keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (01/23/85)
[..........] I've recently read some Usenet articles expressing some doubt about Atari's ability to produce these new claimed 16 bit products, i.e. 68000 with GEM for $399 etc. While they may be sticking their neck out, I think many of us should HOPE they succeed. Otherwise, we'll probably be looking at that 8086 family junk for the rest of our lives. I think that both Motorola and Digital Research probably have a fair size stake in this matter. In order to capture a bigger piece of the 3rd party software market, they both benifit from a standardized operating system that is transportable to various 68000 based machines. Certainly Apple is not offering this with their Mac, (try running MacPaint or MacWhatever off the shelf on anything but an Apple product!). Software developers want to see an applications environment that provides object-code transportability to a variety of machines from different manufacturers. Right now, that means IBM and clones. I certainly hope Atari succeeds, as the new products may finally establish an environment on the 68000 that is more condusive to applications growth. Rather than take the 'It'll be a cold day in hell...' attitude about the new Atari (which may amount to saying 'It'll be a cold day in hell when you can find any 68000 generic applications'), I'd rather wish them luck and hope that their cutthroat marketing approach has the desired effect of establishing the 68000 de-facto standard. Keith Doyle {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd "You'll PAY to know what you REALLY think!"
guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/28/85)
> I think that both Motorola and Digital Research probably have a fair > size stake in this matter. In order to capture a bigger piece of the > 3rd party software market, they both benifit from a standardized operating > system that is transportable to various 68000 based machines. Certainly > Apple is not offering this with their Mac, (try running MacPaint or > MacWhatever off the shelf on anything but an Apple product!). Is Atari? GEM may run on multiple machines, but I'd gotten the impression that Atari was using a proprietary OS. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy
haapanen@watdcsu.UUCP (Tom Haapanen [DCS]) (01/29/85)
In article <395@rlgvax.UUCP> guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes: >> I think that both Motorola and Digital Research probably have a fair >> size stake in this matter. In order to capture a bigger piece of the >> 3rd party software market, they both benifit from a standardized operating >> system that is transportable to various 68000 based machines. Certainly >> Apple is not offering this with their Mac, (try running MacPaint or >> MacWhatever off the shelf on anything but an Apple product!). >Is Atari? GEM may run on multiple machines, but I'd gotten the impression >that Atari was using a proprietary OS. In fact, the Ataris use the venerable CP/M-68K with the GSX graphics kernel. Not exactly a proprietary operating system. \tom haapanen watmath!watdcsu!haapanen
jss@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Shapiro) (01/31/85)
[Aren't you hungry...?] On the topic of standard environments - no one says you must use the Mac ROMS. I suspect that some of it is useful and that a GEM implementation might be done fairly painlessly for the Mac. Any thoughts? Jon Shapiro P.S. I am not volunteering.
calway@ecsvax.UUCP (James Calloway) (02/03/85)
x Contrary to early reports, the Atari ST computers will not use CP/M 68K, rather an incompatible offspring of CP/M designed to take advantage of the Graphics Environment Manager. -- James Calloway The News and Observer Box 191 Raleigh, N.C. 27602 (919) 829-4570 {akgua,decvax}!mcnc!ecsvax!calway