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carmel_andrews

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Posts posted by carmel_andrews

  2. Posted

    It's some of both. The 1978 motherboard and RAM boards, along with the unmarked ROM boards, are laid out according to the prototype memory map posted above (see also posted schematics). Then they were cut-and-jumpered to work with the production map and their EPROMs were written with production code. The CPU board is early production, hand-soldered with no solder mask, and its chips are nice early ceramics, but it is not from the original prototype.

     

    What purposes #26 served, I can only guess. As a prototype, it participated possibly in early firmware and software testing. After the production mods, it may have been an internal software development machine, as the sticker underneath hints. After going to PDI, it probably developed their first Atari titles.

     

    I have never seen another 800 like it. Has anyone?

     

     

     

     

     

    What, you've seen an actual proto atari 800, any pics....

  3. Posted

    I used to have a biggish collection of Atari 8bit tape games (most in orig. packaging) I think they numbered around 250 tape games (including compilations)

     

    I found it interesting though that the UK market (as well as some parts of europe) was predominantly 'tape driven', considering though that the success sinclair had with his ZX series (which effectively created the UK games industry as we know it), I found it surprising that the major UK software houses only considered Atari and commodore disk versions of tape games as an 'afterthought' (i.e as an additional sales channel)

  6. Posted

    This has probably been asked but i'm going to ask it anyway

     

    Given that the original Pong unit was a demo only (according to the link i put up about Atari pong in the coin op section here) was the demo unit designned by Bushnell himself or Did Al(lan) Alcorn design it

     

    Just to point out i am only talking about the demo unit only not the actual coin op system

     

    http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/205895-happy-birthday-atari-pongataris-1st-commercial-success/

     

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/how-atari-s-pong-started-the-video-game-revolution-40-years-ago-165259921.html

  9. Posted

    Is that segaworld in the trocadero or the sega concession (which was also a segaworld) in hamleys, saw them both but didn't go in....just looked like another arcade

     

    The best Arcade in central London was on the corner of wardour street, old compton street and brewer street (it also had the distinction of being the cheapest arcade in london), at 10p a game where everyone else was charging either 50p or 1 pound

     

    Do you know if Segaworld also demo'd their games systems releases, like sonic, space harrier, outrun etc

  10. Posted

    linky only

     

     

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/21/atari-files-for-bankruptcy_n_2518778.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-tech?ncid=GEP

     

     

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/426143/20130121/atari-bankrupt-pong-infogrames-arcade.htm

     

     

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/atari-files-bankruptcy-order-split-atari-eh-093918135.html

     

     

     

    About time too, now we can hopefully give Atari the viking burial that's long overdue

     

    After all you can only ressurect your back catalogue of retro format games so many times before people just get bored of them

     

    I think the problem was that Atari released too little original content and didn't innovate enough in the mobile/online market, namely that its competitors were coming out with better, more original content and better priced then Atari

     

    My guess is though, the die was cast once tramiel RM'd with JTS, since the only salvagable part of what merged with JTS was games software, which was the only aspect of Atari that survived

     

    Even if Atari come out of Administration (which is what bankruptcy protection is me thinks) Unless they can innovate in the mobile and online markets with their gaming content and start coming out with games that people want to buy, this whole buy out thing is going to be a waste of time (Unless ofcourse someone does what commodore USA did and buy the name to use on modern hardware formats)

     

    Lets see if Sony or M$$$$ blow a few million to bye out Atari just to put it out of it's misery

  14. Posted

    I saw Bob Gleadow (top man at Atari UK) twice, once at the PCW show and once at the Atari organised Atari 90's show

     

    I also saw Les Player (former Technical Director at Atari UK) at the royal horticultural halls (victoria), think it might have been at an Atari computer fair

     

    The Yakmeister himself (Jeff Minter) at various Atari shows

     

    Les Ellingham (Founder/Publisher of Page six magazine) at 2 AMS shows in stafford (think i might have seen him also at a couple of London Atari fairs)

     

    The founders/programmers at Harlequin (Atari 8bit games publisher/developer) at one of the London Atari shows

     

    Noel Daniels....Used to work for Sillica shop (lead programmer behind A8 sidewinder and Thunderfox, one of the better uridium clones on the A8)

  15. Posted

    If your using a pc, get the windows version of Superpacker (which has exomizer built in) only thing is you need the MADS assembler program in order to use the superpacker (since you need to tell superpacker where the MADS executable is....for some reason)

     

    Superpacker packs all types of atari executables including xex's

  16. Posted

    Re: original VIC chip (not vicII), just after the Pet was launched, commodore got MOS to try flogging (selling) the VIC chip to competing hardware companies (see 'home computer wars' for referrence), apparently they weren't that successful at it, so commodore decided to get in on the act and the earliest vic chip based design were meant for Pet based systems

     

    The Vic 20 was merely an afterthought, when Peddle kept dragging his feet over the Pet based Vic chip systems, Peddle wanted a system to compete with Atari and Apple and tramiel wanted a low end system that cost less then the Atari, Tramiel won the argument and the pet was out of the picture so far as the vic chip was concerned

     

    Another interesting thing is, according to Joe Decuir, the CTIA was already finished (and ready for use) by the time the VCS was released

  18. Posted

    Strange, i do remember some corner shops (i.e newsagents) selling computer games....don't remember seeing anything Atari though (only comm64, amstrad and sinclair)

     

    I only remember Mel C (or his column) when my commodore owning older brother (who actually started out with an A800xl) let me read some of his 'commodore porn' (i.e zapp, YC/CU and CDU)

  19. Posted

    Has any one read or looked at the Atari Book thing they have just brought out?

     

    For health reasons I don't get out a lot (ie hardly ever) and 10 quid is a lot of cash for a magazine, is it just reprints of their earlier stuff or is there more to it?

     

    Can't remember the last time I purchased a magazine, they got so damned expensive and 80% adverts..

     

    I'm lucky that my mate buys Retro Gamer so I borrow a set of them and digest and give em back..

     

     

     

     

     

     

    10 quid for a magazine......who's it made by...news international/NMC etc (same people that do tatler/vogue etc)

     

    For that sort of money i'd want a ton a games some free emu's and at least 200 plus pages (plus an addendum with type in program listings)

  20. Posted

    I remember seeing the tv series kate and ali (i think it was shown on C4 in GB), in one episode i distinctly remember the son (think his name was chip or sommat like that) pulling an Atari 800 out from under his bed

     

    Also in chocky's children the main character in the series in the first episode is seen playing with his friends Atari 800 playing the game 'space invaders' at turbo speed

     

    If anyone remembers the 1980's series 'Magnum PI', in one episode when tom sellecks character is laid up in hospital, the kid in the same ward is playing the A8 version of defender on a 600xl it looks like and later in that episode, tom's character is seen using the 600xl to hack into some computer system using Atari brandard telecoms hardware

  21. Posted

    From the mid 1980s it became difficult to get anything into stores if you didn't fit into a distributor's neat pigeonhole and jump through the correct marketing hoops (have a watch of Commercial Breaks, there's a glimpse of what's involved when Ocean start pushing Hunchback 2 out near the end). People like Jeff Minter and Mel Croucher struggled to get their games to the masses on the C64 and Spectrum because, despite the demand being there after positive magazine reviews and from word of mouth, they weren't mainstream and i suspect this is why Minter started working with other publishers around 1985, it was easier to leave the hassle of marketing to people who actually wanted to do it.

     

     

     

     

     

    I didn't know that Mel C. programmed games, I though he was only a magazine columnist/freelace journalist type

     

    So, It wasn't the softie houses (as mclaneinc called them) that were 'anti atari 8bit' it was the el crappo distributors (who probably knew even less about that market then the likes of Atari did)

     

    Perhaps we should have waged a war against the distributors and sued them under UK consumer laws, like restraint of business, operating a cartel or anti competitve business practices (i.e UK or EU competition/monopoly laws)...Perhaps then they might have listened then

     

    The question is though, why were the software houses relying on the el crappo distributors to getting 'their product' into the stores/shops, why didn't the software houses just hire 'half decent' sales reps and sell directly to dealers/retailers etc, after all surely the software houses knew how to sell their own product (or am i missing something here)

  22. Posted

    Like they used to say in the programme 'The Pipkins'.....It's time for.....A decent competitor to Ebay....Anyone know how to design/develop a website....i've a few ideas in that direction

     

    Perhaps if ebay had a decent competitor or healthy competition, It might care a lot more about those that sell or buy from it's web service

  23. Posted

    I hope Atari rises from the Ashes of sony's demise (and that of M$$$$$) and starts kicking ar$e with a 2015 version of the VCS mark3

     

    Perhaps Sony and MS are starting to make the same fuck-ups that Atari made way back when (i.e. thinking that they know this business backwards, perhaps since they are lead by HUMANS they don't underatand the idea of 'learning from the mistakes of others')

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    If anyone is interested in more detail, read the timeline on the website or the FBI documents themselves. For everyone else, here is a bettery summary of the full story. I feel more comfortable writing informally in a forum than I do making something more formal and putting it on a website. See what you think?

     

    In 1987, Jack Tramiel's turnaround of Atari had actually worked. In fact, Atari was doing well! They were flush with cash. At this point, Atari was really to begin a resurgence and to build a new empire where they were a major player once again. Their first step was to fix their retail channel. (Another idea they were pursuing about that time was to invest in a semiconductor manufacturer instead.) A well known criticism of Atari was that they had alienated computer dealers and mass merchants in the US. So Atari decided they'd address the sales channel problem by investing in a retail outlet. That would be Federated Department Stores.

     

    And so they bought Federated. But by February 1988, Atari realized that they were totally screwed. They paid $67 million for Federated. Their audit revealed that they needed to write off $43 million of that purchase. So once the company was on the books, it was really only worth $24 million. On top of that, it wasn't profitable. Losses were approximately $3 million a month.

     

    Later court documents seem to suggest that Federated knew they were screwing Atari over on the deal. And it led to a crazy court ruling which says, "If you know they're lying to you and you go foward, you've screwed yourself. Even if you didn't grasp the full depth of how much they were lying to you, YOU are now responsible for the damage." That same decision would poke its head up once again in the Facebook vs ConnectU case with the Winklevoss twins and the ownership of Facebook. They'd later try to sue to recover damages, and that's when they ran into another problem. The merger agreement actually indemnified the CEO of Federated! Was all of this the result of an incompetent CIO at Atari? Overeager management? Were they intentionally being screwed by the owners of failing Federated who wanted to cash out? I think it is a little of all that and more.

     

    If you're looking for the point that Atari died, it would be the acquisition of Federated. Their upwards momentum stopped at this point, and now they were treading water. From that point forward, Atari was trying to survive. Had Atari have put their money somewhere, anywhere else but Federated, they could have seen some fantastic growth in their company.

     

    So, back to the timeline. Jack Tramiel sees the writing in the wall. Atari isn't going to be a rocket to the stars. They're screwed. Just a few months after the audit, he turns the business over to his sons to manage. I remember that some people blamed his sons for the fall of Atari. Larry, Moe, and Curly, as it were. I don't know how true that is. But at that point the company was already broken. The public simply wasn't aware of it.

     

    Two months after Sam Tramiel took over Atari is were the DRAM cleansing and resell operation began. Japanese DRAM manufacturers were tightly controlled on the price and quantitiy that they could sell their chips to the US. But there was no such restriction to the rest of the world. And that was the opening that made the scheme possible. One could ship chips from Japan to Taiwan, and then Taiwan to the US. As long as the import documents were on the up-and-up, it wasn't criminal, at least.

     

    Of course, you'd presume they'd still be open to civil liability to the Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, and they'd be politically vulnerable, and they'd absolutely piss off just about everyone on both sides of the Pacific. One defense that was explained to the FBI was that "it was only a matter of business ethics". Well, maybe. Some ethics, huh? But that was assuming that they weren't trying to hide the operation and their import documents were on the up-and-up. And apparently, they weren't always describing the contents being shipped, and they weren't always honest about the quantity of chips in a shipment. "Ooops. I forgot a zero at the end!"

     

    I really want to tell the story of how I think this plan came into motion. Did it start at Atari? Did it come from the outside? I don't have solid proof, but I have some seriously tight circumstantial evidence, including one person's own words. Unfortunately, it involves bringing a person into the spotlight who is not in the FBI documents. So I'm reluctant to say anything here in the absence of counsel. But back to the question, do I think this was Atari's idea? In a way, yes. But I'm pretty certain it didn't originate with the Tramiels or the CFO.

     

    The FBI documents totally talk about the smuggling and all the cloak and dagger, which is kinda cool. You should read through the timeline on the website, or the raw FBI document itself, for some of the flavor there. Things appeared so shady that it was Atari's own employees who turned them into the FBI, fearing that they were getting pulled into some illegal operation. What the FBI documents don't really point to so much is motive. And I think the Federated story provides the motive. The FBI was told that Atari's own CFO ordered a delivery of materials to Sun Microsystems. With the DRAM sales, Atari could afford to spend more time to turn Federated around. They wouldn't have to publicly admit failure. They wouldn't have to scare investors because now they could meet their numbers.

     

    Towards the middle of 1989, the FBI and US Customs made their case to the Assistant US Attorney. The Assistant US Attorney was considering charges of either wire fraud or falsification of import documents. But it was pretty clear that if that case went forward, Atari would be totally destroyed. The FBI agent that was assigned to the Atari case was pulled into an undercover case. A couple of months later, the rumors were circulating that, on its own, Atari was circling the drain.

     

    By 1991, Atari was a shell of what it was in 1987. The Department of Justice decided not to pursue the case. They left the case with the US Customs Department, but the FOIA request only covered the FBI. We lose the story at that point, but presumably, it didn't go much further. Our new found Atari of story's demise ends with a wimper more than it does a bang.

     

     

     

     

     

    My thinking was that Atari and the FBI as well as US authorities struck some sort of deal around the same time JT was instigating these shenanaghans (after all it was in JT and Atari's interests to), the deal was that the FBI and US authorities wouldn't reveal Atari's involvement (i.e. some sort of imdemnity from prosecution) in exchange for some help in catching people that were 'dirty dealing', so to speak (or some sort of cash payment, like handing over any profits Atari made from the Dram sale)

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