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 ------