From: hyc@hanauma.jpl.nasa.gov (Howard Chu)
Subject: Re: Atari Falcon Discount Supermachine  Re: Sydnes is gone?!!
Organization: SAR Systems Development & Processing, JPL
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 00:19:17 GMT

In article <1992Aug17.204104.25763@uwm.edu> gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) writes:
>jyoung@nyx.cs.du.edu (Jeff Young) writes:
>: YES you wish you has fast Falcon direct slots that people said is
>: TWICE faster then PC EISA bus.  You WISH A600 have anything but
>
>You shallow idiot.  Nearly EVERY personal computer sold by Apple and
>the A2000/A3000/A3000T have a processor slot.  They've had them for
>years.
>
>And they're NO EXCUSE for not having a real bus.

Higher model will have VME bus, probably full 32/32, but might just be
A24/D16 like Mega STe and TT. Dunno.
>
>: memory cards with terrible price and slow 2400 modem card (high
>: priced too).
>
>The point is, only Falcon developers will develop for that "processor
>slot".  PCMCIA cards are being developed by IBM and PC-hardware
>companies as WELL as Amiga developers.
>
>See the differnce?  PCMCIA also has a much larger market, which means
>higher sales possibilities, hence more reason to get INTO the market.

There's also nothing stopping us from putting a VME master into the
processor-direct slot. I don't think this is a serious issue.
(O, btw, sorry for barging in on this little conversation.... }-)
>
>: Sorry Paula not doing 16 AND 8 bit stereo DMA like in Falcon.  Paula
>: cannot even do 1.44 floppy!
>
>And that suddenly means that it's not possible for a custom chip,
>rather than wasting a DSP, couldn't handle audio fed from DMA?  The
>paula handles DMA just fine, all it needs is more bandwidth.

Actually, the Falcon's 8-bit DMA stereo is just using the STe's sound chip.
Nothing new there.
>
>: Sorry you are wrong again!! Even C= said there is many millions of
>: music people who want powerful music and sound machine.  Even in
>: stereo store almost EVERY thing is including DSP in it.  So 
>: entire world will look for low priced Falcons with DSP.
>
>You have GOT to be kidding.  You're sounding more and more like Slu
>Aspiks as this post goes on, you know?  Suddenly it's gone from many
>millions to the entire world.  Do you have any idea how much of a jump
>in logic that is?
>
Well, truth maybe somewhere in between here. Given the choice between
spending $1300 on a hot new Yamaha DSP E-1000 dolby prologic processor with
8 channel digital surround, and a $700 Falcon with DSP, I'll take the
Falcon and write my own dolby decoder (if it comes to that. I'm sure someone
else will beat me to it.) it doesn't take much DSP horsepower to handle
dolby surround processing, I'm sure folks will find plenty of other good
uses for the thing easily enough.

>: ??? IF Apple brags about networking then Atari will brag about MEMORY
>: PROTECTION and true multitasking and 32 BIT bus and DSP and SCSI @
>: and IDE and 16 bit stereo DMA and video overlay and ...!!!!!
>
>They've GOT half of that.  They've GOT the 32-bit bus.  They've GOT
>DSP's that get used for something other than audio.  They've GOT SCSI
>on board, and they've got no USE for IDE.  They've GOT DMA on
>higher-end models, and they've GOT 16-bit audio.

Heh. Good ol' Apple, always giving ya half of what ya want. }-)
(Personally, I don't see why the IDE drive is there. It really makes no
sense at all to me, tho mebbe SCSI drives in that form factor and capacity
weren't available yet?) What else ya wanna use the DSP for - video? Floating
point number crunching? There's nothing *preventing* you from doing that in
the Falcon. I'm sure the sound capabilities are only being touted because
those are what most people will most easily identify with. Many people know
that the NeXT used the same system for their audio. Most people are being
exposed to the term in context of home audio. I don't think there's anything
wrong with riding on that recognition...
>
>Of course, they've also got 24-bit graphics, and the Falcon doesn't.
>They've got a matured and relatively well-designed OS, and the
>Falcon's may be relatively well-designed, may not, but it is NOT
>matured.  As a matter of fact, compared to System 7, its relatively
>featureless.

Hm. I have always had a problem with what people have called "the Mac OS."
Or rather, bundling in features that are rightfully application-level into
the underlying operating system. I'm pretty certain that MultiTOS (Ok, MiNT,
which I've actually worked on) provides more operating-system level capabilities
than System 7. Things like subscribe/post etc. can be implemented on top of
that easily enough, but don't properly belong in the kernel, In My Opinion...
>
>: Falcon has overscan to TV too and people will not have to buy $200-$300
>: flicker fixer.  A600 has HIDDEN price because if people add up 
>: all things to FIX it then they will find poor value.
>
>If the Falcon needs a VGA monitor, then it's not compatible with
>video.  Overscan will do little good, as will overlay.

Multiscan, VGA, composite, and even RF are all supported. Even on my circa-1987
Mega ST I get 832 horizontal resolution using overscan, even on my Sony TV.
(Granted, XBR TV, composite input. Not really feasible for RF...)
>
>: Many billions of people have Sony mini headphones so putting in mini
>: phone is very smart.
>
>Many "billions" of people do not.  However, lots of people have stereo
>systems they like to hook their systems up to.  Professional audio
>hardware often uses RCA jacks.  Do you see the connection here?  It
>doesn't make the Falcon look very professional, does it?

I'm undecided on this one. The STe has RCA audio jacks, but for all the
cables coming out of this box I think I'd prefer the single cable minijack.
I already have several mini-to-RCA adapters so it's not an issue to me.
>
>: Hello whatRyou? Olympic mascot?? A600 has more than 2 joystick?! WHEN?
>
>Wake up, pal.  I'm saying that there's no need for two digital only
>ports and two digital/analog when you could have 4 digital/analog.
>Especially if they're going to have 4 in there regardless.

The digital ports are the old-style 9-pin ports. The analog ports are
15-pin. There's really no practical way to provide both on one port and
remain compatible with all the literally millions of digital joysticks
out there.
>
>: Better ask C= what happenend to SCSI2 port in A600!!
>
>There's no point in putting a SCSI port into a machine targeted to hit
>the lowest of low-ends.

Every machine oughta have room to grow, eh? Not like the MacPlus or PS/1...
>
>: Better ask people what is wanted DIG and memory protection or
>: resource traking!  Millions will take Falcon feature.
>
>Many would take resource tracking, though it does sound, through the
>descriptions, like it has SOME amount of resource tracking.  And there
>are those who want fast graphics, where DIG would be more of a
>limitation than a blessing.  Others don't want to slow down message
>passing by having memory protection.

Full resource tracking. I can't conceive of even trying to multitask
without it. Geeze, what a nightmare.... Also, while message-passing can
be implemented simply enough, I think it's faster to go with shared
memory. (In MiNT, any process can mark a region of its memory as sharable,
or give it up outright to some other userID. I haven't quite figured out
when I would want to give some other process some of my memory and give
up my access rights to it, but the capability is there.)
>
>: You said 10X more on Amiga. OK NAME 40!!
>
<list of trivial software deleted>

This sounds pretty much like the stock set of entries in a Control Panel
desk accessory, with the exception of MicroEMACS. I'm not sure if I'd
package MicroEMACS (or any version of EAMCS, for that matter) with a low
end system, but it's readily available, as you say. As is the full GNU version.
>
>: ??? Advantage magzine said DSP in Falcon used for MANY things...cheap
>: fast modem, fax, IDSN..sorry Paula cannot handle in A600!
>: Atari is giving software to developers so DSP can be programed to
>: do many many things.
>
>But it can't do them ALL AT ONCE.  To use the DSP as a modem you have
>to give up having audio in OR out.  To use it to modify audio in
>realtime, you can't play it in realtime.  Do you see its limitations
>yet?  One of the DSP's best uses is the modification of data, like
>fast fourier transforms & stuff.  If you want to put sound into the
>machine, modify it in realtime, and put it out in realtime, you can't.
>Because the modification, audio recording, and audio playback all
>require use of the DSP.

This remains to be seen. My impression was that audio input was not
dependent on the DSP, which frees up one sticking point. The rest does
seem like a difficult problem. It would certainly be of little use to
be unable to support ISDN in concert with various other operations.
>
>: Sorry you are wrong again!! MultiTOS is very much like unix and
>: Atari will tell everyone at German show soon.
>
>Like and equal are two different things.  Learning about MultiTos will
>NOT teach them unix.  Period.

Depends on what you mean by "teach them unix." If you mean, can I take
software off comp.sources.unix and compile and run it, the answer is "yes."
If you mean, can I use something like the Bourne shell or C shell, or ksh
or bash, the answer is also yes. Can I start up pipelines from the command
line, have BSD-style job control - yes. If you mean, can I look at the
MiNT source code and gain an understanding of 4.3 BSD internals, the answer
is, definitely not, things are obviously going to be very different. Of
course, I can already do all of the above on my current STs, running MiNT
and the suite of GNU utilities.

Gee. Atari may have a GNU system out before the FSF. What a hoot...
-- 
  -- Howard Chu @ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
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 ::To the owner of the blue Mazda, license 742-XLT, your headlights are on...::
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