louie@umd5.UUCP (07/25/85)
I just read the article in the August 1985 issue of Personal Computing on
the Commodore Amiga. There is little detail about the guts of the machine
and the hardware.
All I've seen about the Atari 520ST has been in the net.micro.atari
newsgroup. A little bit more about the hardware and the guts, but not
much.
As you might expect, I'm in the market for one of these two machines, but
have very little to go on. I know that I don't really want a Mac, both
because of the price and the closed architecture. (I don't want to start
any Mac vs. anything else flames, please!). The article on the Amiga
says that it has "true multitasking", what ever that is.
Has anyone on the net made any point by point comparisons of these two
machines? Apparently the 520ST isn't vaporware anymore, and hopefully
the Amiga will begin to appear on dealer's shelves soon. I'm interested
in what the nuts and bolts of the hardware are, and what the provided
software and operating system do for/to you.
--
Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH University of Maryland, Computer Science Center
Internet: louie@umd5.arpa
UUCP: {seismo!umcp-cs, ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!louiesct@lanl.ARPA (07/29/85)
> I just read the article in the August 1985 issue of Personal Computing on > the Commodore Amiga. There is little detail about the guts of the machine > and the hardware. > > All I've seen about the Atari 520ST has been in the net.micro.atari > newsgroup. A little bit more about the hardware and the guts, but not > much. > > As you might expect, I'm in the market for one of these two machines, but > have very little to go on. I know that I don't really want a Mac, both > because of the price and the closed architecture. (I don't want to start > any Mac vs. anything else flames, please!). The article on the Amiga > says that it has "true multitasking", what ever that is. > > Has anyone on the net made any point by point comparisons of these two > machines? Apparently the 520ST isn't vaporware anymore, and hopefully > the Amiga will begin to appear on dealer's shelves soon. I'm interested > in what the nuts and bolts of the hardware are, and what the provided > software and operating system do for/to you. > -- > Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH University of Maryland, Computer Science Center > Internet: louie@umd5.arpa > UUCP: {seismo!umcp-cs, ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!louie The latest issue of Byte does a very good job of describing the Commodore Amiga in detail. Has anything similar been done on the Atari 520 ST? If so will someone let me know. Steve Tenbrink sct@lanl.arpa
gyuri@cvl.UUCP (Gyorgy Fekete) (07/29/85)
I have recieved the 520 ST development package, so if you want any questions
about the DRI system, please ask.
I also saw the AMIGA at SIGGRAPH '85 last week, and it seems very nice.
It looks like an IBP PC: Big box, detached keyboard and separate monitor,
but the resemblance ends there. The crowd was tremendous, so I did not get a
chance to play with it much. The keyboard is perfect! I like it better than
the ST, but that's pretty good too. It has more colors -- I forget how many
simultaneously--and digitally sampled collection of waveforms which was
hooked up to a demo playing music using the keyboard (qwerty, not piano).
They said they'll ship September 1 to dealers. Check MBI (mathbox).
The system seems MS-DOS-ish, but can run desktop stuff too. The nice thing
is that you dont have to run the desktop unless you want to. By the way, for
ATARI ST developers there is a utility that frees up extra RAM by throwing
out the GEM desktop, and lets you run the ST like a CPM/68k machine.
The bucks: 1295 for system with 256k, one floppy drive. No monitor.
Color monitor is about 395, plus add another 200 512k upgrade. So you are
talking around $2000 for a 512k color machine, as opposed to about $1000 for
an ATARI 520 ST with color. Which one is better? Who can tell. Economy was
my greatest concern, so I am happy that I got the ATARI. If I had the other
$1000, I would have gotten the AMIGA, maybe.
--
Gyorgy Fekete --- University of MD, Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526
gyuri@cvl.{ARPA,CSNet}
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