From: jochenw@akela.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Jochen Wolters)
Subject: ATARI Falcon, PC, Mac and all that jazz...
Organization: Rechnerbetrieb Informatik  /  RWTH Aachen
Date:  3 Sep 92 11:50:01 GMT

jyoung@nyx.cs.du.edu (Jeff Young) writes:

>MANY music people care because ST has worldclass MIDI software not 
>found on PC!

  Sorry, Jeff, but this doesn't hold true anymore. Major companies are porting
their software from the Atari to the PC as well as to the Mac. Especially
German developers like C-LAB (Notator, Creator, Notator Logic) or Steinberg
(Cubase, Cubase Audio) follow the trend to serve all three platforms, although
-at least up to now- the Mac still is a notch in front of the PC. We will see
if this will change in the future...
  So, this argument is not important any more!


>will have ability for PC/MAC emulation for very low price then many people
>have mailed me (over 100) with interest.

  Why take a detour when all I want is a Mac? Or a PC, for that matter. This
feature may be interesting for those who aready are using ATARI machines and
are thinking of upgrading to the Falcon. For die-hard :-) Mac or PC fanatics
those emulators you mention, don't have any convincing power.
  Although there's one interesting point about emulators: just look at those
machines that emulate and those that are emulated. You'll immediately see
a correlation between who's emulating who and which machine is important in
terms of installed platforms. To prove my point: have you ever seen an
AMIGA or ATARI ST emulator on a PC or a Mac? Nope, cause nobody's interested
in them. Ever seen PC or Mac emulators on AMIGA or ST? Sure, lot's of em!
Tell you something?! *grin* (Flames: klick-move-empty_trash :-))))))))))))
  BTW: I have to admit that there's a PC emulator for the Mac. But then again,
I also said that this depends on how important the emulated machine is in
terms of quantity, not quality :-)))))


>a. If Gemulator emulates ST what percent of MIDI software works now?
>b. What PC MIDI boards working with Gemulator?
>c. What is speedup of ST software on popular 386 machine with 4 megabyte?

  Who cares as long as there's no program that is exclusive to the ATARI
world? The main advantage of the #1 MIDI machine is obsolete. As long as
you don't throw in the number of users who don't want to switch from the
ATARI to some other machine for their sequencing and notationing needs...


>Falcon has 16 mhz 68030, 32 mhz 56001 DSP, SCSI2, 8 channel 16 bit stereo
>DMA,... and $799 list price so your Falcon emulator will be great!!!!

  *sigh* Add a couple of SIMMs and a useful hard disk (> 200MB) and that price
won't be too great after all...

  To end my 2 cents to this thread: The ATARI falcon may be interesting, but
it is not that extra special for you to get on the nerves of us Mac users (and
PC users as well :-))))) on a regular basis. If you, Jeff, still have the need
to convince folks of the superiority of that machine, please do us the favor
of taking this thread to an ATARI-only newsgroup.

  Be seeing ya,
                 Jochen.
-- 
Jochen Wolters       |          jochenw@POOL.informatik.rwth-aachen.de  
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