Conference 7.286::atarist

You want a real computer? Get a Sony News workstation instead.

The Amiga is a much better game machine than the Atari, because it has
such fancy color graphics hardware for fast action games.  I chose Atari
because the monochrome screen is easier to look at.

    	
    I don't know if it's just marketing hype, but the rumours about
    Steve Jobs' NeXT machine make it sound beyond belief.  If half of what
    I hear is true, NeXT could bury the MacII in no time.
    
    Just a few highlights... (from memory)
    
    * 4 MB Ram
    * 1024 x ?, 256 grey scale monitor
    * 300 MB erasable optical disk
    * Unix and Display Postscript in ROM
    * 4 32 bit expansion slots
    * 68030/6882 processor set
    * Optional PIXAR graphics engine board
    * 1.4 MB floppy
    * Built in SCSI, MIDI, and Ethernet ports
    * 16 bit 44 MHz D-A sound chip (better than compact disk sound)
    
    ... and the list goes on.  The price, with monitor and all the goodies
    listed above is supposed to be $6000!  That, by the way, is less
    than $1000 more than a 2 MB Mac SE with a 40 meg drive.
    
    Jobs intends to sell the whole bundle to university students for
    $3600.  I may re-enroll in college just for this...
    
    Mind you, this is just pre-release rumour mill action.  The official
    unveiling is scheduled for mid-October.
                                           
    Ed.

    
    If you can afford a NEXT you might consider an ABAQ. In terms of
    hardware spec it is about the same as the next except it has colour
    at about the same res as the NEXT has monochrome and it has a  
    removable 40MB hard disc instead of the 300MB optical thingy.  
    However it has a transputer which will leave a 68030 for dead  
    and a very fast blitter. The major advantage is that the ABAQ  
    can do parallel processing so that when Intel bring out 80486  
    or Motorola bring out the 88000 you just buy one farm card 
    (4 transputers+4MB RAM) and you will get a 4 fold increase in  
    speed. If you are a real meglomaniac you can get 3 farms and end
    up with a 130 MIP (yeah, I know MIPS are useless) machine.
    
    The disadvantage is that it won't be available until Christmas 
    and the software base is still small (but not for long). For more
    details see note 226. If you don't want to spend that much you 
    could wait for the new 4096 colour ST.
    
    Alan
    

    	   Last I heard, the NeXT machine was going to be a fantastic
    system, if they could ever get it going. Where did you see this
    info on it? Very interesting...
    
    	   				Les
    

    
    There's a recent note in the Macintosh forum (sorry, I don't remember
    the number)
    
    Although the ABAQ sounds like a technical tour de force, would
    you rather buy a system from the man who invented the Macintosh
    or from the Trameil family ("Why would anyone want to run Mac software
    when there's TOS?)
                           
    If there's one thing I've learned in the past several years, it's
    that technical excellence won't sell systems or woo developers.
    Witness Apples meteoric rise by selling grotesuely overpriced hardware,
    but bundling in fantastic system software and dealer and developer
    support.
    
    Ed.
    

    re: .?
    
    a 4096 color ST?  why so few colors?  IBM VGA has 256,000
    
    re: .0  two minutes to boot the OS
    does that include the time to load the Kickstart disk into memory?
    Or are you talking about only booting the Workbench disk.  If so,
    it sounds your friend is doing a lot of things in his system startup
    file.  All you really need is one command, LOADWB, to load the 
    the Amiga equivalent of GEM.  And not even that if you just want
    to run in a CLI environment.
    
    
    re: ABAQs, NEXTs, 68030s, and other things costing >$2000
    Anybody still remember the home market?  Jack T. sold a lot of
    520 STs into that market.  It took Commodore a long time
    before they got an Amiga to compete successfully in that market
    (the Amiga 500).
    
    That market is critical to the success of Atari and Commodore.
    It isn't as profitable as the workstation market, but it will
    have a long term effect on the future of those companies.  The
    competion isn't between the ST and the Amiga, it's in trying
    to lure customers away from buying ibmpc clones.  They need
    to get as large as possible user base to prevent becoming "just
    a toy" or "a niche computer" when compared to a ibmpc clone.
    
    To do that they need to advertize, to actively support the computer,
    etc.  Atari did that when they first came out with the ST, but
    slacked off after a while.  CBM slacked off from the start, and
    is only now getting it's act together.  Hopefully it's not too
    late for both companies.  Even Apple is enhancing the ][GS.
    
    The problem I see for Atari is that the target seems to be upgrading
    the ST to the features similar to an Amiga (4096 colors, blitter).
    If it's similar, why not buy the real thing?  That way you could
    also get lots of software that takes advantage of those features.
    Atari needs to do better.
    
    -Dave

    Boy, do I feel like raining on a parade!
    
    The NeXT machine, ABAQ et al are all "workstations", pricey business
    machines not aimed at the home market.  You could buy a MicroVAX
    from EPP for less.  (try VTX EPP to see the menu)  And I doubt you'll
    get great discounts on a 4 meg machine given the price of RAM now!
    
    I sort of hope that TOS 1.4 will breathe new life into my Atari
    but it may be too late.  Given the importance of third-party hardware
    and software support, an open bus, and flexible futures, I think
    my next computer will be (gag, cough) a Clone.  Horrid architecture,
    but incredible prices (buy Computer Shopper to see what "commodity"
    means) and a world of goodies.  The 68xxx is a better cpu architecture
    than Intel's ever dreamed of, but from a buyer's perspective, there's
    much to be said for having an installed base of millions and hundreds
    of system suppliers.  (BTW, an AT-clone with one floppy is now in
    the $1K range.  XT-clones are in the $500 range.)
         fred

    
    Fred has a valid point; clones are so cheap that it makes me sick.
    Even the brutish '386 machines (with 16 bit busses) are in the $2500
    price range now.
    
    However... the clones are soooooo boring to use.  Which brings up
    the most important question.  Why on earth do you want a computer?
                    
    If you wanted a low cost terminal with an outstanding monochrome
    display, the ST is hard to beat.  If you want the ultimate game
    machine, with fast graphics and stereo, the Amiga rules.  If you want
    the best personal productivity or business/presentation software,
    along with the best in support and very high prices, get a Mac.
    
    There's so much overlap in capabilities that any machine can probably
    fill your needs; ie, the ST has excellent color graphics for games,
    the Amiga has some outstanding Desktop Publishing software, and
    the Clones can play games (although not as well as the ST and not
    nearly as well as the Amiga).
    
    Ed.

>< Note 255.8 by LEDS::ACCIARDI >
>                             -< What do YOU want? >-
>
>    
>    Fred has a valid point; clones are so cheap that it makes me sick.
>    Even the brutish '386 machines (with 16 bit busses) are in the $2500
>    price range now.
>    
>    However... the clones are soooooo boring to use.  Which brings up
>    the most important question.  Why on earth do you want a computer?
>                    


Agreed, they are boring to use, and I have a VAX at work to do real
word processing, number crunching etc so why have a computer that does
all the normal stuff???

I personally use my ST for MIDI only.  There it is an established leader
(but for how long :-( )

Chad

    re: boooorringg computers
    
    OS/2, VGA, Windows, and yes, even DECWindows are trying to make
    those "other" computers a lot more exciting.
    
    I believe Commodore finally woke up to the reality of the market
    when they put amiga AND ibmpc slots into the Amiga 2000.  It didn't
    cost them much to add the ibmpc slots and it gave "potential" access
    to the cheap pc hardware.  Potential because I'd like to see direct
    access from the Amiga side, not thru a Bridgeboard.  There are now
    amiga add-ons that plug into the ibmpc slots because blank ibmpc
    cards are cheap and it simplifies getting power and ground connections.
    
    After all, creating special hardware for a small market means the
    price will be high.  The more chances the 3rd party market has to
    take advantage of the price/volume in the ibmpc market, the lower
    the end user price.  Look at what has happened with the harddisk
    market for the Atari and Amiga.  The catch is that the computer
    manufacturer has to resist the urge to make "special" interfaces
    that lock you into buying from only them.  Both companies now sell
    clones in addition to 68000 computers, so that should mean they
    now have some ibmpc expertise that could be used to provide access
    to that hardware.
    
    -dave
                     

    re: .-1

    > ...creating special hardware...    
    > the end user price.  Look at what has happened with the harddisk
    > market for the Atari and Amiga.  The catch is that the computer

    The Atari DMA interface is _really_ standard -- it's SCSI without
    the drivers. A driver board can be had for under $100, and it's
    clear that Atari left the drivers off the motherboard to save money
    and real estate. It is _very easy_ to integrate a hard disk subsystem
    for the ST.
    				- HBM

    It's pretty easy to add SCSI, though it's apparently a bit buggy.
    But that's disks only, and SCSI disks cost more than PC disks. 
    
    The boring stuff I'll do is word processing, terminal emulation
    and packet radio.  The packet radio software is centered on MS-DOS,
    and since it involves hardware hacking (comms boards) as well as
    software, the PC bus is necessary.
    
    When you have a special interest group, odds are they'll start with
    clones, since they're more ubiquitous.  Exceptions are music (ST),
    monochrome graphics (Mac), color (Amiga) and probably a few others,
    but still, boo hoo, Clones have the installed base that makes the
    difference.

The myth that the Atari hard disk port is "almost SCSI" is a common
misconception about the machine.

			THIS JUST ISN'T TRUE.

What the hard disk port is, in reality, is the device end of a commodity
DMA controller.  Out of it, you get two bytes worth of control
registers, and a DMA read/write capability for swizzling blocks of data
into and out of the Atari byte-at-a-time.  That's all there is to it.
SCSI has a substantially different set of control signals.

With some software controls, a simple data path, a few registers, and a
PAL, you can make the DMA port into SCSI, but there's a lot more to it
than buffers.

On the brighter side, because this is just a simple DMA port, building
an adaptor to accept a CLONE disk controller card sounds pretty
reasonable.  All you would really need is a way to fake a few 8086 bus
cycles in response to command in the 2 bytes of registers.  It shouldn't
be much more difficult that the SCSI convertor, but then again, I don't
know anything about the commodoty disk controllers for CLONEs.

    See "Roll your own hard disks" note 49.00 ( I think ) this will
    tell you all about a simple I/F for the DMA port which links with
    an IBM OMTI controller card that gives you SCSI.
    
    Peter.