Horace

There is a lot of diverse performance testing programs for Atari ST serial. Some measure CPU, some disk speeds, some graphic, etc. But I think that all it is not too interesting today. Machine is just too old, and people uses it not because of performance or good sound, graphic, but rather some nostalgia reasons, maybe from curiosity. Btw. only Mega STE had faster CPU by factory - 16MHz. But considering that there is a lot of CPU speed sensitive SW - mostly games and demos it had of course 8MHz mode too. Falcon has 16MHz 68030 CPU, what is in average faster 2.5 - 3 x than 8MHz 68000. But in Falcon speed depends from used graphic mode too - higher resolutions, color numbers cause wait states of CPU, because of slow (16-bit) bus. What is bad thing is that a lot of games, actually over 85% (according to some sites) works not with Falcons equipped with some Faster CPU (CT60 for instance) - talking about work in accelerated mode. The reason is of course in a way how SW is written. Pulling out max of limited HW and making CPU speed flexible SW together is not simple thing. Not to mention special tricks based on exact CPU timing. Actually, what bothers me more is slow TOS and AES. It is done mostly in C. No surprise that NVDI is much faster than VDI...

The problem with Atari ST and some newer (LCD) TVs is that ST generates not standard TV signal. Line number is even. and it is not acceptable by some devices, converting chips. Of course, no any logical combining of H and V signals will help to make it better. TBC is only solution, as is mentioned. Or other TV/converter.

DMA, even when active usually does not take any CPU time. But blitter may take some CPU cycles. Then, with skullful programming, you can do some even non-graphical things faster with blitter than with CPU in Mega ST, STE

Nothing, just usual nonsenses and inaccurate claims. Please give link where PP admitted what 'did' . HD-COPY freezes immediately right after start on any newer PC (CPU over 1GHz). For people with little older PCs best way is to use DOS mode and MAKEDISK.

What Christos wrote here is ridiculous and inaccurate. Author did not discover any bugs which are harmful for datas on floppies or hard disks. "I think people's data are too important to be taken lightly. " . What a discovery - I never knew it . Maybe to learn little about related things, terms as MBR, partition table, disc structures etc. Then you may start to communicate with SW author. Writing nonsenses is not the right way when posting bug-report. Myself did not experience any data loss. corruption with PP's SW. And I tested his SW a lot. Then, I did not see any data loss reportings in forums. Program is easy to use with standard disks. With non-standard ones some basic knowledge is necessary. Fact is that we have only 2 programs for Windows XP, which are usable with Atari floppies (800KB format for instance): Floppy Imager and OmniFlop . Second works with some predefined floppy formats in limited count, and lacks many functions present in first. And both programs use special floppy driver instead Win XP's limited one.

You completely misunderstood the whole MBR thing. Myself DL-ed hard disk image, and it did not autoboot on Atari. But all data was there, and it was possible to access it when load driver from floppy. As is explained, problem is caused by Windows XP's writing of some signature in MBR, what destroyed Atari checksum, and nothing else. And author suplied short proggy for fixing that problem (permanently) right next day. So, no erasing of MBR happened. Especially nothing was written on C partition of Windows. MBR on SD card is not partition table of C: on PC Actually, you talk nonsense. There is no "partition table on the C: of a windows PC" - partition table is in MBR. On C, or D... etc. may be only usual parameters, boot code (if active part.) for those partitions self . Obviously, you are not competent to judge about this things.

I agree with first part. Alpha SW ? Updated during years. No bugs there.

This is discussed here zillion times. Please use search...

Let's be real : Techie Alison is away for months, Mug UK is incapable to do anything complexer, lot of people left forum, scene. There is a people which could maintain one PHPbb forum, and quickly fix errors. But obviously neither forum admins, neither experts are really interested. This is not first similar case btw. Instead moaning go to ski

It sounds not good. May be some bad chip, and fixing it is not easy, often is expensive. Best what you can do is bringing it to some expert, serviceman.

One of the best Sinclair games, Highway Encounter for Atari ST ! Nice work, Tomaz Kac May DL it at AF. Or HD fixed, with some trainers : http://ppera.07x.net/atari/SCRSH/highwaye.html

Keeping thousands of menu disks, which are in many cases duplicated, quadded (just minor diffs in bootsector), which work not from hard disk in most of cases on hard disk is not the best way, I guess. Related question: did someone ever took effort to make list what is really usable from that 13 or whatever GB, and how many GB is it if exclude duplicates ? STX images there too ? I keep everything on DVDs. And think that even 1GB hard disk or memory card may be enough. On it fits at least 500 PRG, game. And who needs more in 1 year for instance ?

You got point

There stays: "Here I will not go about limits when using some more advanced OS - as Mint or Magic." . Author's drivers support too FAT32 and Mint, btw. Please read written more carefully. Can someone wisely fill some 100 GB (or even only 10 GB) drive with Atari SW ?

May be of use: http://ppera.07x.net/atari/ASThdFAQ.html

Romania Falcon 030, 4MB RAM, 4GB IDE . Clock seems to be dead