Author: Andrew (74.sub-70-199-231.myvzw.com)
Date: 12-27-2012 00:21
Hi Paranoid,
Yeah, I know that Mac and Atari ST share similar GUI behaviour, but just think the Atari is still awkward. Let me lists some notes of my experience with Atari so far:
1. It doesnt need a boot disk, per-se, but seems to boot faster if there is any in there.
2. Its low rez of 320 x 200 is the same as my Commodore 64 res, so that is okay. However when I set it to med res at 640 x 200 on my Commodore monitor using composite video, it is a bit fuzzy to see the words yet.
3. The mouse is jerky/hard to move around. I tried cleaning the mouse inside the roller wheels etc, but it didnt help much. I still have to reposition the mouse to keep moving.
4. The built in disk drive 3.5" is much faster speed than the Commodore disk drive 3.5", and it's amazing it can load a nice sized graphics game in that small one disk to play. Still it has just 720K size, compared to Commodore's 800k size.
5. Again, seems strange it has no keyboard combo (like alt-ctl-del on PC) to reset the computer or "restart computer," so you have to use that Reset button in the back to start a new session once you're doing running a program or playing a game (so few prgs have Quit menu feature).
6. Currently I have a bunch of 3.5" Atari disks with ARC and ZIP files on them that I can't do much with on the Atari itself since I need an Atari ARC/ZIP program to decode them... so I tried to read them on a Win XP disk drive, but it doesnt see it. Yeah, I know early Atari DOS had some flaw that didnt format a floppy correctly to DOS, and I've tried a few PC programs to read these disks, but to no avail. I read that I could format a DOS floppy on a PC, then back on Atari , copy over the ARC/ZIP files to this PC floppy, which can then to read on a PC normally, then I can UN-ZIP/Un-ARC, etc.. but it's a pain in the butt, since I have about 300+ floppies to go thru.. d'oh....
Any thoughts?
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