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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!bu-cs!hen
From: hen@bu-cs.UUCP (Bill Henneman)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: amiga & st
Message-ID: <657@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 10:19:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.657
Posted: Fri Sep 20 10:19:38 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 16:32:01 EDT
References: <11603@rochester.UUCP>, <266@ccivax.UUCP>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 51

I am confused.  None of the ST stories I read on the net bear even a
remote resemblence to my experiences in Boston.  It could be we are
lucky (my local atari dealer, who also carries the amiga starting this
week) is interested in pushing these machines.  Every time I go in
there, he has demo disks of "things to come" (he was running HUDraw in
mid-July).

If the amiga had been available in July, I would certainly have bought
one instead of the ST.  I had three uses in mind:

		a driver for a DX7,
		a terminal,
		a toy.

The amiga is still hands down a better machine in all respects, but I am
very impressed with the maturity of the ST's software environment.  Despite
all the opinions to the contrary in this newsgroup, I don't find the ST's
software offerings sparse.

Maybe I'm spoiled, but I find the developer's package useless until the
silly hard disk arrives.  I refuse to spoon feed floppies to the silly
disk drives while compiling C programs, so all that stuff is in a box
on the shelf.

I am currently writing all my hacks in FORTH.  4xFORTH from the Dragon
Group is the most professionally done piece of PC software I've ever
bought.  Aside from some minor misspellings, the manual is accurate and
detailed (it weighs more than the double-sided disk drive).  I have
tried a test to destruction of the language, and have yet to find a
single thing that doesn't work as described in the manual.  The graphics
are primitive (mainly straight lines and boxes), but a GEM interface is
promised in about a month.

There's a beautiful terminal emulator (complete with KERMIT) which I
find superior in every way to MacTerm.  The network manager at BU was
pleasantly suprised by the quality of the package.  I can't remember the
name of the company, Unicorn or Dragon or Umber Hulk, or some damned
cute name like that.

My dealer has lots of stuff for the double-knit crowd: mailing label
programs integrated with WP and Email, etc.  In the toy department, I've
bought HEX, HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Mud Pies: HEX and Mud
Pies have ok sound.  I'm going to see a demo of Dragon's Lair on
Saturday:  the dealer says it's "almost as good as the video arcade
version".

In summary, I have more than enough software to keep the ST busy the
entire time I'm around the house.

				Bill Henneman
				Boston University