FXDDR@ALASKA.BITNET.UUCP (02/28/87)
I'm a little surprised by the various comparisons that have been made between the "old" and "new" Atari personalities. Certainly the "old" atari was helpful, but I think they were at least as slow and prone to vapor products as the "new" atari. The Atari 800 was introduced in 1979. I got one in 1980 (my first real micro). The docs that came with it were even sparser than the ST manual. A "getting started" book similar to the Abacus ST intro was included, and had many errors. None of the connector pinouts were given. I wrote a letter to Atari in '80 asking for more technical information. I got the pinouts, brochures on Atari products, and a letter saying that a technical manual was in preparation. The information first appeared as a series of articles in the 1981-82 Byte magazines. The official publications showed up in '82, with the technical docs going for about $70 I think. The interesting part was that this manual was dated Nov 1980...looking back at it I suspect it was the docs for their developer's kit. Overall I think the "new" Atari is running at a much faster pace than the old. Good software didn't start appearing for the 800 until the Byte articles and the tech docs were out (strange coincidence...). I seem to recall '82 was a banner year for the 800 users---my third year owning an 800. My ST has now seen its first anniversary and I have about 40 disks here with all sorts of commercial and PD software for it, so I would say Atari is doing MUCH better now than it did then. I hope so or we won't see the "official" tech docs until 1988, going by the "old" atari preparation time. But let's keep bugging them about it just to make sure! Don Rice University of Alaska, Fairbanks BITNET%"FXDDR@ALASKA" CIS 72337,3417 // KL7JIQ