TT030 vs. Falcon

[Tempest]

Quick question: Which is more powerful, a TT030 or a Falcon030?

 

From what I can tell the specs are very similar. I suppose if you get the TT030 running at 32MHz it's faster than the Falcon, but is faster really more powerful? The Falcon has a later version of TOS (4.06 vs. 3.06), but did it add any useful features?

 

Tempest

[Curt Vendel]

The TT certainly is a more expandable system, the Falcon has a more stable and compliant SCSI2 interface, the TT has some bugs in its interface. You can get a VME card for 32K 1024X768 graphics on the TT, the Falcon uses cheaper IDE HD's, I prefer the pedestal case of the TT of the all-in-one tired looking 1040ST case of the Falcon. The Falcon does have the DSP processor and some apps were written for it like the sound2harddrive utility. the Falcon TOS is a little bit nicer, what really holds all ST's back is that mouse. Atari never made a smoother and more ergonomic mouse and never increased the resolution, bad idea. However you can hack PC mice to work on the ST and I'd advise you do it, the STM-1 is just too clunky and annoying to use.

 

There are now several RomPort and ASCI Port Ethernet Controllers so Internet Connectivity is now cheap and available on all ST's. Out of the box the Falcon does have better color graphics, but the TT has unmatched moncrome hi-res graphics, but requires a special monitor.

 

Both run MINT, BSD and other Unix platforms well. Its a matter of choice, since you have a TT030 now, you've made a good choice no matter what :-)

 

 

Curt