Conference 7.286::atarist

     RE: < Note 602.0 by RODNEY::PETERS "Don Peters, CTC2-1/F10, 287-3153" >

  Don,

     I will be unable to attend the demo at white mountain on wednesday night,
  since I have a class.  Could you please post a review in here on this
  product.  Some of the things I would be interested in knowing, are:

  1) What is the real %increase in speed?
  2) Does it work with PC-DITTO II?
  3) Does it conflict with any memory upgrade mods?

  Thanks

  Bill Powers

In spite of car problems, Jim showed up at 8:15, and spoke until 9:45. He
combines an informal appearance with an easygoing personality, a sense of
humor, and extensive hardware knowledge of the ST. In short, if you can get
him to speak to your group - do it!

Jim brought along a Mega 2 (with Turbo 16 installed, of course) with an
ICD hard disk and demo software. He usually runs Turbo 16 along with
Turbo ST and G+Plus, and highly recommends the latter two. He also uses
and recommends Pinhead.

Turbo 16 is all CMOS so as not to tax the ST powersupply, and will offer
between 50% and 100% (e.g., Postscript computation). It uses a 32K cache
along with its own 16 Mhz 68000 to achieve this. The speedup is 35% on
typical memory accesses and 100% on register operations. Basic, ordinary
ST applications can expect to see about 50% improvement. The speedup
effects of Turbo 16, Turbo ST, and the blitter are cumulative, with the
blitter giving 20-30% speed improvement. You can use an SPST switch to
enable or disable Turbo 16, or hook its control line to pin 14 (which
is currently unused) of the sound chip in order to provide software
control.

While you can install it yourself, installation implies cutting out the
existing 68000 and replacing it with a socket and a few new parts. Jim
recommends that this be a dealer upgrade. He has been a little slow in
getting dealers signed up so far, but does have the Computer Bug in
Hadley, Mass, as the closest dealer so far.

He made two handouts available. One dealt exclusively with speed
benchmarks, while the other was a feature/spec list along with the
price ($299.99). (I'll bring them to the upcoming ABACUS meeting).

I think he said that with PC Ditto you got a Norton rating of .3 without
Turbo 16 and .6 with Turbo 16. He said PC Ditto II probably won't work
with Turbo 16 as it currently exists, but they are building an adapter
board for it.

We then diverged onto several other topics. Someone asked his opinion on
RAM upgrades. He liked Datafree, and said EZ RAM was a good idea, but its
setup wasn't too good. He went on to say his company will offer
accelerators for the Amiga, Mac, and forthcoming TT.

For more information, call (508)475-3810, or you can write to:

  FAST TECHNOLOGY
  P.O. Box 578
  Andover, Ma  01810


P.S.

While at the meeting, I spoke with the owner of White Mountain Computer.
He said he spoke with Atari and can get TOS 1.4 chip sets for $99.95 plus
installation ($30?). As Ken from Atari said in todays USENET mailing, if
you can convince him you are capable of installing the ROMs yourself, you
can do so and just pay the $99.95. You can reach White Mountain at
(603)889-0800.

  RE: < Note 602.2 by RODNEY::PETERS "Don Peters, CTC2-1/F10, 287-3153" >

  Thanks for the review of the accelerator board.


>While at the meeting, I spoke with the owner of White Mountain Computer.
>He said he spoke with Atari and can get TOS 1.4 chip sets for $99.95 plus
>installation ($30?). As Ken from Atari said in todays USENET mailing, if
>you can convince him you are capable of installing the ROMs yourself, you
>can do so and just pay the $99.95. You can reach White Mountain at
>(603)889-0800.

  I went up to white mountain today, and went to see about getting the
upgrade, they do not have them available.  I also got the impression
that they were not going to even get them in, as they kept trying to imply
that modifications must be made to st's.  I told them that the only mods
I was aware of, was for the mega series, but he insisted that transistors
had to be replaced, jumpers cut the whole deal, on 520's and 1040's.

Bill Powers

    Re .3
    
    
    Hi Bill,
    
    
    I amvery disappointed, I have a colleague coming over to the US the
    week after next, I had hoped to ask him to pick up a set of ROMS from
    White Mountain for me.
    
    Do you think there is any chance that by then, it will be possible to
    ACTUALLY BUY a set of these elusive itemsI have an old ST 520 expanded
    with the six chip ROM st, which DOES NOT need any hardware mods apart
    from changing the ROMS. You are right its the Megas, and the new %@)
    and 1024's with the TWO chip set that need mods.
    
    
    Hoping to hear some good news for a change!!!
    
    PAt K.

    RE: < Note 602.4 by UKCSSE::KEANE >


    Pat

      we should continue this tos 1.4 discussion over in note 591 where
    rainbow tos is disscussed.    
    
    Bill Powers

    	Last night the folks from Gribnif Software showed their fabulous 
    V 3.0 of Neodesk at the NAVAUS meeting.  Sitting quietly in the audience 
    was Jim Allen. At the break, I asked him about the 68030 upgrade that he 
    was working on with Gadgets by Small.  He said that Dave would have had to 
    increase his staff in order to be able to market/sell the 68030 upgrade 
    board, and by the way, here's what it looks like (pulls a roughly 5"X4" 
    board out of an anti-static bag). I asked him if he was going to continue 
    with the development and market it. He said it's done and "we'll see". I
    guess he doesn't want to get into the fix his pal, Mr. Teal, got in with
    a premature announcement of a buggy product (PC Ditto II).
    	The reason for the break with Small sounds funny to me, but that's
    what he said.  Perhaps we can get him to demo the board soon? - Chris

Jim said things like "It runs a heavily patched version of TOS 1.6"
which he has permission to resell for a fee of 6 D.M./copy to Atari
Germany.  I also heard things like "50Mhz" and "socket for FPU".

Note this board is only for Megas.