Hey all, just ran across this thread during a google search and thought I'd respond to a few statements made regarding the relationship between Amiga/Atari/Commodore et. al. I'm a professional industry historian and writer, and actually have access to the original court documents and many of the people involved.
Jack Tramiel resigned from Commodore and ended up running Atari.
No, what he did was simply buy the Consumer Division and fold that in to his own company (TTL) which he renamed Atari Corp. Warner's Atari Inc. and Tramiel's Atari Corp. were two different companies and in fact existed during the same time (on paper at least as Warner kept the Atari Inc. legal entity going to deal with lawsuits and other legalities). The confusion comes from Jacking seeking to portray his company as the continuation of the Atari brand (which it was), sometimes just referred to as "Atari".
When they ran out of money again, Tramiel (then at Atari) gave them some money with some very onerous conditions on the loan (can't look for a link now).
Unfortunately, that's not accurate and the source is usually RJ Mical's old storytelling speech. RJ wasn't directly involved with the negotiations, and on the larger claims (like confusing which Atari was which) I'm not sure why those were repeated wrong.
Tramiel never gave Amiga money. The Amiga deal (called the Mickey project internally) was with Warner's Atari Inc. Negotiations started that Fall of '83 and resulted in Atari Inc. giving Amiga a check that March of '84 as an "intent to sign the licensing agreement" payment. The check was not a loan, and was simply to guarantee Amiga's seriousness to pursue a licensing deal of Amiga technology with Atari Inc.
It also bought Atari access to Amiga's engineers and such, with teams on the Atari and Amiga side working together to help Atari develop a prototype console based around the yet to be finished VLSI custom chips, which they did over the Spring. The licensing agreement, to be signed in late June upon the delivery of the chips would be the following: Atari Inc. would pay $500,000 for each of the three first run chips delivered ($1.5 million total). Atari Inc. would then buy 1,000,000 preferred shares at $3 a share. The licensing itself would then entail a royalty payble to Amiga of $2 per chip used in any console or computer, and $15 in any coin-op. Amiga stipulated that Atari would be able to use it in a console first (which Atari had codenamed Mickey and planned to release that Fall) and coin first, with the console allowed to be expandable in to a computer in Spring of '85 with the addition of a keyboard and peripherals. A full fledged computer would not be allowed until '86, to give Amiga enough time to release and their own computer (which was planned for that Fall of '84) and spend time on the market.
Where the myth of Atari owning Amiga if they couldn't pay the loan back came from was this: After the signing of the initial contract and seed loan (which Atari didn't plan on seeing paid back), all documentation and later VLSI chip layouts were put in to escrow. Said documents were to be released to Atari upon signing of the licensing. If Amiga folded in the interim, they would get all the documents and full permission to manufacture said chips on their own without a license. The reason for this was because Amiga was in constant dire straights at the time and already had *4 other investors* by the time Atari did their small loan. They were higher in the que that Atari to split up Amiga's assets to recover their investments, and Atari simply needed someway to guarantee at least some recovery in that event.
Just as the bill was about to come due, Commodore swooped in, bought Amiga, and paid back Atari's loans. Atari, IIRC, sued Amiga and a legal battle ensued, eventually being settled out of court.
A bit mixed up on that. Commodore handed a check for $750 thousand to Dave Morse on June 28th, 1984 - who then took the funds and went directly to his contact/counterpart at Atari Inc. to hand deliver a check for $500,000 plus interest on June 29th with the claim they couldn't get the chips to work. His counterpart at Atari Inc. told him they didn't want the money back, he didn't even think he was authorized to take the check, and that if they (Amiga) needed more time it wouldn't be a problem. According to the sworn testimony, it had been a complete shock because they had just met with Dave at CES that early June where they confirmed everything was on track and both (Dave and his Atari counterpart) were celebratory over the pending signing. Unknown to his counterpart, Dave had been approached by Commodore who may have been interested at buying the company outright after evaluation, and during the interim (that June) got cold feet that the Atari deal may somehow screw it up. So he told Commodore he needed an advance to get out of Atari (making up some things about Atari to Commodore from what we found out, to make it seem dire) and then turned around and told Atari they couldn't get Lorraine to fully work properly and here was their money back.
Interestingly, he even told this under oath that Lorraine didn't work and was chopped up for parts, which we now know to be a lie - Dale Luck has shown off Lorraine at the Vintage Computer Festival for years now.
As far as the suit from Tramiel's Atari Corp., it was a counter-suit. Commodore launched a suit and injunction against Shiraz and two other engineers in early July, and had the injunction extended over the month. The injunction itself barred them on doing any computer work for Jack. The suit
itself was accusing them on theft of trade secrets, since they had taken off with some documentation and backup tapes from a development system.
Jack's son Leonard found the cashed $500,000 check during the end of the July evaluation period (they spent July going over and evaluating everything they inherited in the purchase - projects, facilities, etc.) He then contacted Warner and from that found out about the Atari Inc./Amiga deal (it had been brokered by and owned by Warner and was not a part of the Atari Consumer purchase), and seized the opportunity to strike back at Commodore who was at that time in fully public finalizations of purchasing Amiga . He got Warner to sign over the contract to him in early August and then launched his own suit at Amiga. They later added some patent infringements (something Jay had originally been worried about during the '83 meetings because the basic architecture and display concepts were similar to what he did with Atari Inc.'s 8-bit PCS's). Both companies settled their differences out of court, with Commodore paying Atari Corporation an undisclosed amount.
Marty
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