The Story of 5 Unreleased Atari 8-bit Computers
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- This video tells the story of 5 unreleased versions of the popular Atari 8-bit computer.
Special thanks to the Atari Museum: www.atarimuseum.com/
The Story of the Atari Super XE GS: • The Story of the Atari...
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#RetroGaming #History #Atari - Ігри
While I wrote the spec for the Atari PC, it was John Hoenig that designed and implemented the custom chip in astoundingly short order (and it worked the first time!).
And I was "rehired" at the time of the Tramiel takeover, as the only old Atari engineer in the RBP (ST) hardware team. I think that was at least in part thanks to a dockable 68000 design I did between the 1600 and the collapse of old Atari (which in turn was partly inspired by the earlier 6502/68000 Ajay and I had done). I was lucky Shiraz and/or Leonard had found the design documents squirreled away in someone's filing cabinet so I got to interview for the job I thought I already had. :-)
Thanks for the insight and for stopping by!
We all wanted the 1450XLD “back in the day”. Atari had an enthusiastic user base that was starved for new hardware and software. Too bad it never happened! What’s amazing is that we got as many good things as we did with Atari’s management - constantly inventing new ways to screw the pooch.
Unique user base for sure, we all ran in the other room and yelled at our moms on the phone with the 90 foot cord, can we get an atari
Neither did the expanded version of the 800XL -- the 800XLD, with the large disk drive built in.
In 1983, I must have gone through the XL line of computers pamphlet hundreds of times. I wanted the 1450XLD so much, but alas I started with a 600XL and the 1450XLD never passed the prototype stage, but the price would have been so far out of my range of affordability that I would never have obtained one anyway. The 1600XL, would have been a very cool, but expensive machine, so I do not think it would have ever survived anyway. The released Atari PC compatibles though, are very expensive to obtain and I think they were actually decent computers.
One of your pictures of a 1600xl design is actually a Mindset (a PCish system with an advanced graphics chipset produced by ex-Atari engineers). Neither did the Freddie Chip add colours, although it did speed up ANTIC access to memory.
Yep, I know. I have already explained this, after the 1600XL was cancelled the designers went on to create the Mindset based on a similar design.
I am aware Freddie didn't add any colours, but it was originally meant to and this capability was promised by Atari.
@@TheLairdsLair The 1600XL project was led by Ajay Chopra, who went on to Mindset. Our first version of the 1600 was 6502/68000, with 6502/8088 being the second draft.
I have a friend who used to have a Atari 130XE, but like the Commodore 128, devs just focused on what would work on what worked on the greater part of what constomers had, so most software, especially games, would be made to work on the Atari 800XL So New features were rarely seen in commercial software. Also, that commercial that says the XE has better sound than a Commodore 64 is bull. It was absolutely amazing that the Commodore 64 came with an analog substractive synthesizer including res/filters contained in one chip, the SID 6581. BTW, I still have and use a Commodore SX-64. But before I had a Commodore 64, I had an Atari 800. Granted the grahopic was a bit of a step down goinmg to a Commodore 64 (but not much) the sound is what sold me.
Man I wish the 1450XL had made it out the door, that would have been so sweet.
But why 300 baud modem, rather than just a serial port?
Me, too... in fact, I wish the 1400XL would've been released instead of the 1200XL.
I remember my dad drooling over an article of a 1450XLD in either "Compute" or "Antic" magazine in the 80's. I was about 7 or 8 at the time and we'd had a maxed out 800 with dual floppies since the early 80's. I remember the faster drives were called Happy drives or something like that and you could convert existing ones to this standard. He was part of the big UK Atari scene. Atari really missed a trick with not releasing this or the other model with enhanced graphics and sound.
Even tho the 1200XL was considered a flop (and there's plenty of reasons for it), it did have the best keyboard Atari ever made (I got mine because they had a 100 dollar rebate making it less than 200 dollars to purchase). Pity the keyboard never got another appearance with the proposed 1400XL and 1450XLD. BTW - I'm watching this on an Atari VCS running Ubuntu as a mini PC (although I'll probably migrate to the Ubuntu fork elementary OS once version 6 comes out). It may not be the 'greatest PC' but for a mini profile - it's pretty robust and serves my needs as a mini computer enthusiast who wanted to jump into Linux whole-hog. Thanks to Proton, Steam games work even better than their native Linux versions in many cases.
This was fun. Thank you for posting!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video. The canceled 1400 and 1450's were the first of many big hits to Tramiel's reputation for vaporware. The promotion had already been included with all 600/800XL's. Then they pull it out from under us which turned it into a tease 'you can look at the photos but you can't have it' situation. We didn't even get an apology. Sure, business is about making difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions but we didn't even get an XE iteration of the 1450 which would have been nice. AFAIK the XE's sold much better than expected in '85 and an even higher end machine with integrated drives+controller would have been welcomed. By the late 80's they were a running joke in the entire industry for vapor releases. It's not all bad though.. At least they kept the platform alive somewhat for another seven years which is longer than the Warner era some the hardware was pretty good. Note: never call your product 'rock bottom' it makes it sound cheap or like slimy sediment on a lake bed. PWOTP was a little better but still sounded cheap.
One error in the video is that the 600/800XL's were not in the public's hands in June '83. First manufacture was in Sept 83. Limited quantities were available for xmas which was a big hit for the A8 line and when the C64 took the market lead.
Glad you enjoyed, welcome to the channel, plenty more like this in my "Story of" playlist!
I was going to comment about the 600XL/800XL not being in stores until Xmas 83, and in limited quantities at that, but see you've already done so. This was because James Morgan put a hold on all projects, including the manufacturing of the 600XL/800XL, until he reviewed everything. This delay cost the Atari XL computers Xmas 83 and resulted in the C64 continuing its snowball effect in the market. Perhaps the XL could have sold the most for Xmas 83, or at least enough to cause Warner to want to keep the computer business.
@@RetroDawn The 800XLD and 1450XLD should have been released.
Fascinating video as always.
Glad you enjoyed it
I wish the ST had got the Amy chip as planned :-(
The ST was not planned to have an AMY chip. The AMY chip prototype didn't work and the designer didn't have plan to get it working. If it had worked it *might* have been added to the ST and that was considered as a remote possibility, not a plan.
After the Amy chip was delayed, Atari planned to use a Yamaha FM chip in the ST, but Yamaha declined to negotiate with Atari after they learned the ST would have MIDI ports putting it in competition with Yamaha's MIDI systems. Atari eventually settled on Yamaha's clone of the General Instruments AY chip which basically meant 8-bit era sound.
@@bryede The AMY chip was also supposed to have been used in the version of the 65XE known as the 65XEM (XE Music).
Coolest 8-bit intro music ever.
some guy in some other video actually has a 1400xl. looks like a 1200x; but it talks on the self test menu.
There are quite a few prototypes floating around.
I had 800xl. Served well between 89 - 93 (Previous career unknown) Survived the experimental expandment by internal speaker and malfunctional ramdisk (joined and removed.)
Then sold for shaming price...
Nice video! Liked, and subscribed.
Awesome, thank you!
@@TheLairdsLair you're welcome! Good content should be appreciated.
KILLIAN.....ILL BE BACK.....NICE TOUCH
Nice video (though you referred to the 1600 as the 600 several times).
thank you for saying this i thought i was just getting confused and replayed it several times 😂was trying to figure out what i missed lol
Wait whats the mindset doing in there
The people who designed the 1600XLD went to design the Mindset when Atari cancelled it, based on much of the same design apparently so some people consider it to be a kind of unofficial Atari.
It would of been nice to cite the source of some of your photographs.
I did, most of them were taken from the Atari Museum, who are credited in the description
@@TheLairdsLair Thanks, just want to be sensitive to the fact that Curt Vendel died recently and lots of those images I believe he took. I would of thought it would be good to give credit "in the credits" of the video and not just in the YT description.
There is no credits on the video, I always put credits in the description. One reason being that I can edit them as needed, which I can't do on an already rendered video. I was actually friends with Curt for many years, interviewed him numerous times for Retro Gamer magazine (and others) and collaborated on a few projects. It was actually me who came up with the "XM" name! Atari Museum is an invaluable resource and I always credit it at every opportunity :-)
Much of the "information" in this video about the AMY chip is somewhere between incorrect and pure fiction.
Well, as noted, it was all taken from The Atari Museum, who are considered the authoritative source, so blame them.
Perhaps you can let us all know the real story so it can be shared and used to update all the "incorrect" info online.
@@TheLairdsLair do you have some contact information for them?
The Atari Museum was run by both Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel, since Curt passed away I'm assuming Marty runs it on his own. They also have an Atari Museum Facebook group too. I thought you were friends with Marty so I am sure you can speak to him and get all the information updated. There really is no other reliable source like the Atari Museum for technical stuff and documented history so its the source that everyone uses and credits.
Thanks.
@@leonardtramiel8704 Might also be worth taking at look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_AMY
There was no 800XE and the XEGS was just a console version of the 65XE, so not 16-bit. Just like how the 5200 was a console version of the Atari 400.
There was a 800XE, it was only released in Eastern Europe and the Super XEGS (not normal XEGS) was an unreleased 16-bit upgrade of the hardware that I have done a separate video on.
The 800XE I believe was only named that so there was no confusion that it was basically an 800XL with the new BASIC ROM, and a different expansion port. I forgot the name of the expansion port right beside the cartridge slot(same as the 130XE) without that expansion port, it was the equivalent of the 65XE. I think the 800XE had the same board as the 130XE with just two memory chips missing, hence only 64k(just add the two chips and bam, you got 128k). Now the Super XEGS, I would of loved to have one, I had the regular XEGS at one point. Correct me if I am wrong of course, and as always, love your videos.
Kinda, the 800XE was actually nothing more than a rebadged 65XE that was only sold in Eastern Europe. The 800XL was hugely popular there so they used the 800XE name to make it a bit more familiar as a direct replacement.
Did the ad at 05:30 actually suggest that the Pokey produced better sound than the SID ??
I love the atari home computer line, but that's about as honest as a 21st century politicians saying they represent the little guy.
Sure would have loved to have had a (working) Amy chip in my STe instead of the Yamaha it came with (I would have prefered a Pokey to it).
What is it with Atari never understanding the importance of the hihest-fidelity sound possible ? They hobbled the 7800 and the ST with inferior sound hardware to their contemporaries. With the ST, at least you could add midi hardware for sierra-on-line games.
Hope your not using the currently available Atari joystick, I bought two and they are total crap