"Tracy_E_Thieret.WBST128"@XEROX.COM (10/10/87)
Folks, I've written and talked to the two companies (Hawthorne and Peripheral Tech.) about their respective offerings because I want a computer which will do REAL Arrays without the funny segmentation thing. My conclusion was to purchase the PT 68K-2 so you know up front. The standard disclaimers apply. I don't work for any of the companies involved. For that matter I really don't work very much at all. I get paid for playing at my hobby. I also do some xerography in order to justify it to the management. The statements made below are culled from the paper blurbs from the respective companies and are not guaranteed to be error free. My typing is not error free either but as they say "The information was obtained from the most reliable sources available." PROCESSOR/SPEED TG (aka Tiny Giant): 68000 8MHz PT (aka Radio Electronics PT 68K-2) 68000 8,10,12,16 MHz (how much do you want to pay?) BOARD SIZE TG: Fits on top of a 5.25 floppy disk drive PT: Fits in a Baby PC-AT case TOTAL MEMORY SPACE ON BOARD TG: 512K of 64Kx4 DRAM no info on waits, uses Fujitsu (?) DRAM controller PT: 1024K of 256K DRAM no waits at 10MHz (150ns) uses discrete propriatory design controller DEVICE COMPLEMENT TG: Floppy Disk controller, 2 serial, parallel, timer PT: Floppy Disk COntroller, 4 serial, 2 parallel, timer, battery backed clock, 4k battery backed SRAM. EXPANSION INTERFACE TG: Brings all the 68000 pins to a header for piggy back boards PT: has 6 PC-XT compatible slots on motherboard. Doesn't support memory in them but does support Herc graphics card and PC keyboard if present on bootup otherwise uses one of the serial ports. Hard disk (Winchester) controllers will fit there too and be recognized by the OS. MEMORY MAP TG: Sparce device decoding - each device takes up lots of locations (as far as I can tell w/o a schematic.) They do publish their map in some of their docs and it says things like (not a quote) "serial controller - FD0000 - FDFFFF" PT: Less sparse but leaves a 11 MB contiguous area for memory expansion without any explicit way to put memory there. Lots of address space for PC type peripherals. MEMORY EXPANSION TG: Possible (Hawthorne referred to a 2MB piggy back board) by attaching to the 68000 signals on the expansion connector PT: Possible but not trivial. Pasipheral Tech said that somebody was working on a daughter board for the 68000 and more memory. You can't use the PC expansion slots for mem. expansion even though 2Meg of 68K address space is reserved for "PC address space slots" (WHY?) OPERATING SYSTEM TG: K-OS1 (say "Chaos" One - Joe Bartel of Hawthorne Tech is responsible for the pronounciation) has an assembler, source for the OS, and a compiler for their FORTH like language. Not an extensive utilities set. But does read and write MS-DOS (tr Microsoft) diskettes as it's normal format. PT: This is where the PT board really shines. Their board will support SK-DOS - a single tasking/single user OS with LOTS of utilities. Not MS-DOS (tr) format but comes with utilities to read/write them. Cache/RamDisk, full screen editor, Small C. In addition the board can be ordered with OS-9 for the 68K. I don't know much about this system ($500) but it comes with a REAL C compiler. I'm not sure but it might be multi tasking/user. (?) Get a copy of the 68K Micro Journal for more info. BUCKS: TG: $395 for 128K RAM system with O.S. (K-OS1) PT: $600 for 1 meg board full up (fully populated) and OS (SK-DOS). $200 for bare board and startup kit. Take a look at the October issue of "Radio Electronics" for the PT board and the last few issues of the "Computer Journal" for Joe Bartell's column on the Tiny Giant. As I say, I've ordered the PT card. It's supposed to be shipped (A&T for $600 full up 10MHz) next week. I'll let you know. Tracy. ---------------------------- My opinions are as well informed as I know how to make them and belong to me personally. If you like them send me $25 and I'll send you periodic updates.
mwm@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Meyer, My watch has windows) (10/12/87)
>> I've written and talked to the two companies (Hawthorne and Peripheral >> Tech.) about their respective offerings because I want a computer which >> will do REAL Arrays without the funny segmentation thing. My conclusion That's basically my reason for dealing with 68K boxes. But I wound up going a different route - the "pre-packaged for the consumer" 68k. I'm going to put the list out again, with the Amiga and the Atari ST added.The Amiga will be the A500. Places where it differs from the other two will be pointed out. I'm an Amiga fan, so the ST information is liable to be sparse, and may be wrong. It's being included for completeness; I hope some ST fan will re-issue the list with more complete/correct information. Adding the Mac would be a good thing, too. <mike PROCESSOR/SPEED TG (aka Tiny Giant): 68000 8MHz PT (aka Radio Electronics PT 68K-2) 68000 8,10,12,16 MHz (how much do you want to pay?) Amiga (A500) 68000 7.14MHz, 68010 works as a dropin. Atari (st*) 68000 8 MHz BOARD SIZE TG: Fits on top of a 5.25 floppy disk drive PT: Fits in a Baby PC-AT case Amiga: Comes with keyboard in C-64 like case. The A[12]000 come in an IBM-PC like box. Atari: Comes with keyboard in a C-64 like case. TOTAL MEMORY SPACE ON BOARD TG: 512K of 64Kx4 DRAM no info on waits, uses Fujitsu (?) DRAM controller PT: 1024K of 256K DRAM no waits at 10MHz (150ns) uses discrete propriatory design controller Amiga: 512K, no waits (the A1000 is 256K) Atari: 512K, 1024K (how much do you want to pay?), no info on waits DEVICE COMPLEMENT TG: Floppy Disk controller, 2 serial, parallel, timer PT: Floppy Disk COntroller, 4 serial, 2 parallel, timer, battery backed clock, 4k battery backed SRAM. Amiga: floppy disk controller, 1 serial, 1 parallel. Atari: SCSI, floppy disk controller, 1 serial, 1 parallel, MIDI EXPANSION INTERFACE TG: Brings all the 68000 pins to a header for piggy back boards PT: has 6 PC-XT compatible slots on motherboard. Doesn't support memory in them but does support Herc graphics card and PC keyboard if present on bootup otherwise uses one of the serial ports. Hard disk (Winchester) controllers will fit there too and be recognized by the OS. Amiga: Brings all the 68000 pins to a slot on the side, plus some extra board signals. There is a standard for a slotted bus to hang off of that expansion; either backplanes or single devices are available. The A2000 has slots built in, plus IBM-PC slots that require a "bridge" card to use. The bridge card also provides an intel processor, and IBM-PC clone hardware on board. Cards in the IBM-PC slots are useable from the 68K side of the world. The A2000 also has slots for a coprocessor and a "video processor". ST: none (?) MEMORY MAP TG: Sparce device decoding - each device takes up lots of locations (as far as I can tell w/o a schematic.) They do publish their map in some of their docs and it says things like (not a quote) "serial controller - FD0000 - FDFFFF" PT: Less sparse but leaves a 11 MB contiguous area for memory expansion without any explicit way to put memory there. Lots of address space for PC type peripherals. Amiga: Expansion devices are expected to autoconfig. They should occupy memory space that is a power of 2, and be able to be aligned on any even multiple of their size, with 4 & 8 meg boards exempt from the latter. ST: No expansion possible (?) MEMORY EXPANSION TG: Possible (Hawthorne referred to a 2MB piggy back board) by attaching to the 68000 signals on the expansion connector PT: Possible but not trivial. Pasipheral Tech said that somebody was working on a daughter board for the 68000 and more memory. You can't use the PC expansion slots for mem. expansion even though 2Meg of 68K address space is reserved for "PC address space slots" (WHY?) Amiga: 512K to connector on the motherboard (256K on the A1000) (on the A500, this also has a battery-backed clock), 8 Meg of autoconfig ram, and 2 meg of unused space that third party people have ram boards to fit in. ST: none provided by Atari, various hacks to put memory in the box are available from third party. OPERATING SYSTEM TG: K-OS1 (say "Chaos" One - Joe Bartel of Hawthorne Tech is responsible for the pronounciation) has an assembler, source for the OS, and a compiler for their FORTH like language. Not an extensive utilities set. But does read and write MS-DOS (tr Microsoft) diskettes as it's normal format. PT: This is where the PT board really shines. Their board will support SK-DOS - a single tasking/single user OS with LOTS of utilities. Not MS-DOS (tr) format but comes with utilities to read/write them. Cache/RamDisk, full screen editor, Small C. In addition the board can be ordered with OS-9 for the 68K. I don't know much about this system ($500) but it comes with a REAL C compiler. I'm not sure but it might be multi tasking/user. (?) Get a copy of the 68K Micro Journal for more info. Amiga: unamed thing consisting of the Amiga Exec and AmigaDOS, which is part of Tripos ported to the Amiga. Multi-tasking (but *not* multi-user) message-passing os. Windowing, etc. Lots of full-screen editors in the PD, C compilers available, Forth, FORTRAN, Pascal, Modula-II, and more available. Atari: GEM - a Digital Research windowing system, on TOS - a CP/M-like OS. Much of the software available for the Amiga is available for the ST (or vice versa). OS/9 is also available. BUCKS: TG: $395 for 128K RAM system with O.S. (K-OS1) PT: $600 for 1 meg board full up (fully populated) and OS (SK-DOS). $200 for bare board and startup kit. Amiga: $600 for the A500; $1500 for the A2000; a television can be used for display. ST: $400 for the ST512, which is complete
jejones@mcrware.UUCP (James Jones) (10/14/87)
A message comparing two 68K systems says, in part... >....In addition the board can >be ordered with OS-9 for the 68K. I don't know much about this system >($500) but it comes with a REAL C compiler. I'm not sure but it might >be multi tasking/user. OS-9 is definitely multitasking/multiuser. SKDOS, as you may have seen mentioned long ago here, is Peter Stark's clone of the old TSC FLEX OS for the 6800 and 6809--which evidently has been ported to the 68000. I really don't understand why *R-E* has gone that route. James Jones