🚀 go-pugleaf

I heard that one could ask questions on compuserve about the new
atari machines and Antic would submit them to Atari which would
then respond on compuserve. I have a few questions that might be
asked if someone can submit them on compuserve. Of course if
anyone else can answer them that is ok too. These are about ST
machines.

1. Is the 128k machine expandable to 512k by just adding in 64k
chips and if so is there a jumper that can be changed so that it
can accept 256k chips for future expandability to 2Mbytes.


2. Is there intelligent disk io that uses a dma controller and
priotized interrupt structure ala the ibm pc? This is important
when one has to handle interrupts from various sources.

3. Can hard disks and floppy disks be daisy chained or is one
limited to just one hard disk and one floppy disk?

4. Is atari planning on supporting the new cd roms for access to
large databases or reference guides, etc?

5. Is there any memory management hardware on the machine? This
would be useful for porting operating systems like unix, os9, or gnu.

6. How does one go about becoming a software developer for the
new machines. That is can anybody obtain technical info for
hardware or software development.

7. What are Atari's plans for supporting some form of local area
network?

8. Will the peripherals for the new machines be compatible with
Atari's forthcoming 32bit machine?


Note: I don't expect all of these features to be on the ST
machines. After all how much can you get for $400. But, it
should at least form some idea as to it's limitations.

-- 
ARPA:	eneevax!ravi@maryland
UUCP:   [seismo,allegra]!umcp-cs!eneevax!ravi