Computer Legend and Gaming Pioneer Jack Tramiel Dies at Age 83

By Miuku.
in Back Page News

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Miuku.

Posted
Posted
Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore International and crucial figure in the early history of personal computing, passed away surrounded by his family on Sunday, his family confirms. He was 83 years old.

Tramiel was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1928. During World War II, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, after which he and his father were sent to a labor camp called Ahlem, near Hannover. Tramiel was rescued in April 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1947. In 1984, after being forced to leave the company he founded, Jack bought the crumbling Atari Inc.?s Consumer Division and formed Atari Corporation.

In America, Tramiel started a typewriter repair business. Staying in the forefront of technology, his typewriters morphed into calculators, and later computers. In 1982, Commodore International launched the Commodore 64, which went on to the best-selling personal computer of all time. Tramiel also founded the Atari Corporation in 1984.

?Jack Tramiel was an immense influence in the consumer electronics and computing industries. A name once uttered in the same vein as Steve Jobs is today, his journey from concentration camp survivor to captain of industry is the stuff of legends,? says Martin Goldberg, a writer working on a book about the Atari brand and the early days of video games and computing with Atari Museum founder Curt Vendel.

?His legacy are the generations upon generations of computer scientists, engineers, and gamers who had their first exposure to high technology because of his affordable computers ? ?for the masses and not the classes.??

Tramiel is survived by his wife Helen, their three sons, Gary, Sam and Leonard, and their extended families.

Source: http://www.forbes.co...dies-at-age-83/

RIP Jack.

In no small part thanks to him I've had some of the fondest computer memories of all time - especially those from the early days of VIC and C64.

Grand Master

FloatingFatMan

Posted
Posted

Atari was before my time so "meh".

Now, if the creator of the original NES died... then we have a problem.

Without the likes of Tramiel, you wouldn't HAVE a computer in your home, let alone video games.

  • TEX4S and remixedcat
  • Like 2
Grand Master

+Nik Louch Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

Atari was before my time so "meh".

Wow... Really? So something was before your time and you stop caring? Maybe kids do need spoon-feeding their history these days.

  • TEX4S, Alera and FloatingFatMan
  • Like 3
Grand Master

Miuku.

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Atari was before my time so "meh".

Now, if the creator of the original NES died... then we have a problem.

You realize Commodore 64 preceded NES by over a year and laid the groundwork for computer gaming? It is, without a doubt, alongside Amiga and Atari ST the biggest reason you are playing games on your PC today - without people like Tramiel none of that would have happened or if it had, it would've happened at a much slower and different pace, most likely much worse.

The guy alongside other "legends" of his time were the people responsible, the catalysts if you will, for what we have today.

Grand Master

Hell-In-A-Handbasket

Posted
Posted

Taken from Gizmodo

The Anti-Steve Jobs Dies: So Long, Jack Tramiel

Jack Tramiel, the antithesis of Steve Jobs, has died. Tramiel was the founder of Commodore. Unlike Jobs, Tramiel believed that computers should be utilitarian and cheap, disregarding elegant design or attention to detail?like the legendary Commodore 64.

While Jobs' sense of aesthetics and obsessive detail permeated everything Apple did, from hardware to software, Tramiel?born Jacek Trzmiel in Lodz, Poland, 1928?didn't give a damn. His only concern was price and making things useful enough to win the battle in the marketplace.

http://gizmodo.com/5900742/the-anti+steve-jobs-dies

Grand Master

Hum

Posted
Posted

Without the likes of Tramiel, you wouldn't HAVE a computer in your home, let alone video games.

Let's not forget a fellow named Thomas Alva Edison -- you wouldn't have your electricity, lights, MP3s, let alone the computers !

You youngan whippersnappers ...

Proficient

The_Decimator

Posted
Posted

Taken from Gizmodo

'The Anti-Steve Jobs Dies: So Long, Jack Tramiel

Jack Tramiel, the antithesis of Steve Jobs, has died. Tramiel was the founder of Commodore. Unlike Jobs, Tramiel believed that computers should be utilitarian and cheap, disregarding elegant design or attention to detail?like the legendary Commodore 64.

While Jobs' sense of aesthetics and obsessive detail permeated everything Apple did, from hardware to software, Tramiel?born Jacek Trzmiel in Lodz, Poland, 1928?didn't give a damn. His only concern was price and making things useful enough to win the battle in the marketplace.'

http://gizmodo.com/5...steve-jobs-dies

The fanboyism is strong in this one. & it's even sadder, cuz, well, no one says, "Boo Commodore, Go Apple!" anymore, but they just HAD to do it...

Grand Master

TEX4S

Posted
Posted

Its always so interesting to read about the guys who were in the trenches when all of this really began.

Then to hear what this guy went through in life, and everything he accomplished. Then to read he died and old man surrounded by his family - Well done, sir. Well done.

Grand Master

Hell-In-A-Handbasket

Posted
Posted

Let's not forget a fellow named Thomas Alva Edison -- you wouldn't have your electricity, lights, MP3s, let alone the computers !

You youngan whippersnappers ...

i would have to say everything electronic i think runs off Tesla's inventions, not edison. as edison has Direct current, Tesla had Alternating

Grand Master

Hell-In-A-Handbasket

Posted
Posted

The fanboyism is strong in this one. & it's even sadder, cuz, well, no one says, "Boo Commodore, Go Apple!" anymore, but they just HAD to do it...

i think they are still mad over the iPhone 4 thing, lol

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Posts

    • Secure Boot

      By cork1958 · Posted

      Simple answer is yes, you will still get the Windows updates and as long as browser is up to date, you will be good. Only thing secure boot does is protect you against boot level threats and make it harder to install other OS's. I've been looking into this pretty thoroughly lately myself as wifes computer has secure boot disabled plus my other, older computers that run Linux, don't have secure boot enabled. Have seen all kinds of questions about this on the Linux Mint and MX Linux forums. Just don't suddenly enable secure boot now.
    • Ford execs say they made a mistake when they replaced human engineers with AI

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      How many other companies will follow Ford's lead? Or, have they already gotten lazy and become enslaved to AI--and now can't figure out how to get out of that mess.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      Why would any self-respecting intelligent person follow any recommendation by Donald's GOP administration? With almost two years of fabrications, deceit, and blatantly illegal behavior, why believe them now? They had best be gone after the November 2026 election, so we'll wait and see.
    • AltSendme 0.4.1

      By Copernic · Posted

      AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Why Delta Chat is the best decentralized messenger you have probably never tried

      By zikalify · Posted

      You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      150
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!