[rescue] fwd: Linux Foundation Prepares For Microsoft's Legal Action

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 01:39:57AM +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
>> I know a TV studio had a room full of them to do specialty graphics for
>> a TV show, and many found themselves into use as Video titling machines.
>> To be honest, I never watched that show, I think it was about submarines.
> 
> Quite a few TV shows in fact (with the Video Toaster).  Also DS9, etc.
> There are a number of places *still using* Video Toaster setups.

I believe parts of Max Headroom were done on an Amiga as well.

It was a neat machine, but very, very quirky, and some of the hardware design
after the first work from Miner was just plain braindead.

Atari did the same thing with the TT030 and the Falcon 030.  Wonderful
machines, and easily a challenge to any Amiga, but once again, they didn't
produce the full prototype and cut just enough features to make it frustrating
to work with.

That said, the Falcon was a nice machine.  It was still actively used in
Germany until the early 2000s.  Germany was pretty big on Atari, the whole
product line, and the Amiga as well, which after all was really an Atari.

Atari pretty much abandoned the US market and focused on Europe in the years
before their final death.

Germany is also a place where you still see a lot of Apple II systems, and at
least two companies are making hardware for Apple and Atari 8-bit systems.

Some highlights were the Atari Transputer, which as far as I know was never
sold outside of Ireland, and the production run was very short.  I talked to a
guy who has one maxxed out with T800s.  He also had the very rare 1400 and
1450XLD 8-bit systems, and a 1090XL expansion bus from the late Warner period,
which inexplicably were never produced in large numbers, and canceled quickly.

The Atari has an expansion bus much like the Apple II, but for some reason
neither Atari nor anyone else ever got serious about using it.

Those that did, didn't create a usable plug-in bus, they just used it for
a single device, usually a multi-I/O box.

If the Atari 8-bit systems had had real 80 column support, I'd probably never
have gotten rid of mine.  Likewise I'd have kept an Apple II around for years
if it had better graphics like the Atari.

Now I'm buying them again... :)




-- 
shannon          | Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. -- Unknown