Author: Fat Rakoon (host213-122-96-30.btinternet.com)
Date: 11-21-2001 00:07
Yes, an absolute minimum for any Atari, to survive, simply MUST be that it can do colours, and a useable screen mode for sure!
640x400 is a bit restricting, however, its perfectly useable, and with the internet having an 800x600 standard, this should be the target to aim for at least.
In terms of colours, then 16 is the absolute minimum I recon... 256 being great, and more is well... perfect!
The hardware side of course, the serial ports MUST be capable of full 56K, this means that they must do more, like 115K so that at 56K they are not pushed... Its been the standard in PCs since day 1 to have very fast serial ports, so why the lame excuse for the ST line?
Yes, 33mhz is easily a good compromise between speed, and cost.
When you compare the Falcon (16mhz)and TT ( 32mhz ) there is not really that much difference ( Ok, argue, but you see my point ) so 33mhz with current technology will be very fast indeed on the atari platform, and especially if the hardware also includes all the usual bollocks like DSP, FPU, Blitter, DMA etc etc etc
And of course the possiblily of using current ram too, definitely NOT SIMMS, they are still far too expensive to be worth the bother.
Still, what is all this talk when the ColdFire is there, and XTOS too!!!!
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