From: germanm@weird.miami.fl.us (German Ma.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Atari Falcon (wasn't: Amiga Falcon)
Date: 10 Apr 92 04:36:42 EST
Organization: Weird BBS [Amiga] (305)553-3207 S. Miami, FL USA

In article <1992Apr4.230748.1514@cccan.uucp>, entity@cccan.uucp (Cybernetworx)
writes:

>>>Not exactly true.  Amiga Inc. of Los Gatos developed the initial
>>>Amiga machine, and lacking the resources to carry it to completion,
>>>were bought out by C= (headed by Tramiel).  We're probably
>>>very lucky it started in a small company, the lack of corporate
>>>beaurocracy had to help in getting such a bold machine designed.
>>>Anyway, Tramiel left for Atari, and tried like hell to take the Amiga with
>>>him, but failed.  So Atari threw the ST together to try to be competitive.
>>>The machine pales technically with the Amiga...were it not for C='s
>>>worse-than-horrible marketing ability...well, you get the idea.
>>>If Tramiel had suceeded in taking the Amiga with him, there would never have
>>>been an ST.  (That alone would have made the world a better place :-)

>>
>>WRONG! Tramiel left C= before they bought Amiga Inc.  And the first company 
>>that Amiga Inc. went to was ATARI, but Tramiel gave them a lot less that
>>they expected, because the ST was on the way.  So they went to C=, but
>>C= wasn't interested at the time.  Then Amiga Inc. came back to Atari to
>>except the low price, but meanwhile Atari lowered the it by half.  At
>>this moment C= bought the Amiga.

>
>Actually, the original poster is correct.  True that Amiga Corp went to Atari
>first with the Lorraine.  Everything was kosher and about to be settled but
>Commodore jumped in at the last moment and stole the amiga from under Atari's
>noses.  If you recall there was a court battle about this where atari
>contested the legality of Commodore's purchasing the Lorraine.  Anyhow,
>*AFTER* this Tramiel moved to Atari and apparently took quite a few engineers
>with him too.  The Atari ST was developed as a direct competition to the
>Amiga.  Notice how the ST is a lot like commodores earlier machine (c64) while
>the amiga has certain things (like the way it handles sprites) that are
>similar to the old atari 800's.  Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think
>this might be because of the switchover of a lot of staff.  Anyone know for
>sure?  I know the Lorraine was originally intended as a game machine and
>Commodore had to do quite a bit as far as OS is concerned to make it not just
>a game machine.  BTW, anyone have the issue and volume number of the Compute
>Magazine Editorial where the Amiga Lorraine was first mentioned?  I remember
>reading it, but have no idea anymore what issue it was!  If you know, please
>let me know!!
>

WRONG!! the second poster in this message is correct, the first and third are
lost in history.

Tramiel left to atari firing many of the techs at atari at the time and taking
a few of the c= techs with him to atari.  at this time others quit atari since
Tramiel had his own ideas of what he wanted to do.  This is what sparked up
many of the software companies like Electronic Arts and such.  Tramiel broke
his promise to most of the software and hardware developers, that is why the
stopped supporting atari with third party software/hardware.  That is when Jay
Miner proposed his idea to, four dentist or something like that, to invest in
the ultimate GAME SYSTEM.  This fell thru since the home game console fad died
out and they had to find more support to convert this GAME SYSTEM into a full
fledged computer.  They took thier idea to Tramiel at Atari, he was not
interested because he already had the ST on the drawing board.  This is when
he sorta tricked them and showed interest, but it was only to get thier custom
chips for his ST (notice the resemblence in custom chips "blitter").  This is
when all the hoopla started about people sewing people.  Atari got to keep
it's chips, Amiga was out of luck.  C= found it self having nothing to compete
with Atari, and Amiga was desperate.  This is when C= decided to help Amiga.


get the story right,

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