🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, I have decided now that I am probably going to get an
Atari 520ST in the near future (in case you care, the main
reasons for my decision, when comparing it to the AMIGA, were
the price and the high-quality 640x400 display mode).

(One thing that I noticed is that the 520ST has a little
bus-connector on its side. What signals are available on
that connector?)

I have a few questions, and I am sure that others might be
interested in these as well:

-- what is the cheapest place to buy? I know of a place in
   Cambridge that sells it for $650 (monochrome, ss drive).
-- how pressing are disk-space problems on the machine?
   The dealer disk had a TOS image that was 200k big. Can
   that be stripped down? Are the tools to strip it down
   available? What configuration, a ds drive, two ss drives,
   or a ss and a 5 1/4" drive would YOU recommend?
-- what off-the-shelve development software do you know of
   and would you recommend? I have seen (at various computer stores):
   -- 4xFORTH
   -- HiSoft Assembler
   -- MetaComCo Assembler
   -- Haba C
   Do you have any experience with these? Are there other
   packages available?
   In particular, I have heard that Haba C has some severe
   problems. Is there hope that they'll be fixed?
-- what word processors do you know of/would you recommend?
   I have seen 1st-Word, and it looked decent, although
   not impressive.
   It would be very helpful for me if I could configure the
   processor for my printer (an Imagewriter II).
-- what MIDI software and hardware do you know of for the ST?
-- what commercial RAM upgrades are there? Is there a 1M version
   of the computer being marketed in the U.S.? In Europe?

					Thank you,
					Thomas.

					tmb@tardis.ARPA
					tmb@tardis.HARVARD.EDU