gow@sakari.mrceg (Ed Gow) (09/26/90)
I was told yesterday that Abacus has discontinued their ST book series. I am thinking of buying an ST as a development platform but I need to know what's in there. So, please, in as much detail as possible, where can I get information about the ST hardware and about TOS? Which books are best for details about the cartridge port signals and timings, bus, DMA connector, TOS internals, and device drivers. If they are as non-existant as they seem then Atari has a problem. Your help will be appreciated. -Ed p.s. Please post, I can't get e-mail. -- ------ Ed Gow ------ uwm!mrsvr!gemed!sakari!gow ----------- My opinions are NOT those of GE. MGB - The most fun you can have in a car without a back seat
saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) (09/27/90)
If you're planning to do any serious programming on the ST, I cant recommend
developer registration highly enough. The documentation in the developers
kit is substantial; the standard tools in the kit include some VERY useful
ones, and most to the point, Atari developers support has straightened out
unbelievably much in the last few months. If Atari ever improves their customer
support that much, they might become a market force to be reckoned with.
Consider how much you'd pay for half a dozen third party books. Throw in a
helpful person a phone call away and a couple of utility programs. How bad
a bargain could the equivalent be at about $250?
Another thing: while you can get an awful long way with one machine, I'm
learning that as a product nears commercial release reasons develop for having
several machines: need for several TOS versions, separate test and development
environments, untimely hardware failures and more. Makes the developer
discount program invaluable.
Steve J.