Hi LST ... I can understand people not wanting to use the x86... I guess its a personal thing. As far as the integrated chips go... I just suggested that because I was thinking about a new lowcost ST, but better graphics cards are always an option. For me, the atari always seemed to be the (dare I say it!) clone PC of the 80's. Not many people could afford the true IBM machine and it didn't have any good games anyway :). The ST filled this gap in the home and was more relevant there than a pc would have been.
But when they designed the ST they did choose the FAT and standard floppy drives and DR's GEM. Those must have been conscious decisions to maintain some compatibility across the platforms. These were all core components used in the PC. To change topic slightly however you could say that there is no such thing as a PC component anyway as the PC was simply an almagamation of industry standard components in IBM's rushed attempts to enter the microcomputer market. I remember reading years ago that Atari didn't even want the 68000... they were after a japanese chip.. but it ended up being too expensive or not available... can't remember for sure. So to some extent the ST was part PC and the PC was part ST. Of course it was the ST that gave fame to GEM in the end. At the time that the ST was designed of course there were several better CPU's available than the 8086 and 80186/80286.. and rightly Atari chose them to use in their machines. They chose the best one they could given the price.
Thats what I think we must do now. I see no compelling reason to go PPC... all I see is trouble in the long term in terms of price, availability and future development... and there is no doubt given price that if we have to choose a cheap fast CPU with a long term future...it has to be the celerons and the durons of this world. The x86 development has truely benefited from an explosion in PC sales led by low cost far eastern components makers and IBM's acceptance of an open architecture. Credit where credit is due! (note I didn't mention M$!)
But this can be a good thing I think if we can use these component makers to build the next Atari! I see our biggest hurdle as the OS... but really magicPC is ready to go..I think we should all be thankful for that. Even though I am also a fan of Mint and NAES. I think there is the possibility for an x86 version of that one day too given how so much GNU x86 development there already is and how mint depends on that to some extent now.
So why not have a new ST case moulded with mounts for a small microATX board? and running magicPC or some ported mint/NAES? and get on with our lives running our favourite fast TOS/GEM derivative on some hardware that will really do it justice?
Anyway... enought rant...its too long already :)
have a good one
