ICD founders

[ijor]

Somebody knows what happened with the original owners/founders of ICD?

 

I believe that together with OSS they were the top contributors to the A8. They made all excellent products, and all high quality. Even today, their products are the most popular.

 

But contrary to Bill Wilkinson, ICD people always maintained a low profile. As I recall, I saw their names only once mentioned in some old ICD manual. And all I know about them is that they came from Spartan (the developers of the CHIP). Would love to see an interview with them.

[Goochman]

I believe ICD is now being run by Dewey Cheatum and Howe - their last product was the Catbox for the Jag

[themrfreeze]

Somebody knows what happened with the original owners/founders of ICD?

 

I believe that together with OSS they were the top contributors to the A8. They made all excellent products, and all high quality. Even today, their products are the most popular.

 

Funny you should say that. I worked with Bob Puff (of CSS fame) in the late 80s/early 90s, and the joke was that ICD stood for "I Can't Design". I seem to recall their products having some noticible bugs in them, but it's been so long that I don't remember specifics.

[Gunstar]

I'm pretty sure a guy named Tom Hunt was the owner of ICD, whether or not he founded it I don't know, but if you mentioned ICD and his name in the Jaguar forum you'll get some good answers, though maybe not what you are looking for. Basically, the person(s) running ICD, at least in the end, turned out to be big -time crooks and took a LOT of peoples "pre-oreder" money and ran, they were even shut down and the warehouse put under lock and key buy the authorities where supposedly, a bunch of Atari product stock still sits colleting dust til this day. The People and 4Play/Scatologic (who made the famed Battlesphere game for the Jaguar) worked directly with ICD/TomHunt doing most of it's development and they also got the shaft and Thunderbird, one of the programmers, among others, would have something (very bad) to say about Tom Hunt and ICD as a whole. but to here from him, you would have to join Jaguar Sector 2: http://jaysmith2000.ipbhost.com/index.php?act=idx

[ijor]

Funny you should say that.  I worked with Bob Puff (of CSS fame) in the late 80s/early 90s, and the joke was that ICD stood for "I Can't Design".  I seem to recall their products having some noticible bugs in them, but it's been so long that I don't remember specifics.

 

You can't be serious ...

 

MIO,US Doubler,SpartaDos, SpartaDosX,Hard Disk interface,PR Connection,RTime

 

Are they buggy, crappy software and hardware? Why they were best sellers at that time ? If so, why they are still today the most desired Atari items ?

 

Not to mention their ST host adapter and other ST stuff made by ICD.

[ijor]

I believe ICD is now being run by Dewey Cheatum and Howe - their last product was the Catbox for the Jag 

 

I know, that's why I specifically said the founders and orignal owners, not the current/last ones.

 

I'm pretty sure a guy named Tom Hunt was the owner of ICD...

among others, would have something (very bad) to say about Tom Hunt and ICD as a whole.

 

Tom Hunt was never owner of ICD. And ICD founders weren't the ones that pissed many people. Tom Hunt is a famous Atari programmer, he made some superb software. Some of his later 3D stuff was ported to the PC and published by AutoDesk.

[Mindfield]

Tom Hunt contributed quite a bit to ANTIC back in the day as I recall -- didn't he do View3D?

 

In any event I had a lot of respect for ICD back in the day. I had US Doublers in my 1050, a SpartaDOS X cart, and a P:R: connection -- all solid stuff. And of course, I knew many who had similar stuff -- especially MIOs. That was the product to get for hard disk interfacing.

 

Of course I'm talking specifically of the mid-80s ICD, not the later, post-8-bit incarnation.

[atarian1]

Um, just a note here. The owner's, I mean swindler's , name is Tom Harker - not Tom Hunt. I always thought he was a founder. So who was the founder(s) of ICD?

 

Another meaning of ICD that they joked about was "I Can't Decide"

 

Also, ICD did make high quality products. I don't remember any of their stuff being "buggy". I've got an ICD PR Connection, original ST host adapter, AdSCSI+, Link, Link 2 and an AdSpeed. All worked great from the very beginning.

[www.atarimania.com]

Tom Hunt contributed quite a bit to ANTIC back in the day as I recall -- didn't he do View3D?

That's Tom Hudson.

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Gunstar]

Um, just a note here.  The owner's, I mean swindler's , name is Tom Harker - not Tom Hunt.  I always thought he was a founder.  So who was the founder(s) of ICD?

 

Another meaning of ICD that they joked about was "I Can't Decide"

 

Also, ICD did make high quality products.  I don't remember any of their stuff being "buggy".  I've got an ICD PR Connection, original ST host adapter, AdSCSI+, Link, Link 2 and an AdSpeed.  All worked great from the very beginning.   

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My bad, I meant Tom Harker, Tom hunt just slipped out for some reason...

[densonj]

I know that nobody really meant any harm by some of the things said in above posts, but we really need to be careful about "throwing names around".

 

Tom Hunt is a good guy and has never "ripped anyone off". If anything, he gives away too much. Also, he has made many, many contributions to the 8-bit community over many years.

 

Now that he has been "accidently" thrown under the bus (see above posts) I just wanted to make sure that his name is brushed off and left clean.

 

I think we all should make a great effort to verify our information before potentially doing damage to anothers good reputation.

[Gunstar]

I know that nobody really meant any harm by some of the things said in above posts, but we really need to be careful about "throwing names around".

 

Tom Hunt is a good guy and has never "ripped anyone off". If anything, he gives away too much. Also, he has made many, many contributions to the 8-bit community over many years.

 

Now that he has been "accidently" thrown under the bus (see above posts) I just wanted to make sure that his name is brushed off and left clean.

 

I think we all should make a great effort to verify our information before potentially doing damage to anothers good reputation.

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Dude, I appreciate what you are saying, but I personally have NO CLUE who the Tom Hunt your are refering to even is, and it was NOT HIM I accidentally "threw under a bus," my God, do you know how many Tom Hunt's probably exist in the world, let alone the U.S.?!? To assume that it was this one individual who "happens" to own the name I used and start crying out "foul" over it is absoulutely ridiculous! This person,s "character" was in no way infringed upon for the simple fact that I and probably a lot of others here, reading this post, have NO IDEA who you are even talking about! Geeze. If I said "Jonathan Brown is an A-hole and never trust him!" how many people do you think I could possibly be refering too? I bet if you went and looked in the phone book of just your city alone, you'd find half a dozen Tom Hunt's AND Jonathan Brown's and I just pulled both those names out of my "a-hole!" Verufy information?!?!? How can you verify information about someone you do not even know and were never refering too, that out of sheer coincindence happens to bare the same name! Damage a good reputation?!? Who's?!? The non-existant "Tom Hunt" that never owned ICD becuase that wasn't the owner's name?!? How many Tom Hunt's reputation's did I just "damage." IF I "damaged" A Tom Hunt's reputation, then I damged 10,000 Tom Hunt's reputations! Get over it! Get real! Get lost!

 

Just for shits&giggles, I decided to look up tose two names in my local phone book...I found 3 Tom Hunt's and 7 Jonathan Browns!

 

P.S., Check out my updated signature! I did it just for you densonj! Aren't you pleased?

Edited June 6, 2005 by Gunstar

[ijor]

I'm sure Gunstar didn't mean any harm. And it's easy to mix names. I mixed up Tom Hunt with Tom Hudson myself :oops)

 

Just to clear up the ICD issue for those that are new in the scene:

 

ICD was a very respected company for many years. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that admire the ICD founders. They sold the company at the mid 90's when the Atari market was very small. And it seems that the new owner pissed off quite some many people.

[densonj]

I'm very sorry that you're offended by what I posted. It was not meant that way. I knew that it was just a mistake and acknowledged that in my post. If you don't know who Tom Hunt is, I understand. But many people in the world DO know him and will immediately think of him when the name is used in the Atari communities. It doesn't matter how many Tom Hunts are in the world. There's only one who is widely associated with interest in the Atari 8-bit. That is who people will think of and the only reason why I mentioned it.

[Bryan]

ICD originally stood for something like "Innovative Computer Design" but it was too similar to name already in use, so Tom Harker's official position became that it stood for "I Can't Decide." The other key person in ICD was Mike Gustafson.

 

 

-Bry

[carmel_andrews]

ICD originally stood for something like "Innovative Computer Design" but it was too similar to name already in use, so Tom Harker's official position became that it stood for "I Can't Decide." The other key person in ICD was Mike Gustafson.

 

 

    -Bry

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Wasn't Gustafson one of the designers of either 'the chip' or super archiver/sa2 or the software (810/1050 u/g's)

[Bryan]

ICD originally stood for something like "Innovative Computer Design" but it was too similar to name already in use, so Tom Harker's official position became that it stood for "I Can't Decide." The other key person in ICD was Mike Gustafson.

 

 

    -Bry

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Wasn't Gustafson one of the designers of either 'the chip' or super archiver/sa2 or the software (810/1050 u/g's)

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Yes.

 

-Bry

[carmel_andrews]

ICD originally stood for something like "Innovative Computer Design" but it was too similar to name already in use, so Tom Harker's official position became that it stood for "I Can't Decide." The other key person in ICD was Mike Gustafson.

 

 

    -Bry

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Wasn't Gustafson one of the designers of either 'the chip' or super archiver/sa2 or the software (810/1050 u/g's)

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Yes.

 

-Bry

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I remember that ICD and OSS used the same UK importer, namely Frontier Software (they then changed names to Marpet developments) although sillica shop (sillica systems) also used to import some ICD/OSS products (I bought an original mac65 cart for 70.00 GBP thinking that i was the next chris crawford/chris gray... hardly ever used it)

[ijor]

Ah. Mike Gustafon, yes! That sounds like the name I read as the ICD founder.

 

Wasn't Gustafson one of the designers of either 'the chip' or super archiver/sa2 or the software (810/1050 u/g's)

 

As I said above, it is known that some (or all) ICD founders came from Spartan. Spartan in turn was the company that developed and sold "The Chip" and the original Archiver.

 

Gustafson is mentioned together with Bob Puff as developers in the Super Archiver boot menu. But I doubt he was really involved. If Gustafson was yet ICD owner at that time, would be very strange he did any coding for CSS (the SA company). And the post above by themrfreeze suggests that CSS-ICD relation wasn't exactly very friendly.

 

May be CSS just included Gustafson name because the SA code was based in his original work. May be just to avoid some potential legal problems. Spartan closed down some years before, but that doesn't put Spartan's code in the public domain.

[+Guitarman]

Tom Harker was the owner/founder of ICD. If you go to www.icd.com, there is still a website there that is mantained by Rockriver.net, the company Tom currently works at, though it is there just for information purposes only and none of the e-mail links work.

 

I was looking for someone to fix my 256K MIO I have and stumbled on the ICD site and tried to e-mail someone from it, which came back. I then noticed that the site was mantained by Rockriver.net so I sent them an e-mail asking if they still supported the ICD site. To my supprise, I got an e-mail back from Tom himself. Tom, back around '94 sold all the ICD rights to a company called Fine Tooned Engineering. Here is an exerpt from the e-mail:

 

I sold the rights and all inventory to Mike Hohman about 10 years ago.  I wish I still had some for sentimental reasons but I don't even have a sample.  Mike had big hopes but I don't think he was able to bring anything to market and I am afraid that all the inventory was lost.

 

When I got in contact with another person in regards to the MIO and mentioned to him about the e-mail from Tom, he was shocked, saying that Tom usually does not communicate with anyone since the problems with the Catbox orders. Here is an excerpt from his e-mail:

 

ICD no longer owns their 8bit line of stuff.  All that stuff was sold off about 11 years ago to a Mike Hohman of a company called Fine Tooned Engineering (fTE).  Unfortunately, Mike went of business not long after that due to unwise business practices that drove the company into the ground.  It’s a shame because Mike had some great ideas to make use of all the ICD and OSS products that he acquired (e.g. new MIO with 80 column video and IDE interface, MARS-8 board with multiple O.S.’s and development tools installed (MAC/65, Action, Basic XL/XE) to have available at a keyboard selection, 65816 upgrade).

 

It’s amazing that you got a response from Tom Harker.  He’s been not responding much at all to people in the Atari community since the time he took a bunch of orders for a second run of Catbox’s for the Atari Jaguar and never delivered.  I wish that never happened because Tom Harker was at one time a very reliable and trusted businessman in the Atari community up until the Catbox fiasco.

 

It sounds to me, at the very end with the crash of the Atari market, that Tom was trying to get revenue to build the Catbox's by doing pre-orders but the company still went under in the process.

 

I, myself, have probably 85-90% of the products that ICD made during that time and all, except the MIO, still work great. I just recently set up an Atari 800XL system running SpartaDos X and the R-Time 8 cartridge. The R-Time 8 had a dead battery so I bought a coin cell battery holder and installed it on the R-Time 8 board and replaced the battery. It now works as new and the battery is easily changed out. It's also post Y2K compliant. Go figure for something made in the 80's!!

 

I hope this sheds some light on the ICD subject.

[themrfreeze]

Gustafson is mentioned together with Bob Puff as developers in the Super Archiver boot menu. But I doubt he was really involved. If Gustafson was yet ICD owner at that time, would be very strange he did any coding for CSS (the SA company). And the post above by themrfreeze suggests that CSS-ICD relation wasn't exactly very friendly.

 

Keep in mind that Bob didn't become the owner of CSS until around 1989 or so. I'm pretty sure that the Super Archiver came out well before then, so the previous owner (a guy by the name of Ron) may have had some dealings with ICD. I don't think Bob felt any animosity towards ICD, just that his products were better.

[Bryan]

Some other things (I worked with Tom for a short while in the '90s and have seen what's left of ICD)...

 

Mike Hohman (FTE) bought the rights to all the ICD 8-bit products, but lost all the inventory when he couldn't pay for his warehouse.

 

ICD bought out OSS's product line (not sure what year).

 

Mike Gustafson and Tom originally met because Tom had written some Atari disk utilities and Mike had developed the Chip (I believe). Mike was generally the hardware guy and Tom was the business guy. At one point around '85-86, they had many employees (I've seen the old offices). Mike left sometime during the late ST era.

 

Today Tom runs an ISP.

 

-Bry

Edited June 8, 2005 by Bryan

[ijor]

I have a couple of questions for Bryan (or just for anybody knowing the answer).

 

What happened with Mike, what is he doing today? From your description it seems he was the technical brain behind ICD.

 

Who has, where are, or were they just lost, the internal technical docs of ICD products? Like internal MIO schematics, SpartaDos sources, etc.

[Curt Vendel]

Ah good old Tom "STEAL EVERYONE'S MONEY AND RUN" Harker...

 

 

Took hundred of pre-orders for Catboxes, spent 2 years lying to all of us (yup us, as in me too, took $165.00 of my money and delivered zippo) and then turned around and had some friends auction them all off on EBay to add insult to injury...

 

Tom disappeared off to run some bullsh*t ISP which I'm sure by now has failed and is gone.

 

Occassionally Tom will call Bruce of B&C Atari Sales, Lance of Video 61 and Brad of Best Electronics trying to convince (oh I mean conive) them to "buy" some of his left over equipment, but they have to send the money first and quickly, then he can ship... yeah right, heard that one before, and so have they...

 

Such a shame that ICD, one of the most well respected Atari peripheral companies was dragged down and its memory turned into total crap by Tom Harker.

 

 

 

 

Curt

[Curt Vendel]

Mike is no doubt still hiding from all the people who he too took money for orders for the Mars-8 and many other vaporware products (that in fact Bob Wooley really designed for Mike) as well as running off with people's hardware that he wanted to examine and never returned.

 

When Mike didn't make his payments and his warehouse was sold to a junk dealer in 97' I flew out several days later and went through 115 boxes of "crap" There were a couple of PET's, some Apple's, a pair of SX-64's and a Bell & Howell black plexi Apple ][, the rest was all junk, empty MIO plastic cases, several pallete's of OSS manuals, boxes and labels, tons and TONS of music magazines, Boy's Life, and some assorted other mag's, assorted common cartridges and what have you, and a TI 99 Expansion chassis.

 

I found a box of his personal belongings, checkbooks and other personal items, gave some of that stuff over to a collector who Mike stole a bunch of proto Atari equipment from (I say stole, because it was loaned to him and Mike disappeared off with it) So if there was anything really of worth, Mike may have pulled it out of his warehouse before it was cleared and sold off.

 

 

Curt

 

 

I have a couple of questions for Bryan (or just for anybody knowing the answer).

 

What happened with Mike, what is he doing today? From your description it seems he was the technical brain behind ICD.

 

Who has, where are, or were they just lost, the internal technical docs of ICD products? Like internal MIO schematics, SpartaDos sources, etc.

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