dmm@calmasd.CALMA.UUCP (David MacMillan) (07/31/86)
PLEASE E-MAIL REPLIES. Thanks.
I have a friend who is interested in the ST, but who has
no computer background. Although I do have the background, it is
with mainframes, Suns, & PCs. Therefore, I ask: Would anyone
care to advise her about the pros & cons of the ST. Specifically:
1) Religious responses from converts
2) " " " haters (if any)
3) Availability of good word-processing software
4) Reliability (hardware, OS, & applications)
5) Sources of info (e.g. user magazines, etc.)
6) Comparisons with the Amiga, PC, IBM 1401 :-) , etc.
7) How fast is software becoming available (PD & Purchased)
8) Compatability of peripherals
9) Good dealers / mail order houses specializing in STs
A) Anything else.
Thanks much,
David M. MacMillan, KB6MPN
"If feather-dusters are - UCSD [Lit] (ex-UCSC/Crown)
made of feathers, what are - Calma/GE [Info-Sci] (ex IBM)
crop-dusters made of?" - UCSD Soaring Club
- LM, 'cellist - SSA, USHGA, ARRLfouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA (07/31/86)
Well, I've only had my 1040ST for three weeks, but I'll give you
my first impressions of the machine.
(First, my background: I work for NASA as an OS Guru, and work
with Cray, Amdahl, Vax, Sun and SGI Un*x systems every day. I'm
writing this on a MacUgly (Lisa with MacWorks,) my officemate has an
AT, and other people here have Amiga's. I have owned a (currently
broken) Heathkit MS-DOS (NOT PC compatible) machine for several years,
and was looking for a fast machine to use in music composition/MIDI
control when I bought my ST.)
Let me try to answer your questions.
1) Religious responses: I have had my MacUgly for over a year,
and still find it difficult to get simple programs working, because the
interface keeps getting in the way of writing code. I wrote a fairly
complete utility on the ST using OSS Personal Pascal in less than
six hours. GEM has some drawbacks over the Mac Interface, especially
in renaming and moving files, but it has some advantages, especially
the way that folders turn into real subdirectories.
As far as Amiga versus ST is concerned, the Amiga is a somewhat
better machine, but the cost difference is greater than the quality
difference. Also, most of the quality difference comes in color
graphics, and I don't care about such. I prefer the mono system.
Of course, what clinched it for me was the MIDI port.
2) Religious responses from haters. (NOT APPLICABLE)
3) Availability of good word-processing software.
Your choice of word processor is also a religious issue. There's
1-ST word, which is mediocre, and I have micro emacs which is a text
editor, not a word processor. There are others, but I haven't tried
them.
4) Reliability (hardware, OS & applications)
Well, a month isn't long enough to tell about the hardware, but
mine hasn't broken yet. The software is reasonably reliable, GEM
doesn't seem to crash and most of the bugs visible to developers are
easy to work around. I use OSS Personal Pascal, and it only has a few
bugs, and usually performs better than promised.
5) Sources of info
Atari maintains a buletin board (The base number is (408)745-5308.
Neil Harris also appears to pay attention to all (CompuServe, Source,
Well, UUCP, etc) possible general networks and is reasonable about
answer questions. I haven't tried ATARI user support yet. There are a
number of good user's groups. There is an ST specific magazine, and
START (a quarterly full of software published by ANTIC) as well as
Antic. Of course there are the ABACUS books, and I suppose other
sources.
6) Comparisons with the Amiga, PC, IBM 1401 :-), etc.
Well I don't know about the 1401, but my first computer was a
1620, and the ST blows it away. :-)
As far as the AMIGA/ST comparison; The Amiga does better/faster
color graphics, but the ST does clearer mono. The Amiga has a better
sound chip, but the ST does MIDI. The Amiga has fancy custom
coprocessors, but the ST is more approachable. The ATARI hard disk is
real. There's currently more ATARI software available. In all, the
Amiga is a better piece of hardware, but not enough better to justify
the price.
As far as PC's are concerned, the only advantage a PC has is a
huge amount of software. If you buy an AT (or clone) and max it out,
you can spend 5-6K and have almost as good a machine as 1500$ worth of
ST. . .
7) How fast is sofware becoming available (PD & Purchased)
There is a huge amount of PD Software. Much more than when the
Mac was a year old. Most of it is very good, well written, etc. I
have both the PD Forth, and XLisp and use both.
I don't have as much experience with commercial software, although
it is certainly there. The only thing I have is OSS Personal Pascal,
which I highly recommend.
I have seen a lot of stuff in the ANTIC catalog, and most of it
exists. (I. E. I've seen it for sale at my local ATARI dealer.)
8) Compatability of peripherals
This is where the ST really seems to loose. It isn't big enough
(yet) for a big aftermarket in peripherals, so there aren't many second
sources, except for the hard disks. The expansion kit isn't out yet,
so there aren't many places to put them anyway, and ATARI seems to have
gone out of their way to make it hard to substitute monitors, although
most of this was to make the machine cheaper to build.
9) Good dealers / mail order houses specializing in STs
I don't know about mai order houses, but a local choice for good
dealer is San Jose Computer. (where I bought mine) They are a small
outfit, so they don't have a lot of hardware variety, but they seem
willing to spend a lot of time talking, and they do have most of the
software. I can send you their address if you can't find a better
choice close to you.
A) Anything else.
If you are going to do your own programming, and you aren't
religious about C, try OSS Personal Pascal. It's relitively clean,
runs relitively fast, produces good code, and all of that; but the best
part is the interface to GEM and the manual the OSS people have
produced.
It's almost better than the development system, and costs about
1/4 as much.
----------jdg@elmgate.UUCP (Jeff Gortatowsky) (08/05/86)
In article <8607311755.AA18885@ames-nas.ARPA>, fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA writes: > > Well, I've only had my 1040ST for three weeks, but I'll give you > my first impressions of the machine. > > (First, my background: I work for NASA as an OS Guru, and work > with Cray, Amdahl, Vax, Sun and SGI Un*x systems every day. I'm > writing this on a MacUgly (Lisa with MacWorks,) my officemate has an > AT, and other people here have Amiga's. I have owned a (currently > broken) Heathkit MS-DOS (NOT PC compatible) machine for several years, > and was looking for a fast machine to use in music composition/MIDI > control when I bought my ST.) > > Let me try to answer your questions. My background: Sun UNIX, PC/MSDOS, HP Stuff, and have owned an ST and an Amiga since last fall > > 1) Religious responses: I have had my MacUgly for over a year, > and still find it difficult to get simple programs working, because the > > As far as Amiga versus ST is concerned, the Amiga is a somewhat > better machine, but the cost difference is greater than the quality > difference. Also, most of the quality difference comes in color > graphics, and I don't care about such. I prefer the mono system. > > Of course, what clinched it for me was the MIDI port. The Amiga is the more competent machine. The Amiga's system software is at LEAST an order of magnitude more robust than the ST's. On the other hand, for pure computation the ST is a wee bit faster. However, the extra money for the Amiga is well spent. So much for religion. > > 2) Religious responses from haters. (NOT APPLICABLE) > I like the ST, ALOT. Just not as much as the Amiga. > 3) Availability of good word-processing software. > > Your choice of word processor is also a religious issue. There's > 1-ST word, which is mediocre, and I have micro emacs which is a text > editor, not a word processor. There are others, but I haven't tried > them. > Both fall flat on their chips in this area. For WP'ing, if that's your MAJOR application a PC clone may be worth a look. > 4) Reliability (hardware, OS & applications) > > Well, a month isn't long enough to tell about the hardware, but > mine hasn't broken yet. The software is reasonably reliable, GEM > doesn't seem to crash and most of the bugs visible to developers are > easy to work around. I use OSS Personal Pascal, and it only has a few > bugs, and usually performs better than promised. > Amiga has OS bugs too. The difference between Atari and CBM-Amiga is CBM-Amiga is activly pursuing fixing the bugs. So far Atari has ROM'd them and has seem to have said 'BUGS? Too bad..' Hardware. My 520ST is an early one so I had the loose chips syndrome. That has been rectified by new chip carriers. My Amiga is a pre-production model. Even so (or maybe because of this) my Amiga has been rock solid. No failures at all. > 5) Sources of info > > Atari maintains a buletin board (The base number is (408)745-5308. > Neil Harris also appears to pay attention to all (CompuServe, Source, > Well, UUCP, etc) possible general networks and is reasonable about > answer questions. I haven't tried ATARI user support yet. There are a > number of good user's groups. There is an ST specific magazine, and > START (a quarterly full of software published by ANTIC) as well as > Antic. Of course there are the ABACUS books, and I suppose other > sources. Same goes for the Amiga and then some. Real system documentation that has CBM-Amiga's blessing is available form $99 to $450 depending on what you buy, and who you get it from. Doc's are much better (subjective I suppose) for the Amiga (less contradictions, more examples, etc). Two magazines Amazing Computing (Hackers), Amiga World ('USER's'). > > 6) Comparisons with the Amiga, PC, IBM 1401 :-), etc. > Well I don't know about the 1401, but my first computer was a > 1620, and the ST blows it away. :-) > As far as the AMIGA/ST comparison; The Amiga does better/faster > color graphics, but the ST does clearer mono. The Amiga has a better > sound chip, but the ST does MIDI. The Amiga has fancy custom > coprocessors, but the ST is more approachable. True, th ST is more approachable, at first. Then you quickly realize all the nice services Amiga built in to the OS and all the choices available to you as to how you want your application to work/look. Then you look at GEM for the same choices/services and quickly realize just how 'unapproachable' GEM can be. >The ATARI hard disk is > real. There's currently more ATARI software available. In all, the > Amiga is a better piece of hardware, but not enough better to justify > the price. The Amiga is fully expandable. All it takes is $$$$. Hard disks, RAM (up to 8meg), frame grabbers, digitizers(SP?) both sound and video, card cages (although quite large), 68020/68881 boards, etc. Currently the definitly is more Atari software. That should change, but I'm not a fortune teller. > As far as PC's are concerned, the only advantage a PC has is a > huge amount of software. If you buy an AT (or clone) and max it out, > you can spend 5-6K and have almost as good a machine as 1500$ worth of > ST. . . One other PC advantage is the availability of software that uses the 8087 and 80287. important for number crunching application. And of course the huge variety of plug boards for just about any application. > 7) How fast is sofware becoming available (PD & Purchased) > There is a huge amount of PD Software. Much more than when the > Mac was a year old. Most of it is very good, well written, etc. I > have both the PD Forth, and XLisp and use both. I disagree somewhat. Most of the ST PD software seems poor to me and rarly includes the source for it. On the other hand the Amiga programmers seem much more willing to post both binary AND source, thereby allowing you to modify or enhance it to suit your tastes. Maybe AMIGA programmer's are just more experianced in C, I don't know. I do know that I have aquired nearly 15 megabytes of PD source for the Amiga and some of it is VERY good indeed. > > I don't have as much experience with commercial software, although > it is certainly there. The only thing I have is OSS Personal Pascal, > which I highly recommend. I can also recommend MegaMax C although it has it's problems with complex code (bit fields, function pointers, and some other obscure and not so obscure bugs). Further TDI's Modula 2 seems nice, but I haven't had the time to really use it. I must agree OSS PP is very usable indeed. I too have little in the way of commercial applications for either machine. I just enjoy hackin' 8^) I do enjoy Ageis Images on the Amiga. > I have seen a lot of stuff in the ANTIC catalog, and most of it > exists. (I. E. I've seen it for sale at my local ATARI dealer.) Dealers around the Rochester NY area don't seem to have any of this either. Further, in my user's group, I heard complaint's about very slow ANTIC service. > 8) Compatability of peripherals > This is where the ST really seems to loose. It isn't big enough > (yet) for a big aftermarket in peripherals, so there aren't many second > sources, except for the hard disks. The expansion kit isn't out yet, > so there aren't many places to put them anyway, and ATARI seems to have > gone out of their way to make it hard to substitute monitors, although > most of this was to make the machine cheaper to build. Remember the intial cost difference in the Amiga? Expansion support is a small part of that. The ST's DMA port is still not the same as the Amiga CPU Bus connector. Close but no cigar. > > A) Anything else. > I really like both the ST and the Amiga. If I could buy only one I'd go Amiga but if funding precludes this, the ST is a good substitute. How we've help a bit. -- Jeff Gortatowsky {allegra,seismo}!rochester!kodak!elmgate!jdg Eastman Kodak Company <Kodak won't be responsible for the above comments, only those below>
jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (08/06/86)
Re: CPU expansion port, AMIGA vs. ST: It looked to me (and to Paul Swanson who is a pretty sharp ST hardware person, e.g. upgrading and repairing them as a 520 dealer) ...it looked to me as though the 520ST cartridge port could probably be expanded to a full CPU bus extension port with a little effort. A little machining on the case in this area and addition of a connector with either the additional pins or all pins, and maybe a bunch of bus transceiver chips, and you would probably be able to do it. If you used the existing cartridge port as part of the expansion connection, you would want to put a cartridge socket in the expansion chassis so you could still use cartridge software. So hardware hackers need not despair -- they may be able to expand their ST just as much as one could expand the more expensive AMIGA. However, third party hardware vendors doubtless won't spring up as readily, since most ST owners won't have an expansion connector and if they do there is no guarantee that it will be the same as anybody else's. -John Sangster jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa
fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA (08/06/86)
Well, I won't point by point your point by point of my point by
point (:-) but I would like to comment on a couple of the places where
we disagree.
You claim that the Amiga's system software is at LEAST an order of
magnitude more robust that the ST's. Thinking of the blind men and the
elephant, I would like to comment that in four hours of playing with
a friend's AMIGA, I got about a dozen crashs. My ST crashes about once
a month, unless I have to reboot because the software I'm debugging has
gone into an infinite loop.
I suspect a more evenhanded evaluation would show that they are
roughly as 'competent', but the Amiga has more bugs in the multitasking
area, which is more complex code in the Amiga. The sad thing here is
that the Amiga, being around longer SHOULD be more robust.
I think Atari has been reasonable about bugs. The ROM's didn't
come out until after much debugging had been done in RAM and make the
machine boot much faster. Also, putting much of the OS in ROM is
becoming traditional.
Atari has fixed (and distributed free) both of the default disk
accesories, as well as Basic and LOGO. We'll just have to wait and see
on ROM upgrades.
As far as 'Blessed by ATARI,' $300 gets you a lot of (not well
organized (:-) system documentation with a development system. Also,
the 'official' documentation is due Real Soon Now (December, I'm told)
However, I do agree that the documentation I've seen is better for the
Amiga. Again, spending more money should buy you more.
I guess I don't know what OS choices the Amiga gives me (other
than multitasking) that the ST doesn't that I would want. I would be
interested in hearing more about the advantages of all the extra code
the Amiga kernel carries along.
I was suprised when you mentioned "card cages", since the last
time I talked to the local Amiga dealer, he said they were still
expecting that box Real Soon Now. And without that, you can't upgrade
the RAM to 8 meg. As far as the frame grabbers, digitizers, and
related, they can be had for any system, including the Amiga and the
ST, since most are available with RS232 or 'Centronix' interfaces.
I'm not sure of the status of the coprocessor board for the Atari.
Does anyone know if there is currently a 68881 coprocessor?
I guess I don't seen how the 8087/80287 can be viewed as an
advantage over the 68881.
You disagree with me about the ST PD software, and I am again
reminded of the elephant. Almost everything I've seen which is public
domain rather than ShareWare or "preview" is available with source
code. This includes Uemacs, Xlisp, at least one forth, several ram
disks, numerous games and applications. Much of which isn't
distributed freely is available from the author for cheap.
There are some obvious exceptions. The binaries for Megaroids are
PD, but the source can only be had as printout for 25$. Dave Betz'
adventure writing system doesn't seem to be available in source.
However, I suspect that I was a little enthusiastic in saying that
MOST of it is well written. I guess I should say that most of what I
play with does what I expect it to.
I doubt that Amiga programer's as a group are more experienced C
programmer's than ST programmers.
Actually, expansion doesn't come from the initial cost difference
in the Amiga. You still have to buy the expansion box (for many
dollars) before you can reasonably expand the system.
I do agree that the DMA port is not the same as the Amiga BUS.
It allows fast devices to talk to each other and memory without
hassling the CPU. This is a win in some applications and a lose in
others.
I also like both the ST and the Amiga. I could buy only one.
I've got an ST.
Marty
----------dca@edison.UUCP (David Albrecht) (08/14/86)
In article <8608061704.AA23758@ames-nas.ARPA>, fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA writes: > You claim that the Amiga's system software is at LEAST an order of > magnitude more robust that the ST's. Thinking of the blind men and the > elephant, I would like to comment that in four hours of playing with > a friend's AMIGA, I got about a dozen crashs. My ST crashes about once > a month, unless I have to reboot because the software I'm debugging has > gone into an infinite loop. If you decide to 'play around' with an Amiga let me give you a word to the wise. The system tasks and the disk driver are separate in the Amiga and the communication is not real tight. What this means is that the task may prompt you to swap disks while the disk driver is still writing to it. If you don't sit and stare at the disk light you will take the disk out while the Amiga is writing to it. I had quite a number of crashes that I blame on this. Once I 'trained' myself to not pull the disk until the light is out no matter what the screen says crashes have been extremely infrequent. David Albrecht
higgin@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom) (09/06/86)
In article <839@edison.UUCP> dca@edison.UUCP (David Albrecht) writes: >If you decide to 'play around' with an Amiga let me give you a word to the >wise. The system tasks and the disk driver are separate in the Amiga and >the communication is not real tight. What this means is that the task may >prompt you to swap disks while the disk driver is still writing to it. >If you don't sit and stare at the disk light you will take the disk out >while the Amiga is writing to it. I had quite a number of crashes that >I blame on this. Once I 'trained' myself to not pull the disk until the >light is out no matter what the screen says crashes have been extremely >infrequent. > >David Albrecht This is fixed in system software version 1.2. AmigaDOS will not put up a requester asking for a disk until ALL disk activity is finished. Regards, Paul Higginbottom. Disclaimer: I do not work for Commodore, and opinions expressed are my own.