| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 1092.1 | Music stand computer? | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Thu Mar 14 1991 22:25 | 10 |
| You beat me to it by 10 minutes.
I want one. I've been carrying 18 pounds of Stacy (with cables, power
supply, and 2400 baud modem) back and forth to work every day for a few
months now. That shure would take a load off. Too bad about the lack
of backlight tho. (Be assured, I'm NOT complaining. The Stacy is a
wonderful portable computer. I'd buy it today even in light of Atari's
announcement, since we can be SURE this is a bit further off than this
summer.
|
| 1092.2 | update? | MIDI::GOSSELIN | Dan Gosselin, Bookreader development | Fri Jul 26 1991 14:44 | 5 |
| Has anyone heard anything more about the Notebook? Is it real or just
vaporware? Jeff?
Enquiring minds wanna know...
Dan
|
| 1092.3 | I believe they exist | COMICS::DSMMGR | Pigman, Pigman, ha ha charade you are... | Mon Jul 29 1991 06:26 | 9 |
| Weren't both products demoed in Germany at the ST Fair there ?
I believe it to be more than just VAPOURWARE and think I read somewhere
ST/FORMAT or ST/USER that they are scheduled to be out in September.
Allowing for the usual slippages etc. I am not prepared to say
September in which year 8-)
Jonathan
|
| 1092.4 | | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Mon Jul 29 1991 13:58 | 2 |
| I've heard the same. It's real. The most recent date I've heard was
also September.
|
| 1092.5 | Perhaps announced in D�sseldorf? | IJSAPL::KLERK | Time to draw the Iron Curtain? | Mon Aug 19 1991 05:39 | 5 |
| September seems right. That's when there is another Atari Exhibition
in D�sseldorf, Germany. A major event with lots of publicity currently
in press and radio commercials in Europe.
Theo
|
| 1092.6 | Seen the piccies... | RUTILE::BISHOP | | Wed Aug 21 1991 11:30 | 2 |
| I've seen pictures in a French magazine... so it's real enough...
looks quite nice too.
|
| 1092.7 | ST Book - hands on experience | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Fri Feb 07 1992 10:05 | 27 |
| I have actually TRIED the ST-BOOK. This machine is very well done.
The article in this month's ST Explorer is very accurate. It runs on
NI-CAD packs or in a pinch on eight AA's. You only have to boot it
once, after that, it remebers what you were doing when it's off, and
restores it completely when it is turned back on. The keyboard is
completely natural. I sat down and started typing with no problems at
all.
The "mouse" is unnatural, but you can get used to it. It's small,
lightweight - very portable. I'm currently in California with the
Stacy, and I was able to use the Stacy on the airplace for a few hours,
but it required that the seat next to me was vacant, because it's so
large. The book has a 10 hour battery life per charge too...very nice.
I won't be bored on an airplane ever with this!
The screen is just at good without a backlight as Stacy is with a
backlight. It will work under many more lighting conditions. Stacy is
uselss outdoors on overcast days unless you have polarized sunglasses
on. ST-Book will be JUST FINE in those conditions. The only bad
conditions for ST-BOOK will be near total darkness to total darkness.
I also had the impression the screen was more responsive. I don't
think I "lost" the mouse as often with the BOOK as I do with the Stacy.
I didn't get a date for when it will be available to the public. I
TRIED to, but nobody was talking.
|
| 1092.8 | ST Notebook available anytime soon? | POWDML::STEIL | | Wed Apr 08 1992 17:50 | 6 |
| I could really use an ST notebook this summer.
Anybody know if they might be available?
Gil
|
| 1092.9 | Not quite yet | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Fri Apr 10 1992 00:09 | 2 |
| The 1MB versions are available to some developers in limited quantities.
The 4MB versions haven't been made yet. They are due any day now.
|
| 1092.10 | Twice an ST-Book for half the cost | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Tue Aug 11 1992 17:19 | 64 |
| Here is why I will never buy an ST-Book. Apple offers twice the power
at half the price, and it's available TODAY.
<<< ROUTES::DISK$USER7:[NOTES$LIBRARY]MACINTOSH.NOTE;1 >>>
-< Apple Macintosh Volume II >-
================================================================================
Note 445.0 group powerbook 100 purchase? No replies
XFORM::PAN 14 lines 11-AUG-1992 13:22
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
I'm going to drive down to the nearest Price Club in Seekonk and pick up at
least one Powerbook 100 (4/40 with external floppy) for $899. Does anyone want
me to buy an extra one for them? With sales tax and club membership fees
the net price should be about $955 (less if lots of people share the cost of
my club membership fee).
Please let me know soon (by Wednesday, August 12) and arrange for payment
and drop off (I live in Marlboro. MA and work at the Mill). Sorry, but I can
only accept payment in advance. Please use e-mail to communicate with me. My
address is: gauss::pan.
- Davis
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above computer is TWICE the performance of an ST-Book. It's a
16Mhz 68000 as opposed to Atari's 8Mhz ST-Book. It has a backlit
screen (absent from the ST-Book), and still has a substantial battery
lifetime under normal usage conditions. It weighs slightly more than
the Atari and is slightly thicker, but is still slim and lightweight
for a notebook computer. This under $1000 configuration has the full
4MB or RAM that an Atari is allowed, and comes with twice the hard
drive (40MB .vs. 20MB) as the Atari. It has twice the memory capacity,
as it is easily upgraded to 8MB of RAM. The Macintosh's trackball is
MUCH better than the finger pad on the ST-Book. (Bear in mind that I
have actually used an ST-Book, and had the opportunity to play with
the finger pad for some time.)
This computer COMES WITH multi-user computer networking software and
hardware, still expensive and flakey for Atari, and the equivalent of
NeoDesk, and the equivalent of FSM GDOS (TrueType), and the equivalent
of MultiGEM. (MAC system 7 (multitasking) with Appletalk) It COMES
WITH Hypercard. (Hypercard-like applications haven't made great
in-roads in the Atari market yet.) It can read/write PC compatible HD
or DD 3�" floppies, as well as native floppies, so you can easily move
data between the notebook and your home Atari. It comes with a bunch of
other software (mostly built into System 7) that would be extra cost or
not available on the Atari. CD ROM applications are available now.
(Still waiting for CDAR applications?) Developer support is amazing. I
was given, FREE at MACWorld, a CD that contains the complete text of
Inside Macintosh volumes 1-6, the offical internals documentation,
along with all the developer technical notes and other developer
information available up through October 1991. The average joe can
just call up apple and buy this stuff. Nothing is kept secret for the
inner sanctum only.
And as for migration - this is the LOWEST END of no fewer than FOUR
notebook computer offerings from Apple. There is no place to go but up.
I now own a PowerBook-140, the next model up from the -100. The 140 is
almost equivalent to a TT with no FASTRam. It's a 16Mhz 68030. It
came with ClarisWorks, which is a spreadsheet, a word processor, a
terminal emulator, a database, and an Almost-But-Not_quite-PageStream
all wrapped up into one program. The machine is nothing less than
Amazing.
|
| 1092.11 | Sequencers on the Notebook ? | EICMFG::BURKE | Jim Burke, @UFC | Wed Aug 12 1992 04:13 | 16 |
| That's interesting about the Mac Notebooks. Also, the price you
stateside folk get these machines for is great. Here in Europe, it must
be about double the price. The specs of these Mac notebooks are indeed
impressive.
Anyway, I have been checking out the notebooks for some time, and I'm
still not sure what to go for: Mac, PC or Atari.
I'm keen on the Atari but only for one reason - sequencing. I have been
using Notator for some years, and I would prefer to continue with it.
Which leads me to the main question: Does anybody have any info on the
status of dongled sequencers on the notebook ?
I'm aware that Stacey had serious problems running these; and I'm also
aware of the lack of an *external* cartridge port on the notebook.
Jim
|
| 1092.12 | Okay for Midi too | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Wed Aug 12 1992 11:05 | 20 |
| What was the problem with the Stacy? It's electrically identical to a
1040, so the dongle approach should have been fine there. (I'll sell
you mine, with a UK power cord if you want it, for a good price.)
As a programmer, I've found the Atari miserable to program for Midi.
It turns out that the keyboard service routine spends too long at high
IPL, and the unbuffered Midi uart is easily overrun. The Apple uarts
have 4-byte buffering, so it's harder to overrun. I haven't tried
programming my own Midi on the Apple yet.
When I switched from Atari to MAC, I also switched from Tiger CUB to
EZ-Vision. I immediately found that EZ-Vision is 100 times easier to
use and has much more interesting functions, for a very similar price.
If this is indicitave of a trend, and combined with the difficulty of
programming Midi on the Atari, I would say that the Midi software for
the Mac is generally better than the Atari.
The difficult one is desktop publishing - I haven' tyet found the right
replacement for PageStream. I suspect Aldus Personal Press may do it.
Personal Press just recently became available.
|
| 1092.13 | Screen h/w | EICMFG::BURKE | Jim Burke, @UFC | Sat Aug 15 1992 09:37 | 16 |
| Jeff,
The sequencer problems (C-Lab's Notator I think) were admitted by
Atari. As far as I remember, it was the screen h/w which affected
(corrupted ?) the MIDI stream. One Stacey was sold to Courtney
Pine in Glasgow, and he had problems on a session with Stevie
Wonder, I heard. Apparently it also crashed in the middle of some Tokyo
concert. He wasn't a happy man !
As regards the keyboard service routines, I think that the decent
sequencers implement their own. Mind you, I don't know how they get
round the unbuffered UART servicing.
Jim
|
| 1092.14 | Details on Stacy midi problems | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Mon Aug 17 1992 12:50 | 30 |
| I have heard of both these problems, but I think only one of them is real:
My experience is that the screen hardware didn't actually corrupt the
Midi data itself, but that if you connect the Midi cables with the wrong
polarity, they can induce a fairly substantial audio-frequency noise
onto the synthesizer, which if the synthesizer doesn't go out of it's
way to prevent it, will creep into the audio signal. I experience this
problem with the cables I made myself, but not with ones I bought at a
music store. I'm not sure exactly how they are different (I never
bothered to ohm them out). I don't know if this is what went wrong in
Tokyo or not, but I know it's what went wrong in my own lab.
Regarding the keyboard service - you can get around the single-buffer
uart IF you write your own service routine for both the keyboard and
the MIDI (they are tied to the same wire). They run at the highest
interrupt level (except for modem controls and RS232, which you aren't
using, so it's okay), and you just make sure they finish in time, which
is not hard to do.) The problem with this is that there is no
documented way to feed the keyboard data to GEM at a lower priority in
such a way as to make the mouse cursor work and the standard O/S calls
for keyboard and mouse events. Also, since there is no way to
synthesize keyboard events to the O/S, it means you are left with the
problem of trying to figure out how to deliver keyboard and mouse events
to desk accessories and to the AES service that you wish to use (like
window moving and sliders).
This leaves you rewriting much of the ROMs, and with no forward
compatibilty to new machines. I suspect this is fundamentally why there
are so few MIDI applications that work on TT's. Ask John Miskinis if
you have any questions. He's been down this path.
|
| 1092.15 | Some Tech. Info | AIDEV::MISKINIS | | Wed Aug 19 1992 15:05 | 34 |
| Hi,
YES, I've been down this path... It took me quite a while
to figure out how to get 100% data accuracy when receiving
MIDI data.
What I did was rewrite the entire level 6 (MFP) interrupt
handler, which IS NOT COMPATIBLE with TOS at all... I
can't use GEM either with my code.
Bascially in the handler I have to poll all four UARTS, to
see which one has the byte in it. If it's MIDI, I place
it in my 50K record buffer (unless it's a timing event
such as synch, start, top, or continue). If it's a mouse
or keyboard event, I place it in a cyclic buffer (300 bytes
long). If it's a joystick event, I throw it away for now.
All processing of the bytes is done in a "main loop" which
works out OK for me. The important thing is to just GET
and SAVE the bytes in the interrupt servicing routine, and
perform little or no "processing" of the data.
I've been able to fil my drum machine with the maximum pattern
(8 note ons, 8 notes offs) on 16th notes, and crank the
tempoto the maximum (255bpm), and I won't lose a single
byte. Of course my realtime piano display takes a couple
seconds to catch up when I stop the drum machine. But the
data is OK in the buffer...
For what it's worth,
_John_
|
| 1092.16 | | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Wed Aug 19 1992 16:25 | 4 |
| Just an aside - the Macintosh PowerBook-100 (16Mhz 68000, 2MB RAM, 20MB
hard disk) is now going for $773.09 DEC discout price at ComputerTown,
and rumors are that CompUSA, before they ran out, sold some under $600.
|
| 1092.17 | ST Book Making A Comeback???? | TECRUS::ROST | Raymond Burr 1917-1993 R.I.P. | Thu Sep 16 1993 09:42 | 12 |
| Wow, talk about blasts from the past...
Reports on the Internet of ST Books actually arriving in European
shops. There is some argument over whether this is just new-old-stock
or actually new production. Also arguments over the configuration, is
it 1 meg or 4 meg, how big a drive, etc. Apparently noone has actually
bought one yet...one thing those who have seen it agree on is the price
is too high!
Also a report that Toad has listed them in their catalog again!
Brian
|
| 1092.18 | | ASD::POWERS | Bill Powers ZKO3-2/S11 | Thu Sep 16 1993 15:28 | 7 |
| Brian,
Toad is still using their summer 1992 catalog they haven't printed up
a new one. When they printed that catalog they had expected that atari
was going to sell notebooks in the US, but never did.
bp
|