neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) (12/13/90)
Like others here I saw the review of the new TT desktop in ST World too. The review was a pile of sh*t but the new desktop looks real fine. I want it, but a whole TT is too high a price to pay to get it. If it can't fit in the 192K ST ROMs, OK, just release it in RAM. The computer press reporting on this issue is very confusing:- Computer Shopper quoted an unamed Atari spokesman saying that next year Atari will raise the base level of the OS. ST (Virus) User, in talking about the pirate copies, said that Atari has no intentions of releasing the desktop for existing ST owners. To do so would compete with third party companies producing alternative desktops. I found some old disks the other day which dated from when we were evaluating the ST (No internal floppy, TOS 0.00). One of the disks had a TOS version even older than 1.00! It was in two parts:- TOS.IMG had only the GEMDOS and BIOS while COMMAND.PRG had the VDI,AES and GEM desktop. A crude, MS-DOS style, command line interpreter was also included as an alternative to the GEM part. (For the version spotters: GEM Desktop v3.09, AES 0001, GEMDOS 0400, TOS 0020) The real fun thing was running the GEM part on top of TOS 1.4's GEMDOS and BIOS. This was done by using a boot sector that did not load TOS.IMG but just sets the _cmdload flag at $482 so that COMMAND.PRG gets loaded after the AUTO folder has finished. OK the result is dumb. You downgrade GEM. But why does atari not release the new TT system for ST's in this way? Makes a bundle of sense to me! (and you, gentle reader :-) Just think of what the GEMDOS and BIOS would be like if it had the 192K all to itself! I guess it's just a pipe dream. Atari's policy seems to be:- Take a good look at what others manufacturers do that makes them so popular, listen closely to the opinions of users and programmers then do 'something completely different'. Would it help if we all wrote letters to Jack Tramiel? eg. What *I* think Atari should do:- * Really start marketing the ST as a business machine not as a games machine. * Lose the keyboard styled machines in favour of the Mega style. Make the TT case just a big Mega one. Megas look real neat! * Fix the STacy's battery power problems. * Advertise heavily in the business computer press. (Have you seen the poor quality of ST mags around here!) * Get the Big Boys interested in producing applications for the ST/TT. (Where Big Boys = Lotus, Ashton Tate, Microsoft, Aldus, Borland etc) * Upgrade the GEM/TOS regularly. Perhaps Microsoft would port Windows to the ST/TT as a layer similar to the one above. * Produce new SHIFTER, GLUE and MMU chips to give old ST's as much STE/TT capabilities as possible within the limits of pin compatibility. Improve the base level! I could add lots of other things to that list but they all that seems to be rather obvious to me. If Atari could pull that off they'd be set. I remember Jack grumbling when here came to Europe to promote the PC clone line. "They should be buying ST's" he said. Well go and boot the asses of your marketing men and maybe people will! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ! DISCLAIMER:Unless otherwise stated, the above comments are entirely my own ! ! ! ! "I think all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of ! ! being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with ! ! being sick and tired. I'm certainly not and I'm sick and tired of being ! ! told that I am!" - Monty Python ! ! ! ! Neil Forsyth JANET: neil@uk.ac.hw.cs ! ! Dept. of Computer Science ARPA: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk ! ! Heriot-Watt University UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil ! ! Edinburgh, Scotland, UK ! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) (12/14/90)
neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) writes: - I want it, but a whole TT is too high a price to pay to get it. If - it can't fit in the 192K ST ROMs, OK, just release it in RAM. Buy NeoDesk 3.0. There, you got a desktop better than the TT's. I'd want the TT, not the desktop. (BTW, Gribnif didn't pay me to say that. Nor do I work for Gribnif, but I wish I did. :^) - Computer Shopper quoted an unamed Atari spokesman saying that next - year Atari will raise the base level of the OS. I thought Computer Shopper no longer included articles about the ST. - * Upgrade the GEM/TOS regularly. Perhaps Microsoft would port Windows - to the ST/TT as a layer similar to the one above. All the other ideas were good. Port Windows to the ST?!?! I *would* like easy-to-use multitasking though. -- 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
neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) (12/17/90)
In article <1990Dec14.022044.6599@ecst.csuchico.edu> ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) writes: >Buy NeoDesk 3.0. There, you got a desktop better than the TT's. I'd >want the TT, not the desktop. (BTW, Gribnif didn't pay me to say >that. Nor do I work for Gribnif, but I wish I did. :^) NeoDesk uses GEM. What I'm talking about is a RAM loadable version of the AES, VDI and the Desktop program. That way Atari can add more calls to the AES and VDI plus fix bugs. NeoDesk has to take what it can get. > 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 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ! DISCLAIMER:Unless otherwise stated, the above comments are entirely my own ! ! ! ! Neil Forsyth JANET: neil@uk.ac.hw.cs ! ! Dept. of Computer Science ARPA: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk ! ! Heriot-Watt University UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil ! ! Edinburgh, Scotland, UK "That was never 5 minutes!" ! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+