Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!aplcen!jhunix!rick
From: rick@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Eric Ruck)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Mac Emulator, what to buy?
Message-ID: <4471@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 13 Mar 90 05:33:29 GMT
References: <2309@syma.sussex.ac.uk> <27721@cup.portal.com> <6243@umd5.umd.edu>
Reply-To: rick@jhunix.UUCP (Eric Ruck)
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Lines: 33

In article <6243@umd5.umd.edu> matthews@umd5.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) writes:

>Let's not get carried away here.  Yes, the GCR is an amazing product and it by
>itself works beautifully.  It will NOT work flawlessly, due to other problems
>in the system.  Namely, some really awful cut corners in some Mega computers.
>My Mega 2 refuses to write to Mac disks on the internal drive.  It isn't a
>shielding problem.  We shielded that drive to HELL and it still wouldn't work.
>
>Friend of mine who works at an Atari store looked at my chipset.  He couldn't
>recognize it... I wonder just what the h... <oops, sorry, flame off> Atari
>did when assembling this computer (it's a Rev. 5.0 motherboard).
>
>(btw, it isn't the mechanism either)
>
>Spectre GCR is great.  Mega 2's aren't.
>
>Mike

I wouldn't be so hard on Mega 2's.  I will grant that I don't have a Spectre
GCR (yet) but a Spectre 128 with a Translator, but I can say that not only
will the Translator not work on the internal drive of my Mega 2, but it
wouldn't work on the internal drives of half the 1040's I tried it on, nor
would it work with most of the external drives I tried.  Oddly enough,
the external drive it works best on is my good old drive for my original
520.  I think it's a matter of drive speed or some such thing, rather than
the computer itself.  Otherwise my Mega 2 has performed well (OK, well until
the power supply died after about 5 months, but Atari did agree to fix it
for free).  In using a 1040 while my Mega is under repair, I appreciate the
"little" enhancements to the Mega 2--you'd be surprised how much difference
the detached keyboard and case design make when going back to the old system
for a few weeks.

Eric