daveba@hpsad.HP.COM (David Ballo) (11/30/89)
Although I bought my Atari 1040ST in June of 1988, it appears to have TOS 1.0 in it instead of TOS 1.2 as I had expected. Would some knowledgeable person kindly outline the differences between these two TOS versions? Also, is it worth it to upgrade to TOS 1.4 (for a hundred bucks!)? Thanks, Dave Ballo HP, Signal Analysis Division R&D
kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) (12/02/89)
daveba@hpsad.HP.COM (David Ballo) asks: | Would some knowledgeable person kindly outline the differences | between [ROM TOS (1.0) and Mega TOS (1.2)]? The major difference between the original ROM TOS and Mega TOS is BLiTTER support. Some VDI operations were optimized a bit in Mega TOS as well. GEMDOS uses a larger amount of memory by default in Mega TOS, so some programs which barely fit in a 520ST ran out of memory in Mega TOS. | Also, is it worth it to upgrade to TOS 1.4 (for a hundred bucks!)? Well, I'll let the rest of the netters who have the upgrade answer this, because anything I say on this subject is tooting Atari's horn <grin>. But I'll offer the following: Many, many TOS bugs are gone in Rainbow TOS. Many internal limits in TOS have been lifted. Hard disk I/O is much, much faster. Program launches can be made much faster. You can rename folders, no more making a new folder and then copying all the files in, then removing the old folder. The Desktop is much more convenient, preserving the time/date stamp of your files on copies. The Rainbow TOS Desktop lets you _move_ files and folders, using Control-drag. You can abort a file copy or move operation by pressing [Undo]. A lot of the dialogs are more intuitive. The AES gives you a much nicer item selector, with buttons for all the drives, and an optional title string when supported by software. The Rainbow TOS AES also lets you auto boot a GEM application, configured by the "Set Preferences" menu item in the Desktop. That's only the stuff that came to mind as I was typing, there's more... -- ||| Ken Badertscher (ames!atari!kbad) ||| Atari R&D System Software Engine / | \ #include <disclaimer>