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  • Soviets preferred Atari over Commodore

    From Tristan Miller@3:770/3 to All on Tue Aug 18 09:22:46 2020
    Dear all,

    I recently happened upon this RIA Novosti article from 2013 that tells a fascinating story about Epyx and their contact with representatives of
    the Soviet government: <http://web.archive.org/web/20140311185310/http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20131115/184737635/As-Cold-War-Peaked-Soviets-in-US-Chose-Atari-PCs-Over-Commodore.html>

    According to the article, in 1984 the folks at Epyx decided to provide
    the USSR with a copy of the newly released Summer Games, joking that it
    would allow the Soviets some measure of vicarious participation during
    their boycott that year of the real-life Olympics. So the company sent
    a package containing several copies of the Commodore 64 edition to the
    Soviet Embassy in Washington. A week later they unexpectedly received a
    reply from the Embassy thanking Epyx for the games but lamenting that
    they couldn't play them because all they had were Atari computers! Epyx swiftly dispatched another package containing the Atari editions but
    alas never heard back from the Embassy.

    Regards,
    Tristan

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Tristan Miller
    Free Software developer, ferret herder, logologist
    https://logological.org/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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  • From Yeechang Lee@3:770/3 to Tristan Miller on Wed Aug 19 05:43:39 2020
    Tristan Miller wrote:
    A week later they unexpectedly received a
    reply from the Embassy thanking Epyx for the games but lamenting that
    they couldn't play them because all they had were Atari computers!

    Jack Tramiel was born in Poland, and used his connections to get Atari computers into Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

    That said, the embassy likely just happened to purchase Atari
    computers in the US as opposed to another brand.

    --
    geo:37.783333,-122.416667

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  • From Yeechang Lee@3:770/3 to All on Wed Aug 19 05:45:01 2020
    An example of the Poland-Atari connection: <https://www.atarimagazines.com/v7n1/poland.html>

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  • From Andreas Kohlbach@3:770/3 to Yeechang Lee on Wed Aug 19 11:10:04 2020
    On Wed, 19 Aug 2020 05:43:39 -0700, Yeechang Lee wrote:

    Tristan Miller wrote:
    A week later they unexpectedly received a
    reply from the Embassy thanking Epyx for the games but lamenting that
    they couldn't play them because all they had were Atari computers!

    Jack Tramiel was born in Poland, and used his connections to get Atari computers into Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

    That said, the embassy likely just happened to purchase Atari
    computers in the US as opposed to another brand.

    The British company Memotech had a nice CP/M machine on the market in
    1983. Nice looking too, with brushed aluminum case. They struck a deal
    with the Soviets of 200,000 units. But funding from the British
    government fell short and Memotech went into receivership.

    So it stays an obscure computer. Would had been nice to know how the
    8-bit market would had developed if the deal was successful.

    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memotech_MTX>
    --
    Andreas

    https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

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