a360ad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gnurr) (03/31/89)
Just read a very convincing article in April Computer Shopper
confirming the existence of the ATW..... 1800 hours of use so far.
While I fully appreciate ATARI Sunnyvale's "reasoning" for non-disclosure
of a product "before its time", I have to say that there must be a point
in time when it is at least SAFE to say that products x and y will do this
and that and will be available when.....
There is no doubt in my mind that ATARI is loosing a lot of the market
by keeping their mouths shut. A friend recently bought an SE030 for
$3500 (university discounted) that "appears" to fall far short of the
ATW.... had he even heard of the possible existence of the ATW, i am sure
he'd have hesitated and probably waited. I myself am anxious for a
faster, more powerful machine..... was pert near going to do the same....
until i read the article referred to above. I would like to believe the
following:
( cat Computer Shopper U. K. > Computer Shopper U. S. (April) )
INMOS T800 transputer central processor (32 bit 10Mips/1.5MFlops)
The processors have built-in serial communications channel, each
of which is able to operate at about 2.5MB/sec concurrently with
the CPU (and on-board floating point unit). The T800 has four
such links and this makes it ideally suited to parrallel processing
applications. Internally, the ATW is able to hold 13 of these (along
with anything up to 64MB of memory - using 4Mbit chips) and through
two buffered links can address any number externally. This gives
the ATW the capability of being a 130Mip supercomputer in it
own right.....
Blossom pixel power 1280x960 - 16colors out of palette of 4096
(3 other possible resolutions)
Entry level machines: Helios multi-user OS
1 MB dedicated to video
4 MB user RAM
SCSI hardware support
built-in 40MB hard drive
68000 I/O controller (modified Mega ST board)
$2,500
I highly recommend reading the excellent article written by
Mike Charnley Fisherbrazil@pawl.rpi.edu (Timothy E. Onders) (04/01/89)
Presently, they do not expect to provide an expansion for present ST owners. The ATW will be in a tower configuration, with 40MBy HD, 4 MBy RAM, 1MBy graphics RAM, Helios, etc... The price quoted by Computer Shopper should have been in Pounds Sterling, rather than dollars. The actual price they are presently tossing around is about $4000-$5000. Actual price yet to be finalized. And, Yes, There will be software available upon release of the machine. Nifty stuff too. Timothy Onders brazil@pawl.rpi.edu brazil@uruguay.acm.rpi.edu All information has been reasonably varified by a highly placed souce in Atari Canada.
PETCHER@FSU.BITNET (04/01/89)
The price quoted in the April issue of Computer Shopper for the ATW ($2500 in
base configuration with 4 Mb and including a 40 Mb hard disk) sounds very
good indeed! This isn't another April fool's joke is it?
Something that was not mentioned is whether an add-on box or an add-on card for
existing Mega owners is being planned. Is this in the cards? It sure would be
nice for those of us who have already purchased the 'front end' of the ATW
(68000, 4 Mb ram) for almost the price of the full thing (barring the April 1
possibility of the above quoted price of course).
How about it Atari? Can you confirm the price? Is there an add-on in
the works? If so I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be lining up at
your door pronto!
Don Petcher
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
The Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052
Petcher@vsdnp.scri.fsu.edu
or
PETCHER@FSU.BITNETrsimonian@x102c.harris-atd.com (Simonian RP 66449) (04/03/89)
In article <[gw.scri.fsu.edu].07FA03E0.0092294A.PETCHER> PETCHER@FSU.BITNET writes: >The price quoted in the April issue of Computer Shopper for the ATW ($2500 in >base configuration with 4 Mb and including a 40 Mb hard disk) sounds very >good indeed! >Something that was not mentioned is whether an add-on box or an add-on card >for existing Mega owners is being planned. The latest issue of ST-Informer, from information gathered at CeBit, states that the ATW will run around $8000, and that Atari decided NOT to market it as an add-on to any existing ST. Richard P. Simonian 407/984-6006 Natural Language Processing Group Harris GISD, Melbourne, FL 32902 Internet: rsimonian@x102c@trantor.harris-atd.com
brazil@pawl.rpi.edu (Timothy E. Onders) (04/03/89)
In article <1852@trantor.harris-atd.com> rsimonian@x102c.harris-atd.com (Simonian RP 66449) writes: >The latest issue of ST-Informer, from information gathered at CeBit, states >that the ATW will run around $8000, and that Atari decided NOT to market >it as an add-on to any existing ST. Julius Oklamkac(hope I spelled that right), the Developer Support person for Atari Canada says that the price they are tossing around right now is somewhere around $5,000 to $6,000. The $2,500 should have been British Pounds, not dollars. Also, it will not be made available as an expansion for present ST's. Two other interesting things, to give you a sense of when this thing is going to be available, Prentice Hall Publishing will be selling a three volume set of Helios manuals within the next few months. And lastly, Benchmark Statistics. As far as interger benchmarks go, without using on-chip ram, the 20MHz T800 can out perform a 20MHz 68020. For floating point, a 20MHz T800 is 50% faster than a 25MHz 80386 with Witek Floating Point Co-Processor. If it is allowed to use on-chip ram, all figures go up by a factor of 5 or 6. Tim Onders brazil@pawl.rpi.edu
bgr@long-grain.Rice.EDU (Robert G. Rhode) (07/26/89)
Does anyone know anything about the Atari Tansputer Workstation? Does it really exist? I'd like to know more about it. Robert Rhode | "Today's champion bgr@uncle-bens.rice.edu | is tomorrow's crocodile shit." rhode@ricevm1.rice.edu | Monty Python : Contractual Obligation Album
ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) (01/02/90)
I've been reading comp.sys.transputer and comp.sys.next. The ATW has been mentioned with high acclaim in both groups... as a matter of fact... there is at least one NeXT owner who wishes he had known more about the ATW before he bought the NeXT.. particlulary now that he has seen one. This person claims that the ATW has a good chance at becoming a serious contender in the workstation market.. Perhaps even stealing some parties hooked on the NeXT. How about the front cover of Byte.... seems like it wouldn't hurt. Every other machine that's ever been made or made "into" anything has made it on the cover... -kevin ramsiri@blake.acs.washinton.edu
buggs@cup.portal.com (William Edward JuneJr) (01/04/90)
Anyone know what ever became of the Kuma transputer cards?
Anyone ever see one?
Ed June