johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) (03/19/91)
ST PAD
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The ST Pad is a notepad version of the Atari STe computer. It is
fully ST compatible, and will run any software which is written
to work in the 640 x 400 monochrome mode.
The ST Pad weighs 3 pounds and has an A4 size footprint. There is
no keyboard, mouse or floppy drive. The entire user interface is
based around a pen device. With the pen you can draw on the touch
sesitive LCD as if it were a piece of paper. The ST Pad will
recognise your handwriting and written gestures removing the need
for a either a keyboard or mouse.
Instead of a mechanical floppy drive the machine uses two silicon
drive slots for removable media. The slots can take RAM or ROM
cards for data storage or application software. Each slot can
accomodate up to four MB of data.
The hardware is designed to radically reduce power consumption. This
has been achieved with some innovative design techniques resulting
in a battery life of over ten hours.
One of the most important new features is a suspend and resume mode.
This allows the user to put the ST Pad into a standby mode and then
resume work later at exactly where he or she left off. In standby
mode the the batteries can last several months without losing data.
CPU: 68000 at 8MHz
RAM: 1MB and 4MB versions
ROM: 512KB
Other: PSG Sound
Real time clock
low power control circuitry
Pseudo static ram
External FDD (optional)
Size: A4 Footprint, 36mm thick
LCD: 640 x 400 STN, no backlighting at the moment.
Stylus: Wired stylus with two buttons L/R Mouse functions)
Connectors:
MIDI 2 x 5 Minipin
RS232 1 x 9 pin
Parallel DB25
Power 3 pin
DMA 28 pin Micro-D
Keyboard RJ11, compatible with the Mega ST
JEIDA cards 2 slots, 68 pin
Stylus 4 pin MiniDIN
Expansion: 120 pin connector, WREN expansion compatible.
External expansion:
Address bus, Data bus, interrupts, compatible with WREN, supports
WREN compatible locking screws on the side of the unit as well as
underneath.
Software:
TOS with additional stylus features including mouse emulation and
handwriting recognition.
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--
John Schmitt
johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca
...!unet!utai!utgpu!maccs!johnsekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) (03/21/91)
johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) writes: - TOS with additional stylus features including mouse emulation and - handwriting recognition. I don't know, but for some reason 'TOS with...handwriting recognition' doesn't seem to jive, if you know what I mean. :^) Thanks for posting the information. May I ask where you found it? I just like to know the sources of these things. :^) -- Ed Krimen ............................................... ||| Video Production Major, California State University, Chico ||| INTERNET: ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu FREENET: al661 / | \ SysOp, Fuji BBS: 916-894-1261 FIDONET: 1:119/4.0
johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) (03/22/91)
In article <1991Mar21.080126.22262@ecst.csuchico.edu> ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) writes: >[...] >I don't know, but for some reason 'TOS with...handwriting recognition' >doesn't seem to jive, if you know what I mean. :^) > Well, yeah, I guess I do. In case you're wondering, the technology _does_ exist. I think Xerox PARC has stuff like this going. I friend of mine works at Xerox over here etc... >Thanks for posting the information. May I ask where you found it? I >just like to know the sources of these things. :^) The CeBIT article came from a local BBS. The specs on the ST Pad and ST Book came from Atari's BBS here in Markham. They even set up a special area for these computers on the BBS already. >[signature deleted] -- John Schmitt johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca ...!unet!utai!utgpu!maccs!johns
mlake@irscscm.UUCP (Marshall Lake) (03/22/91)
In article <27E4E601.1238@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) writes: > >ST PAD >-------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ specs deleted ] Simply incredible!! -- Marshall Lake mlake@irscscm.UUCP ...!uunet!media!ka3ovk!irscscm!mlake
mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) (03/24/91)
> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.atari.st.tech: 22-Mar-91 Re: ST Pad specs > Marshall Lake@irscscm.UU (310) > Simply incredible!! Not really. Look at recen PC Worlds, and lookit whats goin on over i the MesS-DOS, Windows world. PEN Windows, and the new GO systems, pen pad. They will have opersting sytems BASED around this technology form the ground up, with pseudo 3D GUI and a lot of other niceties. I doubt Atari will really go the whole 9 yards with this. They have just jaded me too often in the past. I have STacy, so I know what Atari doesn't do right :^(! As far as VME video for the MEGA and TT. Yes you can have VME video, but so what. with no attempt by atari to form any reasonable enhanced video support ala 32bitQuickDraw, all intensive graphics software will have to go through loops (PC type drivers etc.) to run on more than a few boards.
steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) (03/25/91)
[In article <UbuwG1K00WC0EmXYJ3@andrew.cmu.edu>,
mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) writes ... ]
>> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.atari.st.tech: 22-Mar-91 Re: ST Pad specs
>> Marshall Lake@irscscm.UU (310)
>
>> Simply incredible!!
>
>
> Not really. Look at recen PC Worlds, and lookit whats goin on over i the
> MesS-DOS, Windows world. PEN Windows, and the new GO systems, pen pad.
> They will have opersting sytems BASED around this technology form the
> ground up, with pseudo 3D GUI and a lot of other niceties.
Go's OS is built from the ground up. But they're just beginning to peddle
their designs to hardware manufacturers. It's not really ``going on'' yet;
they're just talking about it.
Pen Windows is yet another blast of hot air from the marketing masters at
Redmond. They've been working on Windows for most of a decade and still
haven't got the technology straightened out. Just what I *don't* want in a
Dynabook: a buggy, ugly, crash-prone user interface that runs on top of
MessyDos and requires at least a '386 running at 20mHz to be tolerably
fast.
----
Steve Yelvington / P. O. Box 38 / Marine on St. Croix, MN 55047 USA
INTERNET: steve@thelake.mn.org UUCP: plains!umn-cs!thelake!steve
GEnie: S.YELVINGTO2 Delphi: YELVINGTONzimm@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dylan Yolles) (03/25/91)
In article <A1441535608@thelake.mn.org> steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) writes: >Go's OS is built from the ground up. But they're just beginning to peddle >their designs to hardware manufacturers. It's not really ``going on'' yet; >they're just talking about it. False; more than talk. I work with GO. The software and hardware are real and have been shown to developers. (You're right about it not being MSDOS based, though.) > >Pen Windows is yet another blast of hot air from the marketing masters at >Redmond. They've been working on Windows for most of a decade and still >haven't got the technology straightened out. Just what I *don't* want in a >Dynabook: a buggy, ugly, crash-prone user interface that runs on top of >MessyDos and requires at least a '386 running at 20mHz to be tolerably >fast. > This I agree with. >---- > Steve Yelvington / P. O. Box 38 / Marine on St. Croix, MN 55047 USA > INTERNET: steve@thelake.mn.org UUCP: plains!umn-cs!thelake!steve > GEnie: S.YELVINGTO2 Delphi: YELVINGTON Dylan
trh@atari.UUCP (T R Hall) (03/26/91)
ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) writes: >johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) writes: >- TOS with additional stylus features including mouse emulation and >- handwriting recognition. > >I don't know, but for some reason 'TOS with...handwriting recognition' >doesn't seem to jive, if you know what I mean. :^) >Thanks for posting the information. May I ask where you found it? I >just like to know the sources of these things. :^) You may feel skeptical, but as the designer of the two machines announced, I can tell you that "TOS ... with handwritting recognition" is FACT, not conjecture. The HCR code will be in the ROMs (and was, in the Demo at CeBIT), and tied into the operating system and desktop such that a gesture in the Menu Bar area will bring up a window (as invisibly to existing applications as possible) into which Hand-written characters are drawn. As you write, the characters are converted to ASCII; when you are satisfied, the characters are sent (via the Keyboard input stream) to the application. This way, _*existing*_ applications will have HCR capabilitites. The "hooks" to call the HCR system will be available to software developers, so they may call it directly, to recognize ASCII characters, special character sets, or even gestures. This will be part of the standard documentation. In case you're curious, the software is a neural-net simulation. TRH [ Incidently, "OCR" is "Optical Character Recognition" and "HCR" is "Handwritten Character Recognition"; the former uses the Bit-Map image; the latter uses the "pen-stroke" information directly.]
boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd) (03/27/91)
In article <2881@atari.UUCP>, trh@atari.UUCP (T R Hall) writes: > > You may feel skeptical, but as the designer of the two machines >announced, I can tell you that "TOS ... with handwritting recognition" is >FACT, not conjecture. The HCR code will be in the ROMs (and was, in the Demo >at CeBIT), and tied into the operating system and desktop such that a gesture >in the Menu Bar area will bring up a window (as invisibly to existing >applications as possible) into which Hand-written characters are drawn. As you >write, the characters are converted to ASCII; when you are satisfied, the >characters are sent (via the Keyboard input stream) to the application. This >way, _*existing*_ applications will have HCR capabilitites. > > The "hooks" to call the HCR system will be available to software >developers, so they may call it directly, to recognize ASCII characters, >special character sets, or even gestures. This will be part of the standard >documentation. In case you're curious, the software is a neural-net >simulation. > Wow. Out of curiosity, has anyone written a paper or something on the neural network that you are using? Did you base this on an existing piece of software? Also, I have yet to see a complete description of the machines (perhaps our site didn't get that article!?!). If one has been posted, could someone please email it to me? If it has not, could someone do it!!! -- ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- Mickey R. Boyd | "Kirk to Enterprise. All clear FSU Computer Science | down here. Beam down Technical Support Group | yeoman Rand and a six-pack . ." email: boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu | ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------
mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) (03/27/91)
> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.atari.st.tech: 25-Mar-91 Re: ST Pad specs > T R Hall@atari.UUCP (1624) > In case you're curious, the software is a neural-net > simulation. Really? I am studying PDP at CMU [:^)] and would like to know what architecture you are using, and what kind of training set you used, etc. Also what software do you use? This sound way cool! I would love to show this machine to my instructors. BTW, the ATM is going at 40 MPH now with Neural net implemented on Sun Sparcstations! Posted this time under a more appropriate heading.
bright@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Bob Bright) (03/28/91)
In article <2881@atari.UUCP> trh@atari.UUCP (T R Hall) writes: > You may feel skeptical, but as the designer of the two machines >announced, I can tell you that "TOS ... with handwritting recognition" is >FACT, not conjecture. The HCR code will be in the ROMs (and was, in the Demo >at CeBIT), and tied into the operating system and desktop such that a gesture >in the Menu Bar area will bring up a window (as invisibly to existing >applications as possible) into which Hand-written characters are drawn. As you >write, the characters are converted to ASCII; when you are satisfied, the >characters are sent (via the Keyboard input stream) to the application. This >way, _*existing*_ applications will have HCR capabilitites. This sounds pretty nifty, but will the machine also allow a normal keyboard to be plugged in? The HCR interface would be very handy for portable use, but I can type a lot faster than I can write, and it would be nice to have the option available. BBB -- Bob Bright <bright@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Philosophy University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Man R3T 2N2 (204) 474-9105
pegram@kira.UUCP (Robert B. Pegram) (03/29/91)
From article <27E916DD.17265@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>, by johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian): most of article omitted... > The CeBIT article came from a local BBS. The specs on the ST Pad > and ST Book came from Atari's BBS here in Markham. They even set up a > special area for these computers on the BBS already. > Speaking of CeBIT, what news of TT Sys V R4? I heard it was supposed to be introduced there, I know Amiga Sys V R4 is there. I am just a little cynical about an Atari Unix introduction any time soon - come on guys, make me eat those words! 8-) Ciao, Bob Pegram pegram@griffin.uvm.edu or ...!uvm-gen!pegram
jerry@polygen.uucp (Jerry Sheckel) (03/29/91)
steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) writes: > >They've been working on Windows for most of a decade and still >haven't got the technology straightened out. > Just because they keep improving it doesn't mean they can't straighten out the technology. What does that phrase mean, anyway? Is GEM technology "straightened out"? > >Just what I *don't* want in a >Dynabook: a buggy, ugly, crash-prone user interface that runs on top of >MessyDos and requires at least a '386 running at 20mHz to be tolerably >fast. > Buggy? And I suppose you think that GEM on the ST is beautiful, bug-free, and ultra efficient. Crash-prone? I've been using Windows 3.0 since it was released, and it hasn't crashed yet. Requires a 20MHz 386 to be tolerably fast? Bullsh*t. Ugly? Well, that's a matter of opinion, and IMHO GEM is the ugliest GUI of the bunch. As far as the OS is concerned, you shouldn't feel this need to bash on MS-DOS. After all, TOS and DOS are practically the same OS, ported to different machines. Just look at the major system calls for both OSes -- exactly the same. > > Steve Yelvington / P. O. Box 38 / Marine on St. Croix, MN 55047 USA > -- +-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------------+ | JERRY J. SHEKHEL | POLYGEN CORPORATION | When I was young, I had to walk | | Drummers do it... | Waltham, MA USA | to school and back every day -- | | ... In rhythm! | (617) 890-2175 | 20 miles, uphill both ways. | +-------------------+----------------------+---------------------------------+ | ...! [ princeton mit-eddie bu sunne ] !polygen!jerry | | jerry@polygen.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
jhenders@jonh.wimsey.bc.ca (John Henders) (03/31/91)
In <1991Mar28.165346.17417@uvm.edu>, Robert B. Pegram writes: > >Speaking of CeBIT, what news of TT Sys V R4? I heard it was supposed >to be introduced there, I know Amiga Sys V R4 is there. I am just a >little cynical about an Atari Unix introduction any time soon - come >on guys, make me eat those words! 8-) I understand there's some screen-shots of the TT running Atari Unix up on GEnie. A friend of mine said it was shipping, and requires 8 meg and 100+ meg of hard drive ( what, no floppy version? ;-} ). The TTx has not been announced yet. Please note, this information is from Canada, and so may not accurately reflect conditions in the U.S. -- John Henders jhenders@jonh.wimsey.bc.ca MIND over MIDI Productions or ubc.cs!van-bc!jonh!jhenders Vancouver,B.C