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From: ewhac@well.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: BYTE's review of the 1040ST
Message-ID: <2575@well.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Feb-87 17:50:22 EST
Article-I.D.: well.2575
Posted: Thu Feb 12 17:50:22 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Feb-87 22:22:45 EST
References: <9171@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 50

[ Can you perform the Heimlich Maneuver on the line eater? ]

In article <9171@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> appelbau@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Marc L. Appelbaum) writes:
>
>In the Feb. issue of BYTE Dave Menconi reviews the 1040st.  He
>critizies it for not having a RF modulator.  Does the AMIGA or the Mac
>have one? NO!  Neither of them have standrard ports!! The ST does!!
>
	The ST is a low cost machine.  All other low cost machines seem to
have RF modulators in them, so it probably seemed logical to the columnist
that the ST should have one as well.  Of course, this may not have been
possible since the ST doesn't adhere to NTSC (as far as I know).

	Note: while you can't get an RF modulator of any kind for the ST,
you can for the Amiga.

	Standard ports?  Hmmm.  The monitor port looks unlike anything I've
ever seen before.

>He also critizies the read/write speed of the ST.  He does not mention
>that the ST took the least amount of time to recalculate a
>spreadsheet!
>
	In the short time that I had the use of an ST, I also noticed the
poor disk I/O.  It seems that TOS is not doing any track or sector buffering
at all.  It seemed to me that, when I was transfering a file at 300 baud
out of the ST, the machine would pause every 200 chars or so to get a sector
off the disk.  I personally found this irritating, slowing down an already
slow transfer.

>In his conclusion he says: "The Atari 1040st is an excellent value
>with just a few problems that mar an otherwise ideal product.  These
>include the lack of an RF modulator that whould allow you to use it
>with a television set (Who would want to???), the possibility of
>damaging disks if you exceed the desktop limit of folders..."
>
	I found the review very fair, even if I am an Amigan.  The 1040ST
is, indeed, an excellent value, with a few bugs.

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