n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson) (07/26/90)
I've been reading Comp.sys.atari.st for about two months now, and am getting a little confused with the different types of operating systems mentioned. I know there is the Spectre seriers which emulates a MacIntosh, with the current Spectre being Spectre GCR. I am also aware of the various IBM emulators out on the market; I believe that they emulate the IBM XT well, but do not support AT emulation. I have heard of various GEM(?)/UNIX multitasking environments, and of some UNIX environments without multitasking which exist for the Atari series After questioning a few atari net friends and some local ones, I feel there is a lack of knowledge on how many different "personalities" an atari is capable of putting on. Anyone out there wanna post a listing of what different/alternative operating systems exist for the atari? I know that there are at least ten curious minds who would like to know... If I've stated anything above which is incorrect, please fix it! Thanx a bundle, Perry Pederson n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (07/27/90)
In article <1253@unicorn.WWU.EDU> n8742883@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Perry Pederson) writes: >I've been reading Comp.sys.atari.st for about two months now, and >am getting a little confused with the different types of operating >systems mentioned. I know there is the Spectre seriers which emulates I guess the ST hardware is too versatile for its own good, eh? Just like EMACS... ["Extensability and Modifiability Aggravate Confirmed Simpletons" }-) ] >a MacIntosh, with the current Spectre being Spectre GCR. I am also >aware of the various IBM emulators out on the market; I believe that >they emulate the IBM XT well, but do not support AT emulation. I have >heard of various GEM(?)/UNIX multitasking environments, and of some >UNIX environments without multitasking which exist for the Atari series Ok, lessee what we can come up with... In the beginning, there was... (oh, never mind.) Magic Sac, Magic Sac+ - original & upgraded original Mac emulator, using 64K ROMs plugged into Atari cartridge port. By Dave Small. Spectre, Spectre GCR - Mac emulator capable of using 128K Mac ROMs. GCR can read/write native mode Mac disks, quickly. Non-GCR, MagicSac needed the Translator One, which was very slow. (MIDI speed.) Out in the grey->black area, we had: Aladdin - disk based. Used 64K Mac ROM on disk? Oh well, I never saw it working... That pretty much covers it for Mac emulation. (I suppose the Discovery cart from Happy Computers could go in there too, but again, grey-black.) For PCs, first there was PC-Ditto 1, all software. Emulated an 8086 based IBM XT, at around 1/3rd XT speed. Cool, highly compatible, but slow. Next we have PC-Speed, imported to US by Michtron, I forgot who makes it. Next comes PC-Ditto II. Both of these require soldering an adapter board into your ST, like, onto the CPU or somesuch. Both index at about 4 times faster than an IBM XT. Again, only 8086 based. Talon Technologies brings in Supercharger, an XT-on-a-card that plugs into the ST DMA port. Cool, fast. I've never used any of these PC emulators. Coming soon, rumored, etc. AT-ONCE and AT-Speed, for AT emulation. Hardware, of course. In other, more obscure corners... CP/M-80, Apple II, Atari 8bit emulation, software based. I think that covers the really alien emulation schemes... What next... TOS enhancers. I'd guess MX2 and Micro-RTX are the only ones here. I've used 'em both. MX2 is free, Micro-RTX is shareware. I think Micro-RTX is far better than MX2. Both of them aim at giving you multiuser and multitasking capabilities but remaining TOS compatible. Micro-RTX is more comprehensive, and a lot more stable. MX2 comes with complete kernel source in Modula-2. (I don't know modula 2, so this doesn't help me. sigh...) Micro-RTX is very well supported by the author, Dave Beckemeyer. A detailed comparison probably doesn't belong in this article... Hm. MIDI-tasking, available, but only for use by MIDI software makers. Oh well. TOS replacements? Hm. Minix, IDRIS, OS9-68000, that's all I can remember at the moment. Minix - $100 or so, clone of version 7 unix. Small, kind of a limited system. Meant as an educational tool, not as a production, working environment. Who knows what the next version will be capable of, tho, as it's aiming for POSIX compliance. IDRIS - don't know much about it. Unix clone, comes with X windowing system. OS9 - don't know much about it. Source code compatible with Unix. I hear a lot of wonderful things about it, but haven't sat down to take a look yet. It ain't Unix, but it's better. (? That approach didn't work for Apollo...) Oh, non-multitasking Unix equivalents. Gulam, Mark Williams microshell, Beckemeyer's Micro-C shell, probably several others. Gulam is free, and probably the best command line environment you'll find, anywhere. All it needs now is integration with Micro-RTX and it'll be perfect. }-) Mark Williams msh is kind of a hybrid of a Bourne and C shell. It comes with their C compiler system. It was OK, but I gave it up when I discovered Gulam. It's missing a lot of the C-shell features that I depend on. Gulam is a bit more thorough in its C shell features, though it's got some problems too. (Can't quote metacharacters. Very painful at times...) Beckemeyer's Micro-C shell is a pretty thorough C shell implementation, with some nice expansions (e.g., input line editor). It's about halfway between msh and Gulam in terms of user interface power. (msh is purely a primitive command line system, Gulam is emacs-based full-screen.) I don't know how much it costs by itself, I bought the multitasking RTX-based version. Sorry for the rambling, but I think that touches most of the points asked about. -- -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan one million data bits stored on a chip, one million bits per chip if one of those data bits happens to flip, one million data bits stored on the chip...
ngse18@castle.ed.ac.uk (J R Evans) (07/28/90)
In article <1990Jul27.032743.743@math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: > >Aladdin - disk based. Used 64K Mac ROM on disk? Oh well, I never saw it >working... > Howard - I had a real Aladin on loan once - the commercial product was a ROM-based system. I have seen disk-based systems (presumably pirates) which appear to stem from the same source; did not one of the authors posted some material on this subject a few months back? Russ