20 Oct
1998
20 Oct
'98
2:55 a.m.
I prefer the original systems... The tactile response from an IBM PC
keyboard, the design elegance of an Atari 800, the iterative building of a
screen dump on a HP-85.... this list goes on and on...
Mike: dogas(a)leading.net
20 Oct
20 Oct
1:13 p.m.
I prefer the original systems... The tactile response
from an IBM PC
keyboard, the design elegance of an Atari 800, the iterative building of a
screen dump on a HP-85.... this list goes on and on...
Sometimes emulation is nice too. Otherwise you have to live with the design
elegance of the IBM PC and the tactile response from an Atari 800 keyboard.
(Actually the 800 is nice but the 400, XL, and XE machines have lousy key-
boards.)
But seriously, my view is that emulation has its place. I don't have the
space for original hardware, so emulation lets me play with stuff I otherwise
wouldn't be able to use. Sometimes it can improve on the original system by
giving better debugging or snapshot saving or being faster.
But I want to stress that emulation can only be a good *imitation* of the
original hardware, and a lot of the nuances of using the hardware are totally
missing from emulation. Often, emulation is a *bad* imitation of the hardware.
So don't throw hardware away just because it can be emulated!
-- Derek
1:43 p.m.
On Tue, 20 Oct 1998, D. Peschel wrote:
OK, OK, consider it bitten.
I talked to a dealer at the VCF about buying an Atari; the 1200XL is the one
model I didn't play with. Other people at the VCF recommended the 1200XL key-
board too. The only problem is that there's no standard way to expand the
RAM. (If I'm going to write an Atari program, it should run on standard
configurations, not just my wierd set-up. So if I soup up a 1200XL but no one
else can run my program, there's not much value in my enhancements.)
Why couldn't Atari combine the best features of all the 8-bit machines and
make a perfect 8-bit machine? Or if they did, why couldn't they sell it?
-- Derek
(Actually the 800 is nice but the 400, XL, and XE
machines have lousy key-
boards.)
Bite your tongue! The 1200XL had the nicest keyboard of the lot! 
2:38 p.m.
Actually, I think you can still buy 1200xl keyboards from B&C (you used to
be able to buy them from Radio Shack!) and I have the info for interfacing
it to the 800XL, if you're interested. It mounts pretty well and the
response and layout make it well worth the work.
On Tue, 20 Oct 1998, D. Peschel wrote:
On Tue, 20 Oct
1998, D. Peschel wrote:
OK, OK, consider it bitten.
I talked to a dealer at the VCF about buying an Atari; the 1200XL is the one
model I didn't play with. Other people at the VCF recommended the 1200XL key-
board too. The only problem is that there's no standard way to expand the
RAM. (If I'm going to write an Atari program, it should run on standard
configurations, not just my wierd set-up. So if I soup up a 1200XL but no one
else can run my program, there's not much value in my enhancements.)
Why couldn't Atari combine the best features of all the 8-bit machines and
make a perfect 8-bit machine? Or if they did, why couldn't they sell it?
-- Derek
(Actually the 800 is nice but the 400, XL, and XE
machines have lousy key-
boards.)
Bite your tongue! The 1200XL had the nicest keyboard of the lot!
9413
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4 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
aaron＠wfi-inc.com -
dogas＠leading.net -
dpeschel＠u.washington.edu