peters@pulman.DEC (Don Peters, APO-1/F8, 289-1242) (01/23/86)
Having heard little factual info from what was going on at Atari, I gave a
call to Richard Freck, the person at Atari responsible for St development.
I was lucky to reach him as he just got out of a meeting, and I pressed him
for answers to a number of questions I and others have had regarding Atari
products, plans, etc. The following is what I can reconstruct from my notes
and (sometimes rather poor memory):
1) There is no GEM Draw coming. They are still awaiting GEM paint.
2) Those who read the last issue of Infoworld probably saw an article
regarding a new, less buggy developers kit, that some developers
claimed they had to have to do development. The claim was made that
DRI was just letting some copies out. Richard didn't have any info
on the new software and gave little credibility to the Infoworld
article.
3) It will still be about 30 days before TOS in ROM is available to
the general public via their Atari dealer. HOWEVER, if you are a
developer (and have sent in your non-disclosure agreement), you
can get your ROMs right now by sending in a check for $25 to the
attention of Richard Frick, Atari Corp., 1196 Borregas Ave.,
Sunneyvale, CA 94086.
4) The 1040ST should be coming out soon (they are in the warehouse),
and will come with a built-in double-sided drive and built-in
power supply.
5) Before Christmas there was talk of a number of Atari video
games that were to be available on the ST, such as Missle Command.
This didn't happen, but the project was not canceled and Richard
hopes they will come soon.
6) I recently heard that Atari would be shipping a copy of First Word
and DB Master with every ST they sell, like ST Basic and ST Logo.
This is NOT true, according to Richard. When pressed, he said that
some stores included this software with the ST at Christmas as a
sales promotion. I said I hadn't heard of this, and he said it was
up to the stores to mention this. Anyway, he says it is a violation
of copyright law to freely distribute this software, as it is to
distribute ST Basic.
7) The "official" policy from Atari re the 1 meg upgrade is that it
shouldn't be done. Atari will not repair a system sent to them if
the update has been done unless it has been done at an authorized
service center. When I asked about installing the ROMs, he said
they too should only be done at an authorized service center.
8) I'd been hearing various reports over the past few months on whether
the hard disk drive would be only 10 Mb, only 20 Mb, or both. Richard
said there would be a 20 Mb and a 30 Mb version available, both
around the mid-March time frame.
9) I mentioned that I had been using ST Basic for a while not, and
uncovered several problems with the documentation and software, and
would an updated version be coming out. He said a new version was
due out in mid-March, but had no idea on how it was going to be
distributed.
10) While the TT is not yet an announced product, I did say that I had
heard a rumor that the CPU was to be the 68020 instead of the
National 32 bit chip, 32332. The only comment he had was that
the 68020's were not yet readily available.
11) I noted that I had not gotten my Atari newsmagazine (the Atari
Explorer?) in many months. For that question he referred me to
Neil Harris (408) 745-4394.
12) I mentioned that a lot of rumors and comments on Atari fly around on
the USENET and Arpanet networks, and was he aware of these networks.
He didn't know of them, but did express an interest in them. I got
the impression that he would subscribe if it were possible (is it?).
That exhaused my list, and the poor guy was probably glad to get off
the hook, but I did say I would pass this info along to the Atari
user groups I belong to, so I believe his time was well spent. I've
tried to present the above info as "straight" as possible, but if any
one has serious questions they can call Richard Freck directly, at
(408) 745-4926.
/Don Peters, Digital, 617-689-1242/
...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pulman!petersfreed@aum.UUCP (Erik Freed) (01/25/86)
> Having heard little factual info from what was going on at Atari, I gave a > call to Richard Freck, the person at Atari responsible for St development. > I was lucky to reach him as he just got out of a meeting, and I pressed him > for answers to a number of questions I and others have had regarding Atari > products, plans, etc. The following is what I can reconstruct from my notes > and (sometimes rather poor memory): This is the right way to get just about any answers. There have been a number of times that questions I had about the ST were easily answered just by being persistent about calling Atari and getting shuffled around. A reasonably intelligent exec would rarely just blow off questions if they are intelligent and (obviously) if the answers are not embarrassing or supposed to be kept secret. And in fact, Atari has never been secretive, just not overly enthusiatic about getting details out. If more people would just ask Atari there would be more info in the group and fewer questions... If we all pitch in maybe we could get Atari on the net. Is there anyone who has any ideas about this? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik James Freed Aurora Systems San Francisco, CA {dual,ptsfa}!aum!freed
jbm@bnl.UUCP (james) (01/26/86)
> > 3) It will still be about 30 days before TOS in ROM is available to > the general public via their Atari dealer. HOWEVER, if you are a > developer (and have sent in your non-disclosure agreement), you > can get your ROMs right now by sending in a check for $25 to the > attention of Richard Frick, Atari Corp., 1196 Borregas Ave., > Sunneyvale, CA 94086. > > ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pulman!peters *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** 26 january 1986 i just had TOS on rom installed in my ST, the roms, installation and ny state taxes brought the total to $26.88. this frees up about 190k of ram. it should be noted that the desktop and desk accessories must be on the disk from which you boot. the standard desk accessories take up about 22k. with the disk TOS i could make a ram disk (using M-Disk from Michrotron) of about 80k, now i can make one with ~260K. there are two interesting side effects of the rom TOS. the colors on the desktop (i haven't had time to check elsewhere yet) are distinctly "richer". in addition some of the moire patterns that plagues the color monitor have been eliminated or reduced in intensity. before leaving the dealer he did point out one "bug" with the rom TOS. font-maker software from ANTIC would work under the disk TOS but NOT with the rom TOS. also i've experienced some problem with saving a new desktop to disk; i won't declare this a bug yet until i've played with it a bit more. you can still boot using the disk TOS if you like. The following is an assortment of my observations on 520ST software. 1.) a number of people have asked about "macwrite-like" word processors. i've been using 1st Word which is from a british firm. it's pretty nice but it's not a full-fledged "macwrite". i've been unable to figure out how to output something using double spacing. the program operates in a "document" or strictly ascii mode. the annoying thing is if you save some text as ascii you can't convert it back into a document and use the reformat command. 2.) the ramdisk package from Michrotron (M-Disk) is nice for one drive people like me since i can copy 200k to the ramdisk and from there to another floppy. it cuts down on the number of disk swaps necessary to back things up. 3.) ST-TERM from QMI is a weak attempt at terminal emulation. it fails miserably with vi. i've been unable to make it properly understand xon/xoff. and on uploading from my atari to a mainframe my screen fills with garbage instead of the text that is being transfered. it seems to carry off the transfer okay but i wouldn't want to depend on this product. i would like to know if any of the VT100 emulators make use of the vt100-like keypad for use withe edt on a vms/vax? also how about a tektronix 4010 emulator. i have in mind PCPLOT for the ibm pc, it is both a vt100 and a tek4010. if you don't need to upload or download the atari builtin vt52 is pretty good. that's all for now! jbm@bnl.bitnet
turner@imagen.UUCP (D'arc Angel) (01/27/86)
> > This is the right way to get just about any answers. There have been a number of > times that questions I had about the ST were easily answered just by being > persistent about calling Atari and getting shuffled around. A reasonably > intelligent exec would rarely just blow off questions if they are intelligent ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\ lineater, \~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ well said Erik, unfortunately Atari runs VMS inhouse so getting them on the net may a little difficult. Does anyone out there (esp. at DEC) know of a way to get on the net from VMS? someone from Atari does watch the net but he does it from another machine and he does not really take an active hand in the net, i wonder if he might consider "coming out of the closet (:-)". You listening ? -- ---- god bless Lily St. Cyr -Rocky Horror Picture Show Name: James Turner Mail: Imagen Corp. 2650 San Tomas Expressway, P.O. Box 58101 Santa Clara, CA 95052-9400 AT&T: (408) 986-9400 UUCP: ...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!imagen!turner CompuServe: 76327,1575
dfk@unido.UUCP (02/01/86)
> /***** unido:net.micro.atar / bnl!jbm / 9:31 pm Jan 26, 1986*/ > > 1.) a number of people have asked about "macwrite-like" word processors. > i've been using 1st Word which is from a british firm. it's pretty nice > but it's not a full-fledged "macwrite". i've been unable to figure out > how to output something using double spacing. The kludgy way: Install a printer that has the command to set double spacing in the initialization string. > the program operates in a > "document" or strictly ascii mode. the annoying thing is if you save > some text as ascii you can't convert it back into a document and use the > reformat command. Well you can - sort of: Simply :-) turn all spaces in the ascii file into what they call "variable spaces". I have a little c-program for doing that. But it's on a disk I don't have here at the moment. -Daniel <dfk@unido.uucp>, <dfk@unido.bitnet>
turner@imagen.UUCP (D'arc Angel) (02/03/86)
> there are two interesting side effects of the rom TOS. the > colors on the desktop (i haven't had time to check elsewhere yet) are > distinctly "richer". in addition some of the moire patterns that plagues > the color monitor have been eliminated or reduced in intensity. that is because in the old TOS every other pixel was the foreground color, why ? i dont know ! > > before leaving the dealer he did point out one "bug" with the > rom TOS. font-maker software from ANTIC would work under the disk TOS > but NOT with the rom TOS. also i've experienced some problem with > saving a new desktop to disk; i won't declare this a bug yet until i've > played with it a bit more. (i believe this is correct) the font-maker worked by replacing the 'standard font' in TOS with its own by changing a vector, with TOS in rom guess what (hint: the RO stands for read-only (:-)) -- ---- god bless Lily St. Cyr -Rocky Horror Picture Show Name: James Turner Mail: Imagen Corp. 2650 San Tomas Expressway, P.O. Box 58101 Santa Clara, CA 95052-9400 AT&T: (408) 986-9400 UUCP: ...{decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!imagen!turner CompuServe: 76327,1575
ken@usceast.UUCP (Ken Sallenger) (02/04/86)
jbm@bnl.UUCP (james) writes: > i would like to know if any of the VT100 emulators make use of > the vt100-like keypad for use withe edt on a vms/vax? PC/InterComm from Mark of the Unicorn (617) 576-2760 does an excellent VT100/102 emulation. I have used it with both Unix and VMS. The EDT keypad mode works fine, as do the Unix editors with vanilla termcap entries. Also in the package are Kermit and Xmodem file transfer, easy-to-use setup menus, and some other nifties. Current price is $124. I got it from a local Atari dealer. A co-worker has also used it dialing in to an IBM mainframe, with their VT100-translation software. -- Ken Sallenger # Dept. of Computer Science {decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae | akgua}!usceast!ken # Univ. of SC (803) 777-2840