karl@es56.UUCP (Karl Rowley) (03/17/89)
The ST is now four years old, and is maturing. The support for the machine from Atari is still disappointing. There is a new line of hardware (the Mega ST and the laser printer) but there are no enhancements from Atari for existing 520ST and 1040ST owners. The blitter upgrade died a slow death. After years of promissing upgrades to 520 and 1040 owners, the subject is not mentioned by Atari much any more. No one in their right minds believes that the blitter upgrade will ever take place. The nicely printed documentation for the ST has never materialized. Years ago this documentation was supposedly close to release. Networking? Yeah, there's MosesPromiseLan. Appletalk connections? Are you kidding? Now TOS 1.4 is coming out. Will this be available for 520 and 1040 owners? Look at history for the probable answer. After four years of promises with a zero delivery rate, I have become skeptical. Copy me directly on any replies. Send flames directly to me. I am waiting by my mailbox with a bucket of cold water. Also, these are my own flames and not those of my company. Karl Rowley Evans and Sutherland Computer Division ...!decwrl!escd!karl escd!karl@decwrl.dec.com
Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) (03/19/89)
Karl Rowley writes: >"The support for the machine from Atari is still disappointing. >There is a new line of hardware (the Mega ST and the laser >printer) but there are no enhancements from Atari for >520ST and 1040ST owners." Personally, I prefer third market people to enhance my ST. Having had owned an ST since summer of 1985, I have been exceedingly satisfied with the box and the upgrades offered. My 520ST ended up being sold for a Mega2 ST and the owner of the 520 has bumped it up to four meg! He is very happy. I have had my Mega2 ST since fall of 1987, and other than needing the ram drivers replaced, have been very happy with it. I'm no casual user. I run FullWrite and Excel via the Spectre 128. Compare the Atari ST with other systems. How many times has the Amiga been upgraded? Look how the Amiga 1000 was dropped so that the Amiga 500 and 2000 could take its place. Look at IBM. For years, it spent millions trying to convince the world to go with the AT standard and now has dropped that in favor for the Personal System 2. Look at the Mac. From the Mac Plus to the Mac IIcx... The Mac Plus is not upgradeable and Mac SEers are having to pay $1100 for the Mac SE 30 upgrade. They also have to trash any peripheral cards. Other than the Apple II series, there is not ONE home computer platform that has been able to hang in there due to upgrades that don't cost an arm and a leg. Getting back to the ST. Double sided drives can replace the single sided drive residing in the 520. Third market people, not Atari are offering upgrades, match co-processing, and acceleration. As far as the ST series is concerned, look at the changes done to the mother boards of the individual machines. There is a constant flux of improvement. I hope and pray that Atari never builds a box that can be improved but in a way that we have to pay a dear price, that is, a price kin to the SE's $1100.00. Let's go further. The Mac II is being offered an upgrade that costs $2100.00! There is one area that I do agree with Karl Rowley on: "The nicely printed documentation for the ST has never materialized. Years ago this documentation was supposedly close to release." For shame! The ST has been out for almost four years and there is yet for an 'official' technical manual to show on the shelves. Yes, I know about Abacus.... But, all in all, I think the ST machine is right on track especially when we note that it is a low-volume box in the American market. Just my opinion. Of course it is flavored with the fact that I'm able to run commerical-grade Macintosh software on it. I LOVE IT! Larry Rymal <Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET>
Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (03/20/89)
No flame, just a comment... If you think that things in Atari land are bad, I could send you pages of complaints from Apple/Mac owners about their company and their promises, be thankful you're not paying $5,000 a machine like they are! Be thnakful you don't have to pay $50+ simply to use a different printer with your machine! Be thankful that Atari didn't raise the prices of their machines last year like the 25%+ increase Apple owners were treated to. In comparison things don't look so bad in Atari... Peter Szymonik
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (03/21/89)
This is not a flame, nor is it a "my computer is better than your computer" posting. In Larry's followup he posted this : In article <890318.15195162.015395@SFA.CP6> (Larry Rymal) writes: > Compare the Atari ST with other systems. How many times has the > Amiga been upgraded? Look how the Amiga 1000 was dropped so that the > Amiga 500 and 2000 could take its place. If you saw my original article on why the 1040ST and the Amiga 500 were the same machine, you will know that I believe that in the pure hardware sense both of these machines have desirable qualities. What Larry is comparing above is manufacturer support. This is an area where Atari is lacking. Below is the text of a message I sent to the original author which just yesterday returned to my system unopened. Please read it and think which of these things you would like Atari to do, rather than think of it as a condemnation of Atari or the ST computer in general. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: ucbvax.berkeley.edu!es56!karl Subject: Re: Disappointing ST support from Atari Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st In-Reply-To: <8903170020.AA03032@es56.escd.uucp> Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Cc: Bcc: A sad testament it's true, compare that to the Commodore Amiga ... In article <8903170020.AA03032@es56.escd.uucp> you write: >The ST is now four years old, and is maturing. The Amiga is not quite 4 years old (Oct '85) and is maturing. >The support for the machine from Atari is still disappointing. The support for the machine continues to improve. There are now yearly developer's conferences in Europe and the U.S., a monthly newsletter that contains solid technical information, a developers program that is supported on a couple of networks, and dedicated phone support for commercial developers. >There is a new line of hardware (the Mega ST and the laser >printer) but there are no enhancements from Atari for existing >520ST and 1040ST owners. There are now three "new" machines, and expandable 68000 based machine the A2000, an expandable 68020 based machine the A2500, and a more cost effective home machine the A500. Owners of the Amiga 1000 were given a couple of opportunities to "trade in" their older 1000 for the newer A2000 model. This week Commodore began shipping 80286 "bridgeboards" to dealers. These boards can replace existing 8088 bridgeboards to provide PC/AT speed and compatibility in addition to the already quick Amiga 2000 and 2500. They also began shipping A500 expansion boxes to upgrade them to a total of 3Meg and a 20Meg hard disk. >The blitter upgrade died a slow death. After years of promissing >upgrades to 520 and 1040 owners, the subject is not mentioned >by Atari much any more. No one in their right minds believes that >the blitter upgrade will ever take place. Since it's introduction there have been four releases of the operating system (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3), today there is a fifth (1.4) in alpha testing. ROM upgrades are available, and a new updated chip set for better graphics is currently being tested for release with 1.4. This deals with the biggest complaint of Amiga owners, the requirement of using interlace to display 700 X 420 graphics. >The nicely printed documentation for the ST has never materialized. >Years ago this documentation was supposedly close to release. Nicely printed documentation has been available for the Amiga since a few months after it's announcement. Commodore made available for a nominal fee disk based updates to that documentation when the OS was revised. Last week, a newly revised version of the Amiga ROM Kernel Manual was released by Addison-Wessley. This manual contains all of the latest information available with the existing 1.3 OS release. Upgrades to the other volumes of this manual are promised by A-W for this summer. >Networking? Yeah, there's MosesPromiseLan. Appletalk connections? >Are you kidding? Only one year after it's announcement an ethernet product was available. Today, Ameristar supplies TCP/IP and NFS for use with all expandable Amiga models, with A500 support being shown but not yet available. >Now TOS 1.4 is coming out. Will this be available for 520 and >1040 owners? Look at history for the probable answer. Now AmigaDOS 1.4 is starting alpha testing. Will it be available for previous owners ? Look at history for the probably answer which says : Yes, it will be available as will new ROMs for owners of the A500 and A2xxx machines. UNIX has been shown at several shows on the higher end machines. >After four years of promises with a zero delivery rate, I have >become skeptical. After four years of improvements with an improving delivery rate I have become even more enthusiastic about the machine, it's possibilities and its future. Pretty amazing what some commitment on the part of a manufacturer can do for a machine. If you were a commercial developer and saw these two histories side by side which machine would you develop for ? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.