I was reading on wired, and came over a post by Dave Haynie. Which would be a pretty good source in any case. Gave some elements about commodore vs atari which clarified a bit for me. so I share it here if anyone else have interest (probably well known for many too). I knew the atari vs commodore switch, but not about the cp/m and atari.
source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/ms-patent/
The Atari STwas years after Steve Jobs had any dealings with Atari. In fact, it didn't originate at all within Atari. In 1984, Jack Tramiel, CEO of Commodore, left after a power struggle over the company's future. Along with him went a group of Commodore Engineers.. in fact a skunk works group that had been looking at taking the company's Commodore 900 architecture to the 68000.
Jack wasn't ready to give up the PC biz, and the old Atari was dying fast. Tramiel became part of the drama, Atari was split it two, with the gaming going one way (to Warner Bros), the computers going to the Tramiels.
In a curious turn-about, this lead Atari to Amiga, Inc.... as small computing startup. Under Jack, Atari was trying to let them default on a loan, which would have left Jack in control of the 80s most innovative computer platform. But Commodore came in, last minute, and bought Amiga, Inc.
That left Atari to finish up the project they swiped from Commodore, a simplified C900 using the 68K instead of the Z8000, in an Atari/Commodore style CPU + keyboard -- the ST. Atari had no ability to put out their own OS + GUI, but they were able to more or less buy off-the-shelf from Digital Research. Yup, the CP/M guys, who missed the boat on the IBM PC a few years before. They had written a graphical shell for MS-DOS, called GEM. Which is why the ST doesn't run CPM-68K, but a thing called GEMDOS.
See since GEM ran on MS-DOS, not any version of CP/M, and in the usual tail-wagging-dog fashion of these GUIs, DRI found it easier to rewrite CP/M as an MS-DOS clone.. at least enough of a clone to run GEM. Including use of the FAT filesystem and most other everyday MS-DOS-isms.
So yeah... makes no sense to say Amigas were involved, AmigaOS was no more related to MS-DOS than Unix or MacOS. But the Atari ST was basically a 68K PC, just with standard UI, much as Windows eventually worked.
source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/ms-patent/
The Atari STwas years after Steve Jobs had any dealings with Atari. In fact, it didn't originate at all within Atari. In 1984, Jack Tramiel, CEO of Commodore, left after a power struggle over the company's future. Along with him went a group of Commodore Engineers.. in fact a skunk works group that had been looking at taking the company's Commodore 900 architecture to the 68000.
Jack wasn't ready to give up the PC biz, and the old Atari was dying fast. Tramiel became part of the drama, Atari was split it two, with the gaming going one way (to Warner Bros), the computers going to the Tramiels.
In a curious turn-about, this lead Atari to Amiga, Inc.... as small computing startup. Under Jack, Atari was trying to let them default on a loan, which would have left Jack in control of the 80s most innovative computer platform. But Commodore came in, last minute, and bought Amiga, Inc.
That left Atari to finish up the project they swiped from Commodore, a simplified C900 using the 68K instead of the Z8000, in an Atari/Commodore style CPU + keyboard -- the ST. Atari had no ability to put out their own OS + GUI, but they were able to more or less buy off-the-shelf from Digital Research. Yup, the CP/M guys, who missed the boat on the IBM PC a few years before. They had written a graphical shell for MS-DOS, called GEM. Which is why the ST doesn't run CPM-68K, but a thing called GEMDOS.
See since GEM ran on MS-DOS, not any version of CP/M, and in the usual tail-wagging-dog fashion of these GUIs, DRI found it easier to rewrite CP/M as an MS-DOS clone.. at least enough of a clone to run GEM. Including use of the FAT filesystem and most other everyday MS-DOS-isms.
So yeah... makes no sense to say Amigas were involved, AmigaOS was no more related to MS-DOS than Unix or MacOS. But the Atari ST was basically a 68K PC, just with standard UI, much as Windows eventually worked.
