knnngt@ukma.UUCP (Alan Kennington) (03/19/86)
***** The lines that ate Paris - film title ***** I've just been shopping around for world ST prices, and these are the results: In Australia, the standard B/W system that costs some $700 or so here, costs A$2150 x .704 = US$1510. And the government only takes 20%. Someone is making a big profit over there! But then I suppose some sort of voltage conversion has to be made. In Germany, the cost is DM2898 x .444 = US$1285 for the 1 Meg system with German keyboard and TOS on disk (still!), and the double sided disk drive. That's the 520ST+ that has been mentioned here before. But in Germany now, it seems they have a 1040STS or something, with a built-in double-sided floppy for DM3298 x .444 = US1465. And these two are also just the B/W system. The good news for anyone going to these exotic places is that according to the Atari person who answered the phone in CA, the American version will run on 50Hz with a transformer, but that the keyboard clock will run at 5/6 speed!!! Doesn't this suggest that some crucial part of the keyboard circuit can be replaced with a German part to make it run at the speed? It's very clear to me now that the best policy is to buy here and use a transformer overseas. Can anyone say whether STs have got beyond the US, Canada, UK, Germany Australia and Switzerland? The Bios listing suggests a French version, but that could conceivably have gone only to Quebec. Perhaps the English language component of TOS will be rejected by the Ministry of Culture. And what is this new French computer language coming out soon? I've seen a sample of French Basic. If anyone has a copy of French Basic for the ST I would gladly know about it. ...................ak.
jmlang@water.UUCP (Jerome Lang) (03/21/86)
In article <2898@ukma.UUCP> knnngt@ukma.UUCP (Alan Kennington) writes: >The Bios listing suggests a French version, but >that could conceivably have gone only to Quebec. Perhaps the English >language component of TOS will be rejected by the Ministry of Culture. >And what is this new French computer language coming out soon? I've seen >a sample of French Basic. If anyone has a copy of French Basic for the ST >I would gladly know about it. This French version of the Bios (looking carefully at it) actually uses an AZERTY keyboard -- same logic as with QWERTY, those are the first letters in the top row. This keyboard layout is not used in Quebec, or in French Canada for that matter, we use a bilingual QWERTY keyboard. This presents an interesting problem as this latter keyboard possesses a dead key -- you type a ` or a ^ and the carriage (or cursor) does not advance, allowing you to overstrike with the letter you want accented. This is fine for typewriters, but is a ****&&*** for computers. The difference between the AZERTY keyboard and the bilingual QWERTY actually delayed the introduction of a French ST in Quebec. (Should be available by now, I haven't checked.) About French Basic; with a 'decent' BASIC, they only thing needed to "frenchise" it is to change the token lookup tables. I haven't looked at the internals of STBasic but I presume it can be done in a similar fashion. My experience is that it is not worth the trouble -- you learn a few odd words (odd for non-anglophones), and you're ready to go. This is nothing compared to learning a human language. You get used to seeing bilingual code -- variables and comments in French, the keywords in English. It also helps to identity the parts of your code that got borrowed from the net. -- Je'ro^me M. Lang || jmlang@water.uucp Dept of Applied Math || jmlang%water@waterloo.csnet U of Waterloo || jmlang%water%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
jwt@atari.UUCP (03/25/86)
The ST ikbd (intelligent keyboard) microcontroller derives its timing information from the crystal clock, not the power line frequency, so it will be the same world-wide. I should point out that the ST power supply only provides DC voltages to ST power connector... so the ST's keyboard would not know what the power line frequency was.