From: wmagro@uiuc.edu (William Magro)
Subject: First Falcon030 impressions
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 09:04:09 GMT

WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN EXAUSTIVE REPORT OF MY FIRST HAND DEALINGS WITH A  
FALCON030.  MOVE ON IF YOU DON'T LIKE LONG POSTS!

Well, I got my hands on a Falcon030 which I get to keep for two days, so I  
stayed up until 6am, and ran it through all the tests I could think of.  I  
set it up next to my ST and ran some 'real world' benchmarcks against the  
ST.  I tried all the software I could find (mostly PD and shareware and  
demoware, as I don't own much commercial stuff except games). I was able  
to borrow a copy of wordflair and of wordperfect from a friend, and I  
tried out our User Group's copy of PageStream.

We first hooked it up to a SC1224 through the 'ST Monitor Adaptor Block.'   
This plug converts the 19 pin monitor out (which is a non-standard pinout)  
to either an SM124 or SC1224 (or other ST monitors).  We were able to do  
640x4?0 or so interlaced (which is icky) in true color.  The machine has a  
nice slide show program which was displaying TARGA 24bit files (in 16  
bits) in interesting ways.  Nice scrolling and unrolling and fade effects  
were used to move from picture to picture.  I think the machine was in  
320x200 true color mode for these displays, but the picture was near photo  
quality.

You can see the slowdown of the machine when running the desktop in  
640x4?0 true color, but the machine was still relatively quick.  We were  
able to do all the modes (color and ST 640x480 mono) on the SC1224.  The  
mono mode didn't look all that good, because of 'moiring' apparently due  
to the not-so-fine shadow mask on the SC1224.

The sound was impressive as advertised.  There is a program called System  
Audio Manager (or SAM) which allows you to assign keys to all gem events.  
I put opening and closing file drawer sounds on my opening and closing  
windows.  The internal speaker is really LOUD!  I kept waking my wife up  
when the machine said 'Welcome to Atari Falcon oh-thirty' at startup.   
Unfortunately, the Sound control panel didn't save my volume preference  
correctly, so the volume was always set to 14 after a reboot. 

The machine I am using is supposedly an 'engineering sample', with German  
keyboard and PAL RF modulator (so I couldn't use my TV).  It is loaded,  
with the 65meg internal hard drive and 14Meg of RAM.  I wanted to open it  
up to see how everything is laid out, but it isn't mine, so I didn't.  The  
machine has an internal fan and the hard drive is quite quiet.

The external SCSI-II connector is a standard 50 pin mini 'Honda'  
connector, found on SUN and DEC and NeXT equipment.  So, neither your  
current SCSI cable nor a Mac SCSI cable will work.  Unfortunately these  
cables cost $250 from Sun and $80 from third party vendors.  I happened to  
have an extra DEC cable at work, so I borrowed it for the night.  I took  
an extra Seagate ST577N 65 meg drive I have and formatted it with ICD  
utilities on my ST.  I changed the address to SCSI 0 (the manual says your  
SCSI hard disks MUST be in order starting at zero), and booted the falcon.   
The memory test came up, the IDE driver recognized the internal drive and  
identified it as an ST9077A drive, the SCSI driver recognized my ST577N  
and printed its name, then said 'SCSI 1 not responding...' and booted the  
desktop.  The drive came up fine, and I was able to try out various  
programs.

I first ran QuickIndex (which was on the internal drive) and got the  
following results:

Test                      Machine compared to
                     STe           TT            ST
=====================================================
CPU Memory           471%          66%           471%
    Register         402           49            402
    Divide           504           49            504
    Shifts          1737           49           1737
DMA 64k Read        3533         6099           3996 <-this test looks
                                                       wrong!
Gemdos files        3575         3575           3575

TOS Text             118           53            127
    String           145           69            153
    Scroll           158           59            210
GEM Dialog           130           72            186
=====================================================

I have never used QuickIndex before, so I don't know whether these numbers  
seem reasonable.  The DMA read certainly looks incorrect.

Next, I wanted to check out the new keyboard controller that is supposed  
to be quick enough for 300dpi mice.  I plugged in my Golden Image 300dpi  
mouse and moved it quickly; the pointer still goes crazy on the screen.   
Evidently, this early machine does not have the new chip or the new chip  
still isn't fast enough for my mouse.

Other notes of interest:  The machine was running the new TOS 4.01 with  
three dimensional buttons and 'animated' icons--icons change when you  
select them instead of inverting.  Often, when I rebooted after a crash  
using control-alt-delete the machine would get confused and make LOUD  
repeating key click noises until I hit a key.  The floppy activity light  
now lights when either the internal HD or the floppy is in use.  I had no  
trouble reading and writing floppies from my ST or from an IBM.  The case  
cutout for the 1.44 meg floppy is now rectangular, so drive swapouts  
should be easy.  The machine was labeled as a german falcon, with german  
keyboard and 240 Volt input.  I plugged it into a 120V outlet, though, and  
it worked fine.  Either it has an autoswitching supply (like macs) or  
someone replaced the power supply with a US model.  Support for all  
international keyboard layouts was in ROM.  I was able to click on 'US'  
and have my keyboard mapped the QUERTY way instead of QUERTZ, which is how  
the keys were labeled.  I was disappointed that the keyboard is very  
similar to the original ST keyboard.  It is slightly improved over the  
ST's 'mushy' feel, but it is a long way from the feel of sun/next/mac  
keyboards, which I prefer.  The computer came with a 220 page user manual,  
which was extremely well written, considering Atari's flyers for the ST  
Book and MegaSTe which contain spelling and grammatical errors as well as  
typos (VERY unprofessional).  It seems they hired a new, more careful  
technical writer.  The manual is fairly complete and includes pinouts for  
all the back side ports except the television port.  Surprisingly, there  
are no instructions for connecting a TV in the manual.

I have a multisync, but the machine did not come with the required 'VGA  
adaptor block', so I couldn't plug it in.  I tried using my multisync->ST  
cable, but it didn't work.  Some experimentation revealed that the problem  
was in the composite sync.  The problem is in my multisync, not the  
falcon, I believe.  

I only have an SM124 at home (which the Falcon handled perfectly), so all  
the following information applies to a Falcon030 running from an ST577N  
(~570k/sec) drive on the SCSI-II bus (except where noted), on a mono  
monitor.  The other machine is a 1040STf TOS 1.4 with a slloooww maxtor  
mfm drive (~370k/sec).


Here are programs that I tested that functioned correctly:
==========================================================
Calamus 1.09 demo
AKS (a beer barrel warehouse game)
Freeze Dried Terminal
Invision Elite (demo) (cool startup screen went by so fast i couldn't see
                       it)
Mono 'Shifter demo' (old demo.  ran much faster than on my ST!, but hung
                     the machine on the last bit)
Uniterm
Sticker3 diskette label program
Sudden View (demo)  (wow! this one surprised me.  It worked perfectly and
                     was FAST!)
1st word
Infocom games
CAD 3D
PuzzlePuzzle puzzle game
Printmaster
Psion Chess
Megaroids (timing was still correct!)
Pagestream 2.2 (still painfully slow at four times faster than an ST!)
CSTeX
WordFlair


These programs failed (usually hanging the machine):
====================================================
Spectre 3.0 (didn't even make it to the main setup screen, handing after
             the 'Hard disks do not match saved info...' message.)
Redacteur (demo) (half works then hangs the machine)
Patience (solitaire cards)


I did various timings on the kinds of operations I do frequently: file  
copying, TeX, and archiving/unarchiving.  I found some a few surprising  
results.  In general the falcon was much faster at graphics (such as  
screen redraws) and comparable or slower in disk operations.  The slow  
desktop copy time may be due to settings of the hard disk driver.  The  
Falcon030 was using Atari Hard Disk Driver 6.0.3.  I don't know whether a  
cache was enabled or not.  On my ST I use ICD software with fairly large  
read and write caches.  The slowness in the Falcon seemed to be due to FAT  
lookups on the nearly full 65 meg SCSI drive (one partition).  Here are  
some tests and some timings:


Test                            Time in US units (I don't know metric)
                                    Falcon030               ST TOS 1.4
=======================================================================
initex latexg.ini and dump           2:20                      2:05
latexg.fmt file

latex atari.tex document from        1:30                      1:55
CSTeX distribution

Copy CSTeX directory                30:00                      7:15
(6.1 Meg in 714 files).
Falcon had 'fast' ST577N, ST had
'slow' mfm drive.

Scroll Calamus demo document         1:03                      2:29
(with space shuttle graphic) from
top to bottom at 500% magnification.

Scroll same document a screen at a   0:08                      0:19
time (using scroll bar) at 999%.

Both systems running MiNT:           0:45                      0:51
zoo a paula.zoo paula/*

Still under MiNT:
zoo xp paula.zoo > /dev/null         0:07                      0:13

Under MiNT, archive my whole MiNT   16:45                     24:02
directory.
zoo a mint.zoo mint/*
=======================================================================

My overall impression of the machine is very positive.  The all in one  
case design was not so annoying since the hard drive was internal.  I  
would still prefer a separate keyboard with a better feel.  It is a shame  
the machine isn't black (but grey).  A friend of mine says that there is a  
law/rule in Germany against buying black computers with state funds.  It  
sounds pretty far-fetched that would be true, but if so, that might  
explain the abandoning of the black case.

I am sure that the hard drive speed could be improved with the right  
sofware.  Overall the machine feels quite snappy.  I will have a hard time  
going back to my ST tomorrow.  The sound improvements are wonderful, but  
of limited usefulness to the average user.  They will make games amazing  
though.  The biggest improvement is in the graphics modes and the new 3D  
buttons on the desktop.  Otherwise, it's just a quicker ST.

I will happily buy one of these for $800.  I was hoping for something  
closer to a four times speed improvement instead of the two to three times  
improvement I observed.  But any extra speed and expanded memory are  
enough to please me.

I hope my long long long post wasn't too much.  If the length bothered you  
please tell me in e-mail.  Any other questions are welcome, as well.

--Bill