Author: Shalroth (cpc7-seac20-2-0-cust1.7-2.cable.virginmedia.com)
Date: 01-12-2013 21:05
"Atari ST is between Commodore 64 and under a Mac Plus."
Wash your mouth out!!!
The ST is (IMO) far superior to a Mac Plus... the Mac Plus could only manage a display resolution of 512 x 342 in Monochrome, while the ST will drive a Monochrome monitor at 640x400, and you have the option of colour on a TV or RGB monitor, which the Mac Plus simply can't do.
This made the ST a popular alternative platform for Desktop Publishing in the 1980s... the Atari Laser printer hooked up to the Hard disc interface, and was super fast compared to the slow Apple LaserWriter which attached by a serial port.
The Mac Plus doesn't have industry standard serial or parallel printer ports, MIDI ports or any kind of monitor output. There's no synthesizer chip for playing back music, although the Mac is quite good at playing back PCM sampled audio.
Point of interest - an ST with the Spectre GCR Mac Emulator cartridge runs Mac software 20 - 30% faster than a 'real' mac. I've tried it!
The Mac Plus cost $2599 at launch, the ST was $799.
Compared to a C64 - it becomes a bit less straightforward. The C64 has a better sound chip - the SID is far superior to the YM-2149 in the ST, which can only really generate square waves and white noise. There's no filter, but the clock rate of the ST is fast enough that it can play back PCM sampled sound reasonably well. The STE can play back PCM samples at 50KHz using DMA, but a classic ST can't.
The ST's video system isn't terribly sophisticated, but it can be convinced to do some interesting trick effects (changing the 16-colour palette on each scan line for instance). Even a 1985 ST has a total palette of 512 colours, the STE has 4096, which is better than the C64's 256.
"Also, it's so strange it works this way to boot up long time (20 secs?) when no floppy and w/o a boot disk, everytime it loses its settings (eg, change rez).. it's funny it only has a handful of settings, unlike even a Mac Plus."
When you boot an ST, it will spend twenty seconds or so looking for a floppy disk from which to load. After twenty seconds, it gives up, and shows you the GEM desktop. If you insert a disk during this period, the computer will check it for a preferences file (DESKTOP.INF) and programs to execute in a folder named 'AUTO.' If there's nothing, you'll get to the desktop after about three seconds.
The DESKTOP.INF file store the positions of icons and the screen resolution. If you have a disk in the drive, and have pressed 'Save Desktop' it will remember this. The ST doesn't have any kind of non-volatile memory, so it needs to load these settings from disk.
There are more than a handful of settings, but you need to have the Atari control panel 'desk accessory' on the disk you ST boots from. It's not built into the ROM. It allows you to change the colours of the desktop, how quickly the keys repeat when held down, and printer/serial port config.
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