🚀 go-pugleaf

I had the opportunity to take a look at John DeMar's "ST-NET" in a very
primitive form.  It was *SLOW*.  File service is slower than floppy access
by a significant amount.  And that's with only two computers talking to
each other; things will slow down even more when you add more computers
to the net.  The problem isn't anything you can really solve in software;
it's the 31Kbaud transmission rate of the MIDI port.  That's simply too
slow for anything but the most primitive networking applications (MidiMaze,
for example).  Even Appletalk, which isn't a speed demon by any stretch
of the imagination, runs seven times faster than the MIDI port.  Combine
that with the cockeyed way the ST handles MIDI interrupts (they have lower
priority than things like the RS232 port, which is silly since the MIDI
port is half again as fast) and you have a really monstrous programming
project that's not going to give you a whole lot of benefit anyway.

The DMA port is the only good place to plug a network interface into the
ST; it is fast enough to do reasonable networking, such as Ethernet.  If
someone develops an Appletalk box for the ST, they will stand to make quite
a tidy profit, especially if they can make it work with the Spectre 128
and Magic Sac.  That or an Ethernet interface are much more worthwhile
networking projects for the ST.

(Of course, if you're just doing MIDI networking for the fun of programming
the stuff, ignore everything I've just said...)

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These are my opinions, and in no way reflect those of UCSC, which are wrong.
Steven Grimm		Moderator, comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st
koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu	uunet!ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!koreth