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Attending the recent show in Birmingham one could have been forgiven for thinking that we had all been sucked into a time warp and projected some years into the past. The general opinion was that the show was a huge success and I hadn't seen this kind of turn out for some time. It would seem that the Atari market has not passed-on just yet.
New and old faces could be seen in the hall, that seemed to fill up quite quickly and stay busy for much of the day. Faces that I hadn't seen for some time attended, a sign of the times it would seem. This would certainly seem to be a renaissance in the Atari market. New product continues to be developed and released, and even some old favorites are making a come back. I see from issue 66 of ST Applications that Protext -- that work-horse of the wordsmith -- is back on the market after the passing of Compo.
TOS'ers. No, I'm not throwing abuse at someone, but thinking aloud about the trend to move away from the Atari name and call our merry band of users by the operating system we all know and love. Atari as a trading entity is no more, perhaps we now have the opportunity to throw off the stigma that is attached to the Atari badge. It's unfortunate that Atari decided to call their operating system TOS. But TOS is alive and well. And used every day by thousands of people across the country.
Having a Windows PC sharing desk space with my Atari, I have had the opportunity to compare TOS with Windows 95. They obviously do share some similarities. TOS attempted to emulate the Apple desktop, remember back in the late 80's when the Atari was dubbed the poor man's Mac? As Windows 95 has attempted to take most of what was good about the Mac interface it is no surprise that the Windows 95 desktop looks very similar to what you will find on many Atari screens. Well, it has a few folders anyway.
It is only when you look under the surface that you find the dirt. For Windows 95 is a messy operating system. With acres of hard disk space to run rampant over, every Windows application places small pieces of code all over the place. Uninstalling a program from Windows is a nightmare of the highest magnitude. Small pieces of code link into so much of the existing operating system, it is little wonder that there are dedicated uninstall programs available. They don't come cheap, but without one you may reboot your machine to find yourself locked out.
TOS on the other hand is simple and elegant. With the addition of one of the new desktops and maybe a multitasking system an Atari screen can look rather smart. However none of the aforementioned mess is in evidence. Your folders invariably contain all the files that your applications will need. All we have to do is remember that there may be resource files in a folder, or maybe a configuration file in the root directory of the boot drive. Coupled with perhaps a couple of Auto folder programs and you have finished. Diagnosing faults is usually quite simple. I know I will make some users cringe when I say that editing the font files for GDOS is child's play after you have attempted to track down a fault under Windows 95.
I am still waiting for Plug and Play to solve all of these problems, but it would seem that I will have to wait a few years yet. Attempting to install one of the Wacom ArtPads on the PC was testament to this. Windows should really be able to detect this new hardware. Dutifully it did put up a dialogue box to this effect. It then went on to delete the mouse driver that I had on the system. On rebooting, the system didn't recognize the new hardware. Without a mouse driver installed I had no way of getting back into the system to reinstall the driver. Luckily the Windows desktop can be navigated with the keyboard. All is now back to normal, but not without some frayed nerves and more grey hair.
Installing the same graphics tablet for a recent review for this very magazine was quite straight forward. The driver that is supplied as part of the Quill package is easy to use. A couple of screens set the tablet up, and away you go. The print-out of the Windows installation instructions for the ArtPad from the Wacom Web site run to 4 pages. And that is just how to unpack the drivers and accompanying files before you even think of installing it under Windows! Then you have to decide whether to do this or go with DOS!!
Needless to say, it is a love hate relationship with both machines. One area that I can't really fault either machine on is their handling of comms. Using CixComm/CixRead on a TOS machine is just as efficient as using Ameol under Windows. Odd that when you consider that one machine has an 8MHz 68000 chip, with the other sporting a 133MHz Pentium. For e-mail the Atari holds up quite well in any company.
TOS'ers everywhere, it would seem, can look forward to a few years yet of productive life from their machines. If any of you visited the System Solutions stand at the recent Atari Shows, you will have no doubt marveled at the super ST they had on display. If developers feel they can produce kit of this kind, the rest of us a few rungs down the technological ladder can rest assured that the kit we use every day is far from obsolete.
Dave Howell
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