[net.micro.atari] Atari and UNIX, etc

peters@pulman.DEC (Don Peters, APO-1/F8, 289-1242) (10/23/85)

>does anyone know if somebody is porting unix
>to the atari 520 st?
 
Two days ago I attended the first meeting of the Boston Computer Society's
ST user group. At that meeting one of the officers mentioned that he had
a discussion with Jack Tramiel the preceeding week. The following items
emerged from that discussion:

  - there is no OEM deal with AT&T, but Atari did buy UNIX from them

  - Jack is not at all worried about the Apple/GEM thing

  - Atari will show a 1 Meg system at COMDEX

  - Atari plans to release a lot of educational software for the ST

  - Atari will have their hard disk drive by Christmas, for $699, the
    same price as Haba. The decision as to whether it will be 10 or 15
    Mb has still not been made

  - TOS in ROM should be out in about a week

At this same meeting there was a brief demo of ST Basic. It is a interpreter
and requires 143K bytes (!). The manual was about 1/2 inch thick. Basic was
to be mailed to all ST owners who sent in their warranty cards. There was
some question as to whether the manual would also be sent (the manual we
saw was in loose-leaf form).

NEWCHROME (an updated FAT) and ST Writer were also demoed, are from Atari,
and are also free (from your dealer or computer club).

Tom Hudson's (formerly Analog magazine) DEGAS draw program was also demoed,
and was impressive. It will be available in about 7-10 days from Batteries
included, for $49.95.

We also heard several MIDI demos using the AKAI synthesizer and Atari MIDI
software. One attendee just bought a Casio CZ101 synthesizer the previous
nite, for $350.

     /Don Peters, Digital, 617-689-1242/

        ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pulman!peters