kurt@fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) (08/15/85)
I went down and looked at the 520ST yesterday. I am going to buy either an
Amiga or a 520ST this fall during the price wars and have been collecting
data on which to base a decision (see previous postings). Heres my impression:
Imagine a 16-bit Commodore 64. More processing speed, of course. More
colors, more sound, same relatively low price. Same physical configuration.
Same kind of design philosophy. A mass market machine for the late 80's.
The 520ST is a small box just larger than the keyboard. The C64's volkswagen
curves are replaced by sleek angular styling which is quite attractive. Mouse
and joystick plug in on the right. On/off and reset are in the right rear,
with power supply presumably in a box on the floor, just like the C64. Very
small 3 1/2" drives with stylish plastic cases, and the monitor plug in the
back via DIN cables. A bus expander connector is on the left side. The disks
run cold (a relief for C64 owners), load very fast, but have a sheet-metal
noisiness when you insert disks.
There are basically three video modes used by the OS for display, a b&w 640x400
mode, a hi-res 640x200 color mode, and a low-res color mode if you want to
connect the 520ST to a TV. In 640x400 mode, you can display about 40 lines of
well-formed but extremely squinty 5 pt text. In 640x200 mode you get an 80x24
character display, but in color. Here's the catch: You can't tell the soft-
ware to use color mode when you are connected to a b&w monitor because the
hardware knows what kind of monitor you have and refuses to change modes. When
you push the reset button the picture disappears and the monitor's flyback
transformer emits a loud whine. I am concerned this means the 520ST controls
critical functions of the monitor, making it susceptable to a catastrophic
hardware or software failure mode which might fry an expensive monitor.
TOS looks like a garden-variety single-tasking OS. You can get a listing of
files that looks very conventional. The files do have a date stamp. Is there
a time of day clock? I don't know. I didn't see a way to set it. There is a
VT52 terminal emulator built into the OS. Hurray.
There is no software today. My dealer said 20 titles within 2 weeks. Many
of these will be games (big deal). He also said there will be a software
emulation IBMPC hack like the Amiga folks have announced. Consider this a
rumor. I am not concerned; there will be good, inexpensive software by autumn.
All the Mac C compilers will be ported rapidly I bet.
You can crash the current TOS. I did it twice. Rebooting takes a non-deter-
ministic amount of time. It reboots when you change from b&w to color monitor.
Total ticket price is $999 for color, $799 for b&w. Second disk is $200.
Hard disk end of september; $595 from Atari, unknown from Haba systems.
Now, how can I get to try an Amiga?
--
Kurt Guntheroth
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
{uw-beaver,decvax!microsof,ucbvax!lbl-csam,allegra,ssc-vax}!fluke!kurt