kiki@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jack W. Wine) (03/11/91)
I'm getting an Atari 1040STe and have these questions and comments: 1) Is there any difficulty in exchanging ascii data between the Ste and an AT clone with a 3.5" drive? 2) Has anyone connected the STe DMA port with SCSI converter to a PC with a SCSI controller to allow the STe to read/write the PC hard drives and other peripherals? 3) The 1040STe obviously wasn't designed for easy expansion, so I would like to move the system board to a PC-type fliptop case with 200W power supply. I've heard that there is a company that markets an Atari conversion kit and would like to know their address. Also, does Atari sell just the Mega STe keyboard so that individuals could use them with a custom case? 4) The GBS SST030 board sounds very good, but it seems to me that it should provide for 4 megabyte simms, since the prices for these memories have become more cost effective ($200/simm) than 1 MB simms. Has anyone queried Mr. Small about this design decision? I thought 4 MB simms fit in the same socket as 1 MB ones. 5) With other companies also designing '030 upgrade boards, is there any consensus on a type of Atari ST '030 bus? I know video cards will be developed for each '030 board, but it would be beneficial to the ST owners if a common bus was used. 6) The SST board is supposed to have TOS 1.6 roms licensed from Atari. With the advent of the versatile 68030, is there any plan to put a different operating system to use? I've read of the Geos OS by Berkeley Softworks and it seems like a good candidate for porting to the SST030 board. If 50,000 ST pooled together $20, would that be enough to commission Berkeley Softworks to do the port? 7) Suppose everyone who bought a SST030 board added $20 so that Mr. Small could commission a company to provide a new operating system. Is this feasible? 8) I mailed GBS an inquiry about their SST030 board, but haven't received any reply. I know Mr. Small posted a short list of specs for the SST and mentioned complete information might be available by ftp, but I can't find it. Could someone post or email it to me? 9) I don't subscribe to Compuserve or Genie, but I would like to read the logs of conferences of Atari officials and developers. I know about the postings on Freenet, but it is not complete. Is there any archive on the internet that has the complete conference logs? Thanks for any answers or input! Jack
bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) (03/12/91)
In article <11885@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> kiki@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jack W. Wine) writes: > >I'm getting an Atari 1040STe and have these questions and comments: >... >6) The SST board is supposed to have TOS 1.6 roms licensed from Atari. > With the advent of the versatile 68030, is there any plan to put > a different operating system to use? I've read of the Geos OS by > Berkeley Softworks and it seems like a good candidate for porting > to the SST030 board. If 50,000 ST pooled together $20, would that > be enough to commission Berkeley Softworks to do the port? Geos isn't actually an OS, it is a graphical environment, just as GEM is to TOS. I suspect, however, that you could find someone to port Geos to the 68K for 50,000 * $2, let alone $20! However, no existing programs would look any different - programs have to be written especially to take advantage of the environment, just as a non-Windows program on an MS-DOS machine looks no different when run under Windows or plain MS-DOS. >7) Suppose everyone who bought a SST030 board added $20 so that Mr. Small > could commission a company to provide a new operating system. Is this > feasible? More feasible (in my slightly-biased opinion) would be Gadgets licensing OS-9 for use on the SST030 board. OS-9 provides binary compatibility between the ST/TT, Amiga, Mac, and several other slightly more obscure machines, and by virtually all accounts provides all the OS services that seasoned programmers have come to expect, with very little overhead. The main limiting factor of using OS-9 on the ST/TT is there is (currently) no standard graphical interface; OS-9 itself makes no assumptions regarding graphics. Several graphical environments have been or are being worked on (including G-Windows, X-Windows, and MGR), but none are being packaged with OS-9 for the ST/TT. >Thanks for any answers or input! >Jack -- ############################################################################## # Bill Sheppard -- bills@microware.com -- {uunet,sun}!mcrware!mwca!bill # # Microware Systems Corporation --- OS-9: Seven generations beyond OS/2!! # ######Opinions expressed are my own, though you'd be wise to adopt them!######
mc4c+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Choi) (03/12/91)
> Excerpts from netnews.comp.sys.atari.st: 11-Mar-91 Questions about ST > hw/sw up.. Jack W. Wine@uhunix1.uhc (2488) > 6) The SST board is supposed to have TOS 1.6 roms licensed from Atari. > With the advent of the versatile 68030, is there any plan to put > a different operating system to use? I've read of the Geos OS by > Berkeley Softworks and it seems like a good candidate for porting > to the SST030 board. If 50,000 ST pooled together $20, would that > be enough to commission Berkeley Softworks to do the port? > 7) Suppose everyone who bought a SST030 board added $20 so that Mr. Small > could commission a company to provide a new operating system. Is this > feasible? Hey Dave Small... Hyper Web, Hyper Web, Hyper Web!!!!!!!!!!!! (or Mach maybe?)
tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Tony Reynolds) (03/13/91)
In article <1820@mwca.UUCP> bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) writes: >In article <11885@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> kiki@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jack W. Wine) writes: > [stuff about SST and the GEOS port deleted] >Geos isn't actually an OS, it is a graphical environment, just as GEM is >to TOS. I suspect, however, that you could find someone to port Geos to >the 68K for 50,000 * $2, let alone $20! However, no existing programs >would look any different - programs have to be written especially to take >advantage of the environment, just as a non-Windows program on an MS-DOS >machine looks no different when run under Windows or plain MS-DOS. Flame ON! All flames are C-64 specific--excuse my ignorance of PC Geos. Geos is a piece of crap Operating System. I know. I had the priviledge of writing Spelunker, one of the first non-Berkeley Softworks DAs for Geos. It is a true OS. It has some equivalent multi-tasking features to GEM, id est DAs can run on clock-ticks, message passing is done for redraws, and a few other things. My greatest complaint about Geos-64 and B.S. is that the PRM sucked! There were more spelling and punctuation errors in it than in a typical post some illiterate third-grader! Some functions listed in the index were not even documented in the main body of the PRM. Nowhere in the old PRM does it mention that DAs are the same as dialog boxes, but it does say that you can't have two Dialog Boxes on the screen at once. I found out the hard way about this one! Development tools at the time sucked, too. I had to use the Commodore Assembler, because it was similar in style to the B.S. assembler. The Commodore assembler places an (8-character?) limit on the length of symbols so the Berkely symbol names had to be truncated or renamed. I had to use a disk-editor to change the file types and allow the Geos info sectors to be attached to the DA itself. A typical turn on the source code took 15-17 minutes: re-write,assemble,edit-disk, run, fail, think. Spelunker is also my pet peeve against share-ware. I uploaded the program, its SOURCE, the assembly include files, the methods, and GeoWrite Docs to Quantum Link. I asked for $3.00, to be sent to a starving student. NOT ONE DIME, NOT A FLIPPING DIME, has been received. Someone even had the NERVE to FIX the source code, and then say this person could not get in touch with me! MY ADDRESS WAS IN THE SOURCE CODE! IT COMES UP DURING ASSEMBLY! So, every program I writen and released to the public since then has been for Free-- I don't wanna get my hopes up! Thanks, Simon Poole. Flame OFF! This .sig file is completely original, including many of the spelling errors. I don't think anybody has one quite like it, and if they do, you can send comments to:tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu,or call me at (601)232-7402. So there. \\\\Tony\Reynolds\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\Ride\the\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) (03/14/91)
In article <1991Mar12.201001.18669@cs.olemiss.edu> tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Tony Reynolds) writes: >In article <1820@mwca.UUCP> bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) writes: >>Geos isn't actually an OS, it is a graphical environment, just as GEM is >>to TOS... >Flame ON! > >All flames are C-64 specific--excuse my ignorance of PC Geos. > >Geos is a piece of crap Operating System... I was referring to the new GEOS _for_PC-Clones_ - designed as a "poor-man's" Windows 3 - in other words, it will run (quite well, I read) on a 512K 8088. The reviews I've read have been quite good, but it is still simply a GUI, relying on MS-DOS for the OS (and PC BIOS, to be precise). -- ############################################################################## # Bill Sheppard -- bills@microware.com -- {uunet,sun}!mcrware!mwca!bill # # Microware Systems Corporation --- OS-9: Seven generations beyond OS/2!! # ######Opinions expressed are my own, though you'd be wise to adopt them!######