Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ptsfa!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!voder!apple!landon
From: landon@Apple.COM (Landon Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Gee whiz...
Message-ID: <7590@apple.Apple.Com>
Date: 8 Mar 88 06:14:47 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 50


Technical content: zero.
If ancient history bores you, please type 'n'.  I gotta flame:

>In article <345@nunki.usc.edu> rjung@castor.usc.edu (Robert Jung) writes:
>>  We know Jack Tramiel can make things move when he really wants to; Putting
>>together a prototype 68000 machine in six months is an amazing task.
>
>Yes, it would have been amazing, had it actually happened.  When Tramiel
>took over Atari, though, there were already people working on a 68000 machine,
>and had been for some time.  Those people were, essentially, the only
>ones that Tramiel kept when he purged the company.  While the final ST
>design might have had significant Tramiel influence (it looks it - it's
>cheap enough), it's pretty clear that the groundwork had been laid before
>he ever came on the scene.

In my younger years I would have sprouted bright blue actinic sparks
and gone for an artery.  Instead I'll just say that "I was there, and
you were not."  We did SO do it in six months.  I'm sure it shows.

(At one early point, the ST was going to be a National 16016 or something.
The ST was essentially designed by Tramiel Technologies Ltd (TTL), oh, days
and weeks -- maybe even a whole month -- before KUJ signed the Warner deal).


When the Flying Tramiel Bros. took over the company, I was a mere (mere?)
video-game writer in a management-impoverished (though manager-rich) part
of the 8-bit games group.  One fine, black day Leonard Tramiel and John
Feagans strode into the coin-op engineering building, hatchets and hoods
and clipboards in hand.  While they were walking down the corridor, a voice
cried out over the announcment system:

	"Imperial storm-troopers have entered the base!  Imperial
	 storm-troopers have entered the base!"

We each had a two-minute interview to save our jobs.  FTB kept fourteen out
of sixty or so engineers.  Very entertaining.  I don't think any of us had
much 68000 experience; they were looking for slaves.  In some respects the
people who were layed-off were the lucky ones....


-Landon

[Disclaimer: Leonard Tramiel and John Feagans are perfectly nice people who
are NOT storm-troopers and who would NOT do anything nasty to anyone else
with a hatchet, though perhaps with a clipboard... :-)]

-- 

I speak for me.