Tech: Tramiel stays with Commodore, No Atari Buyout

[danielb1]

In OTL, after losing a power struggle with Commodore's board of directors, Jack Tramiel left Commodore, founded his own company (Tramel Technologies - no, that's not a misspelling, if you can believe Wikipedia), and later bought Atari from Warner Communications.

This begets two major questions:
1. What of the Amiga? OTL, the people in the Amiga Corporation approached Tramiel with their machine, and he basically brushed them off (telling them that he liked the machine, but not the people), so they were instead financed mainly by Atari. When Tramiel bought up Atari, their working agreement pretty much fell apart, and Amiga was purchased instead by Commodore. With Tramiel at Commodore, Atari will likely continue to work with Amiga. This means no Atari ST...

This affects what the "next-generation" Commodore system is. They most likely go for the Commodore 900, a proposed Zilog Z8000-based system running Coherent (a UNIX-like system), more of a business machine (in line with the PET-based CBM models).

2. What of Atari? In OTL, Warner was trying to get rid of them, as they were a financial black hole in the aftermath of the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Who buys Atari, if it isn't Tramiel? Or does Atari perhaps disintegrate altogether?

Possibility: the Japanese company Namco, which OTL bought Atari's Arcade division in 1985, might consider going whole-hog. They may not have the resources for this, but if they manage it'll give them the opportunity to be as big as Nintendo OTL - or bigger, if the Amiga manages to survive.

 

[Electric Monk]

For starters Tramiel staying would probably kill Commodore. The Board was desperate to fire him for very good reason.

There's a solid theory that his price war with Atari (and others, driving Texas Instruments out of the home computer business) caused the video game market crash and, incidentally, hammered Commodore International's bottom line into the ground.

Assuming Tramiel stays I imagine he can find some other way to screw up Commodore.


As for Amiga the only deal Atari offered them was incredibly bad, which is why they were so eager to get bought by Commodore. Obviously ITTL Atari scoops them back up for a pittance, the employees (mostly ex-Atari) desert again and Atari—lacking backing from Warner Brothers—does nothing with it. (The OTL background is that Atari bridge financed them with very nasty terms, and Commodore swept in and bought them just before the deadline for a fair price.)


Who, if anyone, buys Atari? That's an interesting question. One of the Japanese companies seems likely, particularly one already into hardware—Sega, NEC, Nintendo or even an attempt to make a new MSX for America as well as Japan—or perhaps Commodore buys them[1] to secure their distribution chain and future video game/computer development (they would, after all, get Amiga without the personnel which would make Tramiel happy).

That would well position a proper Commodore 64 successor to be cut down into into a video game console when Nintendo kicks it off again and having access to American/European computer developers used to the C64 would set up an interesting split in the console market[2]. After all Atari never really had good software developers while the C64/Amiga/PC market did and moving them into the console market 10-15 years early would be cool.




[1] That's more or less what happens in the timeline I'm working on, although Tramiel is gone.

[2] Again, what happens in my timeline.

 

[Nicole]

Atari had a lot of projects that were actively in the pipeline- there are whole websites dedicated to this. When Tramiel came in he basically wiped out all of the pre-existing Atari.

In this timeline the 7800 will be released in 1984 or 1985, and will have a fighting chance against the Nintendo Entertainment System- Tramiel wanted to run a computer company, not a video game company, and sidelined the video games, releasing them only a few years later at a bare minimum with most of Atari's planned extras never to be released. Atari had a lot planned for the 7800- what got released makes a mockery of it.

Atari's plans for Amiga, IIRC, involved buying the Amiga chipset and using it in a video game console and a computer of their own, however, they did not attempt to acquire the Amiga Corporation, so one has to wonder- they could easily be a takeover target, though by whom?

Who buys Atari... an excellent question. If the 7800 proves to be a success early on then Warner might be more willing to hold on, but it'll probably be gone before Time-Warner in any case. I can't really see them spinning it off to be separate... hm, what about Sega? Sega in this period was only the Japanese side of the business, the American side had been sold off to Midway IIRC. Sega was controlled by the major Japanese conglomerate CSK, so they would have the financial ability at least.

 

[SunilTanna]

IMHO:

The damage to Commodore from pricewars is vastly overstated

They could sell the C64 for $100 or less, and make a profit per unit. It was thanks to vertical integration (Mos etc.), which was Tramiel's strategy. Nobody else, not even Apple had that.

The real reason Tramiel left Commodore was part of long running saga. He wanted to raise money (e.g. sell stock) to advertise, etc. Others wouldn't let him, because it meant they'd be diluted. So you need a pre-1985 (maybe early 80s?) PoD really. I'd be willing to bet this makes Commodore stronger.

As for Amiga - I bet that goes to Atari (which was the original plan of Amiga and Atari), and then Atari is eventually killed by WB, and Amiga dies with it.

Z-8000 thing I think was dead from inception. But took so many years to die, it was obsolete before being abandoned, let alone launched.

If you could keep Chuck Peddle at Commodore, making Peddle makes an x86 machine similar to the Sirius 1, but for Commodore. Commodore have more money from selling stock, and Commodore, rather than Apple Macs, becomes the second main brand of PCs.

 

[danielb1]

The Commodore C900 was cancelled when Commodore bought Amiga, but I don't see it as being particularly obsolete by 1985-6 standards - and it was nearly ready for sale, several prototypes had already been built. Perhaps not 100% state-of-the-art, but its specs were comparable to, if not better than, an IBM PC/AT, which was the high-end system of 1985. See THIS announcement, which suggests that Commodore planned to bring the 900 out soon.

10 MHz Zilog Z8001 (16-bit with 23-bit memory address - granted, Zilog had some problems with this chip, but by 1985 it was working, and seems roughly equivalent in performance to an 80286 or a 68000.).
Graphics: 1024x800 monochrome graphics on the workstation (this is actually amazing by 1985 standards, while not color it has a higher resolution than nearly anything else on market at the time), 80-column plaintext on the server. The workstation was supposed to have an early GUI, and use a mouse.
Memory: 512k standard, up to 2 megabytes on-board.
Hard disk: 20 megabyte standard, 40 or 67 megabytes optional
Floppy drive: 1.2 megabyte, 5 1/4" (comparable to high-density IBM)
OS: Coherent (As I mentioned, an early UNIX-like system, advertised here as "100%-compatible" with System V UNIX. While I doubt the 100% part, it is still knocks the socks off of MS-DOS or any comparible system, and would compare to a high-end AT running XENIX.

The 900 seems to me to be a more than adequate replacement for the various 8-bit CBM models using MOS 6502-compatible chips (which really were outdated, at least for business use, by 1985). Whether or not they'd be killed in the onslaught of AT-based high-end machines, I'm uncertain.

Oh, and Commodore did make PCs in OTL - the Commodore Colt series. They were kind of a schizophrenic company, a weakness (and at times a strength) caused in combination by Tramiel himself and by the lack of leadership when he left. I'm half surprised they actually cancelled the C900, they had fingers in every pot, and often seemed to try to compete against themselves (see the Commodore Plus/4 fiasco, a machine that was basically a direct 64 competitor).
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As for Sega... interesting. Sega didn't really have a North American branch at the time, and their then-current system, the SG-1000, was technically inferior to the Atari 7800 (the Sega Master System came out in late 1985; the 7800 was intended to come out Christmas 1984, but was delayed until 1986 thanks to Tramiel). Atari, despite the massive sea of red ink in response to the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, still had a substantial sales network. If Sega had the money and the willpower to remake Atari (and Amiga along with them), they'd massively improve their position in both video games and in home computers.

Oh, and another thing to consider: OTL the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the Sega Master System's replacement, used a Motorola 68000 processor, same as most Commodore Amigas. Atari seems to have been interested in the Amiga's graphics platform for a games system. If Sega buys Atari and Amiga, the result could well be, come ~1988-89, an Atari branded "Amiga Genesis"!

 

[danielb1]

Also, I agree that Tramiel would be much better suited for Commodore than Atari. Tramiel founded Commodore, after all, and Commodore was basically his company: a business intended to sell as many computers as possible through use of aggressive pricing and vertical integration (courtesy of MOS semiconductor).

Atari, OTOH, was mainly a video game company (even their computers were gaming machines, to an even greater degree than the Commodore VIC-20 or 64). Tramiel was pretty much the arch-nemesis of early video game manufacturers - he would rather just sell a similarly-priced computer (and a Commodore 64 didn't cost much more than a video game system, a VIC-20 or Commodore 16 was even cheaper). He pretty much butchered Atari when he took over, and even later attempts at the video game market were rather botched (see the Atari Jaguar, not a bad system in its own right but the marketing was bollixed, courtesy of Jack Tramiel's son Sam). Tramiel and Atari were a match made in hell.

The only problem is: what of the Amiga? If Atari doesn't find a suitable buyer, the Amiga people have to go elsewhere for money or they're screwed. And the Amiga was amazing by the standards of the day - the graphics and sound chipset were top-notch, and AmigaOS - a multi-tasking graphical OS - was unmatched by any affordable computer system at the time (contemporary Macs were single-tasking, as was the Atari ST. Windows 1.0, released 1985, could theoretically multitask, but was bound by the same memory limits as MS-DOS and used cooperative multitasking, whereas AmigaOS used preemptive multitasking, the same as UNIX and Windows NT).

 

[SunilTanna]

The reason the Z-8000 machine would be obsolete is the speed Commodore worked. They might have demoed in 85, but you can bet it wouldn't have shipped in numbers until 87, maybe 86 at the outside, and probably no upgrades until 89 or 90. Commodore's management (especially Tramiel) focus was on the low-end, so the machine would have gone the same way as the Peddle x86 machine, and Peddle's upgrades to pet plans.. slow or no where. Graphics weren't much of an issue on a high-end business machine in the 80s, but lack of software would have been.

C-16 / C-116 / Plus-4 again comes from the low-end focus. Tramiel wanted a super-cheap machine to compete with Sinclair/Timex. Not because they were a threat, but because they might be. These machines were super-cheap with 10 chips only. What happened was that (a) The engineers and Tramiel didn't realize that non-compatibility with the C-64 was a big issue, and (b) After Tramiel left, marketing upgrades these machines and prices, so they ended-up as albatrosses that didn't fit in the range, and overlapped with the C-64. If Tramiel had stayed at Commodore, these machines would IMHO probably have been quickly abandoned (like the Max Machine was) when it was realized they no longer had a market.

Something like Sirius 1 (Victor 9000), is what I think Commodore could have done (probably would have done) in early 80s if Peddle had stayed, and Tramiel had been allowed to raise cash - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_9000 - it was a darn good machine, ahead of its time.

 

[danielb1]

The C-16 actually might have been a success (it sold halfway decently in Europe, the only one of the three not to be a complete flop) had it been a straight-up VIC successor. The 116 was a C-16 with a lousy keyboard (and Commodore should have learned its lesson with the PET and its original chiclet keyboard), and the Plus/4 was (I gather) intended to be a more 'serious' machine than the 64 - but that really makes no sense in that market (it was poorer for games than the 64, and 'serious' customers didn't shop for $200-300 machines back then).

As for the development speed of Commodore, its true that they weren't the fastest-advancing company around. But the constant-upgrade cycle wasn't as big then, and computers often took a long time to develop. The IBM PC was an exception, coming out to market in only a year on a completely new platform, and IBM sold it for 5 years with only minor changes (more base memory, upgrades to DOS, switch from 160k to 360k disks). Apple took 6 years to release and develop the Macintosh; though the upgrades were comparatively rapid, that was because the original Mac 128 lacked memory AND the ability to expand it (and other crucial features) - upgraded models of the original monochrome/68000 Mac sold until 1990. Amiga still sold decently, despite taking as much as 5 years to release a substantial upgrade (granted, one reason for the death of the Amiga was slow tech advance). 8086/8 machines still sold into the 1990s.

1986 seems like a reasonable release date for the Commodore 900. The Amiga 1000 was announced in 1984 and released in 1985 - and Commodore had manufactured 500 C900 prototypes by the time they canceled, so they could not have been too far off. They seemed to have provided incremental upgrades to the PET every 2 years or so (especially RAM - the original PET had 16k RAM standard, by 1983 they had 128k, with optional Z80 and 8088 expansion cards), and the Amiga had an improved model in 1987 (the 2000) and a processor-enhanced model in 1990 (the 3000). So I would expect an improved model in 1988 and a Z80000-based 32-bit machine in 1990. Which wouldn't have been state-of-the-art, but it wouldn't have been especially out-of-date compared to its rough contemporaries, the Macintosh II or the higher-end IBM PS/2 series. Hell, the Apple IIe was sold, essentially unchanged, from 1983 to 1993 (same with the Commodore 64).

Commodore sold its prototypes for $4000, a bit high but not unreasonably so (assuming a similar price for the complete machine). The original Macintosh II sold for $5200 in 1987, with a Motorola 68020 (slightly more advanced) and otherwise similar equipment.

This doesn't mean it isn't doomed. Zilog never developed a 486-comparable machine (and the first 80486 machines came out in 1991 OTL, the 68040 soon afterwards). Lack of software may doom it if Commodore isn't smart (though its compatibility with UNIX helps, at least on the business end). A full GUI-on-UNIX on what is basically an 80286-level machine would probably run slowly (think Windows 3.0 on an 8086), and Commodore wouldn't've managed to get out truly state-of-the-art tech. Commodore would have to deal with its US reputation of being "cheap games machines" (PET-based machines sold much better in Europe). They'd eventually have to provide color graphics (especially by the 1990s). There'll be a gigantic price gap between the 64/128 and the 900 that could use filling (a cost-reduced 900, perhaps, similar to an OTL Amiga 500?).

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Actually, one thing I wonder is: without the Amiga, and assuming the 16/Plus/4 gets even fewer sales, the Commodore 128 would have been their big machine in 1985. With Amiga sold by a competitor (if at all), and no Atari ST, the 128 could have sold better than OTL. It was still an 8-bit machine, but improved over the 64 and it was compatible with both C64 and CP/M software.

 

[Nicole]

The Atari Museum website has a lot of interesting information on prototypes built by Atari pre-Tramiel.

This seems to have been their plans for the Amiga- I suppose the 1850XLD could be expected to have been roughly similar to the Amiga 1000 of OTL.

The final system slated for release in 1st quarter 1985 was the 1850XLD, according to Steve Bristow, this system would be based on the Amiga Lorraine Specifications with detachable keyboard and 68000 processor.

Wikipedia also mentions a 1650XLD that was canceled when Tramiel showed up, which would have been based on the 6502. The "D" designation I would guess would imply having disk drives built in.

 

[martyg]

Sorry to revive the thread a year later, but just ran across it doing a google search and had to weigh in to correct a lot of stuff -

In OTL, after losing a power struggle with Commodore's board of directors, Jack Tramiel left Commodore, founded his own company (Tramel Technologies - no, that's not a misspelling, if you can believe Wikipedia), and later bought Atari from Warner Communications.

He bought the Atari name, properties, and facilities (manufacturing and distribution) from Warner, basically what amounted to Atari's Consumer division. He did not buy Atari Inc. itself, that ceased to exist.

This begets two major questions:
1. What of the Amiga? OTL, the people in the Amiga Corporation approached Tramiel with their machine, and he basically brushed them off (telling them that he liked the machine, but not the people),

No, he approached them that Spring of '84 while looking at various companies in California to use for tech in his new computer. They never went anywhere.

so they were instead financed mainly by Atari.

No, they were already financed by Atari. Talks began in the Fall of '83, and the initial contract was put together between January and March, with a signing and initial payment that March.

When Tramiel bought up Atari, their working agreement pretty much fell apart, and Amiga was purchased instead by Commodore.

No, Amiga tried to cancel the deal before Jack bought Atari Consumer. Literally the week before. It was a deal brokered by Warner, and went with them as part of the open accounts. When the initial canceled check was discovered at the end of July '84, Jack had to literally go and get Warner to sign over the account as a means to counter Commodore's lawsuits against his engineers.

With Tramiel at Commodore, Atari will likely continue to work with Amiga. This means no Atari ST...

Correct, it would have meant that had Warner not split the company up, Atari would have moved forward with their extensive research in 68000 based systems that were already in place, including custom graphics and sound chips. And the company would have been trimmed down as Morgan had already been putting in to motion.

2. What of Atari? In OTL, Warner was trying to get rid of them, as they were a financial black hole in the aftermath of the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Who buys Atari, if it isn't Tramiel? Or does Atari perhaps disintegrate altogether?

There were talks of Phillips or several other companies buying them at the time. Also, the new CEO James Morgan had a reorganization in the works as mentioned above, to focus Atari in specific directions. He didn't have a clue that Warner was looking to offload the company and didn't find out about Tramiel until the talks with Tramiel were already half way done.

Marty

 

[martyg]

There's a solid theory that his price war with Atari (and others, driving Texas Instruments out of the home computer business) caused the video game market crash and, incidentally, hammered Commodore International's bottom line into the ground.

Highly unlikely. The computer section was only a small portion of Atari's income. What killed it was in the consumer console market.

As for Amiga the only deal Atari offered them was incredibly bad, which is why they were so eager to get bought by Commodore.

Never happened, that's misinformation by RJ Mical. The deal was actually very good, and called for them to make even more money than the deal they did with Commodore. It included investment in the company via funding and stock purchases (1 million shares at $3 a share), a licensing of the technology, and a royalty on every console and computer manufactured with Amiga technology. The issue was that co-owner Dave Morse had been skittish and developing cold feet on the deal in July. He had been up front with them that he wanted to build up Amiga to sell it, which was his ultimate goal. He was afraid Atari would change their mind at some point, and screw this up. Even when trying to return the initial money, he was told they didn't want the company.

Obviously ITTL Atari scoops them back up for a pittance, the employees (mostly ex-Atari) desert again and Atari—lacking backing from Warner Brothers—does nothing with it. (The OTL background is that Atari bridge financed them with very nasty terms, and Commodore swept in and bought them just before the deadline for a fair price.)

No, that is not the OTL. See above.

Marty

 

[martyg]

Atari had a lot of projects that were actively in the pipeline- there are whole websites dedicated to this. When Tramiel came in he basically wiped out all of the pre-existing Atari.

No, he froze all projects for evaluation and so Warner and him could decide what goes with who. During the process, a lot of projects and material actually walked off with the engineers and others.

Tramiel wanted to run a computer company, not a video game company, and sidelined the video games, releasing them only a few years later at a bare minimum with most of Atari's planned extras never to be released. Atari had a lot planned for the 7800- what got released makes a mockery of it.

Not what happened either. While I realize that quote by one of GCC's (the designer of the 7800) people gets tossed around a lot, it's not the case. Jack was planning on relying on the video game portion of Consumer to keep the company afloat. He started up the 2600jr project again almost immediately after the freeze, the end of July. The 7800 was not started up again right away because there was an outstanding payment to GCC over the MARIA chip. Warner and Jack had to work out who was liable for it, and it wound up being Jack paying it the next spring. Work started up and came to a head under pressure from Warner that Fall, and it was released again in January of '86.

Atari's plans for Amiga, IIRC, involved buying the Amiga chipset and using it in a video game console and a computer of their own, however, they did not attempt to acquire the Amiga Corporation, so one has to wonder- they could easily be a takeover target, though by whom?

It involved licensing the technology, not buying it. And Amiga actually had 4 other companies investing in it already. With all the financial problems they were having, it was much more likely the company would have been split up and cannibalized between everyone and Atari would have gotten free access to the chipset rather than needing to license and pay royalties.

Who buys Atari... an excellent question. If the 7800 proves to be a success early on then Warner might be more willing to hold on, but it'll probably be gone before Time-Warner in any case.

Initial reviews of the 7800 at the CES were not good actually. And one has to wonder would have happened with it had Atari released their Amiga based console that Winter (Christmas time) as planned.

 

[martyg]

IMHO:
As for Amiga - I bet that goes to Atari (which was the original plan of Amiga and Atari), and then Atari is eventually killed by WB, and Amiga dies with it.

A) That was not the original plan. There was nothing in the contract for that, other than a security for investment in the case Amiga went bankrupt.

B) Atari would never have been killed by WB, they needed to recoup money. The alternative timelime would be much more likely to have been Atari being sold off to someone else, or Jim's plan succeeding.



Marty

 

[martyg]

The only problem is: what of the Amiga? If Atari doesn't find a suitable buyer, the Amiga people have to go elsewhere for money or they're screwed.

They would have simply added yet another investor as they had already been doing.

 

[martyg]

The Atari Museum website has a lot of interesting information on prototypes built by Atari pre-Tramiel.

This seems to have been their plans for the Amiga- I suppose the 1850XLD could be expected to have been roughly similar to the Amiga 1000 of OTL.


Wikipedia also mentions a 1650XLD that was canceled when Tramiel showed up, which would have been based on the 6502. The "D" designation I would guess would imply having disk drives built in.

Yes, that's my partner Curt Vendel. Atari Inc. actually had a lot in the oven before Tramiel. That included 68000 based computers, new custom chipsets, new high end workstations, etc. They were working on a lot of next gen material via AED - Advanced Engineering Division.


Marty