Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hao!gatech!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!franco
From: franco@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: DBs for ST
Message-ID: <36500034@iuvax>
Date: 23 Feb 88 13:04:00 GMT
References: <16@erc3bc.UUCP>
Organization: Indiana University CSCI, Bloomington
Lines: 22
Nf-ID: #R:erc3bc.UUCP:16:iuvax:36500034:000:1549
Nf-From: iuvax.cs.indiana.edu!franco    Feb 23 08:04:00 1988


I have to say that PC Ditto is worth the money...It runs just about everything.  The
only programs I have not been able to run using PC Ditto are some terminal emulation
things like Pibterm.  There are only two problems with Pc Ditto.  The first is that
it is slow on many things.  However, interfacing with, say, DBASE III+ is fast enough.
Using Procomm at 1200 baud is fine.  Compiling and editing with Turbo Pascal is easy.
On the other hand, some things are too slow to be useful.  My biggest problem is that 
PC Scheme, the second most important IBM stuff to me, is in this category.  My guess 
is that PC Scheme runs at about 5 percent of IBM PC speed.  The editor cannot be used 
at all because of slowness.  I am now testing PC TeX, the most important IBM stuff I 
have.  By the end of the week I should know whether that is useful.  The second 
problem is that PC Ditto, as far as I know, still has not produced a version for black 
and white monitors.

There is at least one alternative that should be available any day now.  That is
a hardware emulator from Monarch (Pheonix Az, I believe).  This sticks on the back
of your 1040 or 520 (all ports are still available, however), has 4.77 Mhz and 8.0Mhz
clocks, and uses the ST memory only (it was originally reported that it had its own
512k worth of memory).  Price: not fixed but expected to be in the $350 ballpark.
I recently heard it was awaiting FCC approval.  I will probably have to get this 
in order to run Scheme (unless an Atari version shows up).

franco@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu