| | | DUSSELDORF REPORT | | | Story by John Nagy, Courtesy AtariUser Magazine | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: This article may NOT be reprinted without written permission of Quill Publishing. Copyright (c)1992, AtariUser Magazine, John Nagy Atari's Newest Machine is introduced in German Atari Fair The floor of the world's largest annual Atari fair had "Falcons all over the floor of the show, in almost every booth," according to Nathan Potechin of DMC Publishing, Inc., who gave AtariUser eyewitness accounts during the show. Other estimates said that about 20 Falcons were roosting throughout the sprawling conference center. Many show-goers thought they were looking at regular 1040's since the Falcons on display were not black as originally thought. The Dusseldorf, Germany locale for Atari Messe was again inundated with Atari--the huge trade show spans roughly four football fields of floor space. Nathan reported that the show this year (August 21-23) is similar in size and attendance to last year's event, which brought 30,000 of the faithful to visit 180 vendors. The announcement of the Falcon 030 was the first order of business at Dusseldorf. The crowds knew what they were coming to see after months of nearly-accurate profiles of the coming machine were offered by most of the Atari media, and the excitement was high as they saw it firsthand. However, numerous reports have been made by developers and attendees that indicate that the Falcon is not quite ready to fly. While many existing software products are said to run flawlessly and swiftly, reports of spectacular crashes when running software already loaded on the demo units hard drives blemished the premier. In any case, many vendors at AtariMesse had new applications that exposed the power and features that are new on the Falcon 030. DMC Publishing (Calamus) again had the largest booth on the floor, spanning 4,000 square feet with about 40 people working in it alone. Other large booths included TMS, Matrix, 3K, and Maxxon. Many new products were shown, and AtariUser will report on them in detail in our next issue. Prices and Plans The "base" Falcon 030 will retail for $799 in the USA in a one-megabyte configuration. The next option up the scale will be a four-megabyte RAM Falcon with 65 megabyte hard drive at $1,399. Availability in the US is slated for "October" in limited quantities. The FCC type acceptance for domestic sales is not yet in hand, but is predicted to be a sure thing this time, due to extensive tests done in-house at Atari. Marketing plans for the new machine in the USA were also revealed in Germany. Sam Tramiel told dealers and developers at Atari Messe that the US launch will be via regional marketing build-ups. Individual regions of the USA will be targeted, one at a time, with major "dog and pony shows" to both woo and educate computer dealers. Significant co-op advertising money will be offered to dealers who join in the roll-out. Once enough regions are served by a new operating dealer network, Atari will launch a national advertising campaign. Industry observers suggest that this plan will make the most of Atari's cash and production resources. By serving a small but growing dealer network with product, on-board Falcon dealers can be more assured of delivery of product during the build-out stages of the plan. Dealers will help and be helped in promotional costs, enabling Atari to make a bigger splash in smaller ponds with less of their own money, and allowing Atari's resources to go towards increasing production of Falcon computers. As production and sales increase, so will revenues with which to attack new regions. Meanwhile, Falcon specific software will mature and present a solid base for the later national marketing efforts, to come in 1993. The Word on the Bird Atari's CEO Sam Tramiel made conference appearances on the GEnie and Delphi telecommunication networks the week before AtariMesse, giving the fans worldwide a chance to "talk" to him "live." Communicating via modem to the conferences, the audience could ask questions directly of Sam and the Atari technical team, and get answers in real time. The result was the best look we've had to date at the intention and potential of Atari and the new Falcon. The corporate view of the Falcon 030 is that it exceeds all of the multimedia expectations of the computer buying public, while being an exceptional value as a home computer system. Sam took fire on the conferences over the 1040 style case, which is seen by some as a curse. Sam reiterated the Atari position that the Falcon 030 is the consumer/ introductory unit of a new series of computers, and alluded to a 68040 to come, but would say no more. Conversely, Sam Tramiel said of sales and advertising of the current line of Atari computers: "We felt that the present ST/STE family was not strong enough to market in the US. We have been waiting for this new product, and we do plan to support it and market it in the US. It will be a hard battle, but we will put a good effort behind it." He added that the STe and especially the TT lines will continue to be produced and supported. More: ||| MultiTOS is a combination of rom and disk based software. Most well written applications seem to work fine. MultiTOS will be available as an upgrade for the TT030 and future 68030 and above machines. ||| Bundled software will be packaged with the Atari Falcon030 will include games written especially for the Atari Falcon030, including LandMines and a BreakOut kind of game. There will also be a Rolodex type of application called Cal/Apt, a calculator application called ProCalc, and a Talking Clock desk accessory. ||| New STe compatible analog joysticks will have 15 buttons, with three fire buttons and a 12 key keypad. ||| A true expansion bus via a direct processor slot with all of the necessary data and control lines to allow plugging in optional third party coprocessor boards. This will allow more complete PC and Mac emulators, for example. ||| According to Sam, there are some 30 new developers that are producing software for the Atari Falcon. Several of the developers are also NeXT developers. ||| Contrary to a few scare rumors, the MIDI and cartridge ports are still standard. However, there is no external floppy connector for a second disk drive, and no ACSI/DMA port for Atari brand hard drives and laser printers. Sam explains that Atari opted for the industry standard and faster SCSI II. Third party companies have developed converter boxes to allow the SLM printers to connect to the Atari Falcon 030. Memory Matters The Falcon 030 can have 1, 4 or 14 megabytes of RAM. The memory is addressed continuously, and any application or MultiTOS can see all the memory at once. Memory upgrades will be through a "Atari Falcon" ram board. There are no memory controllers on the board like on the TT, and Atari's pricing on the RAM will be "very competitive." The RAM in the Falcon is 32-bit wide, and the limited total RAM configurations allow faster memory access than other multiples. Why 14 instead of 16 or more megabytes? In order to maintain a high degree of compatibility with ST software, a 16 meg window was maintained despite the ability of the 68030 chip to "see" far more memory. The top two meg of the 16 meg a 68000 is capable of addressing are mapped as I/O device handling areas, so they are not used by the Falcon either. The result is a lot of RAM that is used just like ST memory instead of the switching scheme used in the TT. Sightings The Atari Falcon030 will work with any VGA, or Atari ST Color Monitor... SC1224 or SC1435. The 16 bit True Color (non-palette) mode will work in 640 x 480 interlaced on a TV or ST style monitor. A special cable will let you use an older ST monitor. True Color will also work in 320 x 480 on VGA monitors. The BLiTTER Chip has been sped up to 16 MHz to handle the extra bandwidth and does double duty for fast hard drive access. The Falcon 030 is easily "Genlockable" for multimedia and TV use; a cheap third-party external device is required to strip the sync from the external signal. | | | NETWORK FLOW CONTROL | | | Compiled by Ed Krimen | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- Some messages may have been edited for correct spelling, grammar, and irrelevant material. WHAT?! NO FLOPPY PORT ON THE FALCON? ------------------------------------- -=> In the "Atari Corporation Online" category (14) -=> from the "Atari Falcon 030 Computer" topic (20) Message 35 Mon Aug 17, 1992 K.CAVAGHAN2 [OakSprings] at 00:38 EDT I am very excited about the Falcon and it's potential. I only have 1 question (of course). I'm hoping I am wrong but is the Falcon limited to just the internal floppy? I hope I read the spec's wrong but if so, may I ask why? Thanks, Kent ---------- Message 39 Mon Aug 17, 1992 OUTRIDER [Terry] at 11:04 EDT Kent, There is no external floppy port, but from what I understand you can hook up a high density floppy drive to the SCSI II port. - Terry - ---------- Message 40 Mon Aug 17, 1992 J.ALLEN27 [FAST TECH] at 12:14 EDT If you need an external floppy you can buy a SCSI unit. I think the strategy behind having only one floppy is that EVERY Falcon comes with a hard drive interface built in, and you can get a small Hdrive for the price of a second floppy, so that is what people would do, rather than investing in two floppies. With the early STs that wasn't the case, remember that it was many months before the SH204 was out in quantity, and back then a hard drive wasn't thought of as cheap enough to be affordable to anyone...20Meg IDE's are affordable to anyone who can afford the computer in the firstplace ;-) =================================== MORE NOTES ON THE FALCON FROM JIM ALLEN --------------------------------------- -=> In the "Atari Corporation Online" category (14) -=> from the "Atari Falcon 030 Computer" topic (20) Message 17 Fri Aug 14, 1992 J.ALLEN27 [FAST TECH] at 22:54 EDT The internal expansion bus is very general, it can be used for anything ...386sx, acceleration, video, etc, etc. I look forward to making an accelerator for this unit, it is the best baseline we've ever had to start with!! Should be easy to make it quite peppy. The memory daughterboard is ALSO a good place for video expansions, the sky really is the limit on the neat things you can do down the road with this machine....of course it's gonna be a while before there are 1,000,000+ units out there. The only continued limitation on PC emulators will be the fact that although there is 640x480 mode it isn't done with the weird bank switching stuff the PC VGA cards are, making it tough to emulate VGA color, so much PC software goes right to the hardware on the VGA cards. But it may be possible to build a video/memory daughterboard that could really act like a VGA card to a PC emulator. We'll have to see. The Falcon has a SCSI II port, just like the Mac, but there is no more Atari ACSI port. 3rd party's are going to come out with a SCSI interface box for the SLM printers, to replace the original controller box....which is kinda neat, because from there all you need is a driver to be able to use the SLM on a fast Mac or PC with SCSI....hmmm. Of course a fairly inexpensive accelerator will be able to bring the Falcon up to the equivalent of a 486-100 ;-) With some hires mono video tossed in and a 19" Mac mono monitor would give you a KILLER DTP/ Graphics machine for about $2,500 in the Falcon. Add a BIG Hdisk and the Unix software and for $3,000 you've got a kickbutt lowend Unix workstation....just get NeXT Step ported to it...pleeeease ;-) =================================== FLOPTICAL DRIVES AVAILABLE FOR ST AND FALCON -------------------------------------------- -=> In the "Atari Corporation Online" category (14) -=> from the "Atari Falcon 030 Computer" topic (20) Message 150 Mon Aug 24, 1992 MAG.SOFTWARE at 01:39 EDT For those interested in an external floppy drive for the Falcon, New Dimensions Computer Center sells a 20MB Floptical drive with 1 20MB disk for $459. With 'shoebox' case, 60 watt power supply and SCSI cable for $589. With 'shoebox' case, 60 watt power supply, ICD AdSCSI Host Adaptor, DMA cable and software for $659. This Floptical drive will read, write and format 720K and 1.44MB floppy disks as well as the 20MB disks. Floppies run TWICE as fast as a 'regular' floppy drive. Extra 20MB disks are ONLY $24.95. Contact: New Dimensions Computer Center 9026 W. National Ave West Allis, WI 53227 (414)327-3311 =================================== C++ FOR THE ST -------------- -=> In the "Atari Corporation Online" category (14) -=> from the "Atari Falcon 030 Computer" topic (20) Message 71 Thu Aug 20, 1992 CBARRON at 01:38 EDT >Is anyone planning on implementing C++ on the atari platform? It is near completion. Comeau Computing (I think that is the name the vendor of Comeau C++ for unix anyway.) has an almost completed port of their software to the atari platform. It is AT&T 3.0 with templates, etc. compliant and very portable accross platforms. Reviewers in the unix segment of computers think very highly of this product. ---------- Message 72 Thu Aug 20, 1992 CHERRY.FONTS [Todd] at 02:04 EDT A fellow developer friend uses GNU C++ for all his commercial Atari software projects. It exists and is free (available here on GEnie I believe,) and is quite capable. ..Todd Cherry Fonts Member IAAD =================================== MAKING THE RIGHT THINGS HAPPEN ------------------------------ -=> In the "Flaming - Debating - Discussions - Rumors" category (18) -=> from "The Soapbox: Editorials about Atari" topic (2) Message 173 Fri Aug 21, 1992 LEXICOR [Lee] at 00:29 EDT I know it's hard to understand, and I am probably the last person to say so: "But" you should understand that there are a lot of honest, hard- working, devoted people working at ATARI doing their level best to make the "Right" things happen. I have met and had dinner with Sam T, Bill Rehbock, and others, and I believe that these two and all those who they work with are doing everything possible. You have to really be in this business before you can begin to understand how complex and how hard it is to get everything to happen when you want it to. Yes, I know I rant and rave sometimes, both here and elsewhere, but do understand I hope that what "I want" for LEXICOR and what ATARI "needs" is not always the same thing. They can no more drop everything and do for me than they can drop everything and just start pandering to the US market. I am not making excuses for ATARI; and I am not saying that "my view" of the ATARI market is any better than theirs is. What I am saying is that it is really quite pointless to challange Sam T. or, as I often do, challenge Bill Rehbock when I am frustrated. These men have many restrictions on what they can and cannot do. I would be willing to bet that no matter what choice they make on any given issue, business situation or who gets what and when, there will always be someone who will be unhappy. It is really quite unfair to expect any large company to be sensitive to each and every need of each patron. Even at LEXICOR we often have chronic problems. I could show you a file of small problems and nearly a thousand letters sent to me by customers who just wanted a little attention -- you know, just four or five questions. There is no way I can ever answer all these letters as much as I would like to. I have two telephone lines, one direct. I publish this one so that our customers can call and try to get problems solved directly. But even so, this does not always help. There is little I can do about some problems, albeit I have complete authority to do whatever I want! But I can't do anything to make disk deliveries speed up, or make UPS find a lost shipment. In many cases, I can only ask for help from this vendor or that vendor. In many cases, I have to shell out cash before I can order. Think what it is like to pay for all the "Bazillion" bits and pieces to build a computer, and how amazing that they even work at all! I hope these comments will be of some interest! Lee =================================== POSSIBLE 68040 UPGRADE FOR FALCON --------------------------------- -=> In the "Hardware" category (4) -=> from the "Turbo16-30 from Fast Technology" topic (11) Message 109 Sun Aug 16, 1992 J.RICE5 [Joe Rice] at 03:59 EDT Jim, I saw that Sam Tramiel indicated that the Falcon couldn't be upgraded to a 68040. I assume you know something he doesn't, right? Joe ---------- Message 110 Sun Aug 16, 1992 J.ALLEN27 [FAST TECH] at 12:48 EDT Yep, the design of the Falcon doesn't have any built in "gotcha's" that make using an 040 impossible... which IS the case with the ST(E) design. Also, the OS has been "fleshed out" in many ways by Atari, so that MultiTOS knows what to do with each of the possible processors it might end up running on. I've done a study of what's required and it will be possible to put a board in, although it may be in the $1,100 range. I've also scoped out the Tiny030 for the Falcon, and will provide swap- grades for Tiny030 owners in the future when they want to move to a Falcon. I'll probably yank out a design I have for a Mac monitor compatible high-res monochrome and slap that onto the Falcon Tiny030. Since the RAM system is 32bit on the Falcon -- not burst mode but 32bits wide -- the cache for it will be 32bit and I've got a really neat design done. It should be a serious screamer... 40 or 50Mhz 030, cache, and 1152x870 19" mono video circuit. ---------- Message 111 Sun Aug 16, 1992 AD-VANTAGE at 12:58 EDT Joe, I would read Sam Tramiel's statement to mean *ATARI* will not be offering a 68040 upgrade for the Falcon. With the processor direct connections, just about anything is possible in the way of Falcon upgrades with the help of 2nd party developers such as Fast Technology. -- Ron =================================== SO WHAT'S IT LIKE? ------------------ -=> In the "Flaming - Debating - Discussions - Rumors" category (18) -=> from the "Atari systems vs. Other systems" topic (22) Message 118 Fri Aug 14, 1992 D.D.MARTIN [Swampy] at 18:34 EDT Well, folks, I've had my PC for a little over 2 weeks and am here to tell you that I'm not overly impressed. Understand that it is a truly dedicated system. I run it only to do research for my business. What it does for me in this regard is worth the expense. The system I have is a 386-DX, 4 megs RAM, 3.5 and 5.25 high density floppies, 80 MEG h/d and a CD ROM player (the research data base is on CD disc), and super VGA monitor. My _first_ impression of this rig was geeezus, it's so BIG!! The CPU case turned out to be too big to put on my desk top so I moved it down under the desk. Besides, it's _ugly_. My sister (a programmer and systems anylist) put the system together for me and set everything up so that when I turn it on it goes straight to the research program. I don't think I could have gotten all the config.sys and autoexec.bat files done by myself. I don't _want_ to learn computing I just want to _use_ a computer! I never will forget setting up my first ST. It was so easy! Plug and play! I had the system up and running and was logged on to GEnie using FLASH within a half hour of getting home with my new computer. It took my sister 2 hours to get the PC set up and she _knows_ what she's doing! Pitty the poor soul who knows very little about computers that buys a PC at SAMS and faces the overwhelming task of getting it running. Hugs...Swampy ---------- Message 176 Sat Aug 22, 1992 C.HERBORTH [-Chris-] at 16:26 EDT BTW, a friend of mine just got a TT. We're planning to kill him so we can take it... We've also been playing with the LC II at the Future Shop and yes, it's slow as molasses. Yuck. Reminds me of when I had a C=64 and it took a half hour to load a game. The one guy who's a hardware guru said "_THIS_ is an 030?!?!?" Then there's my '486 at work. We've paid about $2000 for the software on it (only one pirate application! wow! NCR's pretty good about that) and are there any useful _tools_ on it? Nope. If I need to convert a picture from one format to another (since Word can't deal with most TIFF images we have, and PCX is a Bad Thing) I either have to bring it home for my ST to churn away on, or hack something together on the unix server. Have you ever tried programming with MicroSloth C?!? There's about 200 command switches you _need_ just to compile a simple hello.c program (ie, a program that prints "Hello!" and does nothing else)... Not to mention the fact that most software doesn't work properly on it, since I don't have a VGA monitor. We dropped > $3000 to put a 19" monochrome on it. Oh, so fast on that 8Mhz bus. I'm _very_ eagerly awaiting a Mega-style Falcon 030. If they don't fly in North America, I'll have to move on from my ST... Probably to an SST or TinyTurbo 030. DOS is the choice of the stupid generation (ie, people who don't know anything about computers and buy it for work; and business people who still think IBM is the safest business machines, despite the fact that they grab the cheapest klone they can find) and Macs are so over-priced that it's not funny. Mind you, if I won a lottery, I'd probably consider a Quadra 950... then I'd buy a NeXT. Didja ever notice how much PC owners/users talk about "compatibility"? How they pay an extra $100 or whatever to have that archaic 5.25" drive installed "just in case"? DESPITE THE FACT that they never pass data files around?!? And even when they do, they're doomed, since they don't have the same application, or the same _version_ of the application. -Chris- =================================== CAN YOU EVER HAVE TOO MUCH FALCON INFO? --------------------------------------- -=> In the "Flaming - Debating - Discussions - Rumors" category (18) -=> from the "Atari 'Falcon' Project' topic (20) Message 229 Sat Aug 15, 1992 J.ALLEN27 [FAST TECH] at 03:12 EDT The Falcon is a really really spiffy offspring of the STE and shares the same basic memory map. The top 1 Meg is used for IO devices, the next to top 1 Meg is used for Tos ROMs. That leaves 14 Megabytes out of the 16 Megabytes total address space. You can now use the full 14 Megs of address space as RAM, the RAM controller even does the work for you!! Yes, the 030 chip allows more than a 16 Megabyte address space, but NOT when you are trying to be as compatible as possible to the STE. Far too many ST applications, especially games, are not and never will be "32- bit clean". So Atari made the new machine so it didn't _require_ 32bit clean software, it will run the older non-32bit clean software...like Tempus the editor as an example, and Calamus 1.09N as another example. It's really a very nice compromise, and if you _need_ more the 14Megs it can be arranged, by slapping a memory expansion board in the CPU expansion slot, rigged up to act the way TT ram does now in the TT...and on the Turbo030 accelerator ;-) So you could add, hmmm, 8 16Megabyte SIMMs, or something equally rediculous. ;-) On the video, yes, by implementing the "interlaced" mode you can get most resolutions on the SC1224, making the transition for ST users much less costly to begin with. Neat. NTSC has 525 periods of information between vertical sync pulses, so there is the ability to put 525 lines worth of info on the screen. Oops, that's 525 lines between even vertical sync pulses. Each period of information is unique, so that's about as close to having 525 lines of resolution you're going to get on a TV. But because TV is "overscanned" on the tube, you actually only see about 480 of those lines, the rest are "off screen". If you could scrunch the vertical size down enough you could see them all. Overscanning is used so they don't have to be as precise in manufacturing the TVs about lining up the display on the tube, the whole tube face gets zapped, otherwise you'd have to precisely adjust the position of the display so it was located neatly on the screen. The Falcon will be "acceleratable" easily, 40 or 50 Mhz would be the target for an 030, if you're going to the trouble of speeding up, why stop at 33? ;-) Atari has been very sensible from the start on upgradability with the Falcon. If they can't meet the $35/Meg RAM price, I'm sure a 3rd party will. Since the 4 Megabyte size board would require 8 1Megx4 chips, a small PC board, and an inexpensive connector, it should be salable for around $159 retail, or $40/Meg and still make a profit for the developer and dealer. The internal IDE needs to be a 2.5" drive to fit, and I'm sure they'll leave the space there, ready to have a drive slapped in, no tricks, no hurdles, no crippling. There's been a real, fundamental, change in Atari's view toward 3rd party enhancements and user upgradability, and the Falcon will show it. The IDE and SCSI II ports are DMA'd ports. The Blitter chip is used as a generic DMA controller, not only drawing lines on the screen like lightning, but also reading/writing to disk. Something the Mac's lack and could REALLY use. ;-) The Falcon only knows about 14 Megs of RAM, CPU, blitter, DMA, etc. It is out of the box a 24bit machine...ie, only the first 24 bits of the 68030 address bus are connected to anything. This is REQUIRED in order to be thoroughly compatible with the ST software that is not "32-bit clean". Yes, a 3rd-party can add "TT RAM" since the OS continues to have all the appropriate support built in. I'd assume that will happen, as I said, this is a VERY EXPANDABLE machine; there are very few limitations. However, adding "TT RAM" type boards will change the system into a 32bit device and it will have then have some of the incompatibilities that the TT has. I'd suggest someone doing such a board include a "defeat" to allow return to 24bit-ness. ---------- Message 55 Sat Aug 22, 1992 D.ENGEL [Thunderbird] at 09:41 EDT Towns: Here is a list of the most frequently asked questions, minus the questions about advanced models and marketing strategies... Fire 1: Does the Falcon 030 come with MultiTOS. I mean, is it done and ready and shipping in Falcons, or will it be an 'upgrade'? Fire 2: Has GEM been tweaked up with nice multi-colored (aka more than 2) Icons and Gadgets? Maybe even 3-D like buttons, etc? Fire 3: In a 14 meg unit, where the 68030 doesn't "see" the last 2 megs, did you guys at least give the hardware access to it? Like, could it be used by the sound stuff, or the blitter? Is there possibly a way of "bank switching" a la 130XE, which lets me use the RAM for anything? (I mean my whole computer only has 2 megs now, so it seems like a waste to not have access to it) I don't suppose that the Falcon RAM card only has 14 megs populated? Opinion around here says that it has the full 16 on it. Fire 4: What is the difference about VGA monitors which won't let the Falcon do 16 bit color in 640x480 mode, yet it will work with a TV? I was always under the impression that TV was poor quality and that monitors were much better. Is it because of the interlacing? Fire 5: Will I be able to take advantage of the new resolutions on my SC1224? If so, will they suffer because the monitor is outdated? Fire 6: Does the BLiTTER and other hardware video features work in ALL resolutions? The BLiTTER seems to be set up for the 4 plane, 2 plane, and 1 plane modes of the ST. Have to new modes been designed to fit the Blitter, or the other way around? How about horizontal and vertical scrolling? Overscan? Fire 7: How much does it cost to become a Falcon Developer? What would one get from Atari if one were to register? Fire 8: Will MultiTOS really be able to run concurrently such existing programs like Pagestream, DynaCADD, Aladdin, etc? Or, will only special versions run with it? Also, is there a "I'm a bad program and I only run when I have the whole system" mode, which will allow poorly written programs to run? Fire 9: What portions of MultiTOS are on disk? Does this mean that perhaps periodic upgrades to the disk portions of MultiTOS will be available on the Official Online Service of Atari Corp? Why put it on disk in the first place? It's not a RAM hog like windoze, is it? Fire 10: Can you tell us about any potential uses for the DSP, other than the sound processing capabilities? Thanks for taking the time to read and consider these questions, which have been nagging at us all for so long. It seems like every answer spawns 10 more questions, but any information is truly appreciated. thanks. ---------- Message 56 Sat Aug 22, 1992 J.ALLEN27 [FAST TECH] at 11:12 EDT TBird, the 16Meg board will only allow 14Megs to be accessed. The ROMS have 1Meg of the memory map, and IO devices have another 1Meg. The Blitter needs to access the ROMS and the IO devices. SO nothing that could use the access will be able to, that's life. Why is it so hard to understand? If you take a Mac Plus or Classic, stuff a 68030 board in, and stuff 16 Megs on RAM on it, you will still only get access to 14Megs of it...for exactly the same reason. A 16Meg upgrade should be around $399 from 3rd parties, based on the price of 4Meg Drams these days. ---------- Message 60 Sat Aug 22, 1992 FIFTHCRUSADE at 16:52 EDT Thunderbird, I can answer some of these. #5 You'll be able to use your old monitor with an adapter, and it will work with any resolution with 200 horizontal lines. The number of colors doesn't matter. You'll want a new monitor for the higher resolutions. #9 Why put it on disk anyway? That's where a large complex operating system belongs. The main reason to have TOS in ROM is so you can use the system without a hard drive. You can't realistically run more than one application at a time unless you have a hard drive anyway, so Multi-TOS should be on the hard drive for upgrade purposes, and to save ROM space. #10 Lots of DSP uses. I hear rumblings of "realtime-raytracing". Ben White 5th Crusade Software ---------- Message 62 Sat Aug 22, 1992 TOWNS [John@Atari] at 17:25 EDT 1. To my knowledge, MultiTOS is NOT currently shipping with the Falcon030 machines in Germany. I don't know when that will happen, but we still have some work to do on MultiTOS. 2. The Falcon030 version of TOS (known as TOS 4.0) has numerous new features. They include support for DMA sound playback and record, DSP support, 3D objects (the windows from the desktop are 3D), sub-menus and popups built into the OS, and up to 256 color icons. 3. Currently, the extra 2 megabytes is not available for use in Falcon030. They do have the full 16 megabytes on the board. 4. True Color, 640x480 on a VGA monitor is too much bandwidth for the video hardware to handle. TV modes look okay, but I think the best route is an Atari color monitor (the same as the current Atari Color monitor). 5. Yes. And no.. the new modes look fine on a SC1224. 6. There is a re-designed BLiTTER in the video chip that runs at 16Mhz instead of 8Mhz and is used in all modes. Overscan is built-in and Hardware scrolling works the same as the STE. 7. The developer information has not changed. You should talk with Gail Bacani at Atari. 8. If you have a bad program, you should pressure the author of the program to fix it. However, if you run that program as the only program in the system, it will probably work. Besides, since current versions of MultiTOS are soft-loaded, you can disable MultiTOS when you boot up your system for those annoying programs. And yes, MultiTOS does run existing applications concurrently. There are some programs that don't work, but the major applications are running now or may require a small update. 9. MiNT and the new AES are on disk. The VDI and the lower level OS functions are used out of ROM. MultiTOS does use some RAM, how much I am not sure about. As for availability of MultiTOS, I have no idea when that will happen and how it will happen. 10. Well, it can be used for decompress of JPEG pictures. We are already doing that here at Atari. How about a modem? There are DSP modems out there that are just an adapter that plugs into the DSP port and processes the analog signals from the modem. If there is anything else.. or you would like me to expand on something, please feel free to jump in and ask. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. Resolutions available on the Atari Falcon030 (c) 1992 Atari Corp. Written by John Townsend ========================================================================= This document may be re-printed again and again as long as the Atari copyright remains intact. ========================================================================= A couple of notes: Unlike previous machines, there are just too many resolutions to give each resolution a name. Therefore, I will do my best to describe what the resolution is and which monitor it is on. - NOTE: TV and a Color Monitor are the same.. by Color Monitor, I am talking about the standard SC1224. By VGA, I mean a standard VGA Monitor. 40 column modes ( "column" means the number of x pixels divided by 8) --------------- 4 color, normal, TV: 320x200, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, normal, TV: 320x200, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, normal, TV: 320x200, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, normal, TV: 320x200, true color 4 color, interlace, TV: 320x400, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, interlace, TV: 320x400, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, interlace, TV: 320x400, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, interlace, TV: 320x400, true color 4 color, normal, VGA: 320x480, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, normal, VGA: 320x480, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, normal, VGA: 320x480, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, normal, VGA: 320x480, true color 4 color, line-doubling, VGA: 320x240, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, line-doubling, VGA: 320x240, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, line-doubling, VGA: 320x240, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, line-doubling, VGA: 320x240, true color 80 column modes --------------- 2 color, normal, TV: 640x200, 2 colors, 1 plane 4 color, normal, TV: 640x200, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, normal, TV: 640x200, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, normal, TV: 640x200, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, normal, TV: 640x200, true color 4 color, interlace, TV: 640x400, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, interlace, TV: 640x400, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, interlace, TV: 640x400, 256 colors, 8 planes True color, interlace, TV: 640x400, true color 2 color, normal, VGA: 640x480, 2 colors, 1 plane 4 color, normal, VGA: 640x480, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, normal, VGA: 640x480, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, normal, VGA: 640x480, 256 colors, 8 planes 4 color, line-doubling, VGA: 640x240, 4 colors, 2 planes 16 color, line-doubling, VGA: 640x240, 16 colors, 4 planes 256 color, line-doubling, VGA: 640x240, 256 colors, 8 planes and lastly.. there are compability modes for ST Low, ST Medium, and ST High on both VGA monitors and SC1224 monitors. (On a color monitor, ST High is achieved by using the interlace mode). Also, the ST Monochrome monitor (the SM124) will work with Falcon030 as well. However, it only supports one resolution: ST High Resolution. All modes on a TV can be overscanned. This means multiplying the X and Y resolution by 1.2. For example, modes with 320 pixels of horizontal resolution (X res) will become 384 pixels across, and modes with 640 pixels will become 768 across. Overscanning is done in the X and Y resolution. You can't do them independently. Special Note: On a VGA monitor, overscan is "faked".. since the video hardware doesn't have the capability to do overscan on a VGA monitor, we made it so that if a overscan mode is set on a VGA monitor, you still see the normal size screen, but the screen is a window onto the bigger overscanned image. Make sense? We did this for compatibility. This way if a game that has an overscanned starup picture can use the same pic on both the VGA monitor and the TV monitor. Pretty cool, eh? BTW.. Overscan can NOT be set from the desktop. The AES and Desktop will work just fine with it, but because you can't see the parts of the screen, we thought that that option shouldn't be available from the desktop. We don't want to confuse people. However, Overscan can be set using a new XBIOS call (Vsetmode()).. so it is still available. I hope I haven't made any mistakes. I triple-checked this document in search of errors and I couldn't find any. If you do find some, send me Email on GEnie (to TOWNS) or CIS (70007,1135) and let me know. -- John Townsend, Atari Corp. PS. Anyone who would like to reprint this message, please do so! The smaller the number of times I have to type that message, the more my fingers with thank you! ;-) After looking at this one more time.. one point to clear up: By saying SC1224 Color Monitor, I mean any Color Monitor that Atari have manufactured for the ST/Mega/STE/MegaSTE computers. Clear as mud? ;-) =================================== FALCON VERSUS TT ---------------- -=> In the "Atari Corporation Online" category (14) -=> from the "Atari Falcon 030 Computer" topic (20) Message 153 Mon Aug 24, 1992 J.MEEHAN3 [>> Joe M << ] at 05:59 EDT Jason, What are your needs in a computer? The TT and the Falcon are two different manchines. Your needs should determine which you want. In general, I would say if you are into DTP or CAD, you will want the TT. If you run more towards MIDI and general use, the Falcon may be a better machine for you. It also might be interesting to see what add on hardware may be made available for the Falcon. From the talk I hear it may out speed the TT with a little help. >> Joe Meehan << ---------- Message 154 Mon Aug 24, 1992 S.WINICK at 07:46 EDT Jason, I really don't understand why so many folks are trying to compare the Falcon with the TT030 and are holding off purchasing a TT to wait to see the Falcon. I suspect it's because so far all most of you have been only able to see are written specs rather than the machines themselves. But the TT030 and the Falcon are so totally different machines, it's really not a logical comparison. It's kinda like going car shopping and trying to decide whether or not to buy a currently available mini-van that'll handle all your growing families current and anticipated future needs, or waiting to see what next years 2-seater convertables will look like. If you have a current need for the raw power the TT030 offers, the Falcon is simply not a viable alternative as it is simply NOT YET AVAILABLE in this country. If you need a large screen monitor for CAD or DTP work, the TT030 is ready NOW to meet you needs. If you need high resolution color graphics, VME boards for the TT030 are available NOW. If you need maximum processing speed for these type of demanding applications, the TT030 is already running along at a blazingly fast 32MHz, offers the ability to use extra fast TT-RAM, and the math coprocessor chip is standard equipment. If you need to run multiple peripherals such as scanners, plotters, modems, etc., the TT030 already has multiple serial and modem ports. Basically, the TT030 is part of currently available system 'solutions' for high-end professional applications. And its professional-style keyboard is no small item for anyone who needs to do a lot of typing. On the other hand, if your current computer is meeting all your current needs and you are in no rush to upgrade your home or personal computer needed primarily for a variety of personal applications, then waiting for the Falcon may be right for you. If you're a home user who wants maximum compatibility with computer games, the Falcon, provided of course that Atari can eventually deliver it with an FCC Class B certification, would be a better choice (the TT030 is a Class A Business machine). Of course, if you're currently using a 520/1040 series system and simply need a little more horsepower, built-in hard drive, and better keyboard, the MegaSTe may also be a good choice. As with any 'new' computer model, remember that it always takes a little time before the software can catch up to the hardware's potential. The potential the Falcon offers for direct to disk recording and true-color graphics are impressive. But until the software is developed to take advantage of those capabilities, you will have to wait to achieve that potential. Basically, determine your computer needs, and if at all possible, consult with a quality dealership who can make logical recommendations. I'm sure that once you make a list of your own needs and desires, the choice will become readily apparent. I'm sure that once Atari can provide their dealerships with at least a Falcon demo model, most people will have little trouble deciding which Atari model will be best for their individual needs. Now, if you still really feel the need to try to compare the Falcon to other models, why not try the new Apple machines or the Amiga? ;-] Sheldon (Computer STudio - Asheville, NC) =================================== | | | FALCON SPECIFICATIONS | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- Atari Falcon Specifications /// CPU: Motorola 68030 running at 16 Mhz - 32-bit Bus - Optional 68881 or 68882 FPU - RAM: 1,4, or 14 megs - Standard Atari Cartridge Port - Motorola 56001 DSP chip /// EXPANSION BUS: Internal direct processor slot for 386SX PC emulation, or other coprocessor /// GRAPHICS: - Super VGA graphics: 640x480 with 256 colors - True color 16 bit mode allowing a display of up to 65,536 colors - Accepts external video sync signal, allow high quality genlocking - Overlay mode for easy video titling and special effects - Overscan on TV's and ST Color monitors - 262,144 possible colors - Hardware-assisted horizontal fine scrolling - BLiTTER graphics co-processor /// SOUND FEATURES: - Eight 16 bit audio DMA record and playback channels - Stereo 16 bit digital DMA input - Stereo 16 bit DMA audio output - SDMA sound/DMA Coprocessor /// STANDARD PORTS: - SCSI II port with DMA - High speed LocalTalk compatible LAN - Connector for analog RGB color (ST or VGA) or composite video - RS232C serial port - Bidirectional parallel port - MIDI IN/MIDI OUT - Stereo microphone input, miniature stereo plug - Stereo audio out, miniature stereo plug - Two joystick connectors - Two enhanced digital/analog controller/light pen connectors /// DATA STORAGE: - 1.44 Mbyte floppy disk drive - Optional internal IDE Hard Disk /// SYSTEM SOFTWARE: - Pre-emptive Multitasking with adaptive prioritzation (MultiTOS) - Inter process communication - NewDesk desktop and eXtensible control panel - Multiple window user interface; number of windows limited only by memory or software in use. /// PRICING: - 1 Meg RAM base configuration: $799 US - 4 Meg RAM with 65 Meg internal hard drive: $1,399 US /// AVAILABILITY: - Shipping to begin in October, 1992, with limited US distribution pending FCC type acceptance.