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From: jbm@bnl.UUCP (james)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: Some news items from Atari
Message-ID: <188@bnl.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Jan-86 14:31:17 EST
Article-I.D.: bnl.188
Posted: Sun Jan 26 14:31:17 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 05:59:11 EST
References: <663@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. Upton, N.Y.
Lines: 63

> 
>  3) It will still be about 30 days before TOS in ROM is available to
>     the general public via their Atari dealer. HOWEVER, if you are a
>     developer (and have sent in your non-disclosure agreement), you
>     can get your ROMs right now by sending in a check for $25 to the
>     attention of Richard Frick, Atari Corp., 1196 Borregas Ave.,
>     Sunneyvale, CA 94086.
> 
>         ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pulman!peters

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
					26 january 1986


	i just had TOS on rom installed in my ST, the roms, installation
and ny state taxes brought the total to $26.88.  this frees up about
190k of ram.  it should be noted that the desktop and desk accessories
must be on the disk from which you boot.  the standard desk accessories
take up about 22k.  with the disk TOS i could make a ram disk (using
M-Disk from Michrotron) of about 80k, now i can make one with ~260K.

	there are two interesting side effects of the rom TOS.  the
colors on the desktop (i haven't had time to check elsewhere yet) are
distinctly "richer".  in addition some of the moire patterns that plagues
the color monitor have been eliminated or reduced in intensity.

	before leaving the dealer he did point out one "bug" with the
rom TOS.  font-maker software from ANTIC would work under the disk TOS
but NOT with the rom TOS.  also i've experienced some problem with
saving a new desktop to disk; i won't declare this a bug yet until i've
played with it a bit more.

	you can still boot using the disk TOS if you like.

The following is an assortment of my observations on 520ST software.

1.) a number of people have asked about "macwrite-like" word processors.
i've been using 1st Word which is from a british firm.  it's pretty nice
but it's not a full-fledged "macwrite".  i've been unable to figure out
how to output something using double spacing.  the program operates in a
"document" or strictly ascii mode.  the annoying thing is if you save
some text as ascii you can't convert it back into a document and use the
reformat command.

2.) the ramdisk package from Michrotron (M-Disk) is nice for one drive
people like me since i can copy 200k to the ramdisk and from there to
another floppy. it cuts down on the number of disk swaps necessary to
back things up.  

3.) ST-TERM from QMI is a weak attempt at terminal emulation.  it fails
miserably with vi. i've been unable to make it properly understand
xon/xoff.  and on uploading from my atari to a mainframe my screen fills
with garbage instead of the text that is being transfered.  it seems to
carry off the transfer okay but i wouldn't want to depend on this
product.  i would like to know if any of the VT100 emulators make use of
the vt100-like keypad for use withe edt on a vms/vax?  also how about a
tektronix 4010 emulator. i have in mind PCPLOT for the ibm pc, it is
both a vt100 and a tek4010.  if you don't need to upload or download the
atari builtin vt52 is pretty good.

	that's all for now!

			jbm@bnl.bitnet