Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!philmtl!atha!rwa
From: rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: TT's VME-slots
Message-ID: <1230@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 9 Nov 89 22:17:01 GMT
References: <2202@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <4699f8e3.14a1f@force.UUCP> <2207@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <1215@atha.AthabascaU.CA> <2223@hudson.acc.virginia.edu>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 40

gl8f@astsun8.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) writes:
>Right, and a HOME USER with a TT/P doesn't need the things you plug into
>lots of slots. Why should a HOME USER then waste money on slots they won't
>use?

Well, perhaps you and I disagree about what a Home User is :-).  I
myself would like a few slots - say three to five - because I like to
hack hardware.  And because SCSI isn't The Greatest Thing Since Sliced
Bread to me (to others, it may be, the world is big enough for both
opinions to coexist).

Something I would very much like to have on a VME card is a modem -
not a modem for the phone line (how passe' :-), but a nice quick
56kBaud HDLC radio packet modem.  I want it on a card so it can do dma
directly to the buss, and generate interrupts only on frame
boundaries. 8000 character interrupts per second is hard on a machine
that's trying to do other work (like pay attention to the keyboard).

I'd like some uncommitted ttl i/o ports - say about 32 bits worth.
I'd like an ethernet card, and maybe a multiport serial card.
I'd like some a/d and d/a, and maybe a DSP (digital signal processor)
coprocessor board.

Now maybe you can stick all this stuff on SCSI.  I don't know, I seem
to remember some rules about a total of 8 targets + initiators.  Maybe
that was SCSI-1, and has been relaxed.  I'd still feel uncomfortable
building the scsi adaptors, and the targets do need some local
intelligence, don't they?  I don't know whether I could make all that
fly, and it would be nice if I could just go straight to the buss
rather than screw around with talking to the scsi controller,
especially for coprocessors.

Anyway, I think I'm a home user.  I'll probably go with the TT/X iff I
buy another Atari at all.  The TT/P sounds like a fun box for the
right person, if the prices truly are in line.  Pricing is pretty soft
right now, though.  I wonder if AllanP or KenB could give us a price
_range_?  Probably not ;-).  I promise to bitch about the price
regardless [100 :-)].

	Ross