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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihwpt!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Serious ST Questions
Message-ID: <708@ihwpt.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Feb-86 18:31:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ihwpt.708
Posted: Tue Feb 18 18:31:22 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Feb-86 04:20:02 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 32

First, I'd like to know how many chips in the ST are
soldered in instead of socketed, and which these are.
Please answer this for the early STs, the current models,
and the future shipments.  I'd like to decide which
vintage model would be best for doing hardware upgrades
(piggy back RAM, 68010, etc).

More serious:  How can the ST be bus-expanded?
The *other* brand brings its entire bus to the side connector,
but the ST has only a read-only 128K game cart socket
(what, games?  on an Atari??).  How can there be an
expansion chassis into which we can plug boards with
lotsa RAM, 32000 co-procs, or whatever else needs some
direct bus access?  Will we be stuck with a box hung
off the floppy or hard disk serial ports?
Which can't be accessed directly?
Tecmar is already advertising a true expansion box
for the you-know-what.

Finally:  Is it possible to write directly to the graphics
bitmap in RAM (from an assembler or C program)?
Where speed is of the utmost, we'll need to be able
to do our own custom bit-blits, quickdraws, etc.
to compete with the custom graphics chips in the
high-priced machine.
I heard that on one of the machines (forget which)
you were somehow prevented from direct access to the
graphics area (this may just be a BASIC restriction,
as there is no MMU in either machine to stop machine
code routines from doing it).

Hoping to get an ST soon, mike k