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From: ravi@eneevax.UUCP (Ravi Kulkarni)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: more Amiga vs. ST (ST)
Message-ID: <385@eneevax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Oct-85 23:45:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: eneevax.385
Posted: Sat Oct 12 23:45:29 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 05:36:04 EDT
References: <4421@alice.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, EE Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 71
Xref: linus net.micro.amiga:4240 net.micro.atari:1289

Re: Creative Computing Review

>   "...As I hooked up the system and turned it on, my disinterested facade
>began to crumble. Since the operating system is not yet available in ROM, 
>I had ample opportunity to check the transfer speed of the disk drive as it
>loaded TOS from disk. The ST loaded the entire 200K+ file in about 25
>seconds...."
> .
> .
> .
>The ST appears to be a nice, homey monochrome, and some-color graphics
>machine, when compared to the more expensive, but certainly more powerful
>Amiga. ST drives really are slower, and hold less- than the Amiga's- no
>matter what some 'special' people say.

Either this guy did a sloppy review or it is a combination of things
that he has heard from other people as evidenced by the above
contradiction. Yes the ST disks have marginally less capacity 720k(DSDD)
vs 880k(DSDD) but having seen both systems reboot and startup programs
the amiga seems a factor of two slower. Since both computers use
dma for disk access the only explanation for this must lie in the 
software or the disk format.

>   "Unfortunately, the feeling of euphoria did not last long, as I realized
>I had no way toput the ST through its paces. The only software I had was
>Logo- a version so slow that I wondered if the interpreter was written in
>Logo. The fact that I had sprung $1700 to buy the developer's package hardly
>made me better off than the average buyer. Although the package came with 
>development software like a C compiler and assembler, it was essentially
>useless out of the box, because the text editor needed for writing programs
>was to be sent out later by the manufacturer (apparently much later, since
>six weeks after getting the machine, I'm still waiting.)

This seems to be very dated. When I recieved my developers package I
also did not get an editor, but a call to atari solved that problem
as they sent an updated bios guide and a copy of micro emacs. They
were probably in the middle of switching from mince to micro emacs.
In any case this fellow seems more interested in creating gripes than
attempting to resolve his problem through proper channels. A recent
article outlines what is in the developers package and an editor is
certainly listed.

>These included a CP/M 68K manual and the full manual for development of GEM
>on the IBM PC. Only a few pages of the documentation came from Atari, 
>including some sketchy material on the BIOS routines, the keyboard, printer
>codes, and source code listing for the boot ROMS. Of the 1500 or so pages
>included, more material was devoted to the Kermit protocol file transfer
>program than to the ST."

My initial reaction to seeing the entire kermit manual was similar. But
again this fellow seems to have never bothered to dig any deeper. Yes,
the GEM examples are for the ibm pc but the description of the bindings
are entirely applicable to the ST. The few routines that are not
available are clearly marked as optional and not necessary to an
implementation of GEM. I have found that most things work as
advertised except for a few compiler bugs that could be worked
around. The bios routines are clearly specified although a few of
the names were modified slightly in the header files. My only
complaint is that compiles take so long on a floppy system. I 
have solved that problem however by upgrading to 1meg and doing
everything on the ramdisk.

I have no objection to people posting reviews, but may I suggest
a little quality control. I think misinformation confuses what
should be an open and healthy debate.

-ravi

-- 
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