rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard) (09/07/85)
Both the Amiga and the ST have delayed putting their operating systems in ROM. LET'S HOPE THEY NEVER DO!!! Would you want to void your warranty to upgrade from ms-dos 1.x to 2.x or 3.x? How about CP/M 1.x (there was such a beast back in the days of toggle switches), 2.x 3.x, or do you prefer Unix V6 to V7, 4.2, S3, S5? Once an operating system is put in ROM, the machine that contains the ROM, starts to become obsolete. Besides, When there are no 'Guarenteed ROM Vectors' for developers to go blythly jumping into, you eliminate future 'Compatibility Problems' (Try running 1-2-3 on a sanyo 550) There is no "best way" to write software (bad ways and good ways yes!!). one routine may be faster but requires more memory. That is why lotus and flight-sim... go manipulating the hardware. The could have sold the OS enhancement as a separate products, instead, you have to put up with the slower ROM routines. Maybe wth a little luck, we will see third party operating systems that will provide transparency between the ST and AMIGA. Micro-ware already has OS-9 for the 68000, maybe they'll port it to these machines. (It may not be true UNIX, but it fits in anything). How many people would buy a UNIX-like OS for $95.00 (the price for the COCO version)? Vendors of multi-user systems now have a 'workstation' complete with graphics for the price of a Terminal. If either company "burns-in" their OS, they will have shut the doors to hundreds of new marketing possibilities. Part of the popularity of the 'PC' (IBM style) is that, one disk can run on more than one machine. There are few stores in my area that carry a good selection of BOTH atari and commodore software, maybe some third party effort could make selection easier. Both machines appear to be well designed, AMIGA seems to be a little too proprietary for my tastes, but in markets which IBM and APPLE seem to have all but abandoned (high performance <$1500), this may be just the "fire" we all need. OS in ROM is great for cassette based machines (YEACH,GAG,ECK!!!) where downloading the operating system from tape could take several hours. Both ATARI and AMIGA were smart, they didn't try to get you to buy the system with a cassete and "Upgrade to DISK" when your frustration level got so high that you were ready to start from scratch. Speaking of ROM upgrades, remember the COCO (TRS-80 Color Computer)? There are bugs in 1.0 rom but the better ROMS are not available to earlier COCO users. At $39, you can start all over again with the new one. If you have "Extended basic", (makes the machine just usable), double the above price. If you want your dealer to install them, he'll charge for that. In fact, If you bring in a 16K machine that has been upgraded to 64K, they will pull your chips out and put theirs in (for an additional fee of course). The best trick of all is that you have to upgrade the ROM to extended basic to get the Disk drive loaded so that you can boot OS-9, which immediately throws away BASIC. Now that Could have happened with these new machines. They want to be able to have CD-ROM's, but as of yet, there is no "Universal Standard" for such things. Suppose the Standard you buy is not the most popular? I hope they dowload the drive controller. How about networking? If anybody comes up with a "Universal Standard" and your ROM can't handle it... Either of these machines would make a nice workstation for a UN*X host, but you can bet that if "POPPING THE ROM's' is required, that even OEM's would rather "Pass it by" or "Start from scratch". Suppose that next week, you were able to get a digital phone line (50KB) an an X.25 modem. If your operating system didn't support that protocol, Too bad, pop out another $100+. Maybe someone will come up with a new media that will allow you to buy one disk for ALL of the major machines. Ram is like an automobile, you can go almost anywhere. Rom is like a railroad, you go where it takes you. Can anybody clarify the disk formats on these two machines? AMIGA seems to be using 11 secs/track 512 bytes/sec ATARI seems to be using 9 secs/track 512 bytes/sec Are these figures right? Any chance of getting them data-format compatible with each other?
mojo@kepler.UUCP (Morris Jones) (09/10/85)
In article <246@ccivax.UUCP> rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard) writes: >Both the Amiga and the ST have delayed putting their >operating systems in ROM. LET'S HOPE THEY NEVER DO!!! I agree with the spirit of your posting. Unfortunately on the Atari, with the DOS in RAM, not much memory is left for applications. Obviously the thing to do is increase the RAM. -- Mojo ... Morris Jones, MicroPro Product Development {dual,ptsfa,hplabs}!well!micropro!kepler!mojo
indra@utai.UUCP (Indra Laksono) (09/18/85)
> 'Compatibility Problems' (Try running 1-2-3 on a sanyo 550)
Actually, 1-2-3 does run off the shelf on the sanyo 555 with a sanyo
video board that costs about 200. In fact, so does gem if you change
4 bytes in memory. I have run GEM draw on a sanyo 555 vb with 512K.
Other than this tiny point, I think this is a great article.
..{allegra cornell decvax ihnp4 linus utzoo}!utcsri!utai!indra