bryan@ihnet.UUCP (b. k. delaney) (08/08/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** From **RJE** Thu Aug 8 10:57 CDT 1985 >From **RJE** Thu Aug 8 10:57 CDT 1985 forwarded by **RJE** >From rtb Thu Aug 8 10:53 CDT 1985 remote from ihlpm I wandered into the local computer store the other day and they had an Atari 520-ST on display. I got to play with it for about a half hour. Here are some things I found out, and some of my first impresssions. *The initial models being shipped are CPU (with built in keyboard),1 Single sided 3-1/2 inch drive (seperate from CPU), an impressive RGB monitor, and a mouse for retail $995. This was a suprise for me because I thought the first drive was built into the CPU. The storage capacity of the drive is 360k. I don't know why they aren't selling Double Sided drives with a capacity of 720k. I think an after market outfit will start making these pretty soon, unless Atari starts coming out with them. (One of Jack Tramiels favorite tricks is to keep his customers coming back for more, i.e. sell only single sided drives this year and then come out with double sided ones next year, eniticing people to upgrade systems they are already satisfied with). * Additional drives are $200 apiece * The computer has 1 serial and 1 parallel port built in. * There is a hard drive port built in. A 15 meg hard drive will be available for about $400-$600. * GEM is about what I expected. Pretty much of a Macintosh clone. * The keyboard's feel is pretty good, what I would expect for a machine in this price range * I don't think you can pop out of GEM into a command driven OS at this time. This is a disappointment to me as I personally can't stand mouse and icon type OS's. * The machine is being shipped with LOGO, and BASIC will be supplied free when they get all of the bugs out of it. I thought the LOGO was pretty slow for a 68000 machine running at 8 megahertz. * The machine is faster than the Macintosh (except for LOGO, if there is LOGO available for the Mac I can't imagine it being any slower) * There is a VT52 emulator as part of the OS, a big plus for me Over all, I was very impressed with the machine on a price vs. performance ratio. I can't imagine why anybody would buy a Macintosh when they can buy a faster color machine for $1000. The isn't much (any) software available yet. But what is promised looks really good. for example: A 1-2-3 like spreadsheet for $100 A C Compiler for $80 Atari is promising a lot of software at very affordable prices. (Personally, I think the best way to fight piracy is affordable software) (I hope OSS will get on the ST520 bandwagon because I always liked their software and their way of doing business) I don't own a computer right now, but I have owned 2 in the past. I use a computer about 50% of the time as a terminal emulator, 40% of the time for games, and about 10% for programming or hacking. I don't like having a big part of my capital tied up in home computers. Based on my past experience, this is most likely the computer for me. R.T. Bradstrum