[Coco] [CoCo] Atari and Amiga comparison

[Torsten Dittel]

> The last cocofest I was at, I bought an ST of some sort, but the tube in
> its little 12" monitor was gone, so I may see if I can make an adapter
> for your converter and use it on that, someday when I'm plumb out of
> honeydo's & all caught up on the linux mailing lists.

I got an ST in 1989 (lack of CoCo3 here in Germany). First a 1040STFM
(had a PAL RF modulator output), later a Mega ST4 (4 MB RAM). My
harddrive was a Megafile 20 (20MB). I used that setup until '94 or so.
Before I switched to a 486DX4133 16MB, I had an external SuperCharger PC
(XT) Emulator (http://vic20.de/assets/images/SuperCharger.jpg and
http://vic20.de/assets/images/SuperCharger03.jpg ) for the DOS stuff (I
compiled a lot of Topspeed Modula 2 programs with this beast).

However, I (almost) never used the color output of that machine. It was
connected to this custom made 12" SM124
(http://www.maedicke.de/atari/hardware/pictures/sm124_1.jpg ) black and
(paper-)white monitor (now greyscale!) and showed 640x400 pixel at 72Hz
fixed frequency (=>35.7kHz scanline frequency). This was *really* a
crisp picture compared to other systems in these days. Great for DTP and
word processing. We had WYSIA(lmost)WYG with Signum!2 and the NEC P6plus
24-needle printer printing with 360dpi
(http://www.application-systems.de/signum/Resources/signumscreen.gif ).
My main use of the ST (besides DTP stuff with Calamus
(http://www.calamus.net/man/img/cal/de/calamus_0040_prin.gif ) and Word
Processing with Signum!2) was using C-LAB Notator SL as Music Notation
and MIDI Sequencing software
(http://www.tweakheadz.com/images/notator1.gif ).

One exception for using the SC1224 color monitor
(http://www.maedicke.de/atari/hardware/pictures/sc1224g_1.jpg ): Playing
MIDI Maze II (http://www.sarnau.info/software:midimaze_ii ). We
connected up to 16 ATARIs to a Ring Network using the ST's MIDI In/Out
ports (we even had MIDI "network jacks" installed in walls of our
dormitory rooms).

Regards,
Torsten