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From: info-mac@uw-beaver
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: rumoured announcement of Atari-Mac in NY-Times of Jan 7
Message-ID: <387@uw-beaver>
Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 04:49:54 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.387
Posted: Fri Jan 11 04:49:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 05:41:21 EST
Sender: daemon@uw-beaver
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 64

From: Bicer.ES@XEROX.ARPA


I have seen the new system at the Atari booth in CES. There are two models.
130ST (with 128K Ram) and 520ST(with 512K Ram). They both have 192K Rom,
expandable to 320K with add on rom cartriges (application cartriges). The 
system doesn't seem to require a disk drive for operation, but a 3.5" disk
was hooked up to all systems at the show.

The garphics memory is (additional?) 32K with 3 garphics modes.
- 320 x 200 pixels in 16 colors (low res)
- 640 x 200 pixels in  4 colors (medium res)
- 640 x 400 pixels in  monochrome (high res)

The processor is Motorola 68000, clock rate unknown (to me).

The system had a two button mouse. The keyboard was organised in four clusters:
- Alphanumeric pad
- Cursor, Help/Undo (8 keys)
- Numeric pad (18 Keys)
- 10 Function keys (on top of the Alphanumeric pad).

The video ports (from the literature):
- Standard TV
- Low res composite video
- Medium res RGB
- High res monochrome

Communications interface (from the literature):
- Centronics parallel
- RS232C
- Hard disk interface (DMA 1.33 MBytes/second)
- Disk drive interface
- Two joystick ports, one configured for the mouse

Languages:
- Basic
- Logo (I have actually seen logo on a machine with the Digital Research
copyright).


---------

Personal impressions:

I really liked the machine, especially when one of the demonstrators said
the 130ST with disk drive and monitor will cost under $1,000. I guess this,
if correct, does spell trouble for Apple. One of the demonstrators,
(a Mr. Tramiel), was getting a little upset when people were comparing
the machine to the MacIntosh. The demo looked like the machine provided 
similar capability to the MacIntosh. But no one was allowed to touch the 
machine, even the very persistent ones. This leads me to believe that the
software isn't quite ready or stable.

When I asked Mr. Tramiel about the ease of software developement for the 
computer, he replied
   "Digital Research is aware af this problem and will provide a complete
    sotware toolbox for very easy sotware generation."

With the exception of one person, no one was willing to give out any 
price info, but they were taking orders for second quarter delivery.


	Jack Bicer