🚀 go-pugleaf

I requested information about the ATW from the Atari Canada head office 
here in Toronto, and they were kind enough to mail me a 4-page spec 
sheet.  If I see enough interest, I can condense this info and post it 
in a note, but I'd already read most of it myself in various magazines.

The most interesting bit is at the end, where it says stuff about an 
initial 50 development systems around the world (for software developers 
to produce the bare developers environment), followed by a limited 
pre-production release of "several hundred" systems during June 1989. 
While the pre-production release wasm
not to be restricted, (the spec sheet is from March/April '89), 
companies producing commercial applications were to be given preference.
It adds that full scale production "is expected to start during July 1989", 
and that the ATW is expected to retail (sans monitor) for less than 
$10,000 (Canadian Dollars, March '89).

Now for the "live scoop":  I have seen and used one in a commercial 
environment!!  At SEVERAL Toronto-area tourist attractions, there are 
booths run by KODAK where you can have your picture taken (digitized), and 
then printed (in full colour!) on a T-shirt, or post card, or whatever. 
The interesting part is that they do all the digital bit-twiddling you 
want (eg: putting your face on George Bush's body in a White House press 
photo, etc...), and the machine they use for this is an ATW!!!

Needless to say, I stayed at the stupid booth at Ontario Place (a local 
tourist trap) for HOURS, drooling openly.  The graphics can't even be 
described.  Workstation users will know what I mean, others can't even 
imagine.  A $15-20,000 ATW setup, working with the KODAK color 
digitizing cameras and photo-quality colour printers, is a media 
magician's fantasy.

I may even get a summer job at the rotten place, just to get my hot 
little hands on that magnificent piece of hardware.  Tales of a 
silicon junkie...  But I loooooove that machine.

Daniel Rochman, 1st Year Chem Eng, soon to be 2nd Year Comp Sci...
University of Toronto (Canada), Engineering Computing Facility
rochman@ecf.toronto.edu (until May, at least)

Disclaimer:  I own a Mega 2.  I'm not connected to Atari Corp. otherwise.