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bid wrote:It beggars belief that the upgrade path in terms of CPU and Motorola's own work in this regard, really only requires a proper specification to be made and executed in a timely fashion. Its clearly shown by the original aftermarket boards, that 020, 030, more ram, SCSI, IDE etc etc were all possible in a low cost manner. Atari could have easily just incorporated them into a new machine. Even the early TT shows how a 16MHz chip is replaced with a 32MHz daughterboard. I believe that Sparrow was the same, after the real Falcon was canned, I'll bet engineers built it, and practically begged for it to be released as some sort of consolation.
shoggoth wrote:I'd say the TOS sources somewhat confirms all this. All "falcon"-related stuff is labelled "sparrow" in the TOS4 sources, but there's some obvious "things to come"-thinking in the code, especially on the VDI side.
calimero wrote:You already informed us that you found in source code that TOS were prepared for 8bit chunk mode and 24bit mode, right?
Maybe this was features of "canned" Falcon?
Ektus wrote:As for the "modern" design, that came later with the Milan. Baby-AT board, socketed CPU, ISA and (at the time) modern PCI slots, but at the cost of compatibility. Had the Milan come in 1992, with a SuperVidel-like graphics card, things might have gone differently. But that's ancient history now...
shoggoth wrote:It's somewhat prepared for 8-bit chunky and 32-bit truecolor, yes. They were most likely using MATRIX cards internally when developing that stuff (there's a partial MATRIX driver in TOS4, it seems). The SuperVidel driver (ab)uses this in the TOS4 driver (that's why 32-bit/8-bit modes "work" without NVDI on such hardware).
calimero wrote:"The Atari Transputer computer will be a very fast one,
with incredible graphic capability and it will be expandable. It
will be basically a computer with 5 mega RAM, 1 of which
dedicated to video tasks; it will have 4 graphics modes with 32,
16, 8 and 4 bit per pixel, 8 bit for each colour beam (R, G and
B), an 8 bit tag and 256,000 colours to choose from, thanks to
the Inmos Colour Lookup Table chip with a new blitter;"
- @ shoggoth 8bit and 32bit colors stuff you found is only in TOS 4, not in TOS 3?
mikro wrote:calimero wrote:"The Atari Transputer computer will be a very fast one,
with incredible graphic capability and it will be expandable. It
will be basically a computer with 5 mega RAM, 1 of which
dedicated to video tasks; it will have 4 graphics modes with 32,
16, 8 and 4 bit per pixel, 8 bit for each colour beam (R, G and
B), an 8 bit tag and 256,000 colours to choose from, thanks to
the Inmos Colour Lookup Table chip with a new blitter;"
- @ shoggoth 8bit and 32bit colors stuff you found is only in TOS 4, not in TOS 3?
This has nothing to do with TOS. The ATW didn't use TOS at all, it was run by HeliOS.
Mindthreat wrote:While it's been talked about elsewhere and just my 2-cents in.... it still would have been greatly fascinating had they actually implemented the Jaguar chipset with the Falcon together as planned and we would've had an amazingly capable system.
To this day, Atari sticks out as a company that was badly managed, and the hardware idea (ST) was so great, that it took the Tramels nearly 10 years to finally kill it. The ST was the golden egg. A computer that beat the PC many times over, and as pointed out, even the crippled Falcon (aka Sparrow) was ahead of the PC.
AdamK wrote:No not really, by any count. ST line was introduced in 1985 and officially ended in 1993. That is 8 years tops, but really, after 91 (92 tops) ST line was dead in the water, and Falcon did nothing to help it.
Why Tramiels were slow to update ST? My money is on the theory, that after they invested into retail chain that flopped, they lost most of the capital and had no real money to invest. And as charming as he isJack had trouble finding any 3rd party investor.
bid wrote:Kildall was a genius, in the truest sense of the world. Similarly, look at Chuck Pedal, Shiraz, and perhaps some other luminaries that worked at Atari. Atari was a mecca for these types of people, and remember all types of hardware and software gurus worked there once, including Steve Jobs.
bid wrote:Atari computers were purloined for industry (I got my TT from a knitting factory, where it ran an industrial machine), in the automotive industry they ran the show.
bid wrote:Gary died, but the system he created is truely a wonderful, lightweight, fast OS that is modular, suitable for platform change, and tight.
bid wrote:I really cant understand how a computer monopoly formed, and I've always thought that something lightweight and accessible may one day return, when the madness ends!
bid wrote:To be honest, I would like to hear from developers that met the company / a Tramel.
AdamK wrote:GEM was not that great. Maybe in 1985, yes, but world moved on and GEM froze. I think DRI didn't want to invest in it after they lost Apple suit, and Atari did not have manpower to push it forward.
AdamK wrote:No not really, by any count. ST line was introduced in 1985 and officially ended in 1993. That is 8 years tops, but really, after 91 (92 tops) ST line was dead in the water, and Falcon did nothing to help it.
AdamK wrote:Why Tramiels were slow to update ST? My money is on the theory, that after they invested into retail chain that flopped, they lost most of the capital and had no real money to invest. And as charming as he isJack had trouble finding any 3rd party investor.
Cyprian wrote:the same story is with Commodore.
After 1987 none of them product didn't reach a quarter of A500 popularity.
E.g. look at A1200 - it was released in 1992 and it was just a little bit upgraded Lorraine from 1983 - exactly the same blitter, sound, a bit upgraded video (only added 3 bitplanes and extended HAM mode) and memory management. I would say after amiga acquisition in 1984 Commodore lost their "invent"
Cyprian wrote:AdamK wrote:Why Tramiels were slow to update ST? My money is on the theory, that after they invested into retail chain that flopped, they lost most of the capital and had no real money to invest. And as charming as he isJack had trouble finding any 3rd party investor.
the same story is with Commodore.
calimero wrote:AdamK wrote:GEM was not that great. Maybe in 1985, yes, but world moved on and GEM froze. I think DRI didn't want to invest in it after they lost Apple suit, and Atari did not have manpower to push it forward.
but how than you explain one or three man behind MagiC or Geneva? Were they Supermans?
AdamK wrote:No not really, by any count. ST line was introduced in 1985 and officially ended in 1993. That is 8 years tops, but really, after 91 (92 tops) ST line was dead in the water, and Falcon did nothing to help it.
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