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Lynxpro

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Posts posted by Lynxpro

  3. Posted

    I'm not bothered by any of it. Africa brought it upon itself when it rebelled against the British and French Empires in favor of being ruled by homegrown tinpot dictators that made the Empires in retrospect look like shining beacons of liberty. The continent went from a major exporter under imperial times to a basket case needing constant bail outs from our First World Countries.

     

    And if someone wants to buy ethical electronics, you'll have to stick with retro computing since everything now is built in China and the Chinese government doesn't give a rip about human rights in Africa and all the other places they acquire their raw materials from...

     

     

     

     

    Maybe I have a jaded opinion of the subject since I strongly believe the Nigerian spammers deserve a fate far worse than being shipped off to the spice mines of Kessel...

    • Like 4

  4. Posted

    Yeah. I would have to look at the details again. Not sure why he turned them down while at Commodore. Speculation was that he didn't want to hurt the deal with Bally at the time.

     

    Anyone know any other system that has KickMan. (I miss playing that game.)

     

     

     

    Could it be he held anti-Japanese views? And I don't mean to assert that as a slam either...the guy was a victim of the Axis Powers so I can't fault him or many other people of his generation for that possibility...

  5. Posted

    I'm not sure, but I remember reading that Ted Hoff was brought in for that reason. (and of course, Morgan was for Atari Inc, but he seems to have been the only one to actually make headway as such -of course the split killed all of that -and Hoff was also in the worst situration of any of those, coming into Atari Corp in 1995)

    Give this timeline: http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/interactive.html Mead Ames-Klein was only there for a couple months, so it sounds like he's the one you're thinking of.

     

     

    But Ted Hoff lasted for more than a year. He wanted to transition Atari Corp over to a hardware-agnostic game publisher such as what AtariSoft had done before and the current "Atari" is. I met Hoff on two different occasions; great guy. But of course his vision ran counter to lashing Atari to a two-bit hard drive manufacturer.

     

    It must've been "super"-CEO Kenan who wanted to move Atari Corp operations to Boston so he could still run Atari France.

     

    What's striking about Atari Corp is how many great executives they actually employed that after they left the company went on to be superstars. Reminds me of the Sacramento Kings, or the Washington Senators before that [and, of course, in baseball]. I think that really feeds into a lot of the anti-Tramiel sentiments amongst Atari fans, both then and now in retrospect...

     

     

     

    We're internet "friends" and also friends on Facebook.

     

     

    Considering his OS expertise, I'm surprised he didn't go to work for Microsoft post-Atari... After all, Mr. Gemulator certainly did...

  6. Posted

    Who sold 7800 games for $9.99? Was it Sears [via the Sears catalog] during the initial 1986 [re] launch?

     

    I'm trying to remember but I think most of the "later" titles were $14.99 and up [and the Super Games were $30+]. I can distinctively remember my dad driving me across over to the South Sacramento Federated store to buy Food Fight because the closer Citrus Heights Federated didn't have it nor did any of the local Toys R Uses, KB, or Good Guys. I never saw the 7800 sold at any of our Targets in this part of NorCal either...

  7. Posted

    I asked Leonard. His response:

     

    "Larry Siegel and his group were in Chicago and didn't want to move. I don't remember how we got involved with them but that's why they were there."

    Larry had actually wound up taking over as head of the Entertainment Electronics Division after Katz left.

     

     

     

    Well, that explains it. Do you have Leonard on speed-dial? :)

     

     

    Years later, a lot of developers set up shop in Chicago.

     

     

     

    Wasn't Mead Ames-Klein head of entertainment for a brief period after Katz before he left as well? (and was then replaced by Larry for Entertainment and Elie Kenan as general manager of Atari Corp)

    http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/interactive.html

     

     

    Was it Mead Ames-Klein or Elie Kenan that Atari made a big deal about [to Atari Explorer and Antic/STart] who was supposed to turn around the company and move all operations to Boston but lasted like one month on the job? For awhile there, Atari Corp. was like a revolving door with their "leadership" much like the Soviet Union prior to Gorby, except the Atari people weren't croaking.

  9. Posted

    I have a firm making brandy spanking new SIO connectors, yup, thats right so I'm making 1,000 so that'll be enough for the XM's and then will put them up for sale for those who need them for projects and such.

     

     

     

    That's awesome... Now only if the AMY chip could be sourced... :)

  11. Posted · Edited by Lynxpro

    Btw, this was just crazy...

     

     

    That was revolutionary. It predated the Nokia NGage's "sidetalking" by almost 20 years...

     

     

    As for Sears, I remember seeing the 600XL and 800XL models there in their computer department... The department mainly consisted of the systems out on display but not connected to monitors or tvs... You could touch the keys but that was about it. I was lusting for an 800XL back in 84... And then they disappeared near 85. I remember the 520ST hitting Toys R Us before I saw it anywhere else.

  12. Posted

    That reminds me: I watched Watchmen the other day and noticed the window based OS depicted in that looked rather like GEM though maybe it was more of a UNIX inspiration. :)

     

     

    I thought it might be GEM [hoping it was an Atari ST] but it looked more like a Mac the last time I watched the show and paused the scene.

     

     

     

    If the writers of Fringe were really up on their Atari trivia, they would've shown Peter reading the Atari Force comics, especially since they dealt with traveling through the multiverse...

  14. Posted

    Impressive. Did you buy any of those during the limited 1984 test launch?

     

     

    I'd prefer to have one of those translucent cases that Atari Inc. produced for internal mold testing. I also like the white "Jaguar" case that one user posted on Facebook [on Atari's wall] which was from the dental instrument mold.

  16. Posted

    That and the other universe is supposed to be years ahead in technological development compared to "ours". (in that sense, the mac plus might not have gone far enough, though that's a case where you could easily give it up to inconsistent/divergent areas of the alternate timeline premise)

     

     

    Yeah, maybe they had the color Mac that appeared in the Short Circuit universe...

     

    I can't remember what thread [AICN?] it was a year or so ago that I complained about the Walterverse not being different enough. For example, I mentioned they had Windows computers in the Walterverse and I complained that perhaps they should show "modern" versions of the Amiga or the Atari ST as having won the personal computer wars...

     

    Of course, I can't understand their logic of the United States still existing if Andrew Jackson* had never existed. The British would've won the War of 1812 and we would've been reunified into British North America...

     

     

     

    *In one of the episodes last season, the Waltervese Fringe team recovered a $20 bill from our universe and they didn't know who Andrew Jackson was; in the Walterverse, MLJ Jr. is on the $20. It appears Nixon won the 1960 election and was apparently assassinated instead of JFK.

  19. Posted

    The graphics looked a lot like the 7800 version of Joust (which is very close to the arcade), though the sounds were nothing like a TIA, so you may be right.

     

     

    Wasn't there an arcade classics all-in-one joystick a couple of years back that had Joust on it? That could be another explanation. I don't remember if the NES version had better sound than the 7800 version...

     

     

     

    Yah, but you can't really fault on that. It is an alternate universe so things could have unfolded differently there. The stuff that's supposed to be in our universe you can though.

     

     

    Very true. I just remember clearly the Mac Plus debuting at the same time as the Atari 1040ST(f) in early 1986. I remember the computer press making a big deal about both featuring 1MB of RAM but at two different price points...and I got my 1040 shortly thereafter...

     

     

     

     

    The comic was going until '85, so it's possible. But the biggest things at that time were Transformers, GI Joe, etc. which I didn't see anything of.

     

     

    Is JJ's group working on the planned BSG theatrical film?

     

    GI Joe toys were visible in that toy store. They were on the bottom shelf and they weren't as prominent as the Ghost Busters toys...

  20. Posted

    For anyone who watches the show, the 7800 made an appearance on Friday night's episode. The entire episode is a flashback to '85-'86, and Peter's mother takes him to a toy store where he watches a kid is playing Joust on the 7800.

     

    Cool to see even if there was a few inconsistencies (if it's '85 it would be too early to have it in a toy store, likewise they had a boxed Secret Quest which didn't come out until 1989).

     

     

     

    I couldn't make out the Secret Quest box. The writers must really have been fans of Joust and Atari. The kid had a Pro Line joystick in his hand but it could've been one for the 2600. The graphics looked like they were from the arcade so I suspect the production team had the arcade game running via MAME on an unseen computer...

     

    The other inconsistency was in the Walterverse, a Mac Plus was shown on Peter's desk...in 1985...

  21. Posted

    I'd like to see Cloak and Dagger...

     

     

    Actually, I was just reading up the specs on Atari Games's Toobin' title. It also used the YM chip and a Pokey for audio. At least a port to the XM would have arcade-perfect audio...

     

     

    And the Atari Games/Tengen version of Tetris. Although the arcade version used dual Pokey chips for the audio... A 6502 for the CPU...

  22. Posted · Edited by Lynxpro

    I apologize for not writing the thread title clearer... My bad!

     

     

    Does any AtariAge users own one of the reported ST models with a socket on the motherboard for installing an Intel 8086/286 CPU?

     

    Back in the day, I read about some models being offered as such but never had a confirmation they truly existed. If they did, I believe they were prior to the introduction of the STe models but I could be mistaken...

     

    Were those actually released? For some reason, I though they were conceived, but then

    never actually made it into production.

     

    I've got this picture...

     

    post-5822-129841013303_thumb.jpg

     

     

    Based on the address from that chart, that mobo was designed by Styra Semiconductor/Atari Microsystems...

  23. Posted

    It certainly would have been interesting to See what Time-Warner could have done with Atari Corp from '91 onward. (from the computers to the Lynx to the Jaguar -or maybe even an earlier console pushed to get them back into the mainstream home game market ASAP and with better funding and in-house software development via AGames/Tengen/TWI on top of the management)

     

     

    A Time Warner owned Atari Corp. combined with Atari Games would've been a force to reckon with. There would have been enough funds to put back into the Lynx and "Atari" could have launched the Panther or ended up doing what they ultimately did...skip it and move onto the Jaguar. I'm rather of the opinion skipping the Panther may have been as big of a blunder as Atari.....

     

    Seeing as how the Jaguar had its head cut off by Playstation (et al), I don't see that producing a less-capable console would have been a move in the right direction.

     

     

    A complete "Atari" with Time Warner's money could've acquired more game publishers and incidents such as Rayman getting delayed by Sony's manipulations might not have occurred.

  24. Posted

    Hm. What about Commodore's 6509?

     

     

     

    Let's refer to it as the MOS 6509. Wikipedia reports it supported 1MB via bank switching but it apparently had a reputation for being difficult to program.

     

    I'm surprised Commodore didn't sign up for MOS to have a second-source license on the Motorola 680x0 series of CPUs. All the animosity between MOS and Motorola should've been paved over by then...

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