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Really Atari ST?

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Re: Really Atari ST?

#71

Post by kjs3 »

the_af wrote: post #40
hinkley wrote: post #27

Every time we talk of hardware from this era I'm reminded that I was absolutely set on getting a Commodore 64 or even better, a ColecoVision Adam computer, and my dad 'made me' get a Tandy instead. Ugly tan box. Yuck. My dad and I don't have what you might call compatible decision making processes, so there were many times I was disappointed by his decisions growing up. But that machine taught me DOS, the next one go…

According to the 8 Bit Guy, the Tandy was actually a superb DOS computer, maybe the best :)

Which Tandy DOS computer; there were several? While not bad machines, the 80186 ones suffer from all sorts of more or less annoying incompatibilities because of the differences between the peripheral layout and BIOS compatibility. A number of friends of mine got burned by that.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#72

Post by cmrdporcupine »

08-15 wrote: post #64

So the theory is that MSDOS tried to detect if a bootsector contained executable 68k code, because if it did, the BPB was valid and could be used to locate the FAT(s) and the master directory? That's triply dumb, because of the typo noted in the article, and also because executable Atari ST bootsectors had a checksum that should be computed instead of silly heuristics, but most importantly because most Atari ST disks…

The reason they had to be formatted on a PC to be used by both was only due to endian-ness issues:

TOS was tolerant of both big and little endian FAT

While MSDOS tolerated only little-endian.

However the GEM desktop's formatting utility formatted big-endian only.

So to get a floppy readable on both you formatted under MSDOS. Or used a better formatting utility on your Atari that let you choose little endian mode.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#73

Post by cmrdporcupine »

pwdisswordfish4 wrote: post #30

I love how every comment here is about the Atari ST instead of what the post is about, which is where the 069H byte check actually came from.

Just opens a portal for all of us geeks to uncork our love or hate for this classic machine :-)

The actual substance of the article is neat, but I don't have much to say about it beyond that...

Re: Really Atari ST?

#74

Post by kabdib »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #38

> (ST refers to Sixteen/Thirty-two, referring to the 68k CPU’s external and internal data width) I thought ST referred to Sam Tramiel - Jack Tramiel's son.

ST was always "16/32" in conversation with Leonard Tramiel. I don't recall an instance where he admitted it might be anything else. I guess it's possible, but I think that Sam knew it would be unfair to the team.

I wrote this code in the ST BIOS. It's been 35 years, and I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure it was a "Hail Mary" and was not well tested. It appeared to work, and we moved on to more important things. Certainly our really small QA staff (or 5-6 people? certainly less than 10) was not testing it. And we definitely had more important things to make work.

We put the ST together in about ten months; that was from absolutely zero software and no hardware to being available on shelves in stores. I still don't know how we did it. Most of us were working 80-100 hour weeks (and the software people like me were living away from our families, working with Digital Research in Monterey on finishing GEM and porting stuff over).

Every few years I run into Derek Mihockha and he gives me grief about this, and then smiles.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#75

Post by amacbride »

kabdib wrote: post #74
UncleOxidant wrote: post #38

> (ST refers to Sixteen/Thirty-two, referring to the 68k CPU’s external and internal data width) I thought ST referred to Sam Tramiel - Jack Tramiel's son.

ST was always "16/32" in conversation with Leonard Tramiel. I don't recall an instance where he admitted it might be anything else. I guess it's possible, but I think that Sam knew it would be unfair to the team. I wrote this code in the ST BIOS. It's been 35 years, and I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure it was a "Hail Mary" and was not well tested. It appeared to work, and we moved on to more impo…

I loved the 1040ST that I bought at the bookstore at Berkeley, which I used throughout college. I had a color screen for games and MIDI, and a monochrome screen that I used for writing papers, programming, and rlogging into the VAXen (4.3 BSD) and Suns. I definitely appreciated the DOS data-transfer trick!

Re: Really Atari ST?

#76

Post by the_af »

kjs3 wrote: post #71
the_af wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the 8 Bit Guy, the Tandy was actually a superb DOS computer, maybe the best :)

Which Tandy DOS computer; there were several? While not bad machines, the 80186 ones suffer from all sorts of more or less annoying incompatibilities because of the differences between the peripheral layout and BIOS compatibility. A number of friends of mine got burned by that.

You're right! The Tandy 1000, as the sibling comment mentions.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#77

Post by the_af »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #50
the_af wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the 8 Bit Guy, the Tandy was actually a superb DOS computer, maybe the best :)

The Tandy 1000 line was a great DOS machine of its moment for games, because the 1000 wasn't just a PC clone, it was a better version of the PCjr -- it had better sound and graphics out of the box compared to PCs, with better actual PC software compatibility and without the horrible chiclet keyboard. The 1000 was so successful for a while that games that supported the PCjr's enhancements were marketed as "Tandy-compa…

Yes, the Tandy 1000. The 8 Bit Guy has an episode devoted to its superiority vs the PCjr.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#78

Post by rbanffy »

thorianus wrote: post #21
arexxbifs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on this because I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. My take is that both the Amiga and the Atari had a plethora of expansions and, without having any numbers to show, I think the Amiga won out in the expansion race, from 040 cards for the A500 (AFAIK no 040 was available for any Atari until much later) to the Video Toaster. Both machines were hard to evolve because bo…

Well, that was the problem. Atari had the MIDI (pro music) and DTP from the start. The mono 640x400 monitor - ultra sharp was a great gig. Amiga went the road of being console turned computer, and the expansions only created havok with support. Even A500 Plus had issues. Sadly - it also affects community - the IP rights for Amiga are mess, the recent issue with Terrible Fire extensions - for some reason a lot of bad…

The upgrade path for the Amiga chipset ended up being complicated. The 500 and 600 had the ECS chips, that allowed some video modes that were not tied to NTSC, at the cost of a reduced palette. The chipset also competes with the CPU for memory access and this second generation chipset addressed more memory, making the computer effectively slower ("chip RAM" was slow, "fast RAM" was the RAM outside the reach of the chipset that the CPU has exclusive access to). After ECS came AGA, which pushed the boundary further again (but, at this point, memory constraints were not so terrible).

And, of course, there was what seems like a cocaine-fueled endless sequence of management blunders that drove the company into the ground.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#79

Post by pwdisswordfish4 »

tus88 wrote: post #37
pwdisswordfish4 wrote: post #30

I love how every comment here is about the Atari ST instead of what the post is about, which is where the 069H byte check actually came from.

Blame the title.

Fair point — commenting on an article based on its title instead of the contents is a long HN tradition.

Re: Really Atari ST?

#80

Post by kabdib »

Miraste wrote: post #54
code_duck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course MS didn't care about their 'standard'. They assumed they're the only ones using it and/or don't really care about breaking other systems.

Sometimes they broke other systems on purpose, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code .

The other direction, too: "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run!"
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