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From: kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: New Atari machines (home UNIX at last?)
Message-ID: <262@vax2.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 12:38:51 EST
Article-I.D.: vax2.262
Posted: Fri Jan 18 12:38:51 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Jan-85 05:56:30 EST
Reply-To: kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth)
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 48

[go ahead bug, make my day]

Some notes on the 'possibility' of Atari marketing those new machines.

1.  Atari has been talking to National for years about the 32000.  When I
was talking to National, there was always this one particular company in
California who was going to produce a consumer machine based on the 32000.
Of course they could not tell me who it was, but it couldn't have been Apple
and they said (indirectly) it wasn't IBM sooo......  This doesn't mean Atari
couldn't use the 68020.  That's the neat thing about the 32-bit processors.
If you have a C compiler, they're all alike.

2.  A hard disk for $400 is quite reasonable.  Just because the IBM crowd
wants a minimum $1000 for a 10Mb disk doesn't mean that represents a
reasonable markup.  We were able to buy a 10Mb disk (drive+drive electronics
only) for $300 in quantity one.  If you want to talk about volumes of 500K
units/year I bet the price gets even lower.  Also, the consumer industry 
operates on a relatively narrow markup over factory cost.

    Apple can sell Macintoshes to the universities for $1000.  You can bet
they aren't selling at a loss.  The Atari's don't have an expensive high
quality CRT included either, so they should be cheaper.  The pricing is
reasonable, assuming a high volume product.

3.  What design to finance?  They bought the OS from DRI.  No development
there.  I bet they could even get DRI to do the port for them (wouldn't you,
for the kind of volume they could deliver?  Remember, this is the product
that could make CP/M-68K and GEM household words.)  Designing the PCB's is
not that big a deal, the plastic case couldn't cost more than $5 million if
it was the most intricate possible design.  Fancy gate arrays have design
times of a couple of man months and the production cost for prototypes is
really negligable for a company of Atari's size.  The only thing that could
get expensive is VLSI for things like fancy video and sound chips.  These
designs may have been proceeding for some time now (it is pretty clear they
have been) so unless Atari goes belly-up this morning they will not be
affected.

    Besides, remember Traniel fired most of the staff when he took over.  The
engineering design may have been nearly complete when he came in.  All Atari
has to worry about is keeping their current products profitable (even in
bankruptcy, the creditors won't close him down if it looks like he has turned
the corner and might pay them back).  

No, I think this product is coming.  I can hardly wait.
-- 
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurt