Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!isishq!Usenet_News_Of_221/162
From: Usenet_News_Of_221/162@isishq.UUCP (Usenet News Of 221/162)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: WARNING ! Atari ST owners look away now....
Message-ID: <32.2237BAE1@isishq.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 04:55:08 GMT
Organization: FidoNet node 221/162 - ISIS International, Waterloo ON
Lines: 46

From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Date: 10 Mar 88 02:59:17 GMT
Message-ID: <8803100259.AA03230@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.amiga

:>1) The Atari ST's OS has been ported from an IBM PC and has several features
:>   removed (no fonts for example) and has had several (hundred ?) bugs
:>   introduced (40-folder bug, can't rename a folder, can't rename a disk...).
:>
:Wrong.  Porting is modifying existing code to work on a different computer.
:DRI wrote TOS/GEM/GEMDOS entirely from scratch.

        Yah, well they obviously didn't think about it much.  They borrowed
a lot (en concept, en theory) from the PC OS.  For instance, the disk format.

>Yet, in the same machine, we have a midi interface.  Those who are interested
>in good sounding music can add a synthesizer and persue a professional career.
>If this is cost cutting, how come no other machine comes with one built-in?

        Oh please, isn't this a bit old?  Any idiot knows that all you need
for midi is a serial port, a simple serial->midi adaptor (extremely cheap),
and good software.  If I really wanted to, I could hook one up to my 
low-speed digital logic probe (6502 @ 2.4Mhz, can transmit and receive on
two 76.8KBaud lines simultaniously at full speed without interruption. 
--slow-- MIDI is *simple*).

>>4) Virtually all the compilers I've seen (and I've seen plenty of them !) for
>>   the ST have been quite disgraceful. They either have numerous bugs, have
>>   a user-hostile interface (such as a cryptic command line) or are extremely
>>   slow. This just shows that ST software companies are in the market to make
>>   a quick buck off people foolish enough to buy an ST in the first place.
>>
>
>Yawn.  OSS Pascal, MWC Ver. 3.0, Laser C?  What goes for "good" these days?

        As he said ... disgraceful.  Still better than the compilers I
see on the IBM PC (in C at least...)

>
>>6) As mentioned in comp.sys.atari.st, Atari have been caught red-handed
>>   shipping STs with faulty disk drives that don't sense the write-protect
>>   notch on a disk correctly...typical of such a cost-cutting compan

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