mmiller@nyx.UUCP (Mark Thomas Miller) (07/05/90)
In past postings on here, people have been complaining about STe incompatibility with certain software. If you'll remember many years ago, when the 800XL and other such machines came out, there were incompatibility problems with it/them too. How Atari solved this was to bring out The Translator disk, which loaded the old 800 OS into RAM of the XL or XE computer. For me, in some cases where software hasn't worked on my XE, it has worked wonders (yes, I am an 8-bit user, but am aspiring to get an STe soon enough). I think it would be a good idea if Atari put out an older version of TOS (like ver. 1.0 or 1.4) on disk, that would take over as the ST OS, so that those programs that do not run on the STe (particularly games, as has been mentioned) CAN be run, because the characteristics that those programs take advantage of will be there, in the RAM OS. Of course, all the advantages of the newer OS will not be there, but if you want to run an old program on your new computer, it could be the only way, unless you want to wait until the software company comes out with a newer version of the program you want, which in some cases is very unlikely. mmiller@nyx
stephen@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Steve Whitney) (07/06/90)
In article <1433@nyx.UUCP> mmiller@nyx.UUCP (Mark Thomas Miller) writes: > [stuff deleted] >I think it would be a good idea if Atari put out an older version of TOS >(like ver. 1.0 or 1.4) on disk, that would take over as the ST OS, so that >those programs that do not run on the STe (particularly games, as has been >mentioned) CAN be run, because the characteristics that those programs >take advantage of will be there, in the RAM OS. Of course, all the >advantages of the newer OS will not be there, but if you want to run an >old program on your new computer, it could be the only way, unless you >want to wait until the software company comes out with a newer version >of the program you want, which in some cases is very unlikely. > >mmiller@nyx I don't think that this would accomplish anything. The most common reason for programs that work with TOS 1.4 to fail under TOS 1.6 is that the ROMs are in a different part o fthe 68000's address space. If code assumes that it will find the base of the operating system where it always was in the past, it will fail, and with a translator disk, the operating system would _still_ not be in the correct place. In fact, since there isn't any RAM where the operating system used to be, you can't do what you want to without a hardware modi- fication. I'm sue games will be fixed soon since there are so many STEs flooding out into the world now. All we need is a Mega STE now... Disclaimer: There probably _are_ programs that fail under TOS 1.6 because they special case each version of the operating system. You might fix these, but the big problem is the new OS address. Steve -- Steve Whitney "It's never _really_ the last minute" (())_-_(()) UCLA Comp. Sci. Grad. Student | (* *) | Internet: stephen@cs.ucla.edu UCLA Bruin--> { \_@_/ } GEnie: S.WHITNEY `-----'
AAron@image.soe.clarkson.edu (AAron nAAs) (07/06/90)
From article <1433@nyx.UUCP>, by mmiller@nyx.UUCP (Mark Thomas Miller): > > In past postings on here, people have been complaining about STe > incompatibility with certain software. If you'll remember many years ago, ... > Translator disk, which loaded the old 800 OS into RAM of the XL or XE ... > (like ver. 1.0 or 1.4) on disk, that would take over as the ST OS, so that > those programs that do not run on the STe (particularly games, as has been > mentioned) CAN be run, because the characteristics that those programs ... A friend and I tried this very thing with our STe's and TOS 1.0 on disk. It helped "a little"... some programs that bombed right away, didn't bomb right away, but did bomb a little later due to something else... A good example: ST-TALKER, a neat speech synthesizer. Bombed under TOS 1.6 when you tried to make it say ANYTHING. With TOS 1.0 in memory, it spoke, but bombs when you try to pull out the extra speech settings window. But the benefits of the STe far outway the disadvantages as I see it... AAron nAAs AAron@sun.soe.clarkson.edu