🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1315@husc6.UUCP> grunau_b@husc4.UUCP (Justin J. M. Grunau) writes:
>>In article <2425@sunybcs.UUCP> leo@gort.UUCP (Leo Wilson) writes:
>... [he quotes a particularly virulent recent article] ...
>>Come on folks, let's not get carried away.  Please make an effort to keep
>>However, shouting won't accomplish anything...
>Rather, the reason people are shouting, and in my opinion SHOULD be shouting,
>is certain attitudes that we have been getting from the people at Atari -- the
>kinds of attitudes summed up by Mr. Tramiel's remarks concerning Ferrari's.
>
>Right.  No, I think Atari is handling their PR very poorly at the moment, and
>indeed the recent silence of Neil Harris et al. is just a part of it (compare
>the constant involvement of Commodore technical help in comp.sys.amiga).  If
>they do not do some damage control SOON, they are going to lose a lot of very
>valuable recommendations from past customers.
>
The MAILER made me do this....
While I kind of agree with the sentiments stated above. I.E. Being
positive in a bad situation and yelling if that doesn't work. Perhaps we
are mad at the wrong people. The situation seems to be that ATARI went
looking for an operating system for the ST a while back. They needed one
of course and anyone who has programed more that a day has to know just
how difficult it is to write a GOOD operating system. So who has a GOOD
windowing operating system for ANY hardware? Well let's see... SUN,
APOLLO, ATT, APPLE (insert your favorite here). The point is there
aren't any GOOD AVAILABLE systems. 
	Well of course, DRI had an engineer that was working on a MS-DOS
clone and they have GEM. At this point I have to say that personally...
I am MAD AS HELL AT DIGITAL RESEARCH!!! Every problem I have seen with
the ST can be traced directly back to good ol' DRI and their buggy
operating system. Why did they bother with non preemptive multi tasking?
Where was their head when they built the memory allocator? Don't they
know how to say 'Hard DISK' 40 folders?!? You mean someone might want to
have more than 40 folders? They must have had a bunch of virgins working
for them. Can you believe it? They didn't even understand priority
levels as evedenced by the fact that they move the SYSTEM stack with
some of the GEMDOS calls.
	The upshot of all of this seems to me to be that DRI sold ATARI
a bill of goods and now won't stand behind it. I can't help but feel for
the Atari folks, this situation, in my opinion at least, is not really
their doing. For example, the 40 folder limit wasn't apparent to ATARI
until AFTER they released the hard disk. I have watched this new group
since the beginning and believe this to be accurate. When they noticed
there was a problem, they were pretty up front about it. It is to their
credit that they didn't hide it. It is a pretty good bet that whatever
ATARI paid DRI for GEMDOG, they didn't get their money's worth. And the
problem is compounded since DRI and ATARI don't seem to work together on
this one.
	The problem is GEMDOS is now a standard, the WORST thing that
could happen is to have a second release that has different bugs in it.
Other than the operating system, what's to support? Two and Four meg
upgrades are readily available. It reminds me of the old Hot Rod addage
'Speed costs Money...How much Speed do you want?'. They have just
introduced several new machienes, these we all know to be mostly
cosmetic in nature and are certainly something we can duplicate when the
memory prices drop. You want a 68020 you say? No problem, except that
the STUPID DRI OPERATING SYSTEM won't let you install it. The supervisor
stack frames are different you know.
	Personally, I think that ATARI is doing a pretty good job even if
the bosses son is a bit of a twit. He certainly should think before he
speaks to reporters. I tend to think that the current success of ATARI
has gone to his head a little bit. But why blame his actions on Neil and
the rest of the folks at ATARI? They didn't have anything to do with it
except to have to waste time dealing with this rather flip remark, which
is sure to be a waste of there time.
	By the way Neil, if you are reading this, I sure hope that you
guys will remember us when you get around to designing you 32-bit
system. I would very much rather give you guys $1500.00 or so for a box
that will work with my Supra drive on the DMA port than have to sell my
system and do the dreaded market search for a 32-bit system. So here is
my vote for a box that can use the ST as a fast terminal instead or
possibly in addition to the 1024 squared system I am sure you guys are
desinging. You might also consider posting a list of known bugs and work
arounds periodically. Also, judging from the number of books that are
becoming available on GemDos, it might be best to get yours on the
market pretty soon or you will miss the window.
	Well...Feel free to flame if this doesn't suit you. I have thick
skin and can take a joke. What SHALL we talk about?
	This situation was best summed up in a conversation I had with
David Beckmeyer. I asked him why memory seemed to be fragmented so badly
when I was using the MTC-Shell. His reply...The problem is maintaining
compatibality with the BUGS in the DRI operating system....

				Bill Wood (!usceast!tech)