FRANK@SRI-VAX.ARPA (Victor Frank) (08/09/85)
I have been waiting almost 8 months for this. Regarding
<cs2532aa@unm-cvax.UUCP>, dated 19-Jan-85, by Ernie Longmire,
University of New Mexico, entitled Crismire Predicts: Atari.
This is an open letter which I trust will get back to him somehow.
'Ernie, perhaps I'm being a bit premature, but I wonder if you
could keep an eye on this "Crismire" friend of yours. Just in case
he decides to skip the country, that is! There are a number of
"Jack" fans out here just dying to see him eat that IBM PC-AT. We
could probably find a number of dealers that would love to sell him
one for that purpose too.'
I have just received a short extra issue of DTACK Grounded.
Our friend Felgercarb has just purchased a Jackintosh with Color
Monitor over the counter at his local Computerland for $995, and is
sending his $300 for a developer's kit to Atari. He may yet find a
mass market for HALGOL. There is no BASIC yet for the Jacki.
In peeking under GEM, he finds that TOS (Tramiel's Operating
System) is CPM/68K-like. We wonder, could it be that most
purchasers will opt to spend an extra $200 for the color monitor,
and could it be that a reasonable fraction will ditch the GEM
interface? Felgercarb says that 20 mouse operations and 8 disk
swaps are needed to copy a disk (single drive, single side). "THIS
IS MORE USER-FRIENDLY THAN "COPYAB" FOLLOWED BY A COUPLE OF "Y"
RESPONSES TO PROMPTS?"
Is this the next hacker's machine?
Twenty-five days and counting, Crismire!
Regards,
Victor R. Frank, Editor
68796 Hackers Newsletter
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