| Article 70009 of comp.sys.atari.st:
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From: klasmekj@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Kevin J. Klasmeier)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Falcon, Jaguar, Atari in general:
Message-ID: <C85vqH.18q@ucunix.san.uc.edu>
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 93 19:37:28 GMT-1:00
Organization: University of Cincinnati
Lines: 267
=========================================================================
(C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May
be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on
GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign
up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection
type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE
and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information.
==========================================================================
Friday Night Special Edition Real Time Conference
June 4, 1993
Dateline Atari! with Bob Brodie
Host - Lou Rocha
<[Lou] ST.LOU> Welcome to the June installement of Dateline Atari!
with Bob Brodie, Director of Communications for Atari Corp. We are
indeed privileged and appreciative to have Bob participate in this
exclusive monthly conference with Atari users here on GEnie. As
June flowers begin to blossom, Atari users are posting news of
Falcon purchases. In the Bulletin Board there are daily messages
from ecstatic new owners. New Falcon topics are opening as
software notes are shared and compared. There is a very definite
upbeat mood in the Atari ST RoundTable now that the Falcons have
arrived in large numbers. If that were not enough, we have heard
that the 65 meg hard drives have been upgraded to 80 meg units at
NO EXTRA COST! I guess that is the reward for being patient :-)
Tonight, Bob has returned to bring us the latest news on Falcon
availability. He will also give GEnie users the first official
announcements about Atari's newest product. Bob.... the curtain is
rising.
<BOB-BRODIE> Welcome to the June '93 edition of Dateline Atari!
Settle back into your chair for a few minutes. Make sure you have
your capture buffer turned on, or be sure to go to the library
tomorrow morning to d/l the transcript from tonight's session;
I've got lots of info to share with you tonight!
First, I'm pleased to announce that shipments of Falcon030s are
continuing with units for dealers to sell at this point. We
presently have over 140 (yes, that is One Hundred Forty) dealers
on board, in over 40 states. This is much better than where we
were a year ago. We're very pleased that our decision to go with
the new dealer agreement has brought us leverage to bring on new
dealers! In fact, earlier today I got a call from one of our
"holdout", older dealers that hadn't signed the agreement yet.
He's having a change of heart, and I'm looking forward to him
carrying Falcon030s. This is a very good sign!!!
Also, we're pleased that we've brought on board another of our
longtime partners, Pacific Software Supply, to be a distributor
for the Atari Falcon030. We will be working very closely with
them to ensure that the dealers that they sign up meet all of the
criteria that we have established for Atari dealers. All of the
dealers that Pacific Software brings on board will be signing the
same dealer agreements as the dealers that we deal directly with.
Of course, this means that Pacific is now also carrying a host of
accessories for the Atari Falcon030 as well, like the sometimes
elusive SCSI-II cables, a host of Falcon software, VGA monitors,
and lots of other goodies for our dealers. In short, the dealers
are getting another terrific resource to work with!!
Some of you may recall that I indicated in the last
Dateline Atari! we were still a ways off from being able to ship
SpeedoGDOS and MultiTOS to existing Atari owners. Both of
these products are shipping with Falcon030s. Today we received
the diskettes back from the duplicators, and the manuals arrived a
couple of days ago, so we're actually ahead of schedule at this
point! We have begun assembling the packages so our customers
will be able to purchase MultiTOS and SpeedoGDOS along with 14
BitStream fonts within a couple of weeks!!!
The manuals for Atari Works have still not arrived, which means
that we are still ON SCHEDULE <grin> for that product. Works
should be in stock in approximately fourteen more days.
The retail price for the products to current users has been
slightly adjusted, and is now as follows:
SpeedoGDOS - $64.95
MultiTOS- $59.95
Atari Works- $118.95
We have also done an incremental upgrade to the Atari Falcon030 in
our on-going efforts to provide our users with the best units we
possibly can. We have upgraded the Atari Falcon030 from a 65 meg
internal hard disk drive to an 80 megabyte hard disk drive. We
were able to secure the new mechanisms at the very same price as
the 65s, so there will be no increase in price to our customers!
Currently, Atari Falcon030s are shipping with the following
programs on the drives:
MultiTOS
SpeedoGDOS
Landmines
Breakout
CalAppt
ProCalc
Talking Clock
They are also *supposed* to have on them Atari Works, System
Audio Manager, Audio Fun Machine, and FalconD2D. A small number
of machines got out the door without these programs installed on
the drives. We will be shipping a mail-in card to the dealers
that got these machines a card for their customers to mail into
Atari so you will receive these products via mail. We apologize
for the mistake.
We are now in anticipation of another shipment of Falcons in about
two weeks. Included in this shipment is going to be a number of
units that will not have hard drives built in, specifically the
Falcon030 with one meg of RAM and no hard disk, and with four megs
of RAM and no hard disk. These units WILL NOT come with
SpeedoGDOS, Atari Works, or FalconD2D. They will have everything
else, including the hard disk utilities in case you have your own
SCSI hard disk. We will be selling at a later date a hard drive
upgrade kit, which will ship with Atari Works, SpeedoGDOS,
FalconD2D, MultiTOS, etc. on the hard drive.
Regarding applications for the Atari Falcon030, Bill Rehbock has
passed on to me some information concerning products and
availability. Please understand that I am not professing literacy
in all (or for that matter, any) of these products. I am simply
passing on some interesting information to our users. I hope that
this will prove encouraging, and help demonstrate that the
interest for Atari Computers is continuing to grow. In several
cases, these applications will not only run on the Falcon030, but
other Atari computers as well. Where I have commented about who
will be carrying the product in North America, this is based on
the best information I have at this time, and is subject to
change.
Notator Logic, a music applications, by E-Magic
Cubase Audio, a music application, by Steinberg
Inshape, a rendering application by Roald Christesen, carried by
Oregon Research
TruePicture, a retouching application, by HiSoft, carried by
Oregon Research
Harlekin3, a utility, by HiSoft, carried by Oregon Research
OverGenlock, video software by Overscan, carried by COMPO
Screenblaster, graphic expansion by Overscan, carried by COMPO
Overlay, a video application by Overscan, carried by COMPO
DA's Vector, a graphics application by Digital Arts, carried by
Pacific Software
Convector 2, an auto vectorization application from SHIFT, carried
by Gribnif
Zoom, an icon editor from SHIFT, carried by Gribnif
MusiCOM, a music application from COMPO
MusiCOM 2, a music application from COMPO
Digitape, a music application from Trade iT, carried by Codehead
Falcon Speed, a PC board, from COMPO
TruePaint, a graphics application from HiSoft, carried by Oregon
Research
Pure C, a programming language from Pure GmbH, carried by Gribnif
Pure Pascal, a programming language from Pure GmbH, carried by
Gribnif
Studio Photo, a retouching application from Eurosoft, carried by
COMPO
Chagall, a graphics application from Trade iT, carried by Codehead
GT-Look II, scanner software, carried by Pacific Software
Interface, a programming tool, from SHIFT GmbH, carried by
Gribnif.
As you can see, there really is a lot going on!!!
In addition to all of that, we've been busy on the game side of
things as well! We're ready to release three more titles for the
Lynx: Gordo 106, Lemmings, and Jimmy Connors Tennis. I've seen
eproms of these titles, and expect to have news on production in
the near future.
Also on the game side of things, as CES is going on in Chicago
even as we speak, we've announced the Jaguar, our oft discussed
new game machine. For those of you who haven't had a chance to
hear about the Jaguar, here is our press release:
Atari Corp., the founder of the video game industry and the
creative force behind some of the world's best-known titles, has
announced the launch of a revolutionary new multi-media
entertainment system, the Atari Jaguar. The launch will be
supported by aggressive advertising, promotion and marketing
efforts to be centered in the New York market in the fall, with a
national roll-out of the product within one year.
The Atari Jaguar, housed in a futuristic casing, is an interactive
multi-media system based on an Atari-designed proprietary 64-bit
RISC processor. The 64-bit system is four times the technology
currently seen in the market today. The Atari Jaguar features over
16 million colors in 24-bit true-color graphics and produces
shaded 3-D polygons to be manipulated in a "real" world in real
time. The Atari Jaguar also has real-time texture mapping and
creates spectacular video effects.
The sound system is based on Atari's proprietary, high-speed,
Digital Signal Processor dedicated to audio. The audio is 16-bit
stereo CD quality and processes simultaneous sources of audio
data, allowing for very realistic sounds, as well as human voices,
which are essential for future multi-media applications.
The Atari Jaguar is truly expandable and will include a 32-bit
expansion port which allows for future connection into cable and
telephone networks, as well as a digital signal processing port
for modem use and connection to digital audio peripherals such as
DAT players.
The unit will also have a compact disc peripheral, which will be
double-speed and will play regular CD audio, CD + G (Karaoke) and
Kodak's new Photo-CD(R). Currently, there are multiple software
titles in development, which will be available on MegaCart(TM).
Atari, known for such groundbreaking 3-D titles as "Battlezone
2000(R)" and "Tempest 2000(R)," will issue spectacular new
versions for the Atari Jaguar. New 3-D game titles will include
"Cybermorph(R)," "Alien vs. Predator(R)," "Jaguar Formula One
Racing(TM)" and many more. Atari will license third-party
publishers to join the Jaguar family.
"The Atari Jaguar system will revolutionize the state of home
entertainment as we see it today," said Sam Tramiel, president of
Atari. "The idea of a 64-bit system is earth shattering and kids
and adults will be amazed at both the imagery and manipulative
capabilities. And we are proud that our entry into the multi-
media entertainment category will be fully made in America."
The Atari Jaguar will retail for approximately $200 and will be
available nationwide next year. The Atari Jaguar packaged unit
will include one software experience and a Power Pad(R) Controller
with a ten-key pad and other special features.
We did not show the Jaguar on the floor of CES. We have a
videotape demonstrating the units capabilities that we are showing
to developers and key retailers. We have been shipping Jaguar
developer units for awhile now, and are very excited at the
reception of our new unit.
Rather than invest in an incredibly expensive rollout at CES,
we've opted for a "special event" kind of rollout. We will
conduct our event at a date to be announced in the fall.
We are extremely excited about this project!!!! It has been much
awaited by all of us in Sunnyvale, and we forsee it as a product
that will recapture the attention of consumers throughout the
world!! I've been pleased that already, in less than 24 hours
after the press release has hit, a number of publications (even
the foreign ones!) are calling in, and looking for as much
information as possible. For the most part, we're sticking with
the press release at this time. We will release specification
sheets at a later time.
One thing that I know the Tramiels are particulary excited about
with this product, is that it will be an American prodcut,
manufactured in America! I hope that all of you share our
enthusiasm for that!!!
With that, I'm ready to filed any questions that our members might
have tonight, Lou. Let's talk Atari!!!
[rest of conference deleted]
================000000000000===========
Article 70976 of comp.sys.atari.st:
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
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From: hsp4@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Haim S. Poretsky)
Subject: Re: IBM and Atari have teamed up on the Jaguar!
Message-ID: <1993Jun29.215908.9067@news.columbia.edu>
Sender: usenet@news.columbia.edu (The Network News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: cunixb.cc.columbia.edu
Reply-To: hsp4@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Haim S. Poretsky)
Organization: Columbia University
References: <)> <20o457INNb96@life.ai.mit.edu> <ekrimenC9D0I4.J6q@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 93 22:59:08 GMT-1:00
Lines: 78
I just pulled this off of Dow Jones News/Retrieval as reprinted through
Plodigy's Company News figure. Incidentially, ATC closed at 3, up 5/8, on
a day where the market was down, and computer stocks got killed. In other
ATC news, the 1-10 reverse stock split was shot down...
Sol Poretsky
hsp4@columbia.edu
----------- snip snip ----------------------------------------------
PRODIGY(R) interactive personal service 06/29/93 5:46 PM
COMPANY NEWS (sm) provided by Dow Jones/News Retrieval
Copyright (c)1993 Dow Jones & Company
Symbol Searched: ATC
6/28/93 Atari, IBM -2-: MultiMedia System Due Out This Fall
>ATC
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -DJ- Atari Corp. (ATC) said it has
contracted with International Business Machines Corp.(IBM)
for IBM to manufacture the Atari Jaguar at its Charlotte,
N.C., facility.
The Atari Jaguar is a 64-bit multimedia entertainment
system.
In a press release, the company said IBM's three-year
contract for the order is valued at $500 million.
The Atari Jaguar, to be made in the United States, will
be available on a limited basis in the fall, focusing on
the New York market. A national roll-out is expected next
year, with the system retailing for about $200, Atari said.
In addition to assembling the Atari Jaguar, IBM will be
responsible for the component sourcing, quality testing,
packaging and distribution, Atari said.
The company said the Atari Jaguar is an interactive
multimedia entertainment system with 24-bit true color
graphics.
The company said a 32-bit expansion port will allow for
future connection into cable and telephone networks. A
digital signal processing port will allow for modem usage
and connection to digital audio peripherals. The Jaguar
will also have a double-speed compact disc peripheral.
(END) DOW JONES NEWS 06-28-93
|
| Article 71647 of comp.sys.atari.st:
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Newsgroups: rec.games.video,rec.games.video.misc,comp.sys.atari.st
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From: rjung@netcom.com (Robert A. Jung)
Subject: EE Times: "Atari Jaguar an IBM Animal"
Message-ID: <rjungCAAq8F.7r4@netcom.com>
Organization: Southern California Lynx Enthusiasts
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1993 06:33:50 GMT
Lines: 168
For those of us who don't read the EE TIMES, here's the Jaguar/Atari/IBM
article that's provided a good dose of net.news.fodder for the last few
weeks...
==============================================================================
The following article was published in the July 5, 1993 issue of
Electronic Engineering Times. Permission to upload the text of this
article was granted from CMP publications by Ms. Martha Rosaril.
(I thought the Atari community would like to read this
-- Greg Matthijetz, G.MATTHIJETZ)
"Atari Jaguar an IBM animal"
by Junko Yoshida
Sunnyvale, Calif.
Atari Corp. will score a new level of video-game performance this
fall with the introduction of Jaguar, a 64-bit RISC-based system
offering real-time 3-D shaded surfaces with texture mapping.
The $200 system, able to tap into the growing network of cable and
telephone video services, will take videogames into a graphics realm
once the province of midrange 3-D workstatins. In yet a further
departure, the system will be built by IBM Corp.
Jaguar, billed as an interactive multimedia system, is based on an
Atari-designed proprietary 64-bit RISC processor and its proprietary
digital signal processors. The cartridge-based system features 24-bit
true color graphics, shaded 3-D polygons and real-time texture
mapping.
Atari claims that Jaguar offers four times the processing power of
the current 16-bit videogames from Sega and Nintendo, and believes it
is even more powerful than the coming 32-bit ARM CPU-based machine
from 3DO Co. "If a spaceship goes around a moon, or a person walking
on a street turns on the next corner, every object, every detail in
such scenes is reproduced in shaded 3-D images with texture. It's
truly amazing stuff," said Atari president Sam Tramiel.
--Dense ASIC's--
The system's graphics performance is compared by the company to that
of the 3-D engines in midrange Unix workstations. And like those
egines, Jaguar is based on advanced, very dense digital ASIC's.
Jaguar's core consists of two chip sets, one holding the 64-bit RISC
processor and the other containing DSP hardware. "But the
partitioning between the two chip sets is ambiguous." said Richard
Miller, vice president of research and development at Atari, as the
two share some functions. The two sets apparently pack a whole range
of components, including controllers, video processors and encoders,
leaving outside the core only "a very small amount of TTLs and
DRAMs," said Miller. They were designed at an Atari facility in
England, said Tramiel.
The 64-bit RISC processor is capable of processing video data at a
high rate, handling various video effects as well as full-motion
video compression on its own, Miller claimed.
--Lots of bandwith--
Atari would not disclose any more about the core ASICs, such as gate
counts or data bandwidth, but Miller pointed out that Atari engineers
had to concentrate most of their design efforts on bus bandwidth.
"Graphics eats a lot of bus bandwidth. What's available today for
other 64-bit processors such as PowerPC is only just enough for what
we want to do," he said. "What we designed is right up on the level
of expensive 64-bit processors."
To meet its cost goals, Atari had to push ASIC technology to the
limit. The chip sets will be manufactured by "one of the top four
silicon vendors in the world" using the "smallest geometry"
available, said Miller. It is believed that with Jaguar Atari has
become one of the early customers for a major Japanese 0.5-micron
ASIC process, bt the company would not confirm this.
Clearly, manufacturing volume is essential to the Jaguar plan. The
company intends to introduce an add-on PC card featuring the
company's proprietary 64-bit RISC processor, said Tramiel. "It could
also help minimize the cost of our chip sets," he said.
Atari is also considering licensing the chip set to other silicon
vendors, but has not determined any details yet, said Tramiel.
The future holds more integration. But before working on the
ultimate, a system on a chip, the next step for Atari's engineering
team is to shrink what is currently a set of rather large custom
chips further, reducing the whole system to "one processor, one DRAM,
one ROM and one custom chip," said Miller. The company is looking at
both synchronous DRAMs and Rambus DRAMs for future use, "but we are
waiting to see some of the standards issues get settled first," he
noted.
Miller does have a technological wish list. "First," he said, "we'd
love to have 0.3-micron process technology as soon as possible for
custom IC's. Second, we'd like to see some form of synchronous DRAMs
appear as a standard commodity DRAM, and, naturally, a very high bus
bandwidth to produce higher video persormance. The existing
improvements for faster bus interfaces so far have been very
disappointing for us. Lastly, I'd love to play the Atari Jaguar
system on a 10 X 10-foot display. I'm waiting for a very low cost,
low power, large-screen-size display, using probably not an active
matrix but FED-type technology."
In the long run, Jaguar is designed not just as a cartridge-based game
machine. It will use a 32-bit expansions port to connect to cable and
telephone networks, and a digital signal processing port for modem
usage and connection to digital audio peripherals.
This I/O structure reflects Time Warner's 25 percent stake in Atari.
"In the course of our product development, we've had frequent
discussions with Time Warner. It has set the direction for our
machine to have cable and telephone connections," said Leonard
Tramiel, vice president of operating systems.
The company designed and built a 16-bit prototype home-entertainment
machine two years ago, said Sam Tramiel, but scrapped the plan in
favor of a grand attempt to leapfrog the 16-bit systems that were
then coming onto the market. But then Atari engineers started to look
for enabling technology, "there were no RISC processors and no DSP's
that fulfilled our requirements, especially at our cost," said
Miller. Atari's design team even had to develop its own HDL
simulation tools, he said.
"People tend to forget that, unlike business users, comsumers do have
much higher expectations in video quality, speed and cost," Miller
said. "In order to match that demand, we had to really push the
technological envelope, driving the chip counts down, designing the
system to be highly manufacturable and depending on the smallest
geometry prcess technology."
--IBM the OEM--
Atari will also push the envelope in another way, turning its back on
traditiional East Asian manufacturing sites and calling on IBM to
build Jaguar. IBM, working with a 30-month contract worth $500
million, will be responsible for component sourcing, quality testing,
console assembly, packaging and distribution, and will build the
system at its Charlotte, N.C., facility. The motherboard will come
from an IBM-approved manufacturer, said Herbert Watkins, director of
application solutions manufacturing at IBM Charlotte.
For IBM, producing the Atari Jaguar system makes it for the first
time a major OEM for highly cost-competitive, mass
consumer-electronics products, Watkins noted.
"To manufacture one of the most sophisticated game machines in the
world, we needed someone who understood a high-volume, fast digital
machine," said Miller. "IBM was a natural choice."
According to IBM, the prototypes of the Atari Jaguar system will come
out in July, ramp-up models in August and mass-productions versions
in September. The system will be available first on a limited basis
in the fall in New York and San Francisco areas. A national rollout
is scheduled for next year.
- Additional reporting by Roger Woolnough.
==============================================================================
I just like to sit back and watch the net's EE experts analyze stuff like
this to pieces...
--R.J.
B-)
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