Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!IanS
From: IanS@cup.portal.com (Ian Matthew Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: What an Atarian is
Message-ID: <16417@cup.portal.com>
Date: 30 Mar 89 01:04:52 GMT
References: <22152@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <10156@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 31

mars@athena.mit.edu (Anita) writes...

>... I know have a serious commitment to the machine(not the company)
>and to the Hacker Ethic in its purest form(joy of computers for the
>sake of computing).  What motivated all you ST users to buy the...

:-)
Wow, somone who knows of the "Hacker Ethic".  We should form a club. :-)
:-)

>...followed Atari's every move.  I planned to buy an Amiga when Atari
>still retained control of it, but didn't purely because the name Atari
>wasn't on it.  When the ST came out, I snatched mine up.  That is...

What happend was that a group of people RJ Miner (designed the 400-
and 800), Dale Luck, and others got together to design a computer.
They were doing great but the computer market fell out then (1983-85)
and they had to sell.  So they went to Sears, Sony, Philips, Apple,
and finaly Atari.  Atari offered $1 a share and $500,000 in cash.
Atari also was not interested in the people, just the hardware. So
they took the 500 thousand on the idea that Atari would own the Amiga
if they did not pay back the money in 30 days.  On day 26 Commodore
called and made them an offer of $4 a share. So 3 days later they
finally decided on an offer of $4.25 a share and Commodore would hire
them on as programmers.  On day 30 Dave Morris presented Jack Tramiel
with a $500,000 check from Commodore and Amiga became the property of
Commodore.

No flame, just some information.

Ian_Matthew_Smith@cup.portal.com (IanS)