Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!paul.rutgers.edu!njin!uupsi!sunic!isgate!krafla!adamd
From: adamd@rhi.hi.is (Adam David)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: How is Atari doing in Europe?
Message-ID: <3283@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Date: 20 Jun 91 00:56:26 GMT
References: <1991Jun14.010821.9903@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> <5360@syma.sussex.ac.uk> <1991Jun17.190053.7342@clinet.fi>
Organization: University of Iceland
Lines: 39

In <1991Jun17.190053.7342@clinet.fi> likos@clinet.fi (Johannis Likos) writes:

[deleted negative comments about software houses abandoning ship]
>TT is not as powerful as IIfx or 486 (don't even think about 
>NeXT)! Since 1985 ST & Amiga 'a fight between losers' (to be
>continued).

TT is rumoured to see a new incarnation "sometime soon".

>Innovation and high tech is made by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs 
>and others but not in Borregas Avenue...

Mustn't forget to mention Dave Small. I haven't seen an SST yet but heard
they were shipping. If you can get a 50 MHz 68030 in one of those, it'll
burn the pants off anything that has yet been mentioned here.

>The old GDOS had only few driver...
>The new FSM-GDOS has not yet been released...

TOS has yet to be junked. In all seriousness Atari, why not have a REAL OS
in ROM and the option to load TOS and GEM from disk for backward compatibility?
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Atari hardware, though there are
certain limitations which I feel should not be imposed.

The TOS ROMs are a joke though. (Does anyone know which compiler they used?).
I would guess 20% or more of the space in them is wasted because the C
compiler didn't optimise the code. There is plenty in need of revision.
It seems the same compiler has been used for all TOS versions up to at least
1.62. Even recent TOS versions have backward compatibility to features of CP/M
which have never been used on Atari ST/TT hardware products. Until very
recently there has been no support for HD floppies. The list goes on ......

If the hardware wasn't useable and some good quality application software
packages then I wouldn't have stuck with Atari. Despite their failings,
the equipment (with third party support) is still a fair cut above the rest.

-- 
Adam David.
(adamd@rhi.hi.is)