Don't really know, there is a great book on Commodore that came out not
long ago... I'm an Atari guy ;-)
Brent Hilpert wrote:
On 2012 Apr 11, at 11:09 AM, Curt @ Atari Museum
wrote:
Not entirely accurate:
"One of Tramiel's first acts after forming Atari Corp. was to fire
most of Atari's remaining staff and cancel almost all ongoing
projects in order to review their continued viability. It was during
this time in late July that Tramiel's representatives discovered the
original Atari Inc./Amiga contract. "
Jack never fired anyone, his company - TTL (Tramiel Technologies
Limited) bought assets and IP from Warner as well as the Atari name
and logo. Warner retained the remainder of the company as well as
the employee's. Jack spent 2 weeks interviewing and HIRING Atari
employee's to work at TTL which was renamed Atari Corp, so the
Warner-Atari employees came over to work at a new company called
Atari Corp. Those who weren't selected, Warner fired them...
"Tramiels representatives..." no, Tramiels son - Leonard Tramiel
found the cashed check to Amiga for $500,000 from Mar 3, 1984 and
then located the contract between Atari and Amiga for the $500K
advance to continue the chip work and development of the Amiga while
giving Atari engineers access to the technical information as well as
"tape outs" located in an Escrow account at a bank until Amiga
delivered the finished chips. The full details, including David
Morse's own court testimony will be in our 2nd Atari History book in
December called "Business is War: Atari Corp." There was a LOT
more going on behind the scene's then people realize and RJ Mical's
complete mis-recounting of the story which he publicly admits "do you
want the truth or a good story, I prefer a good story" are completely
corrected in the book....
I never followed the details of the intertwined Commodore/Atari
business history, but the part I've never really heard discussed much
is how Commodore successfully transitioned from calculators to
personal computers. Calculator manufactures were dropping like flies
in the mid-70's as calculators became a low-cost commodity business,
Commodore was one of the few that managed to migrate to and thrive in
a new business and market. Strikes me it took some astuteness to
accomplish that.