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From: Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Food for thought (was Buying an ST in Europe)
Message-ID: <21577@cup.portal.com>
Date: 24 Aug 89 22:58:22 GMT
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Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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Michael Fischer mentioned, in answer to a question about the advisability of
buying an ST in Europe with the idea of eventually bringing it back to
the States:
 
>You should also be aware that the German TOS and keyboards are
>different.  The German keyboard has an extra key at the left end of
>the bottom row that is not present on U.S. machines, the letters "y"
>and "z" are interchanged, and many of the special characters are in
>different positions.  Also, the desktop's menus, error messages, etc.
>are in German.  It is possible (with appropriate software) to redefine
>the keyboard translation tables so that the keyboard works more or
>less like the US keyboard, but then the keycaps will be wrong.
 
Now...  everyone has been assuming that Atari Corp. has just been diverting
production of STs to the European marketplace, instead of importing them
into the US...    that they all come off of one big assembly line, and
could just as well be sent to the local Iowa computer store, if only Atari
cared to sell to the US...
 
From the above information though, it's apparent that's not true... the STs
being shipped to Germany are NOT the same product that potentially could be
sent to Iowa, but a specialized derivation of the generic ST product.  Their
keyboards (and related firmware) and TOS are specifically engineered for that
specific marketplace.
 
Thus, it's NOT just a matter of Atari Corp. "diverting" machines into the US,
as Sam Tramiel said in that long-ago CompuServe online conference, but they
have to *specifically* decide to BUILD machines for the US marketplace.
 
The question is, HAVE they?
 
BobR