Jump to content
IGNORED

Atari TT Unix


Recommended Posts

Hello all,

 

I was wondering if anybody had any information about that TT Unix? I have never seen it but it was something that I was always interested in. I had used the Amiga Unix called Amix and being a fan of Unix wondered how Atari's port was? Does anybody have a site with information, screenshots, reviews, or anything else on Atari's Unix? In fact, does anybody have a copy. I always thought it was one of those items that should be archived before it gets lost to history.

 

Cheers!

-P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Curious as to why it took nearly 4 years for the TT unix system to get from Atari's R&D depatment to getting in the marketplace (considering that the ST only took a matter of months for the same thing)

 

Good question.

 

An even better question is, why did Atari bother? All of the nonsense with Unix and the Transputer and such... didn't amount to anything, didn't make them any money, and distracted them from doing things that people actually wanted. All I really wanted was a faster ST with better graphics and I'm sure that's what most people wanted, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Leave the transputer out of this, thats not fair (considering that it was based on a project that the designers, perhillion were doing for commodore for the amiga)

 

What are you talking about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation

 

In 1986 Tim King[1] left his job at MetaComCo, along with a few other employees, to start Perihelion Software in England. There they started development of a new parallel-processing operating system known as "HeliOS". At about the same time a colleague started Perihelion (later Perihelion Hardware) to create a new transputer based workstation that would run HeliOS.

 

While at MetaComCo, much of the Perihelion Software team had worked with both Atari Corp. and Commodore International, producing ST BASIC for the former, and AmigaDOS for the latter. The principals still had contacts with both companies. Commodore had expressed some interest in their new system, and showed demos of it on an add-on card running inside an Amiga 2000. It appears they later lost interest in it. It was at this point that Atari Corp. met with Perihelion and work started on what would eventually become the ATW.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Leave the transputer out of this, thats not fair (considering that it was based on a project that the designers, perhillion were doing for commodore for the amiga)

 

What are you talking about?

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation

 

In 1986 Tim King[1] left his job at MetaComCo, along with a few other employees, to start Perihelion Software in England. There they started development of a new parallel-processing operating system known as "HeliOS". At about the same time a colleague started Perihelion (later Perihelion Hardware) to create a new transputer based workstation that would run HeliOS.

 

While at MetaComCo, much of the Perihelion Software team had worked with both Atari Corp. and Commodore International, producing ST BASIC for the former, and AmigaDOS for the latter. The principals still had contacts with both companies. Commodore had expressed some interest in their new system, and showed demos of it on an add-on card running inside an Amiga 2000. It appears they later lost interest in it. It was at this point that Atari Corp. met with Perihelion and work started on what would eventually become the ATW.

 

Okay, but it still represented time, money, and brainpower that could have been used to make something marketable. By 1989 the ST was becoming pretty ...average. IBM had VGA and the Ad-lib card by then, and a lot of the Mac models were now color models. Yet the ST was almost identical to the machine that first came out four years earlier.

 

And stuff like the Transputer was *NOT* the answer! Atari wanted something expensive and luxurious, but the majority of customers just wanted a better machine, as cheap as possible.

 

At what point did Atari forget their own mantra? "We build computers for the masses, not the classes", indeed!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whilst we all like to think that selling ST and XE computers was the most important thing for Atari, the truth is both Commodore and Atari knew that to make sure they were around for the next century they had to break into the corporate world.

 

Jack figured he needed something cutting edge after being pipped to the post with the Amiga 1000 chipset in 85/86. Transputer machines would not be mass market machines or affordable but it's the same as when Ford were selling the Sierra Cosworth in single figures per quarter, it gave the lowly bog standard rep-mobile Ford Sierra more of a glow in marketing terms AND proved that if they wanted to Ford could make an Audi/BMW killing powerful super saloon car.

 

UNIX was very respected, to have a workable UNIX machine is always good for a company name forever associated with home video gaming thanks to the meteoric success of the Atari 2600. Commodore also burned many bridges with the way they handled sales of the revolutionary PET in the late 70s too so they also needed to get some sort of respect in corporate circles.

 

Without a UNIX machine there would never be any kind of huge corporate sales for Atari or Commodore, nobody cared how good GEM or AmigaDOS was, it wasn't PC-DOS/MS-DOS and it wasn't UNIX. Even the shitty Macintosh only sold to arty farty idiots in business, very very small share of 0.00001% at the time.

 

So that's why they all wanted a UNIX box but I suspect it turned out that in the end only DOS mattered to businesses fixated on Intel hardware for every desktop and so they gave up. UNIX pretty much became for server platforms only in the late 80s/early 90s anyway. Windows, as shit as it was before 95, was 'good enough' and the IT managers didn't really give a shit......radical change in hardware platform = exponential increase in cost of training/hardware purchase costs.......and as history has shown, in the corporate world it was IBM and it always will be IBM compatible. I suspect they realised this and gave up.

 

Atari also had PCs too, I would be very interested in some sales figures for the Atari PCs, given that the name Atari and business computing where not usually in the same sentence in the mind of PC purchasers in the 80s. Shame because their first PCs with the Mega ST styling were probably the best looking PCs money can buy. In fact if I had a spare Mega case I might put a mini ITX board in one and hack one of my broken Mega keyboards to make a faux Atari PC in the style of the PC-1 :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I'd like to know what happened to the ST version of Linux...is it still going or being maintained/developed

Why? Are you planning on installing it?

 

I just haven't heard anything in a long time (i thought the project was dead)

 

It's BSD Unix, not Linux, but it can run the same open source software:

NetBSD for Atari

 

 

 

 

 

yes, maybe so, but you still have to recompile the program to make it compatible with ST unix or the 68k

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd like to know what happened to the ST version of Linux...is it still going or being maintained/developed

Why? Are you planning on installing it?

 

I just haven't heard anything in a long time (i thought the project was dead)

 

It's BSD Unix, not Linux, but it can run the same open source software:

NetBSD for Atari

 

yes, maybe so, but you still have to recompile the program to make it compatible with ST unix or the 68k

 

You will have to recompile any open-source software you want to run on the Atari, regardless of which POSIX-compliant OS you happen to be using, so I fail to see your point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd like to know what happened to the ST version of Linux...is it still going or being maintained/developed

Why? Are you planning on installing it?

 

I just haven't heard anything in a long time (i thought the project was dead)

 

It's BSD Unix, not Linux, but it can run the same open source software:

NetBSD for Atari

 

There was a Linux version for the ST, based on ucLinux that would run on a 68000 ST/STe. It hasn't been updated in a long, long time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gonna see what I can do, need to try mounting the drive with a Linux box and see if I can make an image of it and post it up onto Atarimuseum.com

 

Lemme see if I can do that at the end of January once I've gotten the 7800 XM's shipped.

 

 

 

Curt

 

Curt has a copy. He loaded it on my TT for awhile but I eventually got bored with it and took it off.

 

Tempest

 

@Curt, Can you upload this peace of history I am looking for this software for years.... :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...