sidic1@watale.waterloo.EDU (James Parker) (06/20/88)
I have a few questions concerning the Atari ST and using it for CAD/engineering work. I have heard lots of talk about coprocessors and 68020/68881 boards for other 68000 micros (ie. the AMIGA) but I haven't heard of anything for the ST (1040 or Mega). First of all, does anyone know if anything is out there and what kind of price/performance can be expected.. Secondly, I have a bunch of software written in Fortran and currently running on IBM PC's. I would be interested in porting the software for the ST and I was first wondering if anyone has any idea of the speed I could expect from the ST compared to an XT and/or an AT? The software is basically number crunching and not graphics intensive and a typical job takes about 20 minutes to run on a garden variety 8088 PC but only 4-5 minutes with an 8087 math chip...which initially made me think about math chips for the ST. The ST seems to have some nice features (one of them is price) and it seems to me that with a 68000 it should be at least as fast as the XT but I have never seen or heard anyone talking much about the Atari for scientific/engineering use. I would appreciate any comments or pointers to reviews I might look at. Thanks in advance...