Re: Milan

From: Magnus Kollberg <Magnus.Kollberg_at_emw.ericsson.se>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:45:00 +0100

Hi,

> >So you expect a new OS developed for 040 will be worse than TOS 4.04 on the
> >AB040??? I don't realy see how you can say something like that. You can't
>
> I have just seen Hades60, that's all.

Fair enough. :-)
 
> >> again: do you expect Milan will be up to your Falcon standards?
> >
> >Why not???? If we are goin to judge from your email you have nothing but
> >problems with your Falcon and they must try hard to manage that! ;-)
>
> I just wanted to say that I didn't expect Apex Media nor DSP demos to run on
> Milan. That doesn't mean that I need that kind of software - it just means
> that Milan *most probably* will be a TT clone (in the better case) - IMHO.

I know, I'm just getting tiered of people being so negative about everything
new. IMHO Falke Verlag is trying to blow some life into the Atari market and
setting up www.atari.com with subdomains is the best I hve seen happen for
the Atari community for ages. If we are lucky they will even manage to do well.

For Apex and DSP stuff the future will tell. Apex 2 will most certainly not
work as it depends so heavily on the Videl but for DSP stuff most will work if
the Falcon IO card will be realized. For Apex 3 I see no reason why it should
not work (as long as the Falcon IO card will be available) as it works on the
Nova already. The main problem with Apex 3 is that it's not ready yet. And I
can live without Apex 2.
 
> >etc. A Pentium CPU isn't exactly very expensive.
>
> If it was done this way, Milan wouldn't be a TT compatible computer, so
> serial support TSR (HSMODEM) nor software with direct print would NOT work.

Who cares? As the Milan will be shiped with a new OS they will hopefully have
fixed and icorperated most of these fixes so there will be no need for it. If
you want to see how the Milan is build you can take a look at the lates issue
of ATOS on the web. They have listed all the components used in the Milan and
they are all taken from the PC world. You will lose some compatibility at
_hardware_ level but if you use the OS (which you should do as much as possible)
there will not be much troubles as it hides the hardware for you. This is the
whole point with a OS (almost). ;-)

The BIG advantage to use PC components is that it will be cheap. At a price
half of the Hades I can live with a few hardware incompatibilites.

> When HSMODEM and programs with printer output won't run, it will be just
> like a MagicPC or Gemulator on a PC, again IMHO.

And whos fault is this? I would say that this programs are not very clean written
if they can't livewithout these extensions. I do also belive that there will or
already is support for these in the Milan OS.
 
> I am just trying to point out that Milan can be either a TT hardware
> compatible computer (like is Medusa/Hades) with nearly no PC compatibility
> or it can be a PC motherboard with 68040 and TOS 5.0, which will hardly run
> anything but system clean software which can run on an emulated TT as well.

And that is what I want. Maybe not you, but for me this is okey. How often do you
run software which depends so heavily on hardware?
 
> Actually I am looking forward to see the Milan, but I am still confused if
> it is more like a TT040 or a Pentium.
 
It's a hybrid. It's a PC with a motorola CPU making it cheap to build and that is
the main point. Who wants to pay loads of cash for something which is a bit
more Falcon compatible (it will still be very hard and expensive to make your
own custom chips replacing the Videl and otherchips which are still crap) then
paying for something which is cheap and does mostly what you want.

//Magnus Kollberg
Received on ma. mars 02 1998 - 13:09:00 CET