Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!lll-crg!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!AMES-NAS.ARPA!fouts From: fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16 Subject: Re: Query Message-ID: <8607311755.AA18885@ames-nas.ARPA> Date: Thu, 31-Jul-86 13:55:54 EDT Article-I.D.: ames-nas.8607311755.AA18885 Posted: Thu Jul 31 13:55:54 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Aug-86 06:13:18 EDT References: <2023@calmasd.CALMA.UUCP> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 118 Well, I've only had my 1040ST for three weeks, but I'll give you my first impressions of the machine. (First, my background: I work for NASA as an OS Guru, and work with Cray, Amdahl, Vax, Sun and SGI Un*x systems every day. I'm writing this on a MacUgly (Lisa with MacWorks,) my officemate has an AT, and other people here have Amiga's. I have owned a (currently broken) Heathkit MS-DOS (NOT PC compatible) machine for several years, and was looking for a fast machine to use in music composition/MIDI control when I bought my ST.) Let me try to answer your questions. 1) Religious responses: I have had my MacUgly for over a year, and still find it difficult to get simple programs working, because the interface keeps getting in the way of writing code. I wrote a fairly complete utility on the ST using OSS Personal Pascal in less than six hours. GEM has some drawbacks over the Mac Interface, especially in renaming and moving files, but it has some advantages, especially the way that folders turn into real subdirectories. As far as Amiga versus ST is concerned, the Amiga is a somewhat better machine, but the cost difference is greater than the quality difference. Also, most of the quality difference comes in color graphics, and I don't care about such. I prefer the mono system. Of course, what clinched it for me was the MIDI port. 2) Religious responses from haters. (NOT APPLICABLE) 3) Availability of good word-processing software. Your choice of word processor is also a religious issue. There's 1-ST word, which is mediocre, and I have micro emacs which is a text editor, not a word processor. There are others, but I haven't tried them. 4) Reliability (hardware, OS & applications) Well, a month isn't long enough to tell about the hardware, but mine hasn't broken yet. The software is reasonably reliable, GEM doesn't seem to crash and most of the bugs visible to developers are easy to work around. I use OSS Personal Pascal, and it only has a few bugs, and usually performs better than promised. 5) Sources of info Atari maintains a buletin board (The base number is (408)745-5308. Neil Harris also appears to pay attention to all (CompuServe, Source, Well, UUCP, etc) possible general networks and is reasonable about answer questions. I haven't tried ATARI user support yet. There are a number of good user's groups. There is an ST specific magazine, and START (a quarterly full of software published by ANTIC) as well as Antic. Of course there are the ABACUS books, and I suppose other sources. 6) Comparisons with the Amiga, PC, IBM 1401 :-), etc. Well I don't know about the 1401, but my first computer was a 1620, and the ST blows it away. :-) As far as the AMIGA/ST comparison; The Amiga does better/faster color graphics, but the ST does clearer mono. The Amiga has a better sound chip, but the ST does MIDI. The Amiga has fancy custom coprocessors, but the ST is more approachable. The ATARI hard disk is real. There's currently more ATARI software available. In all, the Amiga is a better piece of hardware, but not enough better to justify the price. As far as PC's are concerned, the only advantage a PC has is a huge amount of software. If you buy an AT (or clone) and max it out, you can spend 5-6K and have almost as good a machine as 1500$ worth of ST. . . 7) How fast is sofware becoming available (PD & Purchased) There is a huge amount of PD Software. Much more than when the Mac was a year old. Most of it is very good, well written, etc. I have both the PD Forth, and XLisp and use both. I don't have as much experience with commercial software, although it is certainly there. The only thing I have is OSS Personal Pascal, which I highly recommend. I have seen a lot of stuff in the ANTIC catalog, and most of it exists. (I. E. I've seen it for sale at my local ATARI dealer.) 8) Compatability of peripherals This is where the ST really seems to loose. It isn't big enough (yet) for a big aftermarket in peripherals, so there aren't many second sources, except for the hard disks. The expansion kit isn't out yet, so there aren't many places to put them anyway, and ATARI seems to have gone out of their way to make it hard to substitute monitors, although most of this was to make the machine cheaper to build. 9) Good dealers / mail order houses specializing in STs I don't know about mai order houses, but a local choice for good dealer is San Jose Computer. (where I bought mine) They are a small outfit, so they don't have a lot of hardware variety, but they seem willing to spend a lot of time talking, and they do have most of the software. I can send you their address if you can't find a better choice close to you. A) Anything else. If you are going to do your own programming, and you aren't religious about C, try OSS Personal Pascal. It's relitively clean, runs relitively fast, produces good code, and all of that; but the best part is the interface to GEM and the manual the OSS people have produced. It's almost better than the development system, and costs about 1/4 as much. ----------