[net.micro.atari] ATARI Developer's kit

gyuri@cvl.UUCP (Gyorgy Fekete) (09/09/85)

An article posted recently about the escape sequences on the ST included the
following information on the DRI developers' kit, some of which I'd
like to confirm, or clear up, or have other people confirm, etc..

> The software developers package costs $300.
True.
> It includes 8 diskettes:
Hm I only got six.
> TOS, Logo, Resource editor, C compiler & assembler, linker,
> Mince, Micro Emacs, and a utilities disk.
I did not get mince, only instructions on configuring it. Did anyone else
get mince with their developer's kit? Also, the Hitchhiker's Guide to BIOS
was on my MicroEmacs (Mark Williams Co.) disk. But that came only recently,
mailed to me as an upgrade from ATARI.

> ...However the major problem is with the libraries.  All of the routines
> in the libraries appear to be there, but they do not all seem to work.
> sprintf is there, but when you link it in you get several undefined
> symbols from the linker.  The program still works though. ..

The strangest thing is that for printf, sprintf, etc to work, you must use
gemstart instead of apstart, and include libf (floating point library) when
you link the program. There are some equates in gemstart that are not in
apstart and which are referenced by routines referenced by printf.
Sprintf does work for me with gemstart, and libf (and aesbind, osbind, ...
which I threw in anyway, but may not need it; I don't know).

My recommendation to anyone who is thinking about a developer's kit is to 
either get the 10 Meg hard drive, or at least another floppy. Double sided
is best, since now you can have the compiler, linker, all .h files and
libraries, plus dump, nm, size, etc on one DS disk, and the source with the
editor on the other (SS is enough). So I never swap floppies when I compile
and link, just sit back for 5-10 minutes. It is painfully slow.

Another good enhancement would be a 1M memory upgrade, and we already know
how to do that from previous postings. I saw Ravi's machine, and the 
1M upgrade really works. A ramdisk driver would hold
about 512 K's worth of programs/libraries. Anyone else writing a RAMdisk
driver for the ST?
-- 
Gyorgy Fekete --- University of MD, Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526

gyuri@cvl.{ARPA,CSNet}

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