Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!econadm5
From: econadm5@watserv1.waterloo.edu (BENTLEY BH - ECONOMICS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: STs and Colleges: A Proposal
Keywords: st, universities, colleges, minix,unix
Message-ID: <664@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 20:13:20 GMT
References: <481784b3.14a1f@force.UUCP> <10652@thor.acc.stolaf.edu>
Reply-To: econadm5@watserv1.waterloo.edu (BENTLEY BH - ECONOMICS)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 39

>Right now, the Atari is a hackers company and the ST is a hacker's machine.
>One of the major criteria here is company support and reputation.  Atari's
>troubles in both areas would be enough to throw out any proposal.  Another
>area that the ST would have trouble in is networking.  Most colleges consider
>a machines ability to fit into future networking (ethernet, primarily).  Yes,
>the Atari can be 'made' to do a lot of things, but I would not think there
>would be very many computer center staffs willing to support that type of
>environment.  If Atari were to concentrate on the Educational Market and
>prove that it would support the colleges, then OK.  But right now, IBM,
>Apple, and HP are the major players in the market, with Commodore beginning
>to show more interest (and support).  Atari is making business decisions
>that may be good for the company, but it just happens that they are un-
>fortunate for educational institutions.
 
 Well good news for you then. StarTrak a local company is working on a fast
 multi-Dma newtworking for the ST that is lowcost (100 or less,thereabout).
 The way it works is several STs can be hooked up together to one Hard Drive.
 (Eg. I have a 250MEG hard drive that I want Two STs to access simultaneously,
 or as close to simultaneous as I can get. One ST runs a BBS the other is
 use for professional programming, yet both use the Hard drive info at the
 same time.) This has already been accomplised no big feat! However after
 several years of research and totally wiping out several 16 meg partitions
 in the process, I have come out with a way to do it cost effective and
 yet Multi-DMA. If all goes well, I will finish writing it in assembler
 and it will be available to the public. The reason it can be considered
 a networking feature is that all rs232 ports can be used at the same time.
 An interesting side-kick to all this was I had Two BBS's running off of
 one Hard drive at the same time. When one person finished writing his
 message the other person on the other line could read his message he just
 saved one second earlier, kinda wierd when you see it work. There are
 other similar systems but I have never heard of any Multi-Dma type before.

 If anyone is interested call me voice sometime. I wont tell you how I
 managed to do it but Ill give you more info on availability.

 Dave Tomesch , Super BBS (519) 749-1206, voice (519) 749-0757.
 "A view to a Kill, a good James Bond Movie"