🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <27E4E580.1093@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> johns@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Conan the Barbarian) writes: 
>
>ST BOOK
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>CPU:    68000 at 8MHz
>RAM:    1MB and 4MB versions
>ROM:    512KB

<other specs; ..., 20/40/60MB harddrive,...,optional ext. floppy>

Insite Peripherals (San Jose, CA  (408) 946-8080) is supposed to have
their floptical drive available in volume in April.  The drive formats
3.5" barium floppies, with embedded servo info, to 20.8 MB and is also
capable of reading and writing 720 KB/1.44 MB floppies. Some of the specs
for the drive are: 65 ms average seek, 1.6 Mbps transfer, 1 ms track-to-
track seek, 15 ms head settle, and 41 ms latency.  It uses a SCSI interface. 
The OEM price is ~$300. 

It's speculated that this will become the standard "A" drive for PCs and 
hopefully, Atari will offer it as a standard configuration for the notebook.
It will add several hundred dollars to the list price, though.

Regarding other aspects of the notebook: 512 KB ROM (Gigantic Tos?), two
ram card sockets (hope this becomes standard on future desktop machines
too), 1-4 MB ram capability (should have MMU with 16 MB addressability),
ACSI port (what differentiates this from SCSI, besides connector pinout?),
128 pin connector WREN compatible (what is WREN? 128 pins give out all the
processor signals and the kitchen sink. Does this imply a 68030 model?)

Overall, it sounds pretty good.  If Atari has integrated the ST chipset, 
then future models in the 1040ST form factor would have room for more
memory and a VGA-type chipset.  Since benchmarks posted here show the 
blitter chip to give only marginal speed improvements to graphics operations,
it should be...obliterated and make room for an upgraded MMU with 24 bit
addressability.  Did anyone check their 1040 STe to see if the SIMM sockets
have an extra r/c address line connected for 4 MB SIMMs?  


Jack