
The Jackintosh: A Real GEM – Remembering the Atari ST - empressplay
https://paleotronic.com/2018/07/08/the-jackintosh-a-real-gem-remembering-the-atari-st/
======
marktangotango
Shawn Hargreaves first created the allegro game library on Atari st that was
eventually ported to dos, windows and everything else. It had GUI framework
inspired by GEM. That was my gateway drug for software development. Really
straight forward and easy to comprehend stuff. We’ve lost a lot imo.

~~~
jchw
Maturity comes with a lot of costs. Try making a lightweight GUI framework
that supports accessibility, bidirectional text, IME, multiple and different
kinds of pointing devices, renders all kinds of Unicode script, DPI scaling,
hardware acceleration, and so much more...

I absolutely miss those days, but only a little :) I just shrug and use Qt and
be happy that at the very least, after I've fought the framework for a couple
hours, an incredible amount of engineering is done on such difficult problems
without me needing to try to solve them on my own in each project.

~~~
badsectoracula
The vast majority of the time you don't need all (or most of) that stuff
though. None of the applications i actually use take any advantage of
accessibility (i do not need it), bidirectional text (most all of the text i
see and write is in English and all of it is in left-to-right order), IME (i
do not write in any language that needs this), multiple pointing devices (i
only have a single mouse), all kinds of unicode script (as i said most of the
text is in English, but i'll have a note on that below), DPI scaling (i prefer
1:1 mapping of units to pixels ratio and none of my monitors are hidpi and i
plan on avoiding getting one as long as it is technically possible since i
want to have the pixels visible), hardware acceleration (i do not think any
GUI toolkit that uses traditional buttons/checkboxes/inputfields/sliders/etc
style uses hardware acceleration, at least in the modern sense where it means
using 3D hardware as opposed to the older 2D acceleration - some toolkits that
try to reinvent Flash are probably using 3D acceleration more but i do not use
any programs that use those) or any "much more".

The note i mentioned above and a small exception is unicode support, but that
is externally imposed: sometimes i download files (like an album i bought on
bandcamp) that use unicode characters which display weirdly if the program you
use cannot handle them. But beyond that, no real need for it and this is only
in a few types of programs.

Of course my needs are not the same as others' needs, but i am "paying" for
stuff i do not use nor need, both in terms of complexity and actual resources.

~~~
robin_reala
That’s the case for any user though. If you’re Japanese and only ever read
documents in Japanese then Shift-JIS is all you need and UTF-8 is a waste of
bytes. If you use a screen reader then there’s an immediate extraneous cost to
your laptop or mobile phone in the form of a screen and a GPU.

The benefit though is interoperability and economies of scale. And besides,
another way of saying ‘not disabled’ is ‘temporarily abled’. Who knows when
you’ll need assistive tech (if ever), but you’ll appreciate the effort that’s
been put into the ecosystem when you do.

~~~
badsectoracula
> That’s the case for any user though. If you’re Japanese and only ever read
> documents in Japanese then Shift-JIS is all you need and UTF-8 is a waste of
> bytes.

Yes, i do not see the issue with it though - remember that i talked about the
case where i explicitly do not care about interoperability, which is pretty
much all the time. I do not see the problem to use specialized software in the
rare cases where i'd need such interoperability (and again, i'm talking about
myself here, not about everyone, although i suspect a lot of people rarely
care about more than a single language - and note that i'm not a native
English speaker).

> . If you use a screen reader then there’s an immediate extraneous cost to
> your laptop or mobile phone in the form of a screen and a GPU.

I'm not sure i follow, what sort of cost are you talking about?

> The benefit though is interoperability and economies of scale.

Similarly, i do not follow. I am talking about the complexity and resources
needed by a GUI system.

> And besides, another way of saying ‘not disabled’ is ‘temporarily abled’.
> Who knows when you’ll need assistive tech (if ever)

I may also need better interoperability or any of the other features mentioned
above, it isn't like my current needs are written in stone, but that is an
issue to be solved when needed, if needed.

~~~
grkvlt
I remember Microsoft did a study on Word usage after everyone complained of
bloat and the huge number of unwanted features, it turned out that each user
only used maybe 5% of the features, but it was a _different_ 5% for each user.
Its the same here. Sure, you only use ASCII and don't care about RTL text or
screen readers, and that would be great if the vendors were writing software
only for your sole use. But they're not, because they need to fund development
of the software by selling as many copies as possible to many different
users...

~~~
badsectoracula
I fully understand that which is exactly why i wrote "and again, i'm talking
about myself here, not about everyone". That doesn't mean i like it though.

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WheelsAtLarge
I recently read a book about Commodore's downfall and it's clear that its
disappearance was due to a lack of future vision and future planning in Jack
Tramiel's part. He got lucky with the Commodore 64 and was looking for the
next big hit. Rather than to develop the company while keeping its customers
happy, he focused on short-term profits. He had no idea what to develop for
the company's customers. So he hoped a new hit would save the company.

Commodore owned the market for home computers. Commodore's customers would
have stayed loyal to the company if they could have gotten a product that
moved the Commodore technology forward but they could not advance the
technology. They saw sales decline and decided to find another hit rather than
to advance the technology.

When he moved on to Atari he developed a great machine but he just did not
know how to move forward the same way he did not know with Commodore.

~~~
laumars
It's easy to Tramiel for not having vision but what you're describing simply
wasn't a thing in that era. Computers were silos which where hardware
incompatible with one another. And the few instances where a next gen machine
was build with support for its predecessors, that generally harmed the
successor more than helped as fewer developers wrote bespoke software for the
newer platform (why would you when you could target all versions of the
product line instead of just the lastest machine?). However that didn't stop
Atari from having a go with the many revisions of the ST and, later, the
Falcon.

Plus the ST and C64 were largely sold as games machines (yes, I'm aware of the
popularity of using the ST as a MIDI sequencer etc) and consoles of that era
didn't follow an upgrade path either (baring the Atari 7800 being largely
hardware compatible with the 2600 but the 7800 wasn't exactly a success
because of that).

Many accounts of history actually look more favourably on Jack Tramiel as they
argue that had the American Commedore offices taken his lead (like the
European division did) and sold the Amiga in toy stores as well as the usual
places - as the Atari ST was sold in Toys R Us across Europe - then the Amiga
might not have flopped in the US. And there is good reason to believe
Tramiel's strategy worked as the ST was a massive hit and the Amiga had a lot
more success in Europe and America after the European division of Commedore
started copying Tramiel's business strategy.

Ultimately though, few hardware manufacturers from that era survived. Even
Apple nearly went under (several times in fact, Microsoft had to bail them out
on one occasion just to avoid a desktop monopoly). And IBM didn't exactly do
well out of upgradeable machines as the market just got flooded with cheap
clones which IBM got no cut from. So it's very easy to blame Tramiel with
hindsight but in reality he was one of the few which had multiple successes.

~~~
pjmlp
> Computers were silos which where hardware incompatible with one another.

Current OEMs seem to be quite willing to return to those days, as solution to
their thin razor margins now with the rise of mobile computing.

~~~
jbverschoor
The MSX was manufactured by a lot of companies.

~~~
pjmlp
And a market failure outside Japan, as far as I can recall.

~~~
mepian
It was rather popular in Russia for a while.

~~~
Fins
And Brazil, IIRC.

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GeekyBear
I worked at a computer/software store in the mall that sold the Atari ST (and
other computers of the era) while I was in college.

I can still remember the reaction you would get when you told people whose
Ataris had gone haywire that the quick fix for units whose chips were coming
unseated from the motherboard was to pick the computer up, hold it level, and
then drop it from about a four inch height.

~~~
tvmalsv
I used to support a product with a similar fix. We had a bunch of desktop PCs
in the field that were only used from January through April of each year, and
usually powered-down the other eight months.

Apparently, after several months of no use, the hard drive bearings had a
tendency to stick, and the temporary solution that often worked was to have
the client lift the front of the box a few inches off the desk and let it
drop, unseizing the bearing.

A lot of reactions along the lines of "I can't believe that worked!"

~~~
bitwize
Ah, the good old ST-506 and its sticky bearing of fail. My IT teacher in high
school showed me his fix -- rapping the back of the drive's casing with the
rear end of a screwdriver.

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jhbadger
It's kind of ironic that the Atari ST was developed in part by a number of ex-
Commodore people, while the Commodore Amiga was likewise developed in part by
a number of ex-Atari people.

~~~
indigodaddy
Source for the latter claim?

~~~
pkaye
From Wikipedia at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner)

>In the early 1980s, Jay, along with other Atari staffers, had become fed up
with management and decamped. They set up another chipset project under a new
company in Santa Clara, called Hi-Toro (later renamed to Amiga Corporation),
where they could have creative freedom.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The original Amiga staffers were not pleased with Commodore's leadership after
the buyout. Early versions of AmigaOS had an Easter egg where you could get it
to display "We made the Amiga...and Commodore fucked it up!"

Later on it was quietly changed to "Commodore: A Tradition Of Excellence" or
something along those lines.

------
a-dub
This machine was my gateway drug. Dirt cheap and awesome. GFA Basic and MicroC
(?) were really fun. Also programmable MIDI ports.

Also, home to one of the first multiplayer networked first person shooters
ever:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze)

~~~
le-mark
Nice, I had not heard of GFA Basic. I'm somewhat of a BASIC afficiando, what
was most compelling about it, in your opinion (those who used it?)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFA_BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFA_BASIC)

~~~
spiralx
Proper code blocks, record types, typed variables, auto-indenting editor,
blazingly fast interpreter, built-in commands for OS and hardware features,
functions and subroutines, an actual compiler if you wanted it... It was far
beyond what any other BASIC could offer, and made the jump to Turbo Pascal
relatively easy.

------
Fins
I've earned a decent living doing DTP on Ataris (1040STFM first, TT030 later)
all the way through 1995 or so. Back then there were some DTP/graphics
software that was miles ahead of anything available on Mac,let alone PC back
then. I haven't really followed that field closely since then, but it seems
some of the features Calamus or Didot had back then still aren't available in
mainstream packages even now...

~~~
skissane
> but it seems some of the features Calamus or Didot had back then still
> aren't available in mainstream packages even now

What specific features are you talking about?

~~~
jacquesm
They actually worked in the way you'd expect them to work.

For the life of me I still can't get two lines of text to line up in almost
every other package, it is most frustrating. Present day DTP/Layout software
makes me long for either ATEX or typewriters.

------
GeekyBear
There's a pretty good oral history of the founding of the company and it's
early years that was posted this weekend:

[https://medium.com/s/story/ataris-hard-partying-origin-
story...](https://medium.com/s/story/ataris-hard-partying-origin-story-an-
oral-history-c438b0ce9440)

------
ggm
I have this memory of The University of York (uk) compsci getting these and
doing truly awesome stuff. But, we had like whitechapels, and Suns, and
Decstations, and Perq, and.. these tiny odd boxes with slidy-sideways function
keys.. wut? WhuT???? And then people were coding sprites, and stuff which
looked like what became mgr -> plan9 and amazing stuff.

I missed out. I totally did _not_ get it, or the zeitgeist. The road not
taken. Damn.

------
thomasfl
I remember creating a small widget application for Atari ST that drawed
rounded corners on the screen to make it look more like Macintosh. Together
with the Geneva font, it was very similar to Macintosh. It was a great
computer.

~~~
robin_reala
For more info on the thinking behind the original Mac roundrects design:
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt)

------
bmaupin
For more interesting reads on the Atari ST, I recommend The Digital
Antiquarian:

[https://www.filfre.net/tag/atari-st/](https://www.filfre.net/tag/atari-st/)

------
NeedMoreTea
Ah, GEM. I always got stuck at _why three colours?_ You're using 2 bits depth,
why not give people the fourth colour!

~~~
bluedino
Having that fourth color (in CGA that would be magenta) makes things look
terrible. It was an artistic decision to have black, white, and a single
color.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
That makes no sense - the fourth colour could have been any in the ST palette.
Choose appropriately for artistic reasons. Pick either a highlight colour
(orange as on the Amiga and whatever early Unix desktop I once used), or a
complementary colour (maybe grey?).

CGA was awful for many reasons, one of which was that all colours were fixed.

------
teddyh
Since articles nowadays seem to like talking about things instead of showing
them, here are some actual screenshots:

[http://toastytech.com/guis/tos.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/tos.html)

------
walrus01
Question, can the PC/x86 version of GEOS run in QEMU or Virtualbox? Or does it
directly address 80286 hardware in such a way that it's not easy to emulate?

~~~
paride5745
OpenGEM is included in FreeDOS:"
[http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=opengem](http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=opengem)

~~~
paride5745
Fixed link: [https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-
stuff/freedos/files/dis...](https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-
stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/opengem.html)

~~~
digi_owl
Hmm, now to find a web browser...

