Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!imagen!atari!kbad
From: kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ROM disassembly for TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <1677@atari.UUCP>
Date: 4 Sep 89 04:20:48 GMT
References: <9401@chinet.chi.il.us> <1666@atari.UUCP> <71359@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 35

root@yale.UUCP (Root Of All Evil) writes:

| [...] Many
| programs require special features or equipment not available on all
| machines, e.g. color screens, hard disks, more than 512K of memory,
| scanners, printers, etc.  Such programs should make clear what their
| requirements are, including any dependencies on particular releases of
| the operating system.  The support problems come when programs aren't
| clear about their OS dependencies and customers aren't aware that
| different versions of the OS exist.
 
  Absolutely true!  THANK YOU for recognizing this.  It is the cause
of many of the support calls recieved here at Atari - a lot of programs
do not contain adequate "requirements" listings.  To their credit, some
dealers do a very good job of informing customers just what they need
for a particular piece of software.  B&C Computervisions in Santa Clara,
CA is a good example, they do a great job of labeling the European games
they carry (some of which do not work on Megas, or Rainbow TOS).

  Another consideration, though, is that the OS sources are in a constant
state of flux, and they are not pretty.  It would take nearly as much
effort (probably more!) to "clean them up" so that they could be released,
as it would to better document TOS.  Given the choice, I'd rather see that
effort go into better TOS documentation.

  Finally, if you have a specific question about something that isn't
covered to your satisfaction in the developer documentation, please call
or write to Atari developer support.  They bust their butts answering
developer questions all the time.


-- 
   |||   Ken Badertscher  (ames!atari!kbad)
   |||   Atari R&D System Software Engine
  / | \  #include <disclaimer>