10 Years of Atari/Atari Games VaxMail | Hacker News Reader

10 Years of Atari/Atari Games VaxMail

textfiles.com

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This archive has been a personal reminder to watch what I say in all digital communication. Even if I think that my post is "internal only" or "private", it can still end up online.

I say this because one of these files has an email that my dad wrote nearly 30 years ago. I'm willing to bet that my dad had no idea that the email he was writing would be read by his son, who would be slightly embarrassed at the fact he was writing in ALL CAPS, and wishing that his dad had used a little more tact in what he was saying.

(The email I'm referring to is in "vax84.txt" search for "THE FUTURE AT ATARI")

Are you just now discovering this stuff? Because I read all these emails on Jed's website, way back in 2001 or so.

(side note: this page has his last name as Margolis, when it is really Margolin)

I've known about this archive for quite a while.

I liked the straight-to-the-pointness of your dad's words. You probably think it's more embarrassing than it really is because he's your dad.

Ditto on the reminder of the permanence of any electronic communication.

My dad didn't work at Atari but years ago I worked with Eddie Babcock at Vicinity Corp (one of the early internet map services), so there is some nostalgia in reading his emails there.

To be fair, it seems a few people's terminals may have only supported uppercase.

This is the same as usenet. Back in the 80's and 90's the expectation of posting to say alt.tasteless.jokes was that it would happily scroll off into infinity. Then a million years later google has the whole damn lot indexed.

The all-caps thing was just the times, terminals were in transition and people were learning how to use the types of services that today have a highly developed etiquette expectation.

Also, a bunch of these people were programming in 6502 assembly language, every day. It marks you, it does. :-)

6502 was for wimps :) LDIR, CPIR, HL and two register set exchange FTW :)

I cut my teeth on the Z80. Fun chip. Moving to the 6502 was a shock that took me months to get used to.

But at some point, I would think in a language I called "6502 C", and code would pop out of my fingers. It's an interesting experience, writing big programs in assembly code.

It completely amazes me how nothing has changed. The only difference from Today's email is that those vax mails were usually longer, more polite, and full of nostalgia.

Take baby announcements emails for example. They're identical word for word as today's. I always thought people recently got better at writing those. But no, the pattern was established back then and, shockingly, we haven't changed the way we're making babies, or changed standards in describing a healthy birth.

Back then, and still today, you could guess the person's personality by his/her emails.

Also, back then, they were trying to improve productivity as a constant struggle, just as we do today. Interestingly, nothing has improved much in that field. It's still a rat race. Everybody recognizes the loss of productivity in large businesses, and there seems to be no real fix.

> more polite

I know you are correct in 99.9% of all situations as email used to be taken more professionally. ...but I did find this little gem in there, it made me laugh and reminded me on how so little has changed in software/process/delivery over the last thirty years.

		From:	KIM::LOGG            1-FEB-1984 09:54  
		To:	@SYS$MAIL:JUNK
		Subj:	More on FXL letter (or the second biweekly Jeff Boscole letter)
		...
		The only reason I was given why the cart was to be released within
		a week of the meeting was to have ONE week worth of sales for the first
		quarter.  WHAT A SHITTY, GOD DAMNED, FUCKING CSDKFHAS FHLAVFHJ EXCUSE!!!!
		What ever happened to quality which the name ATARI is supposed to represent?
		Where was VCS management??  I would hope that someone would stand up and
		say "THE GAME IS NOT READY.  WE WILL RELEASE IT WHEN IT IS DONE!!"  Who 
		are they trying to make look good?

Yes, there are some gems in here, nestled among the chaff of new VAX commands and building operational schedules. I found this bit amazing, from vax84:

  This brings up one of many problems with games of skill that
  include monetary payoffs ... As an example, consider a
  multi-player space war type game where you win money by eliminating other
  players and receiving what they have won so far.  The house percentage
  could be falling into the sun.  What do you suppose would happen out in
  the parking lot if you overheard the guy in the next console scream "I just
  got a ship worth $10,000!" and you had just been about to return that
  much to your home base before some turkey blew you out of the sky...

Rusty foresaw EVE Online twenty years ahead of time.

Absolutely fascinating, I found the collapse emails really telling, this is a long one: http://www.textfiles.com/games/ATARIMAIL/vax84.txt

		From:	KIM::FRANUSIC       23-MAR-1984 15:02  
		To:	@SYS$MAIL:JUNK
		Subj:	THE FUTURE AT ATARI


		LATELY THERE'S BEEN SOME CONFUSION OVER THE "ORGANIZATIONAL
		ADJUSTMENTS" THAT WE'VE BEEN EXPERIENCING HERE AT ATARI.
		LET'S PUT IT ALL INTO PERSPECTIVE ...

		AT THE END OF 1983, ATARI ANNOUNCED LOSSES OF OVER 500 MILLION
		DOLLARS.  THERE WAS SOME TALK THAT THESE LOSSES WERE ACTUALLY
		CARRIED ON THE BOOKS OVER SEVERAL PRECEDING QUARTERS, AND THAT
		MR. MORGAN WAS SIMPLY GIVEN A FRESH START.  THE FACT REMAINS
		THAT ATARI HAS BEEN, AND STILL IS, LOSING AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF
		MONEY, ENOUGH TO MAKE ANY COCAINE IMPORTER'S HEAD SPIN.

		THE HOME COMPUTER MARKET HAS FALLEN FLAT ON IT'S FACE.
		PEOPLE FINALLY REALIZED THAT THEY DIDN'T NEED A HOME COMPUTER
		FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT PLAYING GAMES.  MOST OF THE PERCIEVED NEED
		FOR A HOME COMPUTER COULD ONLY BE ATTRIBUTED TO MARKETING HYPE.

I edited out the rest... was taking up too much space on the hacker board

I love their early version of crontab.

      Find out what is todays date, ala 830717 (1983, 7'th month, 17'th day)
    as well as what day of the week it is (Sunday) and the standard three letter
    abbreviation (coincidently the first three letters of the long name) (Sun in this case).  The proper spelling for Wed is WEDNESDAY, by the way.

      Look for each of the following and do the appropriate thing (execute
    the command file or type the text file):

      'weekday'.com	! as in "SUNDAY"
      'weekday'.day	! SUNDAY.DAY will be typed
      'dow'.com	! SUN.COM will be executed
      'dow'.day	! SUN.DAY will be typed
      'date'.com	! 830717.com, remember?
      'date'.day	! this gets typed
      daily.com	! every day (7 days a week, not 5)
      daily.day	! this one too

Wow, lots of memories there (1984-ish, anyway).

You'll notice a bunch of people leaving after July 84, which is when the Tramiels took over. Coin-op remained with Warner. About a week into the split, there was an email sent out with the subject "Look! Two companies joined by a single computer network!" which caused the Tramiel Atari to be dropped from the net within a couple of hours.

Interesting to see that those missives show really good grammar, spelling and formatting for the most part, differently from today's standards where orthography has somehow become optional. Even for educated people in this field.

Was I wrong to expect Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's name to be in there somewhere?

Jobs and Wozniak were full time at Apple 6 or 7 years before these emails. Seems like a long shot.

You were. I didn't find any mention of Jobs, Wozniak, Apple or Microsoft in the few that I clicked.

Didn't click on any of the links. It's creepy to read other people's emails

This looks a dump of some internal mailing lists. I didn't see any "private" email. You'll see that a bunch of phone numbers and addresses had been scrubbed, too.

I'd agree that it's probably more creepy if you never worked there.

That's good to know then - people have less of an expectation of privacy I'd guess when writing to a mailing list.

I would feel a bit misled if most of the internal mailing lists I've been on were ever made public. I suppose it depends on the size, though. I've been on research-group mailing lists of ~10 people, and that would really feel like a breach of confidence, to release to the world at large emails that were intended for a relatively small circle of colleagues. On the other hand, if someone made a 200-person mailing list's archives public, then I would probably not be as annoyed.

so fricking awesome

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