Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!hase
From: hase@netmbx.UUCP (Hartmut Semken)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: I want a math chip standard for the 1040ST!!!
Message-ID: <1759@netmbx.UUCP>
Date: 21 Apr 88 00:21:38 GMT
References: <7613@ncoast.UUCP>
Reply-To: hase@netmbx.UUCP (Hartmut Semken)
Distribution: comp
Organization: netmbx Public Access Unix, Berlin
Lines: 38
Keywords: coprocessor

In article <7613@ncoast.UUCP> btb@ncoast.UUCP (Brad Banko) writes:
>i want a math chip standard for the 1040/520 ST's!!!
>I want something that Mark Williams will support.
>and I want it NOW.
hihi 8-)
>Any comments?
(see above)
>
>(i want something that i can buy cheap ($100-200) and that i can plug
>into my (otherwise useless) cartridge port.)

I have a ROM for your cartridge port: It gives You a NULL at any byte, word or
longword adress... 8-)

[Hmm, get serious Hartmut!]

It is difficult to operate a math chip without writing to it; writing to
the ROM port is tricky (but possible..).

It would be possible to make a cartridge with a 68 881 or anything like
it. But the chip ist expensive and is it worth the effort?
Atari did a great job in building obstacles to math chip use (they used
the reserved F-Traps for operating system calls instead of math chip
acces). The chip can only be used as some kind of a weird peripheral.
The application must now about it, not just the operating system:
everything must be recompiled....

Everything that *could* be done in hardware (like number crunching,
memory management, disk or other I/O) *must(!)* be managed by the
operating system (look at the Macs floating point lib) not by the
application or compiler (like the 8087/80287/80387 in Mama Blues
machines).

There will be no standard for the ST, right?
hase
-- 
Hartmut Semken, Lupsteiner Weg 67, 1000 Berlin 37 hase@netmbx.UUCP
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