What if Atari allowed Jay his dream?

[smerf]

I think Jay would be as famous as Bill Gates, but unlike Bill Gates instead of promising that technology would promise us a better tomorrow, he'd be very keen to point out that technology will be our undoing, and will erode our freedoms and privacy. Producing generations of people caught up in things that really don't matter, and who don't have the passion or patience for things of substance or traits that help them develop and live as a healthy, happy, human being.

HI,

@XDelusion,

Touche'

smerf

[Fats]

Producing generations of people caught up in things that really don't matter,

Now this thread is going into dangerous territory.
Is there any life up to now that actually did matter ?

Staf.

[psxphill]

I think Jay would be as famous as Bill Gates, but unlike Bill Gates instead of promising that technology would promise us a better tomorrow,

What Bill got right was that it's easier to take one slice of the pie than two. Apple got their market share by being first and being better & selling to people that had plenty of money. While Microsoft sold software to the people who already had computers, to allow them to do more with what they had.
 
Atari & Commodore tried to use the 8bit computer model in the 16bit market and they never escaped that mentality. With businesses moving to PC's or Mac's and games players moving to consoles, there really wasn't anywhere left for them to sell to.
 
If there ever was a chance then they had blown it by the late 80's. By 1995 it would have been game over as Intel & Microsoft were wiping the floor with them.

[XDelusion]

Now this thread is going into dangerous territory.
Is there any life up to now that actually did matter ?

Staf.

Of course life matters, it's part of the structure of universal order, without it we couldn't have death, and what a drag that would be.

[Iggy]

Been reading here for months, but here is my first post:

Open and inexpensive only applies to x86 architecture, I don't think that is very open!

I think the Power PC architecture is really better, even if Freescale is not developing it as fast as it should.

Here is the latest from them (though I don't think this webpage has been updated in a while, like everything Freescale)

Freescale MPC8641D

Another Note:
The GP2X would be great if it had Wi-Fi!

MPC8641D?
The e600 core?
Old and dying a slow death.

All the new PPC development (@ Freescale) is going on in the Qorlq lines.

http://cache.freescale.com/files/netcomm/doc/fact_sheet/QORIQOV.pdf

The e5500 and e6500 64 bit cores are considerably more advanced then the e600.

Years ago, Paul Gentle at Varisys pointed me toward this line as something more easily obtained then the PA6T.

And Andreas Wolf (who regularly posts at MorphZone) has been keeping all of us updated as to any new PPC development.

The real question I have, is what processor would Atari have moved to after the 68K?
We know Commodore wasn't thinking of using a PPC.
Would Atari have chosen this course or something else?

I'm pretty sure that if Paul and Trevor Dickinson produce a successor to the X1000, its going to have a processor based on one of these two cores.

[psxphill]

The real question I have, is what processor would Atari have moved to after the 68K?

The Jaguar 2 had a custom RISC processor. If Atari had more money and the market would have supported it then I imagine a computer based on Jaguar 2 would have made some form of sense.
 
Commodore were going to use a licensed HP PA-RISC, because they could make modifications to it.
 
Sony went for a custom embedded MIPS processor, so the idea was actually quite sane.

[XDelusion]

The Jaguar 2 had a custom RISC processor. If Atari had more money and the market would have supported it then I imagine a computer based on Jaguar 2 would have made some form of sense.
 
Commodore were using a licensed HP PA-RISC, because they could make modifications to it.

I miss the Jag, freaking awesome system with sadly only a handful of games that were worth going back to. AVP being one of them!

[NorthWay]

The Jaguar 2 had a custom RISC processor.

And so did the "1" - you weren't supposed to use the 68000 really, it was more of a bugfix/developer smoothing incident.

The riscs had a good few bugs in them AFAIK and so the general computing model and compiler generated code was hurting/failing. The 68000 meant developers could get code working much faster than getting to know a new architecture and having to work out whether the game bugs were hw or sw. The riscs thus became accellerators.

Wasn't the 2 supposed to be more or less a cleaned up Jag with the 68000 dumped and more 3D oomph? Someone will correct me any moment now.

[Iggy]

I never gave it much thought, but game consoles have quite a history of using Risc processors.
So if all three of the major players in the console market use PPC derived CPUs, I guess the architecture isn't that dead.
It's just a shame that the devices available are so over-priced.

I'm fascinated with what A-eon has managed to create, but without a large market the price of the X1000 commands is out of my league.

[XDelusion]

[youtube]unOQuhiNOuc[/youtube]

[Iggy]

[youtube]unOQuhiNOuc[/youtube]

Jay Miner - Flat Earther?

Man that was depressing.

I'll admit, when that was recorded, I wasn't sure we'd have enough useful applications to make this a practical device.

And now I exchange ideas, code, and commentary even hardware with people all over the world.

Pity he let his general lack in faith obscure the fact that we can never predict the future (and sometimes things get better).

[XDelusion]

Cthulhu waits... sleeping.

I have to say I see the same thing Miner saw more and more every day, and not as a bible thumper, I don't need to be a bible thumper to see the obvious. Likewise, I can not notice the same things that  Neil Postman noticed. Despite all the glitter, cheer, and overwhelming public consensus, I still don't believe the hype.

What is not depressing me is having knowledge and awareness within a world filled with so many false prophets, media messiahs, and misplaced enthusiasm.  Never underestimate
the power of human folly and the folly within human philosophy. Nature hasn't changed, we have. And my Love for that order, that mystery from which we were born, will keep my eyes open for years to come, and it is hoped that it will also serve to correct my own human folly.


P.S. Only the culture that brought you the printing press actually lost touch with history and them selves long enough to actually believe somehow that the earth was flat. And here we are, years later, thinking the printing press has been nothing but a boon to humanity. Funny stuff.

[djos]

CBM lost it's technology vision & roadmap when JT fck'd over Chuck Peddle ... twice!

Chuck should have been CTO and CBM would still be around today - Amiga may have still come to CBM and if Chuck had of been there, along with Kit Spencer (marketing genius that made c64 the success it was & also fck'd over by CBM), imo the CBM & Amiga would still be with us today just like Apple!

IMO there is room for 3 major players in the computer Market - Amiga would ahve needed to corner a niche but with the head start they got in video editing etc it wouldnt have been hard.

As for a current platform, freescale PPC chips are imo a joke - the real action is in IBM's POWER range and the 7+ is an absolute fire breathing beast! (They Power, pun intended, IBM's Watson project)

[Iggy]

As for a current platform, freescale PPC chips are imo a joke - the real action is in IBM's POWER range and the 7+ is an absolute fire breathing beast! (They Power, pun intended, IBM's Watson project)

IBM Doesn't allow mere mortals to work with stuff like that.
And bugs me about Freescale is their inability to get their PPCs to clock any higher then IBM managed almost 10 years ago.

But, I still like the e6500 core. Hyperthreaded, multi-core, 64 bit PPCs are kind of cool.

BTW - X, don't take my less then admiring comments on Miner too seriously.
Honestly, I don't have any faith in humanity either.

[Megamig]

Amiga alone would have never worked without the backing of a company such as CBM as they lacked the resources or cash to mass produce their product/s.


Commodore would have been more successful with the Amiga line if they

> Limited the A500 to the 512k thin Agnus and a memory slot such as the one featured on the A600. No side expansion slot.
   (Would have forced serious buyers to purchase A2000)
> Provided a faster processor to the base A2000
   (68020 minimum)
> Reduced the chip count with ECS
   (Merge CIAs and other custom chips)
> Updated Paula with AGA even if only to provide support for full speed HD floppies
   (Would have saved C= a lot in floppy disks and purchasing custom half spin HD Floppy drives)

[OlafS3]

they would only be successful if they had consequently invested in innovations and technically (expecially graphics and sound) stayed ahead to the competition (PC and consoles). But that would have become more and more difficult over the time and I think the age of custom chips would have ended in the mid 90s. The only chance to stay competitive (price and hardware) would have been to use standard components.