joska

Why drive a 1968 Camaro when you can drive a 2017 Camaro? Same question I use MiNT every day. But on real hardware, not a simulation. To me that's a huge difference.

It could never had made that jump. Atari never had the resources or visions to create and develop a rich OS, neither did they provide developers with usable tools. The result was that a major part of ST software was developed like it was an 8 bit. Developers invented their own solutions to stuff the OS and dev-tools should take care about, but didn't. Writing applications for GEM is hard, much more work than writing the same stuff for Windows or MacOS. And the developer tools - like TOS itself - never progressed. The result is software that's so tied to the hardware that jumping away from the basic ST cause big problems for the users. Remember that Apple - who were big and filthy rich - barely made it. A small company like Atari with the philosophy of never spending a dime never had a chance.

Whether the Amiga has survived or not is debatable If it did survive, it's despite of the PPC, not because of it. Amiga today is still mostly about 68k. The move to PPC was a failure. The Amiga community focused only on the hardware, but failed to realize that 99% of the effort would have to be put into software. It's the software that brings the system forwards, not the hardware. Why do you think the Vampire is such a big success in the Amiga world? Because it combines two things - raw speed AND backwards compatibility. If we ported TOS+MiNT to ARM or Intel today, there would be two major differences: 1 - Much faster hardware. 2 - A lot less software. Who will write the new software that exploits the new hardware?

The Milan has four PCI-slots. It also (optionally) has a 060. The main difference between the Milan and MilanII is that the MilanII was an ATX design, not AT like the Milan. The MilanII was finished and prototypes made, but it never made it to the market. Anyway, I've had my Milan060 for more than 15 years now, and while I really love that machine I have to say that going in the same direction with a new piece of "Atari" would be a big mistake. First of all, PCI has been obsolete for years. Secondly, going that route means having a GEM-only machine. Forget about running any sort of legacy software that's not pure and clean GEM. So no cool pixelpainters, no music applications, no games, no demos. Just "business" The Milan is the best "GEM-machine" out there though. Rock solid and very, very stable. I've spent thousands of hours with PureC on that machine the last 15 years I also have a Firebee and it's pretty much "just" a GEM-machine too. A lot faster than the Milan, but also a lot more fragile. As a new "Atari" I think it has failed. I don't think people realize how backwards compatible new hardware must be to use legacy software in a stable and usable way. Even when using a TT or Falcon you'll quickly get in trouble.

Please add me to the preorder list for a cased cart.

Exactly, which is what makes it interesting

There is an Atari logo on the PCB.

Interesting piece of hardware. It does look like an ACSI->SCSI card, but I did not know that Atari made such a thing as early as 1985. Also, it does not have an ACSI through-port which IIRQ all Atari harddrives had.