Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!mcsun!inria!mirsa!trinidad!colas
From: colas@trinidad.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: STe Incompatibilities (Was: TOS 1.4 Incompatibility List)
Message-ID: <275@mirsa.inria.fr>
Date: 30 Oct 89 13:55:50 GMT
References: <1751@atari.UUCP> <10079@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> <267@mirsa.inria.fr> <269@mirsa.inria.fr>
Sender: news@mirsa.inria.fr
Reply-To: colas@trinidad.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Organization: INRIA Sophia Antipolis
Lines: 52

In article <1751@atari.UUCP>, apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) writes:
> colas@trinidad.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
> People, the only official TOS 1.4 release is dated 4/16/89.  You can
> see the date in the ROM by dumping offset $18 from the start of the ROM
> (which is $FC0000 on ST, but not STe!)

I have brought a lot of confusion with my message, and I want to make things
clearer:

1) I do not want to flame Atari or Alan Pratt, who is doing a good job 
   monitoring this group. I just want to gain information (and I think I
   succeded :-))

2) My only concern is that I want to replace my STf by a STe. I only
want to       know if I can by it now or I must wait 3/4 months before
the software I
   want to use is upgraded for the STe.

3) I saw in a french magazine (Joystick hebdo) that they tested DM, Falcon,    
   Populous, Laser C etc... and they did not work on the STe!

4) I spoke to a ST retailer (NASA) who had a STe in shop and confirmed it to me

5) I assumed that these incompatibilities were due to the TOS 1.4 installed
   in the STe (In fact, it is a newer "TOS 1.6" which is sold with the STe,
   but I was told it only differed from 1.4 for sound with the new chip)

6) So I ran home test for myself these facts on my copy of populous with a
   disk version of TOS 1.4... If I cannot run Populous on my machine, I might
   as well buy an amiga (I'm serious here) I was so suprised that nothing
   had yet filtered on this newsgroup that I wanted to post a message to make
   some light on this subject.

So, as many people with first-hand experience pointed out, I WAS WRONG, 
but now the question is WHY:

-  is the STe really very different from the ST (as the change in ROM adress
   seems to indicate), and incompatibilties stem form hardware differences,
   not from TOS versions?

-  is TOS 1.6 the culprit?

-  do these softwares run only with ROM tos, and not on the disk-based version

-  Are these only rumors spread by the amigoids? :-)

Colas NAHABOO       BULL Research FRANCE -- Koala Project 
                    (GWM X11 Window Manager)
    Internet:       colas@mirsa.inria.fr
Surface Mail:       Colas NAHABOO, INRIA - Sophia Antipolis, 
                    2004, route des Lucioles, 06565 Valbonne Cedex -- FRANCE
 Voice phone:       (33) 93.65.77.71, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66, Telex: 97 00 50 F