peters@pulman.DEC (Don Peters, APO-1/F8, 289-1242) (11/16/85)
Just got my latest issue of Current Notes, a newsletter for Atari owners
published by The Washington Area Atari Computer Enthusiasts (WAACE). Its a
very nice newsletter, covering lots of subjects of interest.
One of the articles that especially interested me was the coverage of the
talk by Neil Harris, managing publisher of the Atari Explorer, given to
the WAACE club on Oct 13th. I'll summarize his comments below.
The XM301 modem is due out now, for $49.95. Apparently lots of people are
awaiting this hardware. Its 300 baud only, and he says Atari is not currently
working on a 1200 baud modem for the 8-bit lines.
The XMM801 printer is also due out now. Its a dot matrix, 80 column, 80
character/second printer.
The Learning Phone cart should be out now - its a terminal program that lets
you talk to PLATO's HOMELINK service.
ProofReader, a spelling checker for the AtariWriter package is also available.
AtariWriter Plus is also coming out now. It features "a spelling checker and a
great many features to make it as full-featured a word processor as we could
possibly get out...".
Silent Butler and Music Painter were also supposed to be out in October.
New software coming out now/soon that support the 130XE are: Paperclip,
SynFile+, SynCalc, and Typesetter.
Remember the Amy chip? Atari couldn't get it into silicon successfully, so
licensed it to an outside company - but still kept the rights to use it.
That company plans to put it into a synthesizer.
--------------------
As for the ST stuff:
A disk of DEGAS (new drawing program from Batteries Included) generated
pictures is available, as is NeoChrome and STwriter. The latter two are
freeware.
He claimed there will be at least 60 software products out, and a handful of
hardware products, before year end. Module II is done, and a BASIC compiler
is available from another party.
ST Basic disks and documentation are being shipped to those who sent in their
warranty cards.
The developer's documentation is in the hands of some editorial people and
Atari is planning a distillation of all the real important calls and hardware
specs and things like that. It should be out in book form, hopefully, before
Thanksgiving, from Sybex books.
Atari is still hoping to get their CD ROM drive out by year end.
As for the hard disk, it will be 10 meg, and shipments to dealers should take
place by year end.
GEM in ROM should have been done in October. It takes 4 to 8 weeks to get the
ROMs back from the orient, so sometime during December you should be able to
go to your dealer and get a set of ROMs for $20.
Several paragraphs followed on his/Atari's thoughts on the Amiga. Basically
Atari believes their ST to be the long term winner over the Amiga due to
price and a product better focused to the needs of the user.
Next year you can expect to see an 8-slot expansion box for the ST, connected
to the DMA port. Another expansion box is also planned that will house a
full 32 bit processor. It will use the ST's I/O and graphics, and will be
a real number cruncher. They are undecided as to the CPU to be used, but
are looking at the 68020 and have ruled out the 32032.
Lots of MIDI software is coming. One they are now reviewing has a full color
graphics screen with the staffs of music and lots of drop-down menu commands
and things like that to place music throught the MIDI.
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That about covers it - hope I haven't omitted any significant details.
Wish we could get a summary of Atari's activities and
plans like this every month!
/Don Peters, Digital, 617-689-1242/
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