Ataris - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

25 Aug 1998

...
  On 24 Aug 98 at 21:02, Uncle Roger wrote:
  At 11:45 AM 8/24/98 PDT, you wrote:
 >Today I saw an Atari 5?0ST and an 800XL. As I understand,   the ST ran
  GEM. Is
this an interesting computer at all? What about the XL? Was
this one of the BASIC computers? 
 520ST does indeed run GEM; it's about equivalent to a Mac   Plus or so.
  Not to start a flame-war or anything but I have a 4 meg Mac+
 and there's no
 way it is the equivalent of an ST. The only thing they had in
 common was the
 68000 processor. In productivity applications, games, music
 programs, graphics,
 and ease of use it is vastly superior. The proper comparison
 would be the
 Amiga, which excelled in graphics versus the ST which
 excelled in music. Their
 capabilities IMHO exceeded the later 386 and with the various
 add-ons  is
 still my machine of choice when not on the net. It's just a
 pleasure to use. 
I'd like to chime in here. The Amiga was a great machine for Graphics,
Video, AND music during it's time (which is still ongoing). It was very
easy to attach a midi interface and there were alot of really killer
sequencers available. Plus, the Amiga bore the MOD music file format!