Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!hall!rosenkra From: rosenkra@hall.cray.com (Bill Rosenkranz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Put up or shut up (was Re: Atari-bashing) Message-ID: <12442@hall.cray.com> Date: 3 Jan 89 16:41:36 GMT References: <474@ur-cc.UUCP> <6847@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <910@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <1537@plx.UUCP> <2167@nunki.usc.edu> <264@ultb.UUCP> <12835@cup.portal.com> <2216@nunki.usc.edu> <13011@cup.portal.com> Reply-To: rosenkra@hall.UUCP (Bill Rosenkranz) Organization: Cray Research, Inc., Mendota Heights, MN Lines: 36 --- In article paone@aramis.rutgers.edu (Phil Paone) writes: =Just on a side note. There are no hardware flaws with the ST. All =the bugs are in software. I remember reading in another article that =the hardware was hacked. I don't get it. THe hardware is all off the =shelf, the system never crashes or behaves unpredictably due to =hardware problems. =-- =Phil Paone =paone@topaz.rutgers.edu =!rutgers.edu!topaz.edu!ppaone good point, phil. the ST non-mechanical hardware is very solid. heavy use of drives will cause them to (eventually) fail, but that is true across the board (ibm, ST, amiga, etc). TOS 1.0 and 1.2 (and equivalent european versions?) suffer from bugs, most of which only cause grief to developers: i wager the "average" ST user rarely sees any bombs (provided his application software is relatively well behaved). i doubt if that type of user (one who does not do "significant" programming in C/basic/et al) even sees the 40 folder bug. please don't start a debate as to what "average" or "significant" means. there are a million or so STs, probably 500-2000 professional developers (i.e. those makeing $$ writing software on and for the ST), and probably 50% or more of the ST owners never even write a basic program. i admit i am just guessing, but it seems reasonable to expect the ST to have a user profile not much different than any other comparably priced ($200