New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[roots.genoa]

It may be a pseudonym; a friend of mine uses one for paid articles. There are no personal info in his profile, no posts in forums, no comments, no blog: https://www.gamespot.com/profile/thewillennium/

[+frankodragon]

31 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

I have no idea if Atari paid him but, in his defense, it seems to be his schtick.  A search of "By Will Fulton" shows a bunch of articles that are similar in format.

Though I must say Atari couldn't have written a better promotion.  I'm happy to warm up the tar just in case. ?

It reads, "Some links to supporting retailers are automatically made into affiliate links, and GameSpot may receive a small share of those sales."

 

Right at the bottom of article.

 

 

[CPUWIZ]

Check out this little Linux box, I am buying this kit, just because. LOL

 

https://store.boingboing.net/sales/vocore2-mini-linux-computer-bundle-with-screen?utm_source=boingboing.net&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=vocore2-mini-linux-computer-bundle-with-screen&utm_term=scsf-338202&utm_content=a0x1P000004MbdT&scsonar=1

 

EDIT: Purchased

[+D Train]

yes, but how many tacos can fit into that box?

 

[Flojomojo]

It's so little! Review it for us when it arrives, will you? I'd be curious about performance and support as compared to the Raspberry Pi. 

[CPUWIZ]

4 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

It's so little! Review it for us when it arrives, will you? I'd be curious about performance and support as compared to the Raspberry Pi. 

 

Well, it is a router, on top of a mini Pi (which has better specs).  I think they don't compare, plus I get a screen with it, that I can use for whatever.  All for $70 and it even has a plastic case!!!!111!!!OMG  Plus, did you notice, how many GPIO's it has?

[Flojomojo]

I'd also be interested in its longevity. Seems too good to me true, but I'd love to be pleasantly surprised. BB store sells some real junk though, and Mark F tends towards enthusiasm even when things are crap. He's like the kid who bought Sea Monkeys but still holds out hope for a better v2.0. 

 

So AtariBox has been really quiet. Did our heroes return from their China trip? I see that the IGG still says "prototype."

[+thanatos]

1 hour ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

Well, it is a router, on top of a mini Pi (which has better specs).  I think they don't compare, plus I get a screen with it, that I can use for whatever.  All for $70 and it even has a plastic case!!!!111!!!OMG  Plus, did you notice, how many GPIO's it has?

 

I want to know how the "Store your data in the private cloud" works.

 

[Osgeld]

55 minutes ago, thanatos said:

 

I want to know how the "Store your data in the private cloud" works.

 

its a router with storage options, its actually quite convenient , welcome to 2009 ?

[high voltage]

Is this AAs longest thread?

[+Spriggy]

8 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

 

So AtariBox has been really quiet. Did our heroes return from their China trip? I see that the IGG still says "prototype."

 

 

I think they're still busy taking chinese taco lessons.  I have a feeling their Duck Tongue and Lychee Taco's may struggle to sell.

 

 

And yes.  That is an actual Duck Tongue and Lychee Taco!

 

 

 

MEANWHILE ....

 

The latest update on Atari SA's P/E ratio, for those following their financial follies.  CLICKITY CLICK!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JBerel]

So, Atari is now dredging up their "updates" from last year for lack of any news. Their latest necro update on FB is about the Rob Wyatt rant on sandbox whatever. Since they're digging that up again, something has always bothered me.....

Quote

Running another OS means you have to reboot the machine, I want any OS to have all the resources and running one OS inside another isn’t a great solution and its not good. It makes any hypervisor very complicated as it becomes more of a virtual machine hypervisor rather than a system monitor hypervisor. I want to keep the hypervisor as simple as possible, the more code in the hypervisor the more of an attack surface there is. The hypervisor is root of keeping the Atari world secure.

I want to make supporting another OS as easy as possible but not at the expense of the user experience of the Atari box in its native form. Something along the lines of: if you plug in a bootable external USB drive our hypervisor will boot from it, otherwise it will boot the internal Atari OS. This keeps both OS’s completely separate and makes supporting multiple OS’s really easy, there is no risk of the internal storage getting corrupted by the other OS. Any OS that is installed will need its startup code modifying because our hypervisor/boot code will enter the OS directly in 64 bit protected mode, the current linux boots from real mode.

I run a hardware server room with over 60 virtual machines running in VMWare and HyperV, though I hardly consider myself an expert on virtualization. But, Rob talks like he doesn't even understand virtualization. He's going on about sandbox mode, rebooting into another OS, and his hypervisor. Am I just stupid, or did bios and firmware just become a hypervisor virtual machine manager that doesn't run virtual machines, but serves as a system monitor? True, a hypervisor can be firmware, but by definition, a hypervisor manages virtual machines within software thus limiting full access to the hardware. Obviously the bios can boot to a USB partition. That's probably why they eliminated the SD card, to avoid other possibilities, or be cheap, or both. But it sounds like he's saying his Atari OS will run as a virtual machine. I dunno. It doesn't make sense, but I'm obviously taking all that bullshit way too seriously. There's still no evidence any of it exists or ever will. I was just burnt about all his talk of hypervisors on a stupid dual boot Linux box.

 

[Flojomojo]

It's a bunch of stuff and nonsense that Rob used to apply for his job, which "Atari" was too lazy to repackage, so they're just spewing it as evidence as progress. It's only fooling those who have already bought into their console. Like Arzt, he spends a lot of time talking about what it is not. Un-console! ???

 

Pretty much any modern computer can boot from an external drive. This isn't special in the least and it's weird how they keep recycling their Medium posts. Those things were ridiculous the first time around. They didn't improve with age. 

[JBerel]

Yeah, pretty much what I was thinking. It just kind of irritates me to no end some dipshit throwing out terms like virtualization and hypervisors while demonstrating he doesn't even know what they mean. I really hate bull shit artists which is why I've made it my part time mission to challenge these dumb asses every time they try to promote another line of bullshit. 

[Flojomojo]

I feel like Rob is bullshitting his employers more than he's bullshitting the public. I wonder if he expected his stuff to be made public like that. No doubt that's what someone on the inside means by transparency. 

[JBerel]

If his checks are clearing, then you're right. I wonder if he was dumb enough to do it for points or a percentage of profits. He hasn't been able to update his website, so who knows.

[Flojomojo]

Of all the things they could be showing, it seems odd to rerun the hospital photo. 

 

 

True Fan #1 can't get enough of this rubbish and is proud that he understood it all. 

 

How long til this is deleted? "When do I get what I paid for?" Answered with a gif of Mister Burns laughing in church, in the shower, at his desk ...

 

 

[+frankodragon]

If there was one word to describe the entire Atacobox from Scam-degogo to "announcements" it be: Rubbish.

 

[pacman000]

I'd say Taco John's trademark is fine, if they coined the phrase. As such, this passage from the article Flojo linked to is important:

 

Quote

This confusion is the danger—described by attorney Nikki Siesel—of trying to trademark a fairly descriptive phrase. A related problem is that someone else may already be using it. Because with Taco Tuesday, at least two other restaurants can make a credible claim to having coined the term before David Olsen and Taco John’s. 

The first is Steve Levinson, the former owner of the Tortilla Flats restaurant in Laguna Beach, California. According to a 1997 LA Times article, Levinson first held a Taco Tuesday in the early eighties and applied for a (state) trademark in 1984. 

Levinson is now retired, Tortilla Flats is closed, and the trademark is expired, so we could not verify the year he applied for it. But law partner William Levin represented Levinson in the late 1990s, and he says he successfully took legal action against over a dozen nearby restaurants on the basis of the state trademark. 

And this:

 

Quote

In 1978, Greg Gregory went to a food court in Philadelphia to do some market research before joining the family business: Gregory’s Restaurant and Bar in Somers Point, New Jersey. “I saw a big line for some Mexican food I’d never had before,” he says. “A guy in line told me they were ‘tacos.’” 

Gregory tried and failed to get his family to put tacos on the menu. As a compromise, they let him sell tacos on Tuesday. After his idea for a “Margarita Thriller Night” got shot down, he settled on the name Taco Tuesday. “It’s got a nice ring to it,” he says. 

The first night, he made his own taco shells and sold six orders. The next week, “we finally found taco shells, and it took off.” His college professor came one night and advised Gregory to trademark “Taco Tuesday,” which he did, with the U.S. government, in 1982. Decades of phone calls and legal letters by his family to competing restaurants, Gregory says, have kept Taco Tuesday unique to Gregory’s Restaurant and Bar in their area. 

So when Taco John’s applied for a federal trademark seven years later, they got it in every state… except New Jersey. 

 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

1 hour ago, Flojomojo said:

Of all the things they could be showing, it seems odd to rerun the hospital photo. 

 

 

True Fan #1 can't get enough of this rubbish and is proud that he understood it all. 

 

 

 

 

Oh John. I really do hope he has some quick access emotional support when Christmas comes around and it's VCS-less

[JBerel]

I think he said his local bar is within walking distance, or that he lived in a bar. Definitely something about a bar, so I'm sure he'll be fine.

[+frankodragon]

I'm guessing he's the local Andy Capp or Barney Gumble.

[Flojomojo]

According to his Wikipedia page, one of Andy Capp's hobbies is pigeon racing. Hmm

[MrBeefy]

Yeah I will feel sorry for Ole John if it isn't what he expects. Remember how upset he was over the removal of the SD card?

 

So what would it take at this point for you all to buy one? For me it would be for them to show me something unique beyond a cool start up screen. I have a PC and plenty of ways to play the vault games. So currently it just looks really cool.

 

I guess by unique I mean games. I have Steam, my original Atari, a Flashback, Xbox, and a Rpi. I might pick up a classic stick but that's made by PowerA.

[Flojomojo]

39 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

So what would it take at this point for you all to buy one?

• Half the price -- or twice the price, but with real power. It's just meh as it is, neither power-sipping like a portable nor juiced enough to run real modern games. 
• Demonstration of competence, not the embarrassing amateur nonsense shown to date. I would have fired Mr. Arzt last year if this were my project. 
• A unique reason to purchase. Software would help. "We are doing our own thing" isn't sufficient in such a crowded field. 

As I've said before, I don't think this is a product for us, or even for any member of the public. It's a portfolio-booster for "Atari" stock so Mr. Chesnais can claim they're back in the hardware game. 

 

I don't think it's that good-looking, personally. That's because I don't have much enthusiasm for 1970s electronics design, and being tethered to a TV in the age of cheap high quality screens seems unnecessarily retrograde. 

 

Their use of crowdfunding was pathetic, especially given their terrible communication. It didn't deserve the attention or funding it received. I'm somewhat comforted that they probably won't get another chance to pull this kind of trick again. 

 

So I'm a hard sell, for tech and product reasons. Too bad for them, because I'm an easy mark for kitschy retro ticky-tack. If they made a Flashback 9 or a portable with fancy build quality, that would have interested me a lot more.