Author: renegade (adsl.link-connect.net.uk)
Date: 09-20-2008 00:31
Atari Eagle Project.
Many years ago I was briefly involved in a project to create a successor to the Atari Falcon, it started as the TS or SS but that sounded wrong so the thought was to go from Sparrow – Falcon – Eagle (The Sparrow was dropped before market because the Falcon project progressed quicker) anyway that was the thinking behind the name. Hopefully there’s a couple of people still reading, bear with me please!! At the time the project fell flat on its face due to legal restrictions over copyrights etc etc.
Anyway I am testing the waters to see if there is any support for such a project to be brought to life, and to see what sort of team can be built up to make it a possibility in any way.
The project is a massive one that will need to be done in many stages. It entirely depends on what sort of following the Atari scene still has, I admit I have been out of the loop for a while so I have lost most of my contacts, looking around the various sites there does appear to be still a lot of support out there.
The Aims were originally to begin by updating TOS to a decent modern standard, probably in an emulation mode in windoze then to work up to a situation where TOS will be able to support a new GEM as a standalone OS on a standardised system made up of PC bits. Pretty much how the Apple Macs now run. At the end of the day the Mac is pretty much a PC with a different OS but the devices are standard across the range, reducing the need for 1000’s of drivers etc which is why people say ‘Macs just work’ and ‘PC’s are a pain in the ass!’
As an end user on an ST you knew where you stood. You bought a program for it and it worked. No min specs (apart from memory, but not often. Or only STE compatible). As a developer it was a challenge to write software that runs on the system, not wait for a system to come along that would run it!! I used to write routines for the STE and if they were too slow had to go back and optimise them until they were fast enough. 99% of the time it was possible to do what was asked. I have since done developing software on the PC etc. and if it ran a bit slow they just upped the minimum spec of the machine. We want to get back to those ways of thinking.
Imagine the power you could have without the overheads of windows or the other OS’s, have the programs you need running without all off the crap running in the background!!
The ideal is to get a boot option to boot to TOS/GEM on a standardised PC base, which would only need to be a low end PC option with optimised programming allowing for mass users to afford the system but all of the performance and more of the top end PC user. A good old Atari type system.
Obviously this is a massive project and may never get off the ground, but with developers and user support it may just have a slim chance. It is going to take a lot of help and the German support is probably critical as Atari would probably have died earlier if it hadn’t been for the support from over there. So if anyone can translate this to German and pass it on that would be appreciated.
Anyone wanting to contribute their time to the project or even just log support to give us some idea of the numbers behind this plan please email the following address: atari_eagle@hotmail.com
Thanks for reading, hope to hear from you soon!! Please spread the word!!
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