kleef@ark.cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) (04/26/87)
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ATARI SHOW ENGLAND
Atari Expands on PC Market
==========================
(by Paul Molenaar)
London, April 25 - Quite out of the blue, Atari introduced a
'full-blown' IBM-PC computer other than the Atari PC that was
first shown at the Hannover Messe in Germany. The new PC has
slots for expandability and may include a built in harddisk.
Atari made no 'big fuss' about it, because as Jack Tramiel said:
"we'd rather people buy the Atari ST." The two IBM-PC compatible
machines Atari now offers are considered to be 'money-makers', no
more, no less.
Otherwise, the Atari Show in the London Novotel was a show of
'maybe later this afternoon'. Although some software companies
had some new products to show, most of the other products that
should have been shown were either "lost during the flight" (Data
Pacific's new version of the Macintosh emulator) or out of order
(Atari's laserprinter). Dave Small, the inventor of the Macintosh
Cartridge was present and took the time to tell me some more
about this product.
"The cartridge project started when I took a look inside the
Macintosh Rom and discoverndependent. My
wife uses a Mac and I figured the Macintosh Rom could be
implemented on the Atari ST. With that it really began, porting
the stuff to the ST and checking out what had to be done to make
it work. In the process I discovered some annoying bugs in the
Mac Rom. As I understand, Apple bought a Cartridge to see what
errors I encountered and patched to make it run on the ST. They
needed to know because of the Mac II project."
Reactions from Apple people varied, Small says,laughing: "On the
first show, some Apple guys walked by my stand saying: "let's
break some legs here." Andy Herzfeld, on the other hand, was
quite interested and told me more about the Mac Rom's and how to
make things work." Small did show version 4.0 of his emulator
software, being able to run more software than 3.x versions did.
The bug that made the system 'bomb' after an application was
ended is removed and more software than before should run now.
"I've also devised a way to ensure that software writing to ram-
location $0, causing most of the crashes, is patched. I made a
dynamic debugging tool for my own purposes that scans the object
code of applications and makes patches where necessary. No, this
will probably not be published. The code is not written very
smoothly."
New will be a hardware interface that makes the original Atari
drives read and write Macintosh disks. Small: "It cn of a
chips that control the speed of the disk and thus
simulate the varying drive speed of the Macintosh." This device
is to be released in a matter of weeks or 2 months at the most,
Small said. At the same time, a Cartridge version for the Amiga
will be introduced. There it will run in the interlaced high-res
mode.
Dave has seen the MacBongo emulator. It is a software-only
version of his emulator. Small: "It shows that a software-only
Macintosh emulator can be done. I have considered it, but as you
may know, Apple US is very eager to sue anyone that tempers with
the Macintosh. That's why my emulator requires the original Rom's
and won't even work with Eproms. And yes, I've heard of the
Aladin emulator too. I would very much like to cooperate with
them. I know a lot about the Macintosh by now and it would be a
waste of time for them to find it all out. I know all the bugs in
MacWrite. It's full of them and I know this version will never be
able to run on the Macintosh II, haha."
It's unlikely the Cartridge will support the newer 128K Roms the
Macintosh 512e and Macintosh Plus are equipped with, let alone
the 256K Rom that is found in the Macintosh SE. Small: "It will
take me a hell of a time. I looked into the code and saw it's a
lot of work. And I prefer to write articles for magazines."
What surprises Small is the prices his emulator retails in
Europe. "It really costs too much. I can understand why people
made MacBongo. If possible, I'll persuade the Europen
distributor the price. It's twice the price the
Cartridge retails in the US. If necessary, we'll lower our
wholesale price of the product for them." By now, Data Pacific
sold some 4200 cartridges. "Maybe it will pay me a holiday to the
Bahama's some day. No, it hasn't made me rich yet. Would I be in
London if I were rich? I'd be on the Bahama's."
Atari, occupying the largest booth on the show, showed (again)
their newer Mega-ST models. Bugs in the Rom's have been removed
and the machine is said to be in production by now. European
dealers should be receiving their first models within the next
couple of weeks, an Atari spokesman said. It could be that the US
market has to wait a little longer, awaiting FCC approval. The
laserprinter isn't in production yet and even the worn-out
prototype couldn't be made to print. Pagedesign packages used
either an Apple Laserwriter or a QMS laserprinter to show the
output.
The new Atari PC, equipped with slots, is a IBM-PC compatibler running at either 4.77 or 8 MHz. The prototype was not
allowed to be opened. This makes me believe it contained either a
'standard' clone motherboard or, as an Atari official suggested,
the motherboard of the earlier, non-expandable Atari PC. It
looked compatible enough, and there's no reason why it shouldn't
be. If anyone else can do it, why shouldn't Atari?
New software:
MicroDeal showed a stunning looking game called Goldrunner. It's
a fast action, shoot'm up arcade game with multiple levels.
Barbarian is the name of a new game by Psygnosis, the company
that brought us Brataccas, Arena Sports and Deep Space. It looked
extremly good, like most Psygnosis software does. The game
involves slaying monsters in an underground world. Terrorpods
will be released shortly, but no demo could be shown yet. The
games will be available for both Atari ST and Amiga.
Superbase was basically the only business-type of software that
was shown. This program needs no further information.
GST brought the latest ("and final") release of First Word Plus.
Their program will retail for just under 80 pound.
COPYRIGHT 1987 BY PAUL MOLENAARkleef@ark.cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) (04/26/87)
Sorry, forgot one or two things: * Some company has produced a small hardware interface for the Atari ST that enables genlock-possibilities. Certain colors can be designated to be used for another video-display. Thus you can have a 'live' video picture of a group of people and animate all kinds of animals among them from the computer. Useful for video-artists only, I believe. BTW: A dutch company is daid to release a similar product for a price of < $40. * The New Magic Sac cartridge will run system 3.2, Finder 5.3. That means HFS is now supported. A functioning system 4.0, Finder 5.4 (the latest) is unlikely, Small said. * MicroDeal also showed a pre-release of a game called Jupiter Probe. Looked a lot like Gold Runner, but was ok. * Robtek England has a new piece of hardware that allows users to switch between monochrome and color monitor without having to change the plugs. They couldn't show it as their first sample "was not representative". It will retail for around 20 pound.
asm@utcsri.UUCP (05/01/87)
In article <987@ark.cs.vu.nl> kleef@cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) writes: >Sorry, forgot one or two things: > >* Some company has produced a small hardware interface for the Atari > ST that enables genlock-possibilities. Certain colors can be designated > to be used for another video-display. Thus you can have a 'live' video > picture of a group of people and animate all kinds of animals among them > from the computer. Useful for video-artists only, I believe. > BTW: A dutch company is daid to release a similar product for a price > of < $40. > > [...] Should be quite easy to put a small hack together at home. The ST monitor plug has an output called GPO (general purpose output) which is driven by the sound-chip's parallel port or some such thing and so produces a logic level signal. It should be possible to use this output to switch the video signals. I haven't really tried this (I have only one monitor!) so I don't know if the output works as the "ST Internals" book says. If somebody should try this, I'm sure people on the net will be interested. anees munshi ps. I don't recall offhand if there is a +5V supply available on the connector. If it isn't, the hack may not be so direct (but there are many ways to get around this minor inconvenience).