>> (Mr. Lamb also had two 64s there, sharing a miserably overworked 1541. :-)
> The influence of schools on computers is interesting. Atari managed to crack
> the German educational system and as a result the best programs for the Atari
> ST have come from Germany.
I would like to agree, but the situation was quite a bit different.
First of all until the end of the 80s there was almost no official
state programm to put computers in every school - some schools did
it on their own, with city or parrent founding. Around 88/89 all
states had programms, but they soly founded IBM alikes.
In the early 80s, computers at school have been Comodore. almost
nothing else. PETs, CBM 3000's and 4000's. Later on also C64.
Some schools (especialy in Bavaria) switched later on for AMIGAs.
Atari never had a big hit (beside from single schools) with their
STs in education. BUT the ST hits the private and small bussines
market in Germany like a Blitz. Low price, good performance and
especialy the superior b&w crt made it possible. Later on the SLM
widened the gap once more. Until Atari failed to offer real upgrade
machines (the Megas where just new cases) Atari has been the single
biggest PC manufacturer in the home/small buz market. And with
programms like Calamus they hit the DTP market from below (the
beautiful b&w crt was just like an invitation)- Apple could have
had learend a lesson, but they prefered to shrink their share.
> Programs such as Steinbergs Cubase and
> E-logic's Notator started out on Ataris partly because of it's music
> capabilities but mainly because of it beimg the machine so many Germans began
> with. They were both ported to Wintel and Mac. Another example is Calamus the
> desktop publishing program.
Jep, but the Musik thing was just insired by the build in MIDI
ports. Almost instantly after apearing, independant musicians
started to develop Software for the ST - lots of them never had
any programming experiance at all - just fascinated by the idea
to have a free programmable MIDI controler for less than 2000 Mark.
Still today, Atari is a must for music making.
Ataris 'power without the price' philosopy meets the market
completely right. They just failed to dig further for gold.
The AMIGA, later on, never catched the ST in the 'professional'
market, only in the home/games area - Here Commodore had the
advantage of the C64 and the fact that most students had an
Commodore (PET, CBM or C64) as first computer in school.
> To this day Germany is still the center for most
> Atari ST activity and where the new clones are coming out of.
Jau - and I'm eagerly waiting for my Milan-060 :)
But don't forget about France where Atari is also still
strong - And Holland of course.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Wait...all matter resists current, and all matter can be forced to
emit light, so any item is a 'Light-emmitting resistor'.
>
>> I used to know the speed of light in Furlongs per Fortnight.
>
>The attoparsec/microfortnight is remarkably close to the inch/second.
>Quite useful for quoting tape speeds :-)
>
>>
>> If you wish to piss off the counter help at your local parts
>> shop... ask for a 'Light-Emitting Resistor'. Hardware stores and
>> markets have them too.
>
>You mean a light-emitting non-linear load?
>
>-tony
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
No, I didn't find one for 10 bucks, but I was wondering if anyone knows
about how many were made?
R.
--
Warbaby
The WebSite. The Domain. The Empire.
http://www.warbaby.com
The MonkeyPool
WebSite Content Development
http://www.monkeypool.com
Once you get the nose on, the rest is just makeup.
< What amazes me is that no one has ever marketed a mainframe-like
< machine out of modern processors. Someone mentioned they had made
What like the VAX 4000 or 6000 series, HP3000, PDP-11/23 or later. The
list could be very long.
< one out of a 286 and some z80s, but why did no single company ever
< sell any? I would think such machines could be very useful. OTOH, it
< makes more money to sell 1000 machines than 3 machines and 1000 dumb
Lessee, I have a Compupro 8/16 (8085/8088) s100 crate that also has a
MPX1 an 8085 board used to do IO independent of the main cpu. A later
version of the machine was made with 186, 286 and even 386 cpus. Some
of the VME and multibus crates were cpu intensive as well. NCR in '91
had a killer four 486 cpu box. The DEC VAX6250 and 6400 were two and
four cpus systems. The point being companies DID. They made money.
They were too specialized(some cases) and difficult(some cases) to
program compared to simpler single cpus.
PCs have at least several CPUs, the 486 I'm running has an 8042 (keyboard
interface), one in the tape backup, one in the SCSI CDrom, several
8051s(each scsi drive) and even one in the keyboard. no doubt I may have
missed one or two.
< terminals...sometimes I wish capitalism was never invented...
Oh dear, here we go again. You are unaware on Connection machines,
DEC LAVCs, Transputers and lots of other multiple processor
configurations. The reason this is not usually done is it's expensive
when it can be reduced to one primary cpu.
Allison
Hello everyone!
I got my new website going, and I'd like a bit of input. I'm starting a
little "computer museum", and need some info. Just click go to
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1/>, and go to the "Command Central"
link. I'm currently working on the Compaq Portable and WANG WLTC page. If
anyone has any pics and descriptions of old 'pooters (or putters, depending
on how old), just email them to me, and I'll try to get them on the page.
ThAnX,
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318
PS>> Don't forget to sign my guestbook :^)
< Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)freegate.com> wrote:
< > Back to classic computers, it has been said, perhaps apocryphylly(sp?)
< > that "My laptop has more computer power than NASA used to put men on t
< > moon." While it may be true, I've never actually seen a description of
< > computer resources available to NASA between 1962 and 1969. Does anyon
< > the list have that information?
"My laptop has more computer power than NASA used to put men on the moon."
I find that a loaded quote because it's unbounded. Does this refer to
ground support, design and simulation systems or what? Granted the
computers that flew were not Crays, they didn't have to be. They were
sized for the mission as it was conceived and then had every ounce of
weight pared out.
They however are unique as they ( I believe from from Gemini on) were
IC based, had to work at extremes of temperature, be compact, not use
too much power or generate a lot of heat that was difficult to remove.
those are imposing requirements for the time (pre 1968 technology!!).
In the case of Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle they also were flown as
stable designs when better technology was available. That's a result
of the need to freeze the design and program it before it could be
flown. Considering the capsule(Apollo) was complete in 1967 (I may be off
a year) for Apollo, that means a lot of fancy design work and programming.
If we look we may see the predecessor to the CADC in the space program.
Now considering the laptop has had some 15 plus years of development
history beyond the space program it should be better!
Allison
< And none of those tricks scale up very well for implementing high-perfor
< versions of standard microprocessor architectures. The point was that
The point is why copy the x86! there are better ways.
I don't think I want to try and do the cache and pipeline registers as
they eat transistors like mad being mostly memory structures. Copying
a PII is also copying how much ram?
It would not be a practical venture.
Allison
>Does any one have docs on the pc-1500? Any info would be appreciated. A web
>search didn't bring anything more than the specs, I would like to find
>programming info if that is possible.
>Thanks
>Francois
Hi Francois,
I just ordered one of these machines ( inbound mail ) send me some mail to
dogas(a)leading.net I should have it by week end...
- Mike
I just went through a pile of stuff in the storage room I use for an office,
and found the following (which the boss is letting me keep):
- complete set of manuals for Lisa OS and 7/7 apps!!!
- complete set of original 7/7 disks
- Smalltalk pre-beta release version 0.3 for the Mac (is this a port of the
Smalltalk that ran on the Xerox PARC? I'm pretty ignorant about that.)
- Manuals for Lisa Pascal Workshop
- MacWorks manuals
- assorted diskettes of old Mac/Lisa stuff
Today was a happy day.
-- MB
