Atari, Jack Tramiel interview, Low Cost Computers, Commodore The Computer Chronicles April 8, 1985

A consumer's guide to the most popular low-cost home computers, including the Atari ST and Amiga.
Guests: Jack Tramiel, Atari; Leonard Tramiel, Atari; Frank Leonardi, Commodore; Gary Kildall, Digital Research
Products/Demos: Atari 520ST, Commodore machines

[@LMB222]

Remember the mouse icon on Tramiel's computers? It was a bumble bee, Tramiel's birth name being Trzmiel, Polish for bumble bee.

[@zyxman74]

There is so much history in this video. Gary Kildall, Jack Tramiel, the home compute wars. media card, lotus, and a door stop :D

[@rolandgerard6064]

yes amazing,....

[@edoardobarolo4680]

Credit card for food stamps.. 1985.. Using computers..We in Italy are starting to use this method now in 2020...

[@edoardobarolo4680]

Credit card for food stamps.. 1985.. Using computers..We in Italy are starting to use this method now in 2020...

[@DieselPLL]

YAHH and the Apple-DRI lawsuit, the Digital Research GEM OS on PC ):

[@1squeamishneophyte]

I like how they're actually asking him semi-tough questions as opposed to this being just an unofficial puff piece for Atari Corp, I can't readily imagine this happening today.

[@wattage2007]

Fascinating to watch a true visionary like Tramiel. He was absolutely spot on about the changing price of technology.

[@PeowPeowPeowLasers]

It's amazing that this interview, where they're talking about the Amiga and ST, took place only eight years after the introduction of the PET. The pace of change was incredible.

[@arasb3258]

Gary Kildall! RIP 1994, way too young!

[@thealaskan1635]

I miss this show. They always showed the evolving computer market&was very informative.

[@Phunker1]

Looks like Gary is fascinated by his own GEM OS ;)

[@SEEMERIDECOM]

+Phunker1 I was thinking the exact same thing. If you didn't know the history behind Atari ST and it's CP/M 68K GEMDOS with GEM Desktop running on top of that.

[@OldAussieAds]

I was thinking this too. Though watching Gary in many of these videos, I can see that he does an excellent job of staying in presenter mode. He asks the questions he believes the viewers would be asking. Very professional.

[@RamLaska]

18:22 Wow, some things NEVER change.

[@mjp29]

Jack Tramiel was the real thing. His Commodore 64 was and is the best selling computer of all time. Steve Jobs can't hold this guys jock strap.

[@AFourEyedGeek]

Jack Tramiel was a dick head who ruined Atari.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Also remember that Commodore owned MOS technologies, which held the patent rights to the 6502 processor. That meant all the early non-CMOS 6502's stuffed into Apple legacy products paid a royalty fee right back to Jack! So he earned money even off his competitor's product sales. True businessman.

[@RamLaska]

9:40 "a color macintosh" two years before Apple made a color Macintosh (the Macintosh II).

[@klimaquatsch1787]

das ist eine Super-Sendung! So viele prominente Personen dort. damals kannten nur Insider diese Menschen, heute gehört dieses Wissen fast zum Geschichtsunterricht, wenn es um Informatik geht. Viele Grüße aus dem deutschsprachigen Teil Europas.

[@Ichinin]

18:23 - still holds true.

[@thealaskan1635]

Ichinin apple is still better than wintel

[@REALsnstruthers]

and both are worse than linux

[@aydenmarietta4906]

Jack’s leader ship at Atari may be controversial and some people may not be very happy with how we ran the company, so I can at least say he sold the revamped 2600 Junior and 7800 for really good prices. If there is a game console for $50 sale today, I would immediately buy it if it had really good games on it. I can also say that he had a great vision in my opinion. Selling the best computers at the lowest price. RIP Jack Tramiel

[@AmstradExin]

I think the Mega STE is a very good machine.

[@neindochoohh7955]

Love Commodore and love the Tramiels. Would have died to meet them. The guy around @16:30 was predicting the future so well!

[@icebob8555]

Wow they were right on most of that. Jack.was a genius

[@thealaskan1635]

He was a jerk. He tried to literally screw the Amiga developers. He screwed retailers too. And he screwed everyone in the videogame business. In the videogame business, you sell the consoles at a loss by giving the most powerful technology at an insanely low price. He did neither with the Jaguar. It could've been more powerful and cheaper, but it wasnt

[@NuntiusLegis]

@@thealaskan1635 I don't care about consoles, and I don't care about the Amiga, which was not a Commodore computer. With the C64, Jack Tramiel achieved exactly what he said here, the best available computer for the best price. If they only had come up with a C64-compatible 16-bit computer in time, they could still rule the world.

[@jareknowak8712]

@onlysublime - thank You for this upload, thank You for this gem!

[@RamLaska]

You know, I grew up as an Apple fanboi (ca. 1984-2018). I idolized the two Steves, and Macintosh pioneers like Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson (look them up if you're not familiar with them -- they created the GUIs you use today, and made them actually work well on low-end hardware). Now that I think about it, Jack was the real hero of the computer revolution. I'm always impressed when I think of this guy, who survived Auschwitz and created a super-successful company that created the best-selling computer of all time.

[@oldestgamer]

Your mean, they stole the GUI fro Xerox!

[@RamLaska]

oldestgamer No, not really. The Xerox GUI was a demonstration which ran on extremely powerful machines. Apple improved on it in many ways, like the ability to not have to redraw the parts of a window that was hidden under another window. They made it into a product that could be sold to individuals.

[@toddmiller5322]

Your real hero is Jack Peddle. He created the 6502 CPU, that was used by both Commodore and Apple. But yes, Tramiel did more to popularize the home computer than Jobs ever did.

[@RamLaska]

Todd Miller This is true. Jack Peddle is a real unsung (undersung?) hero of the computer revolution

[@laposat]

@@oldestgamer True and Microsoft stole DOS from IBM...they were all marketers not scientists.

[@RRSYSinfo]

Now this is old school. Thanks uploaded

[@arifeldman6365]

At the time, the ST and Amiga were way ahead of IBM and even what Apple offered. The Mac II was the closest thing in terms of performance and capability but cost as much as a car.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

The Mac II blew away the competition for what it was designed to do and the cost of the machine was trivial to the customer base that bought them. The PC clone market rapidly caught up by the close of the 80s and by the early 90s it was an inertia that had no stop to it. Meanwhile, the Amiga held tightly to its 1985 heritage, never moving forward.

[@garaschneider4808]

18:22 HAHA some things never change.

[@massimilianomax2161]

I still have one!!!!!

[@LuckyPotatoKat]

I really love Tramiel era Atari and the ST, but good god those cheap capacitors are finally coming back to bite us in the ass ;~;

[@mjp29]

The C128 was only used in C64 mode to play games by most consumers.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Yes it was a bad misstake as Amiga was the real succesor, but all thus plus/4 and c128 was what they was used to do, different computers with dufferent prices.

[@oldtwins]

+Agentum Silwer Silwer Problem was that to get the real power of the 128 with its fast 1571 drive and 80 column RGB display, you ended up paying nearly as much as just buying an Amiga 500. The 128 was a really nice upgrade from the antiquated C64, but the A500 was a machine at another level altogether. So if you had the money for an upgrade, you went to the Amiga. I remember the few that went to the 128 route and you'd see them have buyer's remorse after interacting with an Amiga. Not long after, they sold their 128 and never looked back.

[@Ichinin]

That's not true. I used it a month ago (September 2017) to try out CP/M for the first time ever :D

[@VSigma725]

One of Commodore's biggest mistakes, imo, was not launching the Amiga line with the A500 in 1985. By not having an affordable Amiga right out of the gate, they gave Atari the better part of a 2 year sales lead in Europe and to a much lesser extent the US (since the 520ST was a lot cheaper than the Amiga 1000).

[@oldestgamer]

@@oldtwins Yep, that was me, although it was the ST for me, much more useful for business with a lot of game play as well.

[@TheSocialGamer]

Jack Tramiel interview start 4:17

[@marinvidovic763]

History happening just in front of our Eyes. Thanks for sharing !!! ... just typing this comment on my Galaxy celular/ tablet, A ceramic tile size device ... ... that replaced : *a computer, * a laptop, * a telephone, *a TV, * a DVD player , * CD Player, * a calculator, * a map and a compass * a radio , local & overseas, * a photoaparatus * a camera ... I just cant stop... thinking of devices that are inside this "ceramic tile " (*brick), .. ! This would shock even Jack and Gary ... lol. ... and ...yet ...Look at the letter from Nikola Tesla ...from the beginning of the XX Century. He predicted all this exactly.

[@NuntiusLegis]

But it doesn't have: * keyboard * decently sized monitor * graphical characters * BASIC being the UI * programmable synthesizer * user's guide teaching you computer basics and programming * joystick ports * ability to use magnetic tape, which is the proper storage medium for any respectable computer, just watch any 50s -90s SciFi movie * ability to have a green monochrome monitor connected, which is the proper display device for any respectable computer, just watch The Matrix * boot time of two seconds * the history of being the computer that controlled the airborne telescope that proved the rings of Uranus So I won't sell my C64. :-)

[@NTRSN-Archive]

What for modular analogue synthesizer is this on video close to the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 .?

[@arasb3258]

9:15 That GUI, what year is that?

[@DeckerFI]

4:47 This Jack fellow seems like a nice guy. Gee, I wonder what it would be like to work for him.

[@MrKenrhodes]

LOL Jack was not a nice person. He was a harsh taskmaster and ruthless competitor. I bought 3 of his computers. Loved them. 1040ST was my favorite.

[@timothylegg]

I'd do a year for free just to have him on my resume as my boss and for the skills I develop. Money isn't everything. Being part of a good thing that upsets a market is the stuff dreams are made of.

[@JM20282]

Since Atari is coming back to the console market maybe they should come back to the computer market

[@thealaskan1635]

Too expensive. It would be neat though. A next generation AMIGA. I don't care what Commodore fans say. The AMIGA is an ATARI machine. It had ATARI chips in the motherboard.

[@ErectedGasCan]

18:15 How the hell did he do that? With those spectacles, the screen must have been like a mile away! 😅

[@Gorilla_Jones]

Hey, its Leonard! What year was this? Have fond memories of visiting Atari. Leonard is still part of our Facebook Jaguar group and stops in from time to time.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Business is war!!! :-) Still he did alot right for Commodore when computers was made not to upgrade but to shift systems, like later did with this Atari ST, its lika a vic20 or a c64 but 16 bit not much is possible to upgrade etc. But everything was changing and Atari computers died.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Pretty much. The pre-packaged, non-upgradable computer was on its way out, especially as the IBM cloned with their expansion slots moved in.

[@NuntiusLegis]

@@jesuszamora6949 The cartridge slot of the C64 is quite similar in functionality for upgrades to the expansion slot of the IBM clones, and it would have been possible to build a 16-bit-computer backwartds-compatible with the C64, sadly Commodore missed the occasion.

[@mjp29]

The Commodore 128 was largely a failure. I don't recall any software titles, although I'm sure there were a few, I don't recall any software sold just for the Commodore 128. Largely, the Commodore 128 was used in C-64 mode only, to run and play the software for the Commodore 64.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Well I had the 128D for a short while and the only thing I used it for was 80 column terminal programs. It was quite amazing though (compared to a C64), since text character mode was razor sharp, fast scrolling, and did ANSI graphics that were the rage for online usage at the time. Never used 128 specific functions for anything else, other than a few whimsical basic programs.

[@BorayMusic]

Well, if 5.7 million units sold is a failure...

[@REALsnstruthers]

@@BorayMusic it was a failure in terms of its architecture; next-to-no software houses supported the 128’s extended features, instead supporting the bog-standard 64

[@8BitNaptime]

Pretty much, although GEOS for the 128 was great.

[@berczigabor]

4:05 Printer spitting out a pre-printed piece of paper, which was definitely not printed with it. Marketing as usual.

[@julitomovil]

Atari Forever ✌🏻

[@RRSYSinfo]

When jack talks about Japanese does he mean Nintendo (without advertising)

[@jesuszamora6949]

No, he's talking the MSX.

[@thealaskan1635]

Jesus Zamora no Nintendo had a deal that fell thru w/Atari before he bought it

[@josuemonge963]

RRSYS.info - Roulette Prediction he meant computers not consoles

[@oldtwinsna8347]

He was talking about the personal computer market. At this time the Japanese were producing a lot of high quality semi conductors (which by the way, have a reputation today of being super well made in the retro computer market) but not really piecing it together into full product lines. There weren't many viable 8 bit computers from them, but they later produced a lot of good quality portable computer products. But most of their success was out of the box stuff, like sound cards, digital imaging, and of course the wild success of the gaming consoles to come.

[@than0zZ]

nice hair stewie!

[@petewheeler7283]

😂😂😂

[@michaelstevens630]

I see the software being GEM - Oh.... Jack & Son were funny.

[@MS-ho9wq]

16:44 Never came out :-(

[@arasb3258]

1984 $800.00 = $1,984.07 in 2019! Weird?!

[@RWSCOTT]

Tramiel was a fascinating character. Smart, successful, domineering & unscrupulous as hell.

[@gower1973]

Worlds first laptop at 17.00?

[@NuntiusLegis]

A prototype that never went to market because of a bad management decision.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Funy thing, he is having problems with the cheap useless ST mouse here, and it still was with them till the end with the Falcon ;-)

[@pipschannel1222]

I know right? When Leonard uses it, he's like "come on you piece of crap!" :-) So even brand new, they were useless haha! While I'm a Amiga worshipper in every way possible, I still think the ST is a very nice machine. If only they had used a different mouse and relocated those stupid joystick/mouse ports ;-)

[@thealaskan1635]

@@pipschannel1222 The AMIGA is an ATARI machine too

[@pipschannel1222]

@@thealaskan1635 Interesting comment. Would you like to elaborate on that?

[@thealaskan1635]

@@pipschannel1222 the AMIGA developers used ATARI chips in the AMIGA design. They were still developing when ATARI was still owned by Warner Bros. Warner Bros. did a stupid decision selling ATARI. At the time ATARI was still insanely valuable with their patents. ALL game console game controllers are made one way or the other with ATARI patents. It would've been nice to see Warner Bros. release an ATARI AMIGA. The AMIGA developers showed Jack Tramiel the AMIGA and Jack being an asshole CEO offered them bottom dollar for it. Jack screwed himself by doing so

[@pipschannel1222]

@@thealaskan1635 I don't know where you got this information but I think you misinterpret how Amiga inc. was formed. Amiga inc, originally called Hi-Toro was formed by Jay Miner, a former Atari staff member and Atari tried to take over Amiga inc. by investing in them while they struggled. However, technically the Amiga design has nothing to do with Atari and their chipsets. The only thing in common is the Motorola 68000 CPU. Lorraine's custom chipset however (the original Amiga design) was built from the ground up and has nothing to do with Atari. Totally different machines.

[@RetroDawn]

Turn on comments and then 18:43 is very funny.

[@10p6]

"Jack Tramiel. He created Commodore and in the process killed Atari..."

[@thealaskan1635]

No. He killed ATARI by bad management. For one thing, he let the AMIGA go by trying to screw the developers.

[@REALsnstruthers]

@@thealaskan1635 wrong; atari’s previous owners tried to screw the amiga over; commodore bought out amiga only a short bit after tramiel took over, and although tramiel did sue them over it, he was instead more interested in getting the st developed.

[@jason50146]

American made electronics. The world has changed a lot.

[@TookMe20min2findThis]

"...it's Apple that is most likely to be hurt by Atari.." shouldn't have bought that cheap crystal ball.

[@thealaskan1635]

Ken ded Atari did do some damage. A computer more powerful than a Mac and cheaper too. In color even. It was the number one PC in the music industry for quite a few years because of the built in MIDI interface

[@storerestore]

Well, it was true in the short term, which is really all you can expect of a crystal ball predicting the future of the personal computer market in the 80s. I don't think Atari ST sales ever exceeded Macintosh sales, but it's fair to say that it would have sold more if it wasn't for its cheaper and technologically superior contemporaries.

[@storerestore]

Sure, but the hit Apple took from them was probably exactly in the market segments that that kind of design would appeal to. I mean, if your kid wanted a computer, even an Apple II was a better option than the Macintosh in terms of price, educational software, games and programming, at least for a significant portion of the original Mac's lifetime. This is why the Commodore 64 outsold the Macintosh, Atari ST and Amiga until 90s, because it was a cheap and fun enough color computer to serve as some kid's first machine as a Christmas present long after more sophisticated options were available. Of course IBM pretty much ate them all up eventually before Apple became significantly relevant again. By then Commodore and Atari had died off, and the fact that Apple at all lived through these times is a testament to how well they captured the original Macintosh' market, while Commodore and Atari were pushed out of their market segments by better and better video game systems with higher quality games due to licensing requirements, and the fact that the IBM clones got a lot faster, got VGA, got Sound Blasters etc.

[@storerestore]

I doubt that the IBM PC would have taken a second place to the Macintosh for the sake of color and that particular niche only, simply because the IBM PC was a modular, open architecture that had existed for a long time already of which clones and tons of productivity software and even games was already available. Ironically, IBM seemed to have taken a hint from the success of the Apple II design and made their PC expandable using a standardized bus interface, while Apple didn't. You didn't have to buy another IBM clone to get a graphics or sound card. You just installed another ISA card. It took Apple until 1987 to figure out that Jobs' and Raskin's idea of a serious computer as an opaque appliance was too early and realize a similar concept with the Mac II. Too little, too late, since IBM PC (and compatibles) market share was an order of magnitude greater than that of the Macintosh by then, and the PS/2 with VGA graphics was out the same year. So yeah, the Macintosh was great for the type of work you mention, but then again pretty much only that. For general business software, games, animation etc. there were better alternatives. In my opinion, what killed very nearly killed Apple (and Commodore, Atari and pretty much every other consumer PC company) was the IBM PC architecture which although not particularly sexy or innovative is the reason a modern PC still goes through a 16-bit mode when booting and can still run DOS.

[@storerestore]

So to summarize the would-haves of your last two posts, you think that Apple would have conquered the PC market if they'd launched early with a color computer for less money (by licensing the design to third parties) while offering better developer support. That might be true, but it's far from a simple circumstance. You're describing an entirely different computer and an entirely different business model. The Macintosh line of computers never held anything near the market share of the IBM PC, which was already growing in popularity at a faster rate than any other computer in the mid-80s. Software and hardware peripheral support for the IBM machines was excellent at the time the Macintosh launched. I agree that there are some areas the Macintosh excelled in, but I think that's really the only way it could have stayed in the market. I doubt that it was their goal at the time to be market leaders. It was meant as a computer that regular consumers could use without consulting an arcane list of written commands to perform abstract operations, which was really new ground at the time. There are strong merits to the path it took.

[@averageo2343]

Holy fuck that comb-over is something fierce

[@ufsteropolstero6014]

You can see Jack's pretty pissed off about the Japanese back then. He'd be furious about the Chinese today. (The reason he's upset is his calculator business was pretty much destroyed by the Japanese)

[@NuntiusLegis]

He was not upset because he owned them, as he said. His calculator business was almost destroyed by Texas Instruments, as a revenge he completely destroyed their computer division.

[@laposat]

Wow, Atari will knock out Apple and IBM...what a crystal ball...I have been in the IT for 38 years and never worked on an Atari...

[@timmyt1232]

That's too bad. Atari was popular back in the day. Apple and Atari were in the same boat, but Bill Gates bailed out Apple.

[@NuntiusLegis]

Considering the value for money, I wouldn't be surprised if people bought more Ataris then Apples and IBMs at the time, as poeple bought more Commodores than Apples and IBMs when he ran that company.

[@RamLaska]

9:40 "a color macintosh" two years before Apple made a color Macintosh (the Macintosh II).