It’s okay to like the VCS.

[leech]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

But that can't be Atari's COO!   This board had me convinced that all Atari's current executives were mustache-twirling super-villains, sitting counting a pile of cash earned from scam crowdfunding campaigns, plotting to slap the Atari logo on rolls of toilet-paper and tuna fish next for profit!   ?

Haha!  Well all the little etchings on the motherboard of the VCS to me shows they actually have at least some love for the brand and some of the history of old engineers putting their name on things. 

Did that start in the Atari days?  I kind of relate that to the Amiga.

[zzip]

Just now, leech said:

Haha!  Well all the little etchings on the motherboard of the VCS to me shows they actually have at least some love for the brand and some of the history of old engineers putting their name on things. 

Did that start in the Atari days?  I kind of relate that to the Amiga.

I don't recall ever seeing little easter eggs on the motherboards.  I don't think Tramiel-era Atari would have ever done anything like that because they were too busy trying to disassociate the Atari image from the videogame past.   They wanted their computers to be taken seriously as business machines, but hard to do that when everyone thinks of you as a game company.

[leech]

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

I don't recall ever seeing little easter eggs on the motherboards.  I don't think Tramiel-era Atari would have ever done anything like that because they were too busy trying to disassociate the Atari image from the videogame past.   They wanted their computers to be taken seriously as business machines, but hard to do that when everyone thinks of you as a game company.

Yeah, I think it would have to be pre-Tramiel Atari, the Jay Miner era, as it was his dog's paws on the A1000 case.

[Matt_B]

14 hours ago, leech said:

Haha!  Well all the little etchings on the motherboard of the VCS to me shows they actually have at least some love for the brand and some of the history of old engineers putting their name on things. 

Did that start in the Atari days?  I kind of relate that to the Amiga.

Yes, but bear in mind that Atari are just a brand licensing company who don't make anything, and know next to nothing about technology, while the work of things like designing the board was farmed out to hired consultants.

I'm not sure whether it would have been Rob Wyatt's team who put those etchings on there, or whoever picked up the design work after he left the project, but he certainly had to sue them to get paid for his work.

[leech]

5 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Yes, but bear in mind that Atari are just a brand licensing company who don't make anything, and know next to nothing about technology, while the work of things like designing the board was farmed out to hired consultants.

I'm not sure whether it would have been Rob Wyatt's team who put those etchings on there, or whoever picked up the design work after he left the project, but he certainly had to sue them to get paid for his work.

How much of that was drama to get people to pay attention to them?  He also jumped out of a plane and injured himself or something.  Something tells me there was stupidity on both sides of that relationship.

Did he have a whole team?  Or did they just hire him for the board layout?  He was famous for designing the giant brick that is the original Xbox... not the greatest design in the world for a console (that goes to either the Sega Master System or Genesis / Mega Drive).  The hired him after they already had the sweet renders.

[+x=usr(1536)]

22 minutes ago, leech said:

How much of that was drama to get people to pay attention to them?  He also jumped out of a plane and injured himself or something.  Something tells me there was stupidity on both sides of that relationship.

 

Re: stupidity on both sides of the relationship, agreed.  But Fauxtari's not anywhere near competent enough to orchestrate something like that, and for as much of a tool as Wyatt appears to be it's nigh-on impossible to imagine even him being willing to have a skydiving accident for his employer's benefit.

 

Quote

Did he have a whole team?  Or did they just hire him for the board layout?  He was famous for designing the giant brick that is the original Xbox... not the greatest design in the world for a console (that goes to either the Sega Master System or Genesis / Mega Drive).  The hired him after they already had the sweet renders.

 

Yes, but the renders weren't usable for the final product, and, IIRC, Wyatt was out before the revised motherboard that was one-quarter of the size of the development board they had been using was ready.  The renders weren't even close to reality when he left because there was nothing to package that was set in stone at that point.

Edited January 30, 2021 by x=usr(1536)

[leech]

Yeah, like I said, most of his involvement seemed kind of pointless.  Almost like he went off skydiving because he was bored.  I mean did he do anything to get paid for?  Not defending any corporate jerks that don't pay their employees, but it does seem like he was just a figure they wanted a name attached to it "OMG we got the guy who designed the giant brick known as the Xbox that was just a low powered PC in a box!  We want a low powered PC in a 2600 like case, makes sense to hire him!"

[leech]

I still can't believe someone cut their own hole in the bottom of the VCS to be able to what?  Swap RAM out easier???  How often do you do that?  Like you install it once, and then you're done!

[Matt_B]

4 hours ago, leech said:

How much of that was drama to get people to pay attention to them?  He also jumped out of a plane and injured himself or something.  Something tells me there was stupidity on both sides of that relationship.

Did he have a whole team?  Or did they just hire him for the board layout?  He was famous for designing the giant brick that is the original Xbox... not the greatest design in the world for a console (that goes to either the Sega Master System or Genesis / Mega Drive).  The hired him after they already had the sweet renders.

Meh, the point is that those little Easter Eggs got put there not by Atari but by by one of their hired consultants, and that they've not got a particularly good record when it comes to paying said consultants.

 

Do not mistake them for a sign that Atari cares much about the future of the VCS, especially when there have been plenty of indicators to the contrary.

 

3 hours ago, leech said:

I still can't believe someone cut their own hole in the bottom of the VCS to be able to what?  Swap RAM out easier???  How often do you do that?  Like you install it once, and then you're done!

At the very least it'll come in handy when the time comes to take the RAM back out again for use in your next mini PC. ?

 

 

[leech]

1 minute ago, Matt_B said:

At the very least it'll come in handy when the time comes to take the RAM back out again for use in your next mini PC

Sure... because it's just so terribly difficult to undo 8 screws and some ribbons?

2 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

Meh, the point is that those little Easter Eggs got put there not by Atari but by by one of their hired consultants, and that they've not got a particularly good record when it comes to paying said consultants.

 

Do not mistake them for a sign that Atari cares much about the future of the VCS, especially when there have been plenty of indicators to the contrary.

There's zero public evidence for any of this.  How do we know that the other engineers aren't still there?  The only one we know of publicly that left was Wyatt, and his claim to fame isn't all that great to begin with.  We also know he injured himself going skydiving, so he probably made his cash from MS, and then just went off to enjoy life when Atari had asked him for help.  As far as I'm concerned he probably never did much for them to begin with except cause drama.

 

I mean come on, the guy who had his hand down the back of his pants in the one image is probably still there working on it.

[justclaws]

SurfaceInk also seem proud of their work; it seems extensive, delivering the hardware design, with AMD.
Their "We've Been Busy" page certainly indicates they were a good choice to work with Atari on the VCS.
Atari ® VCS Video Computer System Product Design and Development (surfaceink.com)

The part Atari got Rob Wyatt for, is system software which is absent, on VCS, of course. He wrote about making
a new custom micro hyper-visor which would then boot AtariOS, (or Windows etc. via the absent "Sand Box",)
and would allow mapping of controller buttons etc.. It sounded amazing; like a tiny new Hyper-V, ESXi, or Xen.

[leech]

2 minutes ago, justclaws said:

SurfaceInk also seem proud of their work; it seems extensive, delivering the hardware design, with AMD.
Their "We've Been Busy" page certainly indicates they were a good choice to work with Atari on the VCS.
Atari ® VCS Video Computer System Product Design and Development (surfaceink.com)

The part Atari got Rob Wyatt for, is system software which is absent, on VCS, of course. He wrote about making
a new custom micro hyper-visor which would then boot AtariOS, (or Windows etc. via the absent "Sand Box",)
and would allow mapping of controller buttons etc.. It sounded amazing; like a tiny new Hyper-V, ESXi, or Xen.

Interesting!  So basically nothing to do with hardware design, and they even disable the virtualization hardware in the bios anyhow...  sounds like they didn't even use anything he was hired for anyhow, or he never actually did anything but skydive.

[Matt_B]

34 minutes ago, leech said:

Sure... because it's just so terribly difficult to undo 8 screws and some ribbons?

It was a joke. I even threw in a smiley at the end in case that wasn't obvious, but you chose not to quote it for some reason.

 

34 minutes ago, leech said:

There's zero public evidence for any of this.  How do we know that the other engineers aren't still there?  The only one we know of publicly that left was Wyatt, and his claim to fame isn't all that great to begin with.  We also know he injured himself going skydiving, so he probably made his cash from MS, and then just went off to enjoy life when Atari had asked him for help.  As far as I'm concerned he probably never did much for them to begin with except cause drama.

There's plenty of public evidence that Atari know nothing about hardware. That infamous interview that Michael Artz gave to The Register, for instance. Or maybe that they went to crowdfunding with only lumps of plastic and no working prototype. Or that they've said that they're a marketing company with only around 20 employees. Take your pick, it's no secret.

 

We also know that they didn't pay Wyatt and also Feargal Mac while we're at it. The lawsuits they filed are a matter of public record. Whether they had any input into the final product is immaterial. A company that doesn't pay some of their most high profile contractors doesn't give the impression of caring that much about the project they're working on.

 

From other posts, it seems that it's actually the guys at SurfaceInk who are the ones who actually give a shit. There's still zero public evidence that anyone at Atari does though.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Matt_B
spelling

[leech]

3 hours ago, Matt_B said:

We also know that they didn't pay Wyatt and also Feargal Mac while we're at it. The lawsuits they filed are a matter of public record. Whether they had any input into the final product is immaterial. A company that doesn't pay some of their most high profile contractors doesn't give the impression of caring that much about the project they're working on.

I don't know, if I were a company and I contracted someone to do X work for me and they didn't do it, I wouldn't pay them either.

[Matt_B]

1 hour ago, leech said:

I don't know, if I were a company and I contracted someone to do X work for me and they didn't do it, I wouldn't pay them either.

I don't think there's any evidence that Rob Wyatt didn't do the work that was asked for. Indeed, it's a matter of court record that he did:

 

https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/07/atari-tin-giant-lawsuit.pdf

 

If Atari actually had a case against him for breach of contract, they should probably have turned up to present it rather than leave him to file for a default judgement against them:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/atari_wages_lawsuit_default_judgment/

 

 

[leech]

1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

I don't think there's any evidence that Rob Wyatt didn't do the work that was asked for. Indeed, it's a matter of court record that he did:

 

https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/04/07/atari-tin-giant-lawsuit.pdf

 

If Atari actually had a case against him for breach of contract, they should probably have turned up to present it rather than leave him to file for a default judgement against them:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/atari_wages_lawsuit_default_judgment/

 

 

It was said he was supposed to make some sort of hypervisor / sandbox mode.  VCS doesn't have that.

 

Ha, default judgement was probably cheaper than hiring lawyers.

Edited January 31, 2021 by leech

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 1/29/2021 at 11:59 AM, zzip said:

But that can't be Atari's COO!   This board had me convinced that all Atari's current executives were mustache-twirling super-villains, sitting counting a pile of cash earned from scam crowdfunding campaigns, plotting to slap the Atari logo on rolls of toilet-paper and tuna fish next for profit!   ?

 

We just said he was incompetent and inept. The Register article was the tip of the iceberg of that, but you guys are pretending that being excited about a product he's had three years to study is a replacement for competence.

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Ha, default judgement was probably cheaper than hiring lawyers.

Probably, but it still ended in failure.  Fauxtari is now 100% on the hook for whatever the court ruled on.  Had they gone with the lawyers they might have been able to weasel their way out of it (or at least reduce financial responsibility), but now there's a judgement against the company.  That's not attractive to either investors or creditors.

Edited January 31, 2021 by x=usr(1536)

[leech]

20 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Probably, but it still ended in failure.  Fauxtari is now 100% on the hook for whatever the court ruled on.  Had they gone with the lawyers they might have been able to weasel their way out of it (or at least reduce financial responsibility), but now there's a judgement against the company.  That's not attractive to either investors or creditors.

Yeah, totally doesn't look good on them.  Aren't they based out of France and he sued them from Colorado?

 

Ha, question for you, at what point in time (outside of Bushnell / Dabney) wasn't it a Fauxtari? 

[+x=usr(1536)]

7 minutes ago, leech said:

Yeah, totally doesn't look good on them.  Aren't they based out of France and he sued them from Colorado?

 

It's convoluted.  They're ostensibly based out of France, but with offices in New York.  Who knows what they really consider to be 'home', not that it really matters.

 

7 minutes ago, leech said:

Ha, question for you, at what point in time (outside of Bushnell / Dabney) wasn't it a Fauxtari? 

 

Fair question.  For me, the sale to JTS was the finale.  Others will almost certainly have their own opinions, but that was when Atari was turned into a commodity rather than a company as far as I'm concerned.  Yes, every iteration (Bushnell, Warner, Tramiel) was different to the one that came before or after, but there was at least a common streak of innovation - attempted or actual - taking place.

 

Honourable mention goes to Hasbro.  I truly believe that they had the best of intentions when they bought Atari's remains from JTS, and wanted to exploit at least some of the software properties that they'd purchased in the best sense of the word.  Atari wasn't the right fit for them, though.

 

Infogrames tried, for a while at least.  Then they turned entirely cynical, tried to cash in on the name, and started the events that brought us up to today.

 

 

[youxia]

Infogrames have lost their mind in the late Nineties, way before Atari acquisition. If you read the history of their half-billion spending spree, it's like a scenario for some Corporate Raider movie. They were were sucking the life out of established, venerable software houses way before EA even had an inkling of such idea.

 

I mean, if you buy and sell DMA Design in the same year it's rather clear that long-term strategy and building something is not your intention. I bet this deal must be a running joke around Take 2 offices to this very day

 

It's a shame, because pre-1996 Infogrames was one of my favourite publishers, very original and innovative.

[+x=usr(1536)]

10 minutes ago, youxia said:

Infogrames have lost their mind in the late Nineties, way before Atari acquisition. If you read the history of their half-billion spending spree, it's like a scenario for some Corporate Raider movie. They were were sucking the life out of established, venerable software houses way before EA even had an inkling of such idea.

 

I mean, if you buy and sell DMA Design in the same year it's rather clear that long-term strategy and building something is not your intention. I bet this deal must be a running joke around Take 2 offices to this very day

 

Very true.  Having said that, the company in all of its various iterations has been on a downhill slide for the past 20 years.  The current management seems to be the worst of the lot, and will (IMHO) likely cause it to finally crash and burn unless someone steps in, buys it, fires everyone, and replaces them with people who are competent and actually willing to run it as a technology company as opposed to an IP holding entity.

 

For the long-term viability of Atari, that would likely be the best possible scenario.  As for the likelihood of it happening, well...  I'm not holding my breath.

 

10 minutes ago, youxia said:

It's a shame, because pre-1996 Infogrames was one of my favourite publishers, very original and innovative.

 

Agreed; they really did put out some novel games.  Captain Blood was so completely unlike anything else, and absolutely one of my favourites on the ST.  I realise it's a love-it-or-hate-it game, but if a company is capable of releasing something that splits opinion to the extent that that game did, they're at least doing things differently.  I appreciated that about them at the time.

[leech]

So let me get this straight...

Atari goes from original, to Warner, to Tramiel, JTS, Hasbro... who kind of sat on their IP, then sold to Infogrames, and they published some software (still basically IP holders), finally gets shifted around and they're like "We're going to make hardware again!" and people instead just complain that they are just being IP holders and not doing anything with it but selling a ton of stuff branded with it.

 

  I'm fairly certain at this point that even if they pulled off some magical feat and got to be a popular alternative to Sony / MS's offerings and even go on to make a VCS 2 shaped like a 5200 and people would still call them Fauxtari, Nutari, etc.  That they're at least 'trying' to do something other than sue people over Pong and other 40+ year old IP is a good thing, I think.  Maybe they can eventually grow up into a 'real' Atari at some point.  Guess only time can tell.  Something tells me the deal with the devil that Bushnell made all so long ago had expired and so the Atari name is probably forever cursed like Commodore

[youxia]

 

15 minutes ago, leech said:

That they're at least 'trying' to do something other than sue people over Pong and other 40+ year old IP is a good thing, I think. 

The only thing they're trying to do is to make quick buck along the path of the least resistance. People who are really trying are making Amico.

Edited January 31, 2021 by youxia

[leech]

26 minutes ago, youxia said:

 

The only thing they're trying to do is to make quick buck along the path of the least resistance. People who are really trying are making Amico.

So a remake of an old system with older games is some how more valid than a more modern system?  i mean 'Atari' already worked with AtGames to make the flashbacks, I think they must have been successful enough for them to go for the new hardware.  Either way, as long as stuff is released that makes people happy, it's all good.

Edit: so looked more into the Amico.  It is everything people were complaining about the VCS.  An expensive Android box?

Edited January 31, 2021 by leech