drp9500@ultb.isc.rit.edu (D.R. Paradis) (01/21/90)
the following is from the january 15 1990 issue of macintosh news
atari tt: threat to iicx?
late this month, atari corp. will begin shipping its under-$2000,
16mhz, 68030-powered tt computer. priced at about one-third of apple's
price for the iix and iicx, this second-generation atari machine could
be a threat to macintosh markets with the addition of the $300 gcr
macintosh rom adapter from gadgets by small.
equipped witht he gcr cartridge and borrowed mac se roms, the tt will
be able to run the vast majority of macintosh software at a fraction of
apple's mac iix and iicx pricing.
still, atari is not well know for successful u.s. distribution.
indeed, while the tt laboured through fcc testing in december, it was
shipping in volume in europe. there, the machine is already a favorite
of german industry and could impact mac sales in a country that is
already below other european companies in per capita mac sales.
stateside, atari's lackluster distribution could make the tt little more
than a 68030 curiosity. it's pricedat three to four times the average
atari 68000-based st system. by selling the t, storefront resellers
will put pressure on their already limited resources.
---------------------------------------------------
looks like there is a *new* boss coming to town.......
"power *without* the price!!!!!!!!!!"
sarnila@tukki.jyu.fi (Pekka Sarnila) (03/28/90)
Well they had the TT in CeBit (also the unix model).
The TOS version (TT030/2) should be available in Germany in May:
- 2M memory
- 40M hard disk (not 30 even they say so)
- VGA monitor
- 6500 DEM (available only in this configuration)
The box is really silly looking.
The unix version (TT/030X)should be available to developers in May:
- 2M (slow) memory for video
- 4M full speed memory (unix will use primarily this)
- HD size not sure yet (at least 80 and propably 120, 170)
- tower case
- either 14 inch (VGA) color monitor (640x480 16 out 4096 colors)
or 19 inch mono monitor (1280x960 mono) (really nice with X)
- price not yet know (round 10000 DEM)
The unix version (ATX = Atari unix) is officially Sys V 3.1 (SVID 2) but
it has really BSD4.3 kernel modified for Sys V. On shell level command
switches are Sys V, but the kernel has also full BSD4.3 syscall interface,
BSD signals (including ones needed for full job control), BSD sockets, TCP/IP,
the BSD fast file system, disipline 2 tty driver (supports SIGSTOP etc. = ^Z).
This gives nearly full BSD compatybility. Csh is the full BSD with full
job controll. Tcsh compiles. Gnu CC (1.36), CC+, gdb, gas are fully ported
(really same as Sun m68k) and officially distributed by Atari. Comes with
NFS and X11.4 (has got 3 button mouse). For developers there comes also the
Hewlett Packard extended XFaceMaker tool kit. Kernel size with basic drivers
+ TCP/IP + NFS 650k. Pager is so customized that it will take pages from full
speed memory first, and only if that runs out, from the slower dual-purpose
(video) memory. As I tryed it out it seemed OK. ^Z really worked. The
(VGA style) display seemed slowish (must be in driver). From a X-terminal
the speed seemed fine. It seems like a nice (BSD) hackers home unix machine
(better then Sys V 3.2/80386). But .... Two buts. 16MHz, it is 1990, should
be at least 25 (it seems that TOS compatibility requires either 16 or 32, for
video shifter to work properly). And the price!!!!. I think far too much to
really compete with 386. It seems Atari really doesn't trust it will sell
in great volume, for the current projected price is clearly a low volume
price. Also it is late. It took so long because Atari wanted also TOS
compatibility. The unix only prototype was ready more than two years ago.
It seems Atari didn't believe a unix only version would sell well enough,
and also they wanted future for TOS line.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Pekka Sarnila, University of Jyvaskyla Finland
sarnila@tukki.jyu.fi
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--
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Pekka Sarnila, University of Jyvaskyla Finland
sarnila@tukki.jyu.fi
-------------------------------------------------------------------slammy@admiral.UUCP (Dave Litchman) (05/26/91)
Ok, I'm sure we've all SEEN the TT, at shows and such, but does anyone HAVE one yet? // slammy@admiral.UUCP (Dave Litchman) The Grid/Magpie and /Waffle BBS (HST/V32) 203-661-1279 (PEP/V32) -2873 (V32) -0450 (V29/MNP6) -2967 Multiplayer Games, Multicolor Chat, Multibbses, Multifun!
ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET (Julian F. Reschke) (05/28/91)
In article <yF9J32w164w@admiral.UUCP>, slammy@admiral.UUCP (Dave Litchman) says: > >Ok, I'm sure we've all SEEN the TT, at shows and such, but does anyone >HAVE one yet? > Yes. Since September 1990. Most professional developers in Germany have one.
csbrod@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod) (05/28/91)
slammy@admiral.UUCP (Dave Litchman) writes: >Ok, I'm sure we've all SEEN the TT, at shows and such, but does anyone >HAVE one yet? Yep. Since October 1990. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Claus Brod, Am Felsenkeller 2, Things. Take. Time. D-8772 Marktheidenfeld, Germany (Piet Hein) csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de Claus_Brod@wue.maus.de ----------------------------------------------------------------------
alexd@milton.u.washington.edu (Alex Danilchik) (05/29/91)
For years I have been waiting for a TT.. but when I finally saw one at my local dealer's, I wasn't impressed enough to plop down the cash for a TT/8... since the TT/2 is almost worthless. My dealer has had TT's for months and hasn't sold a single one yet... though he tells me IB computers has been selling them mail order. BTW: my dealer price on the TT/2 sans monitor is $2,100. Could this be the problem? Seem like a reasonable price. But.. to get into 8 megs at an additional $800 or so... i wonder... Are dealers selling these things? cheers! gunnar alexd@milton.u.washington.edu
larserio@IFI.UIO.NO (LarsErikOsterud) (05/29/91)
Even in little Norway ALL developers (execpt me who has a MEGA STE) has a TT, even some users have TTs and MEGA STEs... Lars-Erik / ABK-BBS +47 2132659 / ____ ______ ________________________ Osterud / larserio@ifi.uio.no / /___ / The norwegian ST __________/ ______________________/ ____/ / Klubben, user association
chuck@cpg.trs.reuter.com (Chuck Menard) (05/29/91)
In article <91148.132622ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET> ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET (Julian F. Reschke) writes: >In article <yF9J32w164w@admiral.UUCP>, slammy@admiral.UUCP (Dave Litchman) says: >> >>Ok, I'm sure we've all SEEN the TT, at shows and such, but does anyone >>HAVE one yet? >> >Yes. Since September 1990. Most professional developers in Germany have one. Yes! I waited 5 months - ordered it December 1, 1990. I was the first one to order and the first to receive (probably one of the first to receive here in the Chicago area - non developer machine that is) the TT at the dealer near me. I'm starting to see new software appear for the TT also. Such as: Lattice C TT, Calamus TT, Pagestream (?) TT, Devpac Assembler TT, etc.... By the way, did you see my posting to this newsgroup from a few days ago? Here's the info: How's this: TT030, 4M, 50M HD, with Color Monitor - $2680 Subtract about $500 without Color Monitor. I believe that you can also get the 2M TT030 for just under $2000. A 4M model includes 2M of ST RAM on the motherboard plus another daughterboard with 2 more Meg. One can expand this ST RAM daughterboard to 10 M. The fast TT RAM includes another daughterboard with 1M Sims to add another 4M to make a TT030 8M model. Remove the 1M Sims from this TT daughterboard and replace them with 4M Sims to expand TT RAM to 16M. Result total RAM = 10 + 16 = 26M. I was told today from a dealer here in the Chicago area that these RAM expansion boards will be ready for sale around mid June here. CUL, Chuck P.S. Software from my ST is running many times faster on the TT - to be expected! :)
johnj@knor.prl.philips.nl (John Janssen) (05/29/91)
Here in the Netherlands, you can just buy a TT at your atari dealer. They do (did?) have them in stock. -- John Janssen Check the email address in the header, as this J.v.Deventerstr.1 may have been filled in wrong by the system. Venlo Holland +31 77 513177 Reply to: johnj@idms.prl.philips.nl
baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) (05/30/91)
In article <1884@richsun.cpg.trs.reuter.com> chuck@cpg.trs.reuter.com (Chuck Menard) writes: > >How's this: TT030, 4M, 50M HD, with Color Monitor - $2680 >Subtract about $500 without Color Monitor. I believe that you can also >get the 2M TT030 for just under $2000. A 4M model includes 2M of ST >RAM on the motherboard plus another daughterboard with 2 more Meg. One >can expand this ST RAM daughterboard to 10 M. The fast TT RAM includes >another daughterboard with 1M Sims to add another 4M to make a TT030 >8M model. Remove the 1M Sims from this TT daughterboard and replace >them with 4M Sims to expand TT RAM to 16M. Result total RAM = 10 + >16 = 26M. I was told today from a dealer here in the Chicago area that >these RAM expansion boards will be ready for sale around mid June here. From the discussion on c.s.a.st a while back with Alan Pratt, I believe he said that you can only have 4MB _ST_ ram. You can have 16 MB TTram like you said, but that the other 6MB of ram comes from using the VME bus for ram expansion. In fact, the VME ram is supposed to be faster than STram (no sharing it with video, etc.), even though it is slower than TT ram. However, I wonder why you are limited to only 6MB from the VME? Is it Atari being silly and not allowing you to use _most_ of the '030's addressing capability (of course SOME of it has to be reserved for I/O etc. but not more than 32k worth!) like they did with the ST (you know - the 68k can address 16MB but you are limited to using 4MB max - I mean, even if you dedicated 512k to I/O,ROM,etc. you could put in 15 1/2 MB around it. It would be worth it to use 4-4MB SIMMs as you would only be losing the use of 1/8 of one of the SIMMs (actually 1/16 of two of them)). > >CUL, >Chuck > >P.S. Software from my ST is running many times faster on the TT - to be > expected! :) -Mike
baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) (05/30/91)
In article <17555@chaph.usc.edu> baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) writes: >course SOME of it has to be reserved for I/O etc. but not more than 32k worth!) ooops ^^^ That should be around 1MB - just to be generous with the ROMs :). >-Mike -Mike
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (06/04/91)
baffoni@aludra.usc.edu (Juxtaposer) writes: > From the discussion on c.s.a.st a while back with Alan Pratt, I believe he >said that you can only have 4MB _ST_ ram. You can have 16 MB TTram like you >said, but that the other 6MB of ram comes from using the VME bus for ram >expansion. In fact, the VME ram is supposed to be faster than STram (no >sharing it with video, etc.), even though it is slower than TT ram. No, no, no... Your picture of memory in a TT and its limits is a little off. On the motherboard there are two megabytes of ST RAM. Period. No options, no extra SIMM or DIP sockets, no nothing. You can buy a 2MB ST RAM add-on card, for a total of 4MB of ST RAM. There may one day be an 8MB ST RAM add-on card, resulting in a total of 10MB of ST RAM. You can buy a 4MB TT RAM add-on card. It may be that, with some work, you can make this address 16MB of TT RAM. In future (now?) you can buy 16MB of TT RAM from Atari -- I'm just not sure. All of these boards are more than just RAM -- they also have memory controllers which you can't just get off the shelf. In the TT030, there is one VME slot, but it is not appropriate to put system expansion RAM there. The slot is for peripherals, not RAM. If you DO put RAM there, you have to tell the OS about it yourself, and it will be slow: it's not cacheable, it's only 16 bits wide, it's on the VME bus, and it's not SCSI-accessible (meaning transfers have to be use SCSI-accessible RAM; this is taken care of in the drivers, but it slows you down). I've put memory there to test things, and it is not fun. Things run DRAMATICALLY slower from that kind of RAM. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Atari may, in future, come out with a machine in the TT family which has full-featured VME, including the ability to put 32-bit, cacheable, OS-detectable, SCSI-accessible RAM on the VME bus. The TT is designed with this in mind, but the actual VME bus in the TT030 isn't capable of it. Such RAM would be slower than TT RAM (mainly because you can't do burst fills on the VME bus) and about the same speed as ST RAM: faster because it's not shared with video, but slower because it's on the VME bus. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt
hvaalde@cs.vu.nl (Aalderen van Harold) (06/05/91)
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) writes: >You can buy a 2MB ST RAM add-on card, for a total of 4MB of ST RAM. There >may one day be an 8MB ST RAM add-on card, resulting in a total of 10MB >of ST RAM. >You can buy a 4MB TT RAM add-on card. It may be that, with some work, you >can make this address 16MB of TT RAM. In future (now?) you can buy 16MB of >TT RAM from Atari -- I'm just not sure. Since where on the subject now. Is there a legal way to find out the begin and end adresses of the ST-RAM and the same for TT_RAM And for the ROM? I want to write a routine that as some 32 bit number as input and assuming that it is an address it determines if it is ROM, ST_RAM or TT_RAM or just JUNK and if it lies in the system part of RAM or in the TPA part. any info appreciated? Harold van Aalderen (hvaalde@cs.vu.nl)