aer@alice.UucP (A. E. Rosenberg) (10/12/85)
(To add more fuel to the Amiga vs. Atari 520ST debate.) Excerpted from the November _Creative Computing_, in "Outpost: Atari" - of all places: "After months of waiting for my new Atari 520ST system, it arrival was almost anticlimactic.... As with any new computer product, the first units would have more problems and less software than more established machines. The price would no doubt be higher at first...." "...As I hooked up the system and turned it on, my disinterested facade began to crumble. Since the operating system is not yet available in ROM, I had ample opportunity to check the transfer speed of the disk drive as it loaded TOS from disk. The ST loaded the entire 200K+ file in about 25 seconds...." "[Author states the monochrome screen is very nice...]" "Unfortunately, the feeling of euphoria did not last long, as I realized I had no way toput the ST through its paces. The only software I had was Logo- a version so slow that I wondered if the interpreter was written in Logo. The fact that I had sprung $1700 to buy the developer's package hardly made me better off than the average buyer. Although the package came with development software like a C compiler and assembler, it was essentially useless out of the box, because the text editor needed for writing programs was to be sent out later by the manufacturer (apparently much later, since six weeks after getting the machine, I'm still waiting.) "Moreover, the celebrated 6" stack of documentation that comes with the development package turned out to contain more hints than answers. The bulk of the material consisted mainly of photocopies of Digital Research document- ation, that, though somewhat related to the machine, was by no means ST specific These included a CP/M 68K manual and the full manual for development of GEM on the IBM PC. Only a few pages of the documentation came from Atari, including some sketchy material on the BIOS routines, the keyboard, printer codes, and source code listing for the boot ROMS. Of the 1500 or so pages included, more material was devoted to the Kermit protocol file transfer program than to the ST." What I mean to say by all this is... a $1700 ST development system like that presented above is by *no means* superior to a comparable $1700 Amiga Developer's system. A lot of 'Atarians' though have spat hellfire, though, trying to substantiate that claim. The ST appears to be a nice, homey monochrome, and some-color graphics machine, when compared to the more expensive, but certainly more powerful Amiga. ST drives really are slower, and hold less- than the Amiga's- no matter what some 'special' people say. Both of the speed problems, as an example, will probably be fixed once the software of both machines can get a decent looking over by technicians who were rushing the machines to the marketplace. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Rosenberg @ ATT/BTL Murray Hill "These Are... My Opinions." uucp: ..!ihnp4!alice!aer ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ravi@eneevax.UUCP (Ravi Kulkarni) (10/13/85)
Re: Creative Computing Review > "...As I hooked up the system and turned it on, my disinterested facade >began to crumble. Since the operating system is not yet available in ROM, >I had ample opportunity to check the transfer speed of the disk drive as it >loaded TOS from disk. The ST loaded the entire 200K+ file in about 25 >seconds...." > . > . > . >The ST appears to be a nice, homey monochrome, and some-color graphics >machine, when compared to the more expensive, but certainly more powerful >Amiga. ST drives really are slower, and hold less- than the Amiga's- no >matter what some 'special' people say. Either this guy did a sloppy review or it is a combination of things that he has heard from other people as evidenced by the above contradiction. Yes the ST disks have marginally less capacity 720k(DSDD) vs 880k(DSDD) but having seen both systems reboot and startup programs the amiga seems a factor of two slower. Since both computers use dma for disk access the only explanation for this must lie in the software or the disk format. > "Unfortunately, the feeling of euphoria did not last long, as I realized >I had no way toput the ST through its paces. The only software I had was >Logo- a version so slow that I wondered if the interpreter was written in >Logo. The fact that I had sprung $1700 to buy the developer's package hardly >made me better off than the average buyer. Although the package came with >development software like a C compiler and assembler, it was essentially >useless out of the box, because the text editor needed for writing programs >was to be sent out later by the manufacturer (apparently much later, since >six weeks after getting the machine, I'm still waiting.) This seems to be very dated. When I recieved my developers package I also did not get an editor, but a call to atari solved that problem as they sent an updated bios guide and a copy of micro emacs. They were probably in the middle of switching from mince to micro emacs. In any case this fellow seems more interested in creating gripes than attempting to resolve his problem through proper channels. A recent article outlines what is in the developers package and an editor is certainly listed. >These included a CP/M 68K manual and the full manual for development of GEM >on the IBM PC. Only a few pages of the documentation came from Atari, >including some sketchy material on the BIOS routines, the keyboard, printer >codes, and source code listing for the boot ROMS. Of the 1500 or so pages >included, more material was devoted to the Kermit protocol file transfer >program than to the ST." My initial reaction to seeing the entire kermit manual was similar. But again this fellow seems to have never bothered to dig any deeper. Yes, the GEM examples are for the ibm pc but the description of the bindings are entirely applicable to the ST. The few routines that are not available are clearly marked as optional and not necessary to an implementation of GEM. I have found that most things work as advertised except for a few compiler bugs that could be worked around. The bios routines are clearly specified although a few of the names were modified slightly in the header files. My only complaint is that compiles take so long on a floppy system. I have solved that problem however by upgrading to 1meg and doing everything on the ramdisk. I have no objection to people posting reviews, but may I suggest a little quality control. I think misinformation confuses what should be an open and healthy debate. -ravi -- ARPA: eneevax!ravi@maryland UUCP: [seismo,allegra]!umcp-cs!eneevax!ravi
aer@alice.UucP (A. E. Rosenberg) (10/16/85)
In re to posting damagin reviews: I kept the most damaging stuff out, but left in what related to the 'review' someone did to the Amiga in much the same way. From the same article in _Creative_, listen: "...Even this idle exploration was not to last. After a few short hours of poking around, my ST started acting like it had eaten too much cotton candy and was looking for the men's room. I started to get duplicate images of the Busy Bee icon all over the screen. Then, random dots started speckling the screen as if bees were really the cause of yellow rain. I knew the end was near when mushroom clouds began to appear. The more I rebooted, the faster the machine would crash, until finally I turned it on and nothing happened. Sure, I had had fun a couple of hours, but I really didn't feel as though I had gotten my money's worth." --------------------------------------- This was from the very _latest_ issue of _Creative_. It probably was written little more than a few weeks ago. D. Rosenberg ..!ihnp4!alice!aer -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Rosenberg on Murray Hill /-\|/-\|//\|/-\ ATT/BTL ..ihnp4!alice!aer -- "These are My Opinions." -----------------------------------------------------------------------------