achilles@unixland.uucp (David Holland) (05/03/91)
**** FORWARDED MESSAGE **** **** Follow-up to AUTHOR, please **** From Blade!Laird Wed May 1 91 17:10:18 Date: 91May01 12:19 pm From: Laird@Blade.mind.org Organization: Beantown 617/891-7338 Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit X-Citadel-Gateway: moonsweep.UUCP (Portcullis 0.5) Message-id: <91May0112:19_pm@Blade.citadel> Subject: [none] Atari manufactures a line of PC-compatible machines which are popular in Europe but unknown in the US, pretty much the same as Commodore except that Atari did make one interesting model, a stripped down no-slot PC with a floppy drive, internal hard drive, and VGA display, while all I have seen from C= are fairly generic PC clones.
achilles@unixland.uucp (David Holland) (05/18/91)
*** FORWARDED MESSAGE -- REPLY TO AUTHOR *** Date: 91May03 8:23 pm From: Laird@blade.mind.org Organization: Beantown 617/891-7338 Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit X-Citadel-Gateway: moonsweep.UUCP (Portcullis 0.5) Message-id: <91May038:23_pm@Blade.citadel> Subject: [none] Minor point about the naming of the ST line -- the original 520ST and 1040ST had no additional letters, but the 1040ST had an internal floppy drive. Later, Atari added an internal floppy drive to the 520, and renamed the computers the 520STfm (for _f_loppy and RF _m_odulator) and 1040STf (for _f_loppy). For a while, Atari produced 520STf's with no RF modulator. The Mega 1/2/4ST have separate keyboards, an internal expansion bus, and a blitter chip (which Atari insists is a BLiTTER. Go figure). Then Atari introduced a slightly improved video chipset (larger pallatte) and much better sound chips, and introduced the 520STe and 1040STe (for _e_nhanced). Recently Atari has introduced the Mega 1/2/4STe, a 16 MHz 68000-based version of the STe, with an internal floppy drive, (optionally) an internal hard drive, separate keyboard, and a VME bus slot, for which all sorts of nifty cards are available. They also introduced the TT, a 32 MHz 68030-based computer with the same specs as the Mega STe. Both incorporate a new version of TOS, the first major revision that Atari has released, and (correct me if I'm wrong) add a number of new display modes ranging up to about 1200x1000 monochrome and including a 256-color display mode (out of a pallatte of 16M). One unique aspect of the TT is that it has two RAM busses, one for 16-bit ST RAM, and one for 32-bit TT RAM. Benchmarks of the TT have it performing remarkable similarly to a Mac IIfx, which is pretty good for a much cheaper computer with a slower clock speed. --- END MESSAGE ---