[comp.sys.atari.st] Atari ST Network

"Bob_Anderson.EuroPARC"@XEROX.COM (01/13/89)

Can anyone out there help?
My wife has 2 520 STs working as word processors and general office support
machines.  She wants to upgrade them because neither the wp package or the
data bases she uses are very good.  She would like DTP standard wp,
multiple fonts, blah, blah, blah.  In addition, she wants to use some IBM
software for statistical analysis.  Ideally she would like to network the
upgraded versions of the existing machines to a printer, hard disk serving
as a file server and to a new machine, possibly a 1040. At prsent the 2
machines have a switchbox to an knackered Epson that they share. The
problem is that she cannot find an easy way of upgrading the 520s.  She has
been told of the possibility of 'adding a chip' but this looks to be either
very expensive or not worth it.  She has also been told you cannot network
either 520s or 1040s.
So the questions are:
1. Can the 520s be upgraded easily to 1mg or beyond, how much for and what
does it mean in terms of RAM?
2. Is it impossible to get 2 or 3 machines to share a printer and a 20 or
40 mg hard disk? Is there an Atari version of multifinder?
3. Is the IBM emulator any good?  Will it run quite complex statistical
packages without breaking or needing further patching?

Please reply to  me direct on Anderson.EuroPARC@Xerox.COM as I don't
subscribe to this list and only learned about it by chance.

Bob Anderson