Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcc6!sdcc10!cs163aeo
From: cs163aeo@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU (Professor I.R. Gumby)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ST future
Summary: Re: Should have bought an Amiga???
Keywords: should i have bought an amiga
Message-ID: <101@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU>
Date: 4 May 89 21:07:35 GMT
References: <602@greens.UUCP>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 38

In article <602@greens.UUCP>, allegro@sunpix.UUCP ( SunNCAA) writes:
> 
>      I'm fairly new to the ST realm (6 mos) and after aquiring a 520 ST,
>  40 meg HD, modem, memory upgrade, and gobs of software, I keep hearing that
>  atari will soon drop the ST line in favor of a 'GAME MACHINE'!
> 
>             What is this game machine?
> 
>             Is my $2,000+ investment (no drop in the bucket for most) for naught?
> 
>             Will the already minimal support I get going to be non-existant?
> 
>             Should I have bought an Amiga?
> 
>      I bought my system especially for development work geared toward the home
>  market,
>             Will this market disappear? (did it ever exist?)
> 
>      I had a hard time deciding between the ST and the Amiga. I picked the ST
>  because I thought it had a bright future. Now I'm afraid I was wrong. 

I don't think so.  I'm personally in the market for an ST myself.  I
plan on networking an ST machine with my IBM AT clone with Minix
(see comp.os.minix for details on this UNIX V7 compatable OS).
By the way, Minix has been successfully ported to the Atari ST and a
lot of the GNU utilities (especially GNU C) work under ST Minix.  I
hardly think the support is dying out.  And there's already work for
networking support (both RS-232 and Ethernet), and there is a patch
for Minix for networking through the MIDI port.  I know that my
support is biased in the way that it is oriented towards UNIX
compatable operating systems, but it is there.  I personally don't
care for any other OS other than UNIX myself.  I regard MesS-DOS as
somewhat of a joke and I don't care for windowing environments.
I have gone to great pain and trouble to obtain Minix for my AT clone
and keep careful tabs on the ST version.  

 JCA