breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) (01/01/86)
Well, I have decided now that I am probably going to get an Atari 520ST in the near future (in case you care, the main reasons for my decision, when comparing it to the AMIGA, were the price and the high-quality 640x400 display mode). (One thing that I noticed is that the 520ST has a little bus-connector on its side. What signals are available on that connector?) I have a few questions, and I am sure that others might be interested in these as well: -- what is the cheapest place to buy? I know of a place in Cambridge that sells it for $650 (monochrome, ss drive). -- how pressing are disk-space problems on the machine? The dealer disk had a TOS image that was 200k big. Can that be stripped down? Are the tools to strip it down available? What configuration, a ds drive, two ss drives, or a ss and a 5 1/4" drive would YOU recommend? -- what off-the-shelve development software do you know of and would you recommend? I have seen (at various computer stores): -- 4xFORTH -- HiSoft Assembler -- MetaComCo Assembler -- Haba C Do you have any experience with these? Are there other packages available? In particular, I have heard that Haba C has some severe problems. Is there hope that they'll be fixed? -- what word processors do you know of/would you recommend? I have seen 1st-Word, and it looked decent, although not impressive. It would be very helpful for me if I could configure the processor for my printer (an Imagewriter II). -- what MIDI software and hardware do you know of for the ST? -- what commercial RAM upgrades are there? Is there a 1M version of the computer being marketed in the U.S.? In Europe? Thank you, Thomas. tmb@tardis.ARPA tmb@tardis.HARVARD.EDU