Cost of Atari Falcon when it came out?

[Reiknir]

I just read how, despite having a 16mhz 030 inside, the Falcon was still based on the ST's 16-bit architecture. Blech. Talk about a poorboy's 030 computer or better yet... The Atari Falcon: Choking a faux 32-bit chicken.  :lol:

:furious:

No, it was actually quite a revolutionary computer, the backward thing about it was the operating system, that harked back to CPM68 and Atari could not and would not update it, they had a dispute with DR about license fees and were stuck with a GEM/CPM system from 1984 and only partial sources and a management team that did not understand software.

The Falcon had a hardware multiplexer, so you could route data from one entity to another without a load on the CPU, eg the DSP bus could stream from the hard disk while the CPU was playing around with the graphics, this meant 16 track 16bit audio recording by using the DSP as a simple lossless audio compressor (since the 16x16b data stream was larger than HD's at the time could manage in RT), something we did not get reliably on a PC until 97/98 and then only just.

Atari really had something special, but no clue how to market or develop it, by the time I bought one it was cheaper than an A1200 and soon discontinued, I bought 3 more when they blew the last few off at silly prices

[Reiknir]

Wasn't there two models of Falcon?

Four, one from Atari and three from C-Lab

[Reiknir]

Funny how a few musicians gravitated toward the Atari line just because MIDI was built-in. BTW: I've known musicians that have used ST's before. Guess what? They could care less and knew nothing about the computer as a whole. It was nothing more than just a bridge or an appliance of sorts for them. Never used their computers for anything else.

Same is true with a friend that owns an embroidery/screen printing shop here in town. Used a MegaST for years before he went PeeCee. Only ever used his ST for the one "simple" process of laying out patterns to be scanned in and printed. Nothing else. Veird!

Not weird in any way, the answer in both cases is software, Cubase and Notator on Atari were miles ahead of anything else and people are still using them as Yamaha Cubase and Apple Logic (Notator).

The graphic software was probably Calamus (http://www.calamus.net) At the 1987 to ca 1993 timeframe superior to the Mac and PC eq. in most respects but a bit outdated now, very extendable so it was often sold as a part of an embedded/specialized solutions

[Reiknir]

Really better than anything else available at the time?  Better than Bars & Pipes for the Amiga (the flat-out best MIDI only sequencer I have ever used)?  I have never used Cubase or Notator, but I judging by these screen shots they seem relatively primative compared to Bars & Pipes.

Cubase (Atari ST):


Notator (Atari ST):


Bars & Pipes (Amiga):

At the time Cubase and Logic supported 16 tracks of pro quality audio for starters, something that never happened on the Amiga, B&P was not bad but timing resolution and lack of features for one thing made it somewhat less than pro.

Also you are cheating by using a Pro-24 screenshot, Steinberg Pro-24 is the predecessor to cubase and originates on a C64 hence shitty graphics

[Reiknir]

Gary Kildall invented CPM for the Intel 4004(?) which sort of launched a new market.

Never sold as a 4004 CP, only on 8 bit micros and bigger

went on to found Digital Research which created GEM.  GEM got the pants sued off of them by Apple (there is a surprise) which slowed GEM's development a great deal.

Yes and no, GEM actually predates Apple developments, it has its origins in the GSX graphics library that was very popular for engineering and scientific applications but almost unused in home computers except for one Amstrad model, I had a working multi processor CP/M system with a rudimentary GSX based user interface until 2000 when I was forced to throw it away due to a move, that system had not been upgraded since 1982 so it predated the Lisa.

DR did not lose the Apple lawsuit but decided to agree to change some things that were Apple like

However, when GEM was licensed to Atari it wasn't as restricted at it was before but you can see that GEM was pretty ugly all the way 'round.

GEM was not ugly, it was like the early versions of the CP/M 68K optimized for the PC, and the best selling graphics interface on the PC was a CGA so everything was optimised so it would look OK on 320x200x16 which was the only CGA mode that could be used bitmapped, later versions like GEM/3 actually looked better than the Windows versions that shipped at the time.

TOS was a disaster for Atari and you will know why if you have read my other rambling posts here.  TOS was designed on Apple Lisa Computers but TOS uses instructions that are not available on M chips > than 68k (010,020, etc...).

As I have rambled on in other posts, I cannot conceive of why you would do this.  More to the point, why you wouldn't fix it in a revision of TOS.  TOS 1.0 (like AmigaDOS 1.0) was a piece of crap so rewriting TOS to use certified instructions might have broken compatibility with TOS 1.0, but who cares when you have such a major problem?   Instead, they just kept rolling out TOS versions that only cemented software to the problem.

DR sold the rights to an early CPM68k port and GEM version to Atari, note that this version does not correspond to a release version of either system, this was meant to be a development version and a later version was meant to be used with the shipping unit. Remember that early versions of Z8000 and 68K CP/M ports very full of 8086isms some intended some not, this got better later on, but the original idea was also compatibility so that programs could be ported from 86 to 68K, then to Z8K and so on which explain some of the 86isms in the DR products

DR wanted payment for the final version of both and Tramielsky said no, DR say bye and refused to release any of their programming languages or other software on the Atari platform even tough that was the original intention, this created panic when the original ST dev systems were released with useless development software.

Atari also later added FastTOS routines to TOS and actively encouraged programmers to use them, this killed compatibly with other GEM systems but there were a few software houses that never used the FastTOS so they could easily sell DOS versions as well  (Artline for example).

Atari had to rewrite TOS with the TT (the graphics workstation without a blitter) and the Falcon and this was a major problem with backward compatibility.  Commodore had a similar issue with AmigaOS 2.x since it broke poorly written Amiga 1.x programs.   I suspect that TOS and Muti-TOS was a much harsher upgrade given the extent of the rewrite.

While Multi-TOS was a nice upgrade, it just added to Atari's growing list of problems.

Multi-TOS was stupid, especially the decision to keep it 68000 compatible, if they had focused on 68030 it would have made sense

BTW:  Gary Kildall was on Computer Chronicles and is dead (I believe some sort of bar fight or accident?)

And sadly missed, died of a injuries sustained during a drunken brawl, funny really because he was viewed as one of the nicest blokes in the computer industry....

[Reiknir]

Don't suppose you still have them and would part with one?    I've been wanting one since they came out.  But they never appear on eBay.  I would hazard a guess that those who managed to grab them either have had them die, or just aren't getting rid of them.

slaapliedje

I Still have 3 actually, dunno what happened to the fourth, 2 are still in use and the third has been promised to someone