Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: About Atari's, Mac's, and IBM's
Message-ID: <49940@sun.uucp>
Date: 18 Apr 88 21:56:51 GMT
References: <5419@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <226500010@trsvax>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 34

In article <226500010@trsvax> johnm@trsvax.UUCP writes:
>>How upgradable is it?
>Be more specific...
>
>You can add a variety of memory boards, battery supported clocks, hard disks,
>video and audio digitizers, and all of the usual stuff.  Then there are the 
>more esoteric items like the accelorator board (not yet release) which will 
>increase the speed of ALL programs 45 to 85% or the liquid crystal 3d glasses.

John, you could stand to be a bit more specific yourself. The 520 and 1040 ST
series can be upgraded through hardware kludges much like the early Macs could
be upgraded, neither have slots. The Mega doesn't have slots either but does
have an expansion connector similar to that of the Amiga 1000 and Amiga 500.
Second, be very VERY careful about making claims like "increase the speed of
ALL programs 45 to 85%" because you know not what you speak. Even if you
replace the CPU with a 68020 running at 16Mhz with 32 bit RAM you may not
see your programs get much faster, why? Because the speed of a program is
determined by the *system* speed, and not just the CPU clock. You will be
lucky if your programs speed up 5 to 50%. If you want real fast programs
redesign the *system*.

>>Can it use a Paged Memory Managment Unit?
>You mean like swapping memory out to disk?  No, there is no micro with that
>facility that I know of.

Another two points, one I don't think he meant "can it swap" I believe he
meant can it use a PMMU? And the answer is no, the Atart ST series cannot
use a PMMU. Both the Mac II and any 80386 system can use a PMMU and in the
case of the '386 have one built in. If one is looking for a paged MMU then
one would be better off looking at 32 bit machines.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.