Inky Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 One store in Chicagoland had ALL Amiga/ST material, they didn't last long. What store was that? I know of a Couple. Mars Merchandising for one (although they were software only,) and there was one in Naperville (can't remember the name,) and one in St. Charles... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 Atari computers were toys, none of them could handle big business, or even small business. The music industry is huge business, and the ST succeeded, still used nowadays. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xebec Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 And today the PC is the standard. The PC schooled Atari and Commodore right out of business. Heh. We were right to let those architectures fade away. The article is right, the ST is an oddball design. And the Amiga is a bag of one-trick wonders, never having the necessary bandwidth and power to bring it all together. Atari and Commodore computers were toys, none of them could handle big business, or even small business. The Amiga's multitasking OS, flexible colors/graphics resolutions, and 32-bit processor gave the machine plenty of power for business.. but the apps weren't really there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 Power without the programs.. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 What store was that? I know of a Couple. Mars Merchandising for one (although they were software only,) and there was one in Naperville (can't remember the name,) and one in St. Charles... Ohh hell if I remember, It was off of RT 59. Someplace between bartlett and 59/38 intersection. That's all I remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calimero Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Power without the programs.. Yea, right. http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=22856 Almost all today top-notch software starts its life on non-PC computers! (Software that was ported to Windows when it become "good enought" platform to support advance software from Amiga, Atari, Mac...). Only original PC top-notch software in today use is AutoCad (and it is not even PC but rather CP/M original software!) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 (Software that was ported to Windows when it become "good enought" platform to support advance software from Amiga, Atari, Mac...). yea that took all of not even 2 years, or in atari time, about 6 systems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Yea, right. http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=22856 Almost all today top-notch software starts its life on non-PC computers! (Software that was ported to Windows when it become "good enought" platform to support advance software from Amiga, Atari, Mac...). Or when those non-PC computers couldn't evolve into a capable platform. Software devs said, "hell wit'dis shit, I'm moving to a real computer." Whoosh! And just like that, the PC's popularity exploded in the market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 Microsoft make hype on promisees but deliver just "good enough" product (destroying any competition in process by e.g. duplicating existing standards and making them property). That's ok. A lotta times these small developers come up cockamaney ideas far beyond left-field. No standards, abnormal conventions and even weirder user interfaces. So.. I don't mind MS buying up some company and formalizing & unifying whatever standards came with the acquisition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 (edited) Or when those non-PC computers couldn't evolve into a capable platform. Software devs said, "hell wit'dis shit, I'm moving to a real computer." Whoosh! And just like that, the PC's popularity exploded in the market. That is one of the biggest issues with the mac lineup though the years got thousands of dollars worth of 68k software, tough shit we are now on power pc, oops that ended up being a dead end now your 1 year old G5 is in la la land, and while that is extreme, and they tried with "fat" binaries before the machine was getting slow it was a new software door stop meanwhile if I use an IDE drive or a sata drive in legacy mode I can boot MS-DOS5 on an i7, and right now in the garage I have a 2003 era pentium M (which is a pentium 3 with dynamic clock scaling) almost done installing ubuntu 16.04 LTS dual booting windows 98se (hell it runs windows 7 but there isnt drivers for the ATI 7050M for windows 7) ... cause the PC was so bland and not reliant on custom chips it can be anything you want it to be, monster gaming rig, basic office worker, cad workstation or a server, and it could change at a whim (ie my old gaming rig with a card swap from graphics performance to a pcie raid controller, is my home server) Edited March 10, 2018 by Osgeld 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 (edited) (From Keetah's topic on the Amiga.) For a while now I've thought Atari should've done something like that with the ST, if only to convince their users to move to their line of PC Clones when other companies' PC Clones began to take over. (Buy our IBM Compatibles, & keep your ST software too!) There were products that ran ST software on 90's PC's. Gemulator was a software based emulator but it used an ISA card for TOS roms, still it relied on a fast 486 or Pentium for decent speeds. And there was the Janus board from Germany which was an acclerated ST on a card. Both products used extended VGA resolutions and were meant for GEM based applications. But eventually they were made moot by pure ST emulators like PacifiST anyway... (Eventually I'll give my full thoughts on this topic when I'm not so sleepy...) Edited March 10, 2018 by MrMaddog 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 The reason why Gemulator needed card for TOS ROMs was actually copy protection, with excuse that it allows usage only for owners of TOS ROMs, so legal users (huh) .Concept was good for speeds of PCs of that era - not full emulation, just emulating TOS, AES functions and CPU. HW emulation was barely present. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted March 10, 2018 Share Posted March 10, 2018 The reason why Gemulator needed card for TOS ROMs was actually copy protection, with excuse that it allows usage only for owners of TOS ROMs, so legal users (huh) .Concept was good for speeds of PCs of that era - not full emulation, just emulating TOS, AES functions and CPU. HW emulation was barely present. Yup..like I said it was only good for running GEM apps at faster speed than for games. And once ISA boards boards became obsolete, the current version (after a decade later) used TOS images just like Hatari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted March 12, 2018 Share Posted March 12, 2018 WordPerfect is uter crap compering to Signum! It is interesting how you USA see Atari ST as toy while in Europe it was serious business computer. One big advantage of e.g. ST was easy using (and mixing different) non-english alphabets for both: screen and printing. It was crap, sure. But it was standard in the DOS world. It's one of the apps the ST needed to be competitive. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted March 12, 2018 Share Posted March 12, 2018 There were products that ran ST software on 90's PC's. Gemulator was a software based emulator but it used an ISA card for TOS roms, still it relied on a fast 486 or Pentium for decent speeds. And there was the Janus board from Germany which was an acclerated ST on a card. Both products used extended VGA resolutions and were meant for GEM based applications. But eventually they were made moot by pure ST emulators like PacifiST anyway... (Eventually I'll give my full thoughts on this topic when I'm not so sleepy...) Gemulator was a pure software emulator. The ISA card only held ST ROMS. I talked to Gemulator creator Darek Mihocka about that. He considered emulators such as pacifist to be "Pirate Emulators". Because they were cloning TOS to a file. Probably from a legal standpoint he is correct. He tried to sell Gemulator as a commercial product, and if he didn't take the ROM approach he did, he might have been sued by Atari or Digital or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 12, 2018 Share Posted March 12, 2018 Gemulator was a pure software emulator. The ISA card only held ST ROMS. I talked to Gemulator creator Darek Mihocka about that. He considered emulators such as pacifist to be "Pirate Emulators". Because they were cloning TOS to a file. Probably from a legal standpoint he is correct. He tried to sell Gemulator as a commercial product, and if he didn't take the ROM approach he did, he might have been sued by Atari or Digital or something. Wwhhhuuuuhhhhh!! Hybrid Emulation!! Real hardware ROM chips + x86 software emulator. Didn't someone say reading ROMS while running a full software emulator was impossible? And that. And how are OS ROMS different than game cartridge ROMS? I believe it was kevtris! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted March 12, 2018 Share Posted March 12, 2018 Wwhhhuuuuhhhhh!! Hybrid Emulation!! Real hardware ROM chips + x86 software emulator. Didn't someone say reading ROMS while running a full software emulator was impossible? And that. And how are OS ROMS different than game cartridge ROMS? I believe it was kevtris! You have no clue what talking about. Will not even start to explain basic things to you . 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 12, 2018 Share Posted March 12, 2018 You couldn't in any meaningful way anyway. So.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 (edited) It was crap, sure. But it was standard in the DOS world. It's one of the apps the ST needed to be competitive. Therein lay the real problem for the ST and the Amiga as well. The industry standards at the time weren't on it, weren't on current versions or didn't stay on the platforms long. There were lots of great alternatives on different platforms, but people bought at home what they used at work and bought at work what they needed to collaborate with others using. I loved Co Co Max 10 as a Word Processor on the Tandy Co Co III. But it had its limits when you had to share with someone using WordPerfect or Microsoft Word Edited March 18, 2018 by DracIsBack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 I loved Co Co Max 10 as a Word Processor on the Tandy Co Co III. But it had its limits when you had to share with someone using WordPerfect or Microsoft Word Yeah, that's it right there! Any old computer can run a word processor or spreadsheet program, but you had to have a Windows PC to read Word docs and Excel spreadsheets that companies used. Even if you went the open source route with LibreOffice, you still need to use it to read those types of files. When I started college in the early 90's, they still used DOS based PC's so I was able to convert the draft copies I made on WordPerfect to ASCII and used them on a ST based word processor since it read DOS formated disks. Once Windows & Office took over, forget it! (I ended up converting my 1st Word files to RTF and I suck to that format on my 1st PC, good thing since that protected me from the Melissa virus going around...) Now with everything web based (or on the "cloud") Chromebooks & smartphones are where it's all at now with Windows PC's still around for "legacy" programs. Karma isn't nice to Microsoft at all now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Maybe people calling PC "WIndows PC" is responsible why M$ took over. What about using PC without Windows, MS DOS ? It was possible then, is possible today. Today you can boot it straight into Atari TOS environment thanx to great work of some people. - look for Beekey . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 WordPerfect is uter crap compering to Signum! It is interesting how you USA see Atari ST as toy while in Europe it was serious business computer. One big advantage of e.g. ST was easy using (and mixing different) non-english alphabets for both: screen and printing. Exactly. There were some superb DTP and WP packages with excellent font support. There was of course all the music pro's using the MIDI aspects and decent database and spreadsheet products too. It was less so in the Uk compared to Germany and possibly others but firms did use STs for their day to day work and people working from home often had an ST and software with MS compatible file formats so they could exchange documents back and forth. I used to use an ST to write Unix code for DEC Ultrix using Lattice C and some stubs. I would write the code at home, get it compiling then bring the source into work to test and debug. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KLund1 Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 Jack was in such a hurry to get a machine out he did not do enough homework to see what was out there, what what might be happening the near future. Sure he (Atari) was cash strapped, but doing things in a hurry usully never ends well. He could have done a couple quick focus group studies through any of a number of third party firms that do that. He would have seen that the name Atari means games to the general public. He was a smart guy, he probably would have spun off a subsidiary company to market the ST under. (TMB Systems - Trimial Business Machines??) Next he should have used his C= experaince and put real documantion in every box, and give free deveolpment suff to anyone who asks. Next, use his 'Personality' to get the machines into computer stores. The 8-bits could stay in K-mart and Toy-R-Us. Then write a shedule for incrimental machine upgrade releases, like intel's tick-tock. Possibly make changes to that schedules from focus group and inhouse EE input. His revenge rush to beat C= to market with a 68000 machine is was would eventually kill it. IMO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calimero Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Jack was in such a hurry to get a machine out he did not do enough homework to see what was out there, what what might be happening the near future. Sure he (Atari) was cash strapped, but doing things in a hurry usully never ends well. He could have done a couple quick focus group studies through any of a number of third party firms that do that. Not going to happen. Just listen from Jack Tramiel what he thinks about "marketing research" companies (at 30 minutes): I agree with you opinion that ST could do better under another brand instead of Atari. Regarding documentation, Michaels Tomzyck was responsible for documentation, users relations... in Commodore, and he did not follow Jack to Atari. I also personally think that 80s was quite turbulence time and it was quite difficult to comprehend what tomorrow will brings: "best way to predict future is to invented it" like Alan Kay said. e.g. Xerox (SmallTalk system) and Douglas Engelbart had far better vision of computers world and systems but we ended up with this crapware IT world... (just look what we use now: "forum". This kind of communication is at 80s BBS level - it is awful!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 The IT industry is lousy because of monetization and petty bickering. Anything commercialized goes sour. And what form of communication would you rather have? Message board forums work. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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