hood

[ParanoidLittleMan]

 

I decided back then that my allegiance was not to Atari (unlike you, it seems) or Commodore, but to Jay Miner and his revolutionary hardware. It was a sad day for me indeed when he passed away, we would never see such hardware again.

What is revolutionary HW is very subjective. I was not tied to Atari at all. It was in 1987 that I wanted 16-bit computer, and was in dilemma between Atari ST and then new Amiga 500 . Prices in Germany were pretty much same. What prevailed is that there was way much more SW for ST then. And probably my aversion to Commodore - I repaired lot of C64-s - they were really bad quality. Atari was nothing then for me - XL was overpriced in Germany in years 1983-1986. After all, I may say that I did good choice, because I'm not some big gamer, and could use Atari ST for many things beside gaming. + it is still machine for those who want to save money - look WHDLoad - must pay for it, while we make all it for free, and there are some other similar examples. I have feeling that there is some snobism in Amiga users - especially those with upgrades. There are silly discussions at YouTube about video playback capabilities and hard disk speeds :-)

[calimero]

STE added pretty different audio DMA and HW scroll than Amiga solutions. Nothing from that was invented by Amiga team. You really should have more knowledge before jumping in discussion.

 

Do you know how hardware scroll is implemented in hardware?

 

Amiga have something called "pixel delay" (possible value from 0 to 15):

 

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node0088.html

 

so physically data (bits) in RAM memory does not move at all but there is some hardware that will take information of "pixel delay (X)" and draw bitmap for X pixels left or right so no shifting of bits occur in RAM at all?

[calimero]

• Jack Tramiel found out about the agreement between Atari and Amiga, was angry and sued Commodore.

 

at that point Commodore already sue AtariCorp. (or it was Tramel Technology, Ltd) coz Commodore engineers lead by Shiraz Shivji supposedly took plans from Commodore for new machines (or something like that) and court forbidden Shiraz & Co. to work further on ST computer.

 

Tramiel used Atari-Amiga agreement to contra sue Commodore effectively stoping Commodore to work on Amiga.

(from "Business is Fun" by Curt and Marty)

[ParanoidLittleMan]

 

Do you know how hardware scroll is implemented in hardware?

 

Amiga have something called "pixel delay" (possible value from 0 to 15):

 

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node0088.html

 

so physically data (bits) in RAM memory does not move at all but there is some hardware that will take information of "pixel delay (X)" and draw bitmap for X pixels left or right so no shifting of bits occur in RAM at all?

That's all described for instance at DevDoc org. There is pixelshift value 1-15, combined with wordskip register. Similar as in Amiga, but display structure is much different, so the scrolling too.

Normal is that some pixelshift must be used - that's only way to do it without lot of RAM content movement combined with shift - what only blitter can do enough fast, but will stop CPU while doing it.

Bad thing by Atari is that wordskip register is only 1 byte, so can not have larger virtual screens - max is about 4.2 screen width .

[Nebulon]

The OP's post is an intriguing idea.

 

Lots of good replies here.

 

I definitely agree with the 256 color mode. A lot of people forget that early VGA really wasn't that great and it's just the 256-color mode that it had going for it. I think that if the STe had a comparable 256-color mode, it would have helped catch the attention of more software developers. I also like the idea of a 16 MHz 68000. Yes the 68010 and 68020 would have been nice, but both were quite a bit more expensive. A bit of a boost the sound (e.g. the AMY chip), and the Ste would have been pretty much the perfect machine for the short-term at least.

 

As for the question about why Atari wanted to go with Lorraine, that's pretty much already answered in the replies. I'd summarize it as: a) Atari already paid for some of that technology which would later become the Amiga and b) two of their best engineers (Miner and Decuir) worked on it. So why not?

 

I am surprised though that the home division didn't take more ideas from coin-op over the years. It sure looks like there was a rift between those two teams.

 

And yeah, the original 520 ST really should have had a double-sided disk drive, just as the Amiga 1200 should have had a high-density disk drive. As someone already mentioned, developers will just release their software on the lowest common denominator storage media, and that just hurts the rest of the computers in the line.

 

I really think the ST series of machines could have stolen the thunder from the Macintosh. I'm surprised that didn't happen, considering the price and specifications.

 

Finally, there's the PC. I don't think the PC platform would have done nearly as well had it not been for the clone manufacturers.

[+rdemming]

 

at that point Commodore already sue AtariCorp. (or it was Tramel Technology, Ltd) coz Commodore engineers lead by Shiraz Shivji supposedly took plans from Commodore for new machines (or something like that) and court forbidden Shiraz & Co. to work further on ST computer.

 

Tramiel used Atari-Amiga agreement to contra sue Commodore effectively stoping Commodore to work on Amiga.

(from "Business is Fun" by Curt and Marty)

 

Yes true, but I suppose Jack would have sued Commodore over Amiga even when Commodore didn't sue Atari over Shiraz.

I thought this info would be in the upcoming follow-up book "Business is War" since that one is about the Tramiel years.

[Foebane]

 

Do you know how hardware scroll is implemented in hardware?

 

Amiga have something called "pixel delay" (possible value from 0 to 15):

 

http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node0088.html

 

so physically data (bits) in RAM memory does not move at all but there is some hardware that will take information of "pixel delay (X)" and draw bitmap for X pixels left or right so no shifting of bits occur in RAM at all?

 

I think the Atari 8-Bit had the exact same thing, except for 0-7 instead.

[Lynxpro]

 

 

In short:

• Jay Miner left Atari to setup his own company to develop his next chipset (Amiga)
• Atari financed Amiga to design the new chipset in exchange for the resulting chipset to be used in an Atari game console.
• Atari was suddenly taken over by Jack Tramiel. Jack Tramiel did not know about Atari's agreement with Amiga.
• In the weeks around Atari's takeover, Amiga talked with Commodore.
• Commodore took over Amiga and paid the money Atari gave to Amiga back thinking the agreement they had would be void now.
• Jack Tramiel found out about the agreement between Atari and Amiga, was angry and sued Commodore.
• Long time later the case was settled.

 

Robert

 

No.

 

Atari Inc. was going to gain all of Amiga Inc. David Morse wasn't happy about Atari Inc essentially acquiring Amiga due to the $500k loan that they couldn't pay back so he decided to screw them. He approached Commodore who offered to buy the company for $25 million. Morse then wrote out a check for $500k and went over to Atari Inc and falsely claiming the Lorraine chipset didn't work so they were returning the money without handing over the chips. Amiga breached their contract. It was stipulated that Atari would allow Amiga to license or be acquired by another company so long as it wasn't by Apple, Commodore, IBM, and a few other parties. That was rock solid in the paperwork as part of the terms for gaining the extra $500K in financing. Atari Inc also didn't accept the $500k re-payment.

 

Prior to this, Jack Tramiel had left Commodore, toured the world, then set up the "Trammel Technology Ltd" company. He was looking to acquire a tech company that would allow him back into the market so he could extract his revenge against Commodore and Irving Gould. He toured Mindset - a PC compatible manufacturer founded and staffed by ex-Atari Inc people - and then Amiga. He saw the Amiga Lorraine chipset in action but told them he'd be interested in acquiring the tech but not the people. [stupid foot-in-mouth-comment].

 

Shortly after the fraudulent behavior against Atari Inc committed by Amiga, Warner sold the Consumer Division of Atari Inc right out from under James Morgan's feet to Jack Tramiel. Commodore staff still loyal to Tramiel left and joined Trammel Technology which renamed itself "Atari Corp". Furious over this, Commodore sued Atari Corp claiming that all of their former employees were stealing trade secrets. A short time later, the Tramiels discovered the Amiga contract with Atari Inc and then filed suit against Commodore for all of their underhanded shenanigans. The suits were all settled later but details still haven't been made public even after the deaths of Irving Gould and Jack Tramiel.

[Lynxpro]

I also didn't invoke the Amiga Lorraine in the discussion. The original point was that in 1985, Atari Games Corp. had a standard platform that was more powerful than both the ST and the Amiga and something similar should've been doable by [separately owned] Atari Corp price-wise in 1989-90 for the STE. I still haven't found out any information as to the name of the graphics chip(s) used for it though.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Lynxpro

[leech]

I have to agree that it would have been completely epic if Atari Corp had been able to use Atari Inc's hardware in their computers. I think at the time the STe was being designed, Atari probably thought it'd be better to keep it closer to what the Amiga was using, so that developers could port things over easier. My biggest problem with the STe has always been that while they upgraded the color palette, and they upgraded to stereo sound, they never did add more resolutions. Granted most great developers hacked around that, but it seems it wasn't until the Falcon that they made it more Amiga-like where you could get resolutions depending on your ram, but by then it was kind of too late... well it possibly wouldn't have been, if they'd stuck to their guns instead of ditching the ST line altogether and attempting (and failing) at focusing on the Jaguar. The Falcon has some seriously nice hardware in it, and I consider it quite impressive that my stock one(well, I have 14mb of ram) can play MP3s while my A4000D with an 060/50 and 256mb of ram cannot!

 

Granted, as has been discussed, the lowest common denominator still would have been the ST, and so most things wouldn't take advantage of the 'arcade in a keyboard' that should have happened. Ports would be awesome though!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

For those talking about more color graphic modes: things are that considering graphic chip self that's not so hard to implement. What is real bottleneck here is RAM speed, bandwith. More colors need higher RAM data rate when generating video. The answer on why no more graphic modes by STE is simple: whole concept of ST and of course STE, which has same basic concept, just added some things - allows not video mode with higher RAM datarate.

Something like 256 color mode is just not possible with ST architecture. That would need 2x higher datarate, and then CPU would have very limited access to RAM = work would be very slow.

Only something like Amiga HAM could be possible - so video mode with more colors, but not with direct color (index) values in RAM, but difference to previous value. That mode is far from ideal. Of course, could be good for some special cases. 256 color mode would be good only for adventures with static graphic and painting - but it would work pretty slow. Production costs would increase significantly in any case - new MMU, Shifter, Glue , DMA ...

 

How it is done in Falcon: RAM is much faster that in ST(E), and is 32-bit, not 16 . Bandwith is 4x . That allows even 65K color mode - but then seriously slows CPU, because excessive RAM access.

 

Just to add that STs great and then unique solution was sharing of RAM between CPU and video without CPU slowdown (precisely there is little, in rare cases) - and that is very deep in architecture. Doing STE with total new RAM/video design would just demand some new name too, so not STE .

[Lynxpro]

I have to agree that it would have been completely epic if Atari Corp had been able to use Atari Inc's hardware in their computers. I think at the time the STe was being designed, Atari probably thought it'd be better to keep it closer to what the Amiga was using, so that developers could port things over easier. My biggest problem with the STe has always been that while they upgraded the color palette, and they upgraded to stereo sound, they never did add more resolutions. Granted most great developers hacked around that, but it seems it wasn't until the Falcon that they made it more Amiga-like where you could get resolutions depending on your ram, but by then it was kind of too late... well it possibly wouldn't have been, if they'd stuck to their guns instead of ditching the ST line altogether and attempting (and failing) at focusing on the Jaguar. The Falcon has some seriously nice hardware in it, and I consider it quite impressive that my stock one(well, I have 14mb of ram) can play MP3s while my A4000D with an 060/50 and 256mb of ram cannot!

 

And I wasn't even alluding to using Atari Games tech there. The specs for the 1985 Atari Games hardware is all off-the-shelf with the possible exception of the graphics chip(s) which for some reason aren't detailed on the web. Maybe I should fire up MAME and see if it lists it. But if it is custom silicon, then it would be pretty pathetic that the coin-op company with far less R&D resources could out-engineer Atari Corp.

 

Atari Games did have talented engineers. They did reverse engineer the NES10 chip, created their own NES mapper, created their CAGE audio system, so maybe they did graphics chips as well. But as we know, by the early 90s*, they were using consumer platforms and tweaking them such as with both the 3DO hardware and the CoJag.

 

 

 

*Just for the sake of covering all bases, Atari Games also would've had a license to use the Amiga Lorraine chipset had the Amiga deal not gone south in early 1984. Although as we can see, by early 1985, they already had superior tech. Arguably, their tech in Marble Madness and Paperboy was already superior to Amiga's. Perhaps the Lorraine would've just given them some potentially lower cost options. Atari Games - well, Coin, back then - also had planned to most likely use Atari's own AMY sound chip instead of the YM2151 but that also ended up being a dead-end with the collapse of Atari Inc.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Lynxpro

[Retro Rogue]

Yes true, but I suppose Jack would have sued Commodore over Amiga even when Commodore didn't sue Atari over Shiraz.

I thought this info would be in the upcoming follow-up book "Business is War" since that one is about the Tramiel years.

Not sure what you're trying to state here. There was never any plans to base the RBP on Amiga technology. The suit was purely a countersuit, not one done in anger of Amiga and Commodore.

 

 

No.

 

Atari Inc. was going to gain all of Amiga Inc.

No, they weren't. What they would have gained was royalty free access to Lorraine's custom chips. The technical documentation and layouts were being held in escrow pending the licensing signing, at which point Atari Inc. would gain access to them as part of the royalty agreement. If the agreement was not signed (because of how bad Amiga was financially), Atari Inc. would gain access to said materials royalty free to recoup it's loss. And Morse was worried that the talk of who Amiga could sell itself and who they couldn't (as part of the upcoming licensing agreement) would tie their hands too much. So when Commodore (who was supposed to be one of the no's) reached out, he took their offer. Then using an advance from them he showed up to pay back the loan plus interest, claiming they couldn't get the fabrication of the Lorraine chips to work. The first part (try and pay it back) he was legally able to attempt. The latter (claiming the chips didn't work when they did) was misrepresentation, i.e. fraud and framed the entire taking of the initial loan and work done over the previous several months as not being done in good faith. (The initial loan was done as a "good faith" loan to demonstrate the seriousness of both parties to sign a licensing agreement).

 

And I wasn't even alluding to using Atari Games tech there. The specs for the 1985 Atari Games hardware is all off-the-shelf with the possible exception of the graphics chip(s) which for some reason aren't detailed on the web. Maybe I should fire up MAME and see if it lists it. But if it is custom silicon, then it would be pretty pathetic that the coin-op company with far less R&D resources could out-engineer Atari Corp.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. In 1985 Atari Games actually had far more engineering and monetary resources than Atari Corp. did. They still had much of the same full engineering staff that had been there under Atari Inc., were profitable, and had NAMCO's flush pockets. Atari Corp. was running on fumes into '85.

 

Also, it was pretty common through that time for coin systems to be running custom chips. The cost cutting PC style hardware didn't really come in until the 90s.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Retro Rogue

[calimero]

I also didn't invoke the Amiga Lorraine in the discussion. The original point was that in 1985, Atari Games Corp. had a standard platform that was more powerful than both the ST and the Amiga and something similar should've been doable by [separately owned] Atari Corp price-wise in 1989-90 for the STE. I still haven't found out any information as to the name of the graphics chip(s) used for it though.

 

 

Atari Arcade machine was more powerfull than Amiga or ST...

Atari Arcade (or any other Arcade gaming machines) had few KB of RAM and everything was designed to run games, not personal computer stuff (like Basic, word processing, file manipulation...). Amiga was conceived as gaming machine (console) and she did many compromise regarding serious computing (from 15KHz resolution, to memory non-protective multitasking...) while ST did not even bother to include complete register for fine scroll (important for games) but did include 72Hz mono resolution with zero stall on MC68000 (not like on Macintosh where MC68000 was forced to wait for RAM while display was active).

 

Amiga, ST, Mac (very, very lame piece of electronic) and Arcade machine was designed with different use and goals in mind. You can not simple compare them. Each and every one of them have their strengths and weakness.

[+rdemming]

 

Not sure what you're trying to state here. There was never any plans to base the RBP on Amiga technology. The suit was purely a countersuit, not one done in anger of Amiga and Commodore.

 

I never said Tramiel wanted to use Amiga technology for RBP and that is also not what I meant. I only imagined that Tramiel would sue Commodore/Amiga after the discovery of the Warner Atari's contract with Amiga even when there was no suit from Commodore against Tramiel Atari. Jack left Commodore not on good terms so I can image that he would have taken the opportunity to make it Commodore more difficult to come up with a competing product.

But of course it could that Jack had no hard feelings towards Commodore and only sued because they sued him.

 

Robert

[+rdemming]

Sorry, double post because AA didn't respond.

[Foebane]

 

 

Atari Arcade machine was more powerfull than Amiga or ST...

 

Irrelevant. We're solely talking about HOME computers here.

 

EDIT: WHAT is "RBP"?

Edited January 28, 2016 by Foebane

[+rdemming]

 

EDIT: WHAT is "RBP"?

 

RBP stands for "Rock Bottom Price" and was the development/project name of the Atari ST.

[calimero]

 

Irrelevant. We're solely talking about HOME computers here.

 

EDIT: WHAT is "RBP"?

 

 

I agree but Lynxpro insist that Atari Corp. should use technology from Atari Arcade machines for home computers and I do not see that this is possible at all since Arcade was quite different than home computers - there were design for entirely different goals.

[calimero]

For those talking about more color graphic modes: things are that considering graphic chip self that's not so hard to implement. What is real bottleneck here is RAM speed, bandwith. More colors need higher RAM data rate when generating video. The answer on why no more graphic modes by STE is simple: whole concept of ST and of course STE, which has same basic concept, just added some things - allows not video mode with higher RAM datarate.

Something like 256 color mode is just not possible with ST architecture. That would need 2x higher datarate, and then CPU would have very limited access to RAM = work would be very slow.

Only something like Amiga HAM could be possible - so video mode with more colors, but not with direct color (index) values in RAM, but difference to previous value. That mode is far from ideal. Of course, could be good for some special cases. 256 color mode would be good only for adventures with static graphic and painting - but it would work pretty slow. Production costs would increase significantly in any case - new MMU, Shifter, Glue , DMA ...

 

How it is done in Falcon: RAM is much faster that in ST(E), and is 32-bit, not 16 . Bandwith is 4x . That allows even 65K color mode - but then seriously slows CPU, because excessive RAM access.

 

Just to add that STs great and then unique solution was sharing of RAM between CPU and video without CPU slowdown (precisely there is little, in rare cases) - and that is very deep in architecture. Doing STE with total new RAM/video design would just demand some new name too, so not STE .

 

Atari TT shifter sometimes referred as "double shifter"?!

- TT shifter had 64bit width and 16MHz access to 154KB of ST-RAM (16 256Kbit 100nS) link and have 250nS time slots for shifter/CPU RAM access

- ST shifter had 16bit width and 8MHz access to 32KB ST-RAM? Shifter never interfere with CPU ram access since MC68000 can read from RAM every 4 cycles and shifter read from RAM in oposite cycles since memory is fast enough for this. It has 500ns time slots for shifter/CPU RAM access.

- Falcon Videl had 32bit width and 16MHz but with Burst mode of FAST-PAGE RAM (3, 1, 1... cycles; total 17 longword in sequence) with no limit on memory amount, only limit was bus and memory speed (e.g. if you increase bus speed from 16 to 25MHz you can get greater resolutions!).

 

Does MC68030 in TT have any speed penal if TT run in specific resolution or is MC68030 running always at full speed regardless of resolution? There are infos in link that I left but it is not clear to me they stated that RAM have slices of 250nS (same as speed of RAM in ST??)...

Edited January 28, 2016 by calimero

[calimero]

Forget my previous post!

Here is great thread at atari-forum.com http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26773

I need to read it again there are lot of informatios...

[Foebane]

 

RBP stands for "Rock Bottom Price" and was the development/project name of the Atari ST.

 

You're joking, right?

 

Given the names "Rock Lobster" and "Rock Bottom Price", I know which one I'd prefer.

 

Jesus, why is Tramiel so OBSESSED with "cheap"?

[calimero]

 

You're joking, right?

 

Given the names "Rock Lobster" and "Rock Bottom Price", I know which one I'd prefer.

 

Jesus, why is Tramiel so OBSESSED with "cheap"?

 

 

it is true.

 

Tramiel simple explain why he was "obsessed" with cheap: if you charge to much for your product than you invite competition. You should never sold for more than double of production cost. I think this is video where he explain:

[Lynxpro]

 

 

I agree but Lynxpro insist that Atari Corp. should use technology from Atari Arcade machines for home computers and I do not see that this is possible at all since Arcade was quite different than home computers - there were design for entirely different goals.

 

I didn't insist Atari Corp - a separate company - use Atari Games tech; I was stating what was economical in the arcade in 1985 and before for Atari Games most likely would've been doable in a computer economically in 1989/90, outside of RAM pricing, of course. After all, Atari Games would've sourced those units in the thousands while Atari Corp would've sourced in the hundreds of thousands being a consumer company and most likely having the ability to use economies of scale to bring the prices down better [not that the BLiTTER is a good example of that though] than a limited arcade vendor. I still haven't found the name of the graphics chip but its abilities definitely surpass the Amiga Lorraine chipset.

 

Marty's post was an excellent clarification… don't have time right now to note further than that right now. The only quick point I can bring to that was Namco was not exactly willing to provide Atari Games a lot of funds during their ownership period. It's interesting that once Namco sold their stake back to the employees of Atari Games, the employees sold their share back to [Time] Warner, for better or worse. I would love to read an Atari Games book someday...

Edited January 28, 2016 by Lynxpro

[calimero]

 

 

I didn't insist Atari Corp - a separate company - use Atari Games tech; I was stating what was economical in the arcade in 1985 and before for Atari Games most likely would've been doable in a computer economically in 1989/90, outside of RAM pricing, of course.

maybe you are right. I did not consider time span of 5 years but than again: in 1990 your first priority is to have compatibility with software! (I certainly do not know what could, or could not be done regarding compatibility and arcade approach to ST but my believe that it would be to complicated. They even decide to put 4096 color palete in STe when they could much more but it would hurt compatibility with ST!)